Sunday Sermon

Our Lord both forgives the sins of a paralyitic man and then heals him of his paralysis, in the sight of all. The scribes, predictably, murmured against the Lord for daring to forgive sin, believing Him to be merely man and not also God. We, who are daily the witnesses of God's great workings, can also easily fall into the mindset of the scribes when we refuse to acknowledge the action and the grace which also surround us, and which can heal us of our physical and spiritual infirmities.

When we say we trust in someone's word, what does that mean? What does a person's word signify?

Many times prayer comes easy. We can recite the Lord's prayer with ease. We can take time to spend with God and good thoughts flow like a river. But then there are those times when we cannot have a thought. We have no good thoughts. We aren't even able to have a bad thought, we have nothing to bring to God.

The Bible teaches that our old self was crucified by God on the cross. We cannot crucify our old man. The old man (the mind that wants to sin) was crucified with Christ on the cross. It was God who did that. But there is something else that we have to crucify - our flesh (the storehouse of desires).

“Be ye therefore merciful, as your Father also is merciful.” (St. Luke 6:36)

We like to be so focused on other people's wrong-doing, if for no other reason, it takes the focus off of our wrong doing. If I focus on someone else and focus where they are wrong in their life, it means that I have less time to focus on what is wrong in my own life.

Our Lord delivers two men from demonic possession, allowing the demons to enter into a herd of swine. The swine swiftly run themselves into the sea and drown. Those who had kept the swine were understandably alarmed at this. But instead of rejoicing at the wondrous works of the Lord, the swineherds and the local populace besought the Lord to depart, as they feared they might lose even more material possessions after the manner of the swine.

How often do we cling to material things, and attempt to close out the presence of the Lord for fear that we might lose some trifle?

“Behold they have now been with me three days, and have nothing to eat.”— St. Mark 8: 2.

How these poor people put us Christians to shame! They followed Christ everywhere, over mountain and valley, in order to hear his doctrine and preaching, so that they forgot to eat and drink; for three whole days they remained with him, in spite of the hunger they suffered, until Christ, taking pity on them, relieved them by a miracle. How do we act, who profess to be followers of Christ? How often do we not depart from him and from the teaching of his Gospel for the sake of eating and drinking? Nay, how many are there who give up his friendship and the salvation of their souls, that they may eat what is forbidden at certain times, or else gratify their gluttony by excessive eating and drinking? And why do they act thus? What is the object of their eating and drinking? Is it not that they may be happy, that they may live long and enjoy themselves? Now, the very contrary of this follows on gluttony and immoderate eating and drinking, as I shall now show.

We have gotten the false notion that our bodies are our own, and yet they are not, and even the world knows this is part. And so, who actually owns are bodies?

I want to warn you...I want you to understand... that if you have not forgiven even one person anywhere in the world, no matter how long you may have considered yourself to be a "believer") that you will certainly not enter the kingdom of God.

When a centurion's servant lay sick and near death, the centurion sought out the Lord. Our Lord, moved with compassion, offered to go to the house of the centurion to heal the servant. The centurion moved with great humility and faith confessed his own unworthiness that the Lord even enter under his roof. He besought that the Lord simply "say the word," and the centurion was certain that by the simple word of the Lord that his servant would be healed. And so it came to pass: by the word of the Lord the servant was healed. The humble faith of the centurion is a challenge to us today: do we truly believe that our Lord can heal us by His divine word as well?