Sermons & Homilies
So, here we all are. We are gathered together into this Church, but maybe only physically; we see each other with our physical eyes, but do the eyes of our hearts see the God-like soul of each and every one? Do we understand that we are one body and spirit? We sense the presence of each other here; but do we sense each other’s gifts and virtues, pains and struggles, and silent prayers? Are we bound together by sympathy of mind and heart, bearing each other in our hearts with mutual joy, love, pity and prayer?
Today is the Fourth Sunday of Pascha, which is known as the Sunday of the Paralytic because of the appointed reading from the Gospel of John which we have just heard. That the Holy Church has appointed this reading for the Fourth Sunday of Pascha is very interesting, because we begin now to hear Gospel lessons which no longer have any obvious and outward connection to the Paschal season. No longer do we commemorate the events surrounding the Lord’s Resurrection, but rather encounters which had already come to pass before our Lord Jesus Christ went to His voluntary and saving Passion.
On the Fourth Sunday of Pascha both the reading from the Holy Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles describe miraculous healing. Our Lord heals a paralyzed man who had suffered this affliction for thirty-eight years, while the Apostle Peter heals another paralyzed man, Aeneas, who had been afflicted for eight years, and then raises a maiden, Tabitha, from death itself.