Jesus healed many who were sick: paralyzed, blind, deaf, dumb, lepers… It is interesting that when the Bible speaks of the curing of lepers, it usually doesn’t use the word "to heal" but "to cleanse". Also, the lepers were the only ones who had to show themselves to the priests after being healed.

Leprosy, as a physical disease, is at the same time a symbol of a spiritual reality, namely sin, which burdens, defiles and destroys man, and from which we all need to be cleansed. Christ has bound the forgiveness of sins and cleansing from guilt to the promise He made to the apostles after His resurrection: „Whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained.“

Today’s Epistle speaks of the promise and the Law. God promised Abraham that his Seed would bring blessing to all nations. This promise has been fulfilled in Jesus Christ, who is the descendant of Abraham according to the flesh, Abraham’s Seed. Nothing can disannul the promise that God made to Abraham and through him to all mankind.

This promise was not abrogated even by God’s covenant with Israel, which He concluded through Moses and based on which Israel was convinced that only they were God’s people and only they could partake of the previous promises and blessings. St. Paul shows us that the meaning of the Law given through Moses was something else: God showed Israel and everyone else that if they want to be heirs of God’s promises and live as His blessed ones, then only by God’s grace, not by relying on their own works or merits. The task of the law is to show that all are transgressors, all have sinned and fallen short of God’s glory.

The deaf and dumb man in today’s Gospel represents the fallen man, that has preserved the inner longing for the truth and the eternal but is not able to achieve what he longs for, or even fully realize what he really needs.

St. Paul, in today's Epistle, equates Christ's appearances to the apostles immediately after His resurrection with the revelation he himself received at his conversion. St. Paul writes: “And last of all He was seen of me also, as of one born out of due time.”
This took place at least two or three years after the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus. And after Paul had become a Christian, he spent a few years in Arabia and then another fourteen years in Tarsus before becoming a missionary at the encouragement of St. Barnabas. Paul’s decision to preach the gospel did not come easily and was preceded by deep reflection and inner preparation.

St. Paul speaks in today's Epistle about various gifts of the Holy Spirit. At the end of the same twelfth chapter of the First Epistle to the Corinthians, from which today’s Epistle is taken, he says: “But covet earnestly the best gifts; and yet shew I unto you a more excellent way.” What is this “more excellent way” and what is the greatest of the gifts of the Holy Spirit? St. Paul tells us this in the next chapter of his Epistle to the Corinthians, that “the greatest of these is charity”.