Everything is Awesome! James 5:10-20; St. Matthew 9:1-8 (Riffing on St. Peter Chrysologus) Over the last few homilies, I have tried to share an approach to living that looks for the good, and the beautiful, and the true in all things so that we might have joy in them and nurture them towards greater glory. Today, I am going to continue this lesson by applying it to scripture. Of course, in this case we are not nurturing scripture to greater glory, but we always grow in our appreciation of its goodness, beauty, and truth so that those virtues might grow within us. Let’s go through today’s Gospel reading. This story starts out so mundanely, with Christ entering the boat, crossing the sea, and coming to his town. But even in, this there is something to learn, something that should leave us in awe. This is the God who has complete mastery over all the elements, over all of time and space. Why does he cross the sea in this way – surely the hosts of heaven, at the very least, could have born him to his destination? As St. Peter Chrysologus teaches us the way that he juxtaposes the material with the spiritual and the mundane with the glorious; Christ came to take up our infirmities, and to confer his own power upon us; to experience human things, to bestow divine ones; to accept insults, to return honors; to endure what is irksome, and to restore health, because a doctor who does not bear infirmities does not know how to cure; and the one who has not been a fellow patient is unable to confer health. To summarize St. Gregory of Nazianzus; that part of humanity that God did not accept or assume, cannot be saved. There were no shortcuts for our salvation. God became man and lived according to our infirmity (in everything but sin). Therefore, he endured these limitations so that he would be shown to be true man by these human limitations. Do you see how much beauty here? We go on to read that he entered the boat. He entered a boat? Sure you see where we are going with this! We know these truths, but do we ever slow down and just bask in their glory? What is the boat but the Church? Again, let’s listen to St. Peter Chrysologus; Christ always enters the boat of his Church to calm the waves of the world, so that he might lead those who believe in him tranquilly across to his heavenly homeland, and make citizens of his own city those whom he made sharers in his humanity. Therefore, Christ does not need the ship, but the ship needs Christ, because without a Pilot from heaven the ship of the Church is unable to pass through the sea of the world amid so many grave perils and reach heaven’s harbor. We have talked about the sea and the boat; what about his destination? How can we not be amazed that the Creator and Lord over all the cosmos, for the sake of our salvation; … began to have a human homeland, began to be a citizen of a Jewish town, and he himself the Parent of all parents began to have parents, in order that his love might invite, his charity attract, his affection bind, and his kindness persuade those whom his sovereign might had put to flight, dread had scattered, and the force of his power had made exiles. I cannot tell you how often I passed over these words as if they were filler between the really important things in the narrative. How often do we do this not just with scripture, but with life? Every moment, every detail of life is precious, brimming with meaning and potential. But we skip over this invitation to joy, to glory, because we are looking or waiting for greater things. My brothers and sisters, in a world that has been infused with the divine, everything is steeped in magnificence. And so, we finally get to the meat of the story; He came to his own town, and they brought him a paralytic lying on a bed. And when Jesus saw their faith, it says, he said to the paralytic: “Have confidence, son! Your sins are forgiven you” (vv. 1–2). While the point about God having the power to forgive sins, and Him choosing to exercise that power as man, as the new Adam, thus setting the scene for giving that power to us as the new humanity in Him; while all that may be obvious, or if not obvious, certainly provides the grist for most homilies on this passage…. There are details that we often pass over and that deserve our attention. Jesus saw their faith… Their faith… not the faith of the paralytic. St. Peter points out that the faith of the infirm is often unreliable – the mind of the infirm is often delirious – and so “he does not examine all the senseless desires of the infirm, but he comes to help thanks to someone else’s faith, so that he may grant through grace alone, and not deny, whatever is of the divine will.” What a beautiful thing is the love of the Lord for all of us in our delirium! And, when we are thinking straight, and thus concerned more for the ill and infirm among us as ourselves – he brings his ...
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