Gospel: [Matt. 9:1-8]
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Dear Fathers, brothers and sisters:
Today’s Gospel reading follows directly on from last week’s reading where, if you remember, we were with our Saviour in the country of the Gergasenes or the Gadarenes, in the small village of the Gergesa, in what is today known as Kersa. Despite the great miracle which had been worked in their midst, with the release of the two demoniacs from their complete captivity to satan, these Gentile people of the Decapolis actually beg the Saviour of the world, God Incarnate, our Lord Jesus Christ to leave their country. And so, with great meekness of heart, our compassionate Lord, assents to their request, and steps back into the boat and crosses over the sea of Galilee, this time to the north side of the Lake, to what St Matthew calls His ‘own city’, the town of Capernaum, where Jesus started His ministry.
Again, just as our Gospel reading last week seemed very similar to another better-known account in the other synoptic Gospels of Mark and Luke, the healing of the man with a legion of devils, so this week’s Gospel may also have a similar effect upon us where we hear of a ‘man sick of the palsy’, a paralysed man, carried by his friends and healed by Christ in Capernaum. This may remind us of again the better-known version preserved in Sts Mark’s and Luke’s gospels with the detail of the top of the house being removed, and the paralytic man being lowered down before Jesus. As with last week, the Fathers see St Matthew’s account as referring to exactly the same miracle. To understand today’s reading, therefore, let us turn to our holy Father St Peter Chrysologus, the 5th century bishop of Ravenna, before we also say a few words about the two great saints that we also commemorate today, St Mary Magdalene and St Wandregesilius or St Wandred of Fontenelle.
And he entered into a ship, and passed over, and came into his own city.
It is so easy for us sinners to read this line and to see no particular significance within it. This is why it is so important for us to turn to the God-bearing Fathers, those within whom the Holy Spirit has made His abode. Thus St Peter reminds us of the condescension that the Lord is showing, the fact that He who walked on the waters had no need of course to travel in the boat and yet He endures this.
Christ came to take up our infirmities … to experience human things … because a doctor who does not bear infirmities does not know how to cure … Therefore, He endured these limitations so that He would be shown to be true man by these human limitations.
And, behold, they brought to him a man sick of the palsy, lying on a bed: and Jesus seeing their faith said unto the sick of the palsy; Son, be of good cheer; thy sins be forgiven thee.
In his homily St Peter notes the silence of the paralytic.
[He] hears about forgiveness, and he is silent, and he makes no response to grace, because he was more interested in a cure for his body than for his soul.
However, fortunately for this man, he is surrounded by friends who do have faith that Christ will heal him, that Christ will make him whole. St Peter then draws the parallel with ourselves, how we too are like the paralytic, paralysed by sin but oblivious, silent and even obstinate to Christ’s offer to heal us.
Christ each day both regards our damaged wills, and drags us and urges us on against our wills to remedies that can heal and save us.
And, behold, certain of the scribes said within themselves, This man blasphemeth. And Jesus knowing their thoughts said, Wherefore think ye evil in your hearts?
As God, who could have walked on the water without needing the boat, He could see not only the heart of the paralytic on the bed, but also the hearts of the paralytics’ friends as well as the stony cold heart of the Pharisees. Again, whereas people should have rejoiced at Christ’s promise of the forgiveness of sins, they could only see blasphemy. Of course, the irony is that it is they who are the blasphemers, in denying the divinity of the One who as God was in their midst. But we can also hear this question of Jesus addressed to ourselves – why, brothers and sisters, ‘think ye evil in your hearts’. Why is it that our hearts are still so full of coldness, evil, judgment and malice when we are signed and sealed for Christ, who we will receive this very day into our hearts?
For whether is easier, to say, Thy sins be forgiven thee; or to say, Arise, and walk?
But that ye may know that the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins, (then saith he to the sick of the palsy,) Arise, take up thy bed, and go unto thine house.
St Peter in his homily says –
The Examiner of souls anticipated the wicked designs of their minds and demonstrated his divine power with an action that would provide the testimony, by straightening out the members of a deteriorated body, tightening the muscles, joining the bones, perfecting the inner organs, strengthening the joints, and prompting the footsteps that had been buried for so long in a living corpse to set out on their course.
Just as Christ is God Incarnate, the Word, the Logos made Flesh, so too when the spiritual is manifested and shown through the physical, through this miraculous physical healing.
And he arose, and departed to his house.
Carry, St Peter has Christ say to the Paralytic, what you used to carry you, reverse the burden, so that what is a testimony to your infirmity may be a proof that you are healed.
