{"id":6513,"date":"2020-06-24T15:12:35","date_gmt":"2020-06-24T05:12:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/?p=6513"},"modified":"2020-06-24T15:12:37","modified_gmt":"2020-06-24T05:12:37","slug":"the-paralytic-man-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/the-paralytic-man-2\/","title":{"rendered":"The Paralytic Man"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n

St Luke’s transcribed sermons- Fr Samuel Fanous<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\nare some beautiful readings today, and if you look through them there is a\ncommon theme that runs through all of them. That theme is healing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

If\nyou look at the Pauline it says;<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201ceye has not seen,\nnor ear heard, nor has entered into the heart of man the things which God has\nprepared for those who love Him.\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, you can\u2019t even begin to imagine what God has\nprepared for you. Then if we go to the Catholicon;<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cby which have\nbeen given to us exceedingly great and precious promises, that through these\nyou may be partakers of the divine nature having escaped corruption that is in\nthe world through lust.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is one of the most famous passages in the\nwhole Bible because St peter teaches us something very profound in this\npassage; the true incarnation of Jesus Christ through Him coming as fully God\nand touching humanity in the way He did and uniting it to Himself, He has\ntouched all flesh so that we become like God. God became man, so man could\nbecome God. So, this is what Christ offers us through healing our flesh,\nthrough touching it and making it holy and divine. Hence why this is one of the\nmost famous passages in the Bible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If we go to the acts, we hear of St Paul healing a\ncripple from Lystra. They thought that he was a God because of this healing. As\nwe also hear of St Moses the Strong in the Synaxarion, which is one of the most\nbeautiful stories of repentance we have in the whole church. A man who was so\nfar gone and yet he became one of the greatest saints that we have in the church.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finally, in the Gospel we have Christ healing the paralytic\nman, and if you have a look at the order, He doesn\u2019t heal him then forgives his\nsins. He forgives his sins then He heals him. And the question is, what is the\ngreatest miracle in the Gospels? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

He raises Lazarus from the dead after 4 days and He\nmade eyes for a blind man. But is this really what He came to do?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lazarus rose and then died later on in life. The\nblind man saw but became blind again when he died and saw nothing. So, is this\nreally what He came to do?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All of these miracles don\u2019t achieve any lasting\nservice in and of themselves, because the healing that he achieves is temporary.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Matthew Henry, one of the great biblical commentators says; <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe only reason\nChrist did miracles, was to show what He could really do.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The miracles were just a little taste tester to show what he could really do. The miracles don\u2019t mean anything in and of themselves because of how many people saw his miracles and walked away and kept going on about their lives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What Christ is teaching us today is the real miracle, which is the forgiveness of sins. The real miracle is the healing of the soul, not the body. The healing of the soul has eternal ramifications, and it is so much harder to do than the healing of the body. That\u2019s why Christ questions, \u201cwhat\u2019s easier to say?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is much easier to heal someone than to forgive their sins. Now in modern medicine, you come, and we have miracle drugs because they cure many diseases and fix problems that we never had before. That\u2019s what medicine can achieve, but what medicine can never achieve is the change of heart, the change of person, helping someone to overcome a particular sin. So, when Christ came, He did not come for miracles, He came to say, \u201clook, you have a physical disease and I will heal it for you. Just to show you. Imagine what I could do with your spiritual disease. For us its standard, I repent, and the sin is gone. This is what we have been taught in Church, but if you look, it wasn\u2019t always the case. In the old testament, if you sinned; let\u2019s say you killed someone, there\u2019s no forgiveness. The punishment is death. It is only through Christ that that changes. Now everything is forgivable, everything is healable. This is why the Pharisees were shocked, they said; \u201cwho can forgive sins but God alone?\u201d<\/em> And God doesn\u2019t refute them, because He forgives the sins to show that \u201cI am God.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, all of these readings today show us the process\nfrom sickness to health is an incredibly joyful process, not something sad. We\noften think that repentance is something sad, we should cry and lament, which\nmight be the first part of it. But the reality of repentance is exceeding joy,\nto that that \u2018I was sick and now I am healed\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From now on in your life, you have to remember that\nthere is nothing that can separate you from God except yourself. The only\nperson standing between you and God is yourself. Many people sin and then they\nthink that is the end of the line for them; \u2018Now I am a sinful person; how can God\naccept me \u2026\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And that is what you call despair, which is the worst thing that you can do in life. Many people think that despair is humility, but it is the opposite. It is pride. When you think of yourself as so good, that you can\u2019t imagine how you have fallen so much, you think that you are better than that, but none of us are better than that. At our best states, we are still the biggest sinners before God, comparatively speaking. But when I think, \u2018wow look at what I\u2019ve done, how could I have done this?\u2019 You think your better than what you are, but if you saw realistically you realise that when you sin it is what you are without God\u2019s grace. So, we must remember that nothing can separate us from God\u2019s grace. St Paul says; <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFor I am persuaded that neither death nor life, neither angels nor principalities, nor power, nor things present, nor things to come, not height, nor depth, nor any other created thing should be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

