Fourth Sunday after Pascha – Sunday of the Paralytic; The Repose of our Venerable Father Theodosius, Hegumen of the Monastery of the Caves at Kyiv and Organizer of the Cenoebitic (Common) Life in Rus’ (1074) and the Holy Martyrs Timothy and Maura (286-305)
Read
Acts 9:32-42; Hebrews 13:7-16
John 5:1-15; Matthew 11:27-30
Christ is risen! Truly, He is risen!
As a teacher you wind up meeting students with some really interesting names in the classroom. I actually had the opportunity to teach a student whose name was Dorcas, although she preferred the Hebrew version given today in our epistle: “Tabatha.” She didn’t feel like “Dorcas” was a very pretty name. Yet in the original language, it means “gazelle” a symbol of beauty for the people of that region. The disciple Tabitha was absolutely beautiful in her service to the Church, as we see today how much her death is mourned by her fellow disciples.
Dorcas had two names because it was customary in a place like Joppa, a city of commerce where the “business language” was Greek, to have another name to get by. This is similar to the way we might have a Facebook name or account! But here’s the question for us today: Even if we have more than one social media name or account, are we actually acting like one person or two? What is our true identity?
However many social media accounts we have, first names, middle names or nicknames, the one name we share is that one that gives life to the world: “Christian.” St. Peter shows Christ working through him when he says “Aeneas, Jesus Christ heals you; rise and make your bed.” It’s not Peter doing it. It’s Christ doing it. Peter is living his true identity, his life IN Christ and therefore is doing the things we see Christ do in the Gospel today with the healing of the paralytic. Our Lord said that His disciples would do “even greater things than these,” (John 14;12) and we have seen these miracles throughout the life of the Church, continuing to this very day!
As we continue our Paschal festivities, celebrating Christ’s amazing gift of Resurrection from the dead, let us also begin to meditate on the amazing gift of the new life of mission: our life in Christ!