Despite his silence, his sins and severe physical infirmity, our Saviour had mercy on this poor man. Normally to perform any miracle, Christ looks for faith in the individual that is seeking the miracle, but in the case of this Gospel reading, our Lord was moved by the faithfulness, by the love of his friends, who with great difficulty had brough him to Christ. Indeed, very often it is not our own prayers that brings down God’s grace upon us, but rather the prayers of his saints, his holy ones. It is they who bring us up to the Lord, as the Apostle James writes in his epistle, ‘the effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much’. Today we commemorate two wonderful saints in the company of heaven: St Mary Magdalene and St Wandregesilius of Fontenelle, the first is well known the second less so. Interestingly enough, however, in the Anglo Saxon calendars, July 22nd was primarily kept in most places as the Feast of St Wandregesilius in this country before the schism rather than St Mary Magdalene. These two saints, though divided by over six centuries and from very different places yet shine with a fervent love for Christ and a bold and unwavering faithfulness in the Lord.
Let us start by saying something about St Mary Magdalene. As it says in the second Gospel she was known as Magdalene to distinguish her from the many Marys we come across in the Gospel narrative. She was known as Magdalene as she came from the small village of Magdala which sits on the west side of the Sea of Galilee, opposite the village of Gergesa which we were talking about last week. In our second Gospel we also heard that she had been afflicted with seven demons but was healed by the Lord. Maybe, like the paralytic in our Resurrectional Gospel today she also could not come to ask the Lord for healing, as her mind and heart were possessed by these seven demons, yet our Lord had mercy upon her and healed her. From that day forward she would spend her whole life in the service of the Lord as his most devoted disciple. Nor did she allow her feminine sex to any way excuse her from abiding with the Lord in the darkest and most dangerous of times and places. When the Lord was going to be crucified, where was Peter? Where were the Lord’s apostles, the ones He had specially chosen? When it came to it, Peter betrayed the Lord not once but three times, and ran away when he was confronted. However, St Mary Magdalene together with the Mother of God and the Apostle John did not abandon him. She stood with him and was faithful to Him, not only when the people shouted and welcomed Him, but also when they spat at Him, when they mocked Him, when they pierced Him and crucified Him. She never abandoned Him. And then, after His crucifixion, as soon as the Sabbath had ended, she went immediately to the Tomb to go and anoint His Body, to show the love and care to Him in death which she had shown in His life. And then we have that most beautiful moment in the Gospel when full of grief and bewilderment, at her wits end she encounters the Resurrected Christ, whom she first thought was the gardener and then there is that moment of recognition: Mary. Rabboni. It was then a woman, Mary Magdalene who was the first to preach the resurrection, and to announce this to the Apostles. It is for this reason that she is known as the Apostle to the Apostles as well as the Equal to the Apostles. By Church Tradition, she then continued with great boldness her apostolic preaching of the Resurrection of Christ in Rome and throughout Italy, and it is deeply characteristic of her boldness that she announced the resurrection to the Emperor Tiberias, giving him a red egg and saying that Christ is Risen!
St Wandregesilus, or as he was known here in Anglo-Saxon and Medieval times, St Wandred, was born in Verdun in Gaul in around 600AD some six hundred years or so after St Mary Magdalene. He was born of noble parents and served in the court of the king. His parents had him betrothed to a very wealthy woman from the aristocracy. At this early point in his life, we could say that he had every worldly advantage in life and no doubt was destined for a life of wealth and earthly happiness. Yet, St Wandregesilius, like St Mary, made Christ his first priority and to serve and be with Christ his only concern in life. Thus on his wedding night St Wandregesilius broke the news to his wife that he actually desired to be a monk. By God’s providence and grace, she also confessed to him that she desired to be a nun and so, there and then, they blessed each other to become monastics. From the ancient Life of St Wandregesilius we then read that he gave away all of his possessions and then went to live with an elder before building a small monastic skete at Saint-Ursanne where he deepened his asceticism spending his nights in vigil as well as reciting the psalter in ice-cold rivers. One day in a dream an angel showed him the way to a new monastery at Bobbio which had been founded by St Columbanus, that great Irish saint, missionary and monastic founder who on leaving Ireland founded a number of monasteries across France and Italy. St Wandregesilius perceiving that God was telling him to leave his monastery, then went the way the angel had showed him in the dream until he came to St Columbanus’ monastery at Bobbio. It was there that in the Life we read that he then desired to go to Ireland in order to venerate the Irish saints. He thus set out in a North-westerly direction, travelling not to Rome or Jerusalem but to Ireland. However, it was not God’s will that he should reach Ireland but instead, after becoming ordained to the priesthood in Rouen, he then was led to establish a monastery at La Fontenelle where he remained for the rest of his life. We can thus see in St Wandregesilius’s life a pure faithfulness in Christ and desire to follow the Lord above all the pleasures and treasures of this life. As St Wandregesilius said to his monks at Fontenelle – ‘The purpose of our life is that we should be found at any moment, ready to fufil the commandments of the Lord’.
My dear fathers, brothers and sisters, although we call ourselves Christians, how often is it that we allow worldly desires, our passions, pride and greed to come first in our life before serving God, and following and loving Christ. How often do we become like that paralytic in the God, paralysed by our sins and silent in the face of grace and divine mercy, desiring other things. Let us rather, follow the example of the faithful friends of the paralytic, the saints of God – such as St Mary Magdalene and St Wandregesilius, in serving Christ and making Him the priority and purpose of our lives.
Amen.