Today in the Gospel we heard about a man who received healing, although he did not ask for it.

When the devil-possessed Gadar residents, after healing two demon-possessed and the death of their pig herd, asked Christ to leave them, He, having left the healed one as a witness, entered the boat, crossed the lake and arrived in His city, that is, in Capernaum.

And so, they brought to Him a paralytic lying on a bed. And when Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic: “Son, be of good cheer; your sins are forgiven you.” He didn’t say “now you are well”, but “your sins are forgiven”, making it clear that the cause of disease is sinfulness and that He, as God, has the power to heal both.

Then some of the scribes who did not want to believe in His Deity said in themselves: He is blaspheming. Who can forgive sins except God?

And Christ, seeing their thoughts, said: Why do you think evil in your hearts? for is it easier to say: sins are forgiven you, or say: get up and go?

What is primary and what is the consequence? Of course, the remission of sins is primary, and healing is the result of the remission of sins. And after that He says to the paralyzed: Get up, take your bed and go to your house. And formerly paralyzed got up, took his bed and went to his house, and the people, seeing this, were amazed and glorified God.

Not always people get sick because of obvious sins. One saint from ancient Kiev Russ, Pimen, was paralyzed since his childhood, and in this state, as a teenager, his parents brought him to Kiev Pechersk Lavra. He lay in his cell all his life, and he was granted great spiritual gifts from God, and he was told that he would be healed before his death, which was fulfilled. He was given a gift to beg for the health of others, but not his own.

He had fewer sins than any of us, but he understood that the disease was given to him for salvation.

Unlike many other people, he understood that we are all born alien to the kingdom of God, and that in our natural state we cannot enter there. Christ gives us Holy Baptism, thereby opening the door to His Kingdom, but in order to enter this Kingdom and become its citizens, we ourselves must work and labour. And first of all, we must learn to love God and cut off our fallen will before the will of God, our desires — before His Commandments.

And the Lord gives everyone the burdens and sorrows that serve as a medicine for one’s soul to gain the aforementioned, to get it anyway, anyhow.

If this is a disease, and it is not healed, then you need to take it as a medicine — bitter, but saving — and endure to the end, that is, how much it is needed.

There were three people in another monastery: one vigorously performed his obediences (monastic chores), the other perfectly kept the monastic enclosure and was silent, and the third was just sick, but thanked God for that, and didn’t do anything else, and in the end they appeared to be all in equal dignity.

And that paralyzed, healed by the Savior in Capernaum, like all people who have ever been sick, was sick because without sorrows and illnesses a person cannot be saved.

And Christ, seeing the faith of those who brought him, forgives his sins.

We can see how illnesses can cure not only personal sins, but the sins of the community, of families, of all the people, — that become compassionate, forget about their own chores and businesses and express an active love to the poor ones…

So, the illness can be a final shelter, and some kind of a protective mechanism against the corruption of the whole human nature…

And if we want to be healthy, we would first of all want to seek healing for our souls. We would want to repent of our sins, not only saying in confession, but trying not to sin anymore either by deed, word or thought, as we say.  With the soul, and not with the body, the healing of the whole person begins. Who forgets about salvation because of health, loses everything. The one who seeks first of all the Kingdom of Heaven can be much easier given health as well. Amen.