Sixth Sunday after Pentecost. Octoechos Tone 5; The Holy Priest-Martyr Pancratius, Bishop of Tauromenia (1st-2nd c.).
Romans 12:6-14; Matthew 9:1-8.
Read Matthew 9:1-8
Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!
Talk is cheap. Jesus says as much to the religious legal experts in today’s Gospel reading. He wants them to know something. He wants them to know that he has “authority on earth to forgive sins.” The convincing proof He offers is not just to say so but to make a paralyzed man able to walk.
Certainly, it is a more difficult and convincing thing to heal the sick or infirm than to simply claim a certain authority with words, but what is it about being able to heal that transfers to being able to forgive? How are those two things intrinsically connected?
Notice that, in connecting forgiveness with healing, Jesus does not say that the man is paralyzed as a direct consequence of a sin the man has committed. Jesus is not saying something about the paralyzed man; He is saying something about Himself.
The sin in question, of which all suffering is a result, is the sin of Adam – spiritual death – and then all the sins that flow from it. It is this that Jesus announces as having arrived in His coming: that One is now among us who has the authority to undo, not only what we suffer under, but why we suffer under it.
The burdens we suffer under now have an expiry date. They do not have a future but, in Christ, we now do. What Jesus says to the paralytic, He says to us: “Take heart; your sins are forgiven.” Our calling now is to live in that forgiveness and glorify God.