But there is a catch; and that catch is ourselves. If you do not repent and not feel as though you have sin in your life, or you feel as though you are not worthy before God and you feel that you are ok, you can never have this relationship, it\u2019s impossible. It is you putting yourself a big barrier between you and God, and not allowing God to enter. For us, repentance starts with an acknowledgment of the sin and is completed in the act of confession and achieving healing. Many people feel as though the church made confession up, but if you look at the old testament people would take 2 goats and bring them to the altar and cast lots for them. One of them is God\u2019s lot. And the goat which the Lord\u2019s lot is cast, that goat is slaughtered. The Lord\u2019s one is slaughtered, and the goat that didn\u2019t get killed is set free into the wilderness. Before they set it free, the priest lays his hand on the goat and he confesses the sins of himself and of the whole Jewish people, and that goat goes free while the Lord\u2019s goat is slain. And so, when you come to have confession it is the exact same process; when the priest lays his hand on your head and you\u2019ve confessed your sins you go free as the scapegoat, you\u2019re the one who escaped. But the Lord, the Lamb himself, Jesus Christ, is sacrificed for your sake. Confession is a sacrament in which there is a hidden mystery, in which something happens that you don\u2019t see with your eyes. This is a very beautiful thing that we have to remember, this is the miracle that God gives us in healing. The physical miracles in your life are nothing compared to this healing that can happen to us. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The worst cases as a doctor to see is when somebody comes in with mental health problems. The first thing you ask is a question that tells you what their insight it, do they have insight into their disease, and if they have good insight it is excellent. We can fix it as they will comply with treatment and do what needs to be done because they know that they need it. If you have no insight it becomes infinitely more difficult to treat, if the person has no insight of their mental health problems they won\u2019t comply and thus we can\u2019t treat them. And so, the number 1 marker of whether a person can be healed is whether they have insight into their disease. Sometimes, we walked around like this, with zero insight into what we are. Zero insight into how sinful we are and how much we need God; \u2018I\u2019m fine, I\u2019m a good person. I don\u2019t fight, I don\u2019t kill, I don\u2019t do anything, what do I need God for?\u2019 And that is the hardest thing to cure. St Moses the strong, big sinner, no problem, he knows he\u2019s a big sinner. But most of us going about life ordinarily thinking everything is ok, that is a big problem because we don\u2019t recognise what we need and don\u2019t have. This is the hardest job for any priest and even Jesus Christ Himself who came and could not convince the Pharisees that they needed Him. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, I think for us, God is offering healing for us\nand if you seek Him as a Physician, He will be given to you. But you must never\nfeel or think that you don\u2019t need it, or that you are too good for God. The\nmoment you do that you are making yourself out to be God.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Glory be to God forever.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

St Luke’s transcribed sermons- Fr Samuel Fanous There are some beautiful readings today, and if you look through them there is a common theme that runs through all of them. That theme is healing. If you look at the Pauline it says; \u201ceye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has entered into the heart … Continue reading “The Paralytic Man”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":6514,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[351,54,350],"class_list":["post-6513","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","tag-frsam","tag-paralytic-man","tag-stluke"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6513","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6513"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6513\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6515,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6513\/revisions\/6515"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6514"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6513"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6513"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6513"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}