The Nineteenth Sunday after Trinity AD 2024

Today's Gospel tells about a man who was sick of the palsy. Or rather, about quite a few men who were sick of the palsy. One of them was cured, the others were not, because they didn’t realize that they were sick and didn’t want to be cured.

We are not talking about physical paralysis here, but spiritual paralysis. When Jesus saw the man who was sick of the palsy and was brought to Him, He said: “Son, be of good cheer; thy sins be forgiven thee!” Jesus knew what this man’s real problem was: he was a sinner. Yes, he suffered from a serious illness in this life, but above all, Jesus wanted to save him from the suffering of eternal damnation. If Jesus had the choice to heal a person’s soul or body, He would choose the soul without the slightest hesitation.

We know that eventually Jesus healed this man of physical paralysis as well. He did this to save more souls– to save the souls of those who thought evil in their hearts. Whereas in the eyes of Jesus, the greatest evil was not that they thought badly of Him, but that they were angry that He had proclaimed the forgiveness of sins to that paralyzed man. They didn’t care – they didn’t care what happened to this man in this life or in eternity.

In this they were radically different from those who had brought the paralyzed man to Jesus. They cared and were happy about his physical and spiritual healing. We should be the same: not paralyzed by evil, envy and other sins, but filled with love and joy. Just as Saint Paul says in today’s Epistle: “Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice: and be ye kind one to another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you.”