Sunday After Pascha: Thomas Sunday
Scripture: Acts 5:12-20
Oops!
On this, the first Sunday after Pascha, we celebrate the apostle Thomas, the one who wanted to touch Christ before he would believe that Christ had risen from the dead. Sermons on this occasion usually revolve around faith and doubt, which I touched on in my Lamentations reflection.
But, when we focus on faith and doubt, we neglect a theme that’s equally as important—one that’s mentioned in today’s epistle reading.
We heard St Luke tell us, “… they even brought the ailing out into the streets and laid them on pallets and mats, in order that at least Peter’s shadow might be cast over some of them as he went by. And a multitude also gathered … bringing the ill and those tormented by impure spirits, all of whom were healed.”
Healing.
As Orthodox Christians, we firmly believe that what happened in the resurrection was an act of healing. It’s no accident we celebrate Unction, the sacrament of healing, right before Pascha. We fully expect to healed.
Healing is deeply imbedded in scripture, though our translations often mask it. It’s common to translate the Greek word σώζω as “to save.” When we do so, we usually think of a “rescue” from danger. However, σώζω can also mean, “to heal.” And, in fact, some translations do, in a few instances, translate σώζω as heal.
So, when we say that Christ is the savior, we also mean that he is the great healer.
Ugh!
But, what do we mean by “healing”? What sort of healing are we to expect?
As you know, we celebrated Unction last week and asked God to heal us: “Holy Father, physician of our souls and bodies, heal, forgive, have mercy, and save your servants.” And, as you know, I regularly go to hospitals to visit parishioners who have fallen ill; though, not everyone I anoint is healed. I once had someone tell me, “I guess it didn’t take.”
I can identify with this sentiment. As you all know, I struggle with a voice disorder. When it first afflicted me, and as the doctors struggled to figure out what was happening, I decided to ask a brother priest to perform an Unction service for me.
When I arrived for the service, not realizing how bad my voice was at the time, he asked me to read the opening Trisagion Prayers. After just two sentences, he stopped me and said, “Um, I can take it from here.”
That was a year ago. As you know, I still struggle with my voice. Of course, As an Orthodox priest, I need my voice. I serve God, so why haven’t I been healed?
As I look around our congregation, I see people struck with all sorts of illnesses: cancer, depression, anxiety, dementia, heart complications, anemia, strokes, pulled muscles, mental illnesses … the list is overwhelming. And, I think we’re all wondering: does God heal us or not?
Aha!
The answer, of course, is that, yes, God heals us. But what is meant by healing is much more profound than simply taking away physical ailments.
In this life, no matter what happens, no matter how well we’re healed—either by God or medical science—we will die. But, that’s no matter, because we believe in resurrection. Our bodies will be transformed to be more real than they are now. They will be healed.
But, there are illnesses which are much more serious than bodily afflictions. These are the sort of illnesses we ask healing for in our services, and that’s spiritual illnesses. They are much more dangerous because these illnesses can cut us off from God, who is life itself.
An Orthodox professor, Jean-Claude Larchet, has written three excellent volumes on healing entitled: The Therapy of Spiritual Illnesses. This is, perhaps, one of the best series of books on Orthodoxy I’ve ever read.
In them, Larchet reminds us that we, as humans, are made up of both body and soul. So, when we talk about health, we can’t forget the soul, and healing for the soul can only be found in Christ. This is the sort of healing we come to the Church for. This is the sort of healing that leads to eternal life and the resurrection of our bodies.
Whee!
So, what are spiritual illnesses? Where do they come from? And, how does Christ heal them?
To answer these questions, it’s first helpful to know what spiritual health looks like. Put simply, it’s union with Christ: deification, theosis. This means that our end-goal, what we were made for, is to become like Christ in our actions, our thoughts, our lives.
So, any deviation from being Christ-like, is illness. In fact, this is why we speak about “sin,” which in Greek is ἁμαρτία. This word was originally an archery term that meant one “missed the mark.” That is, the arrow has “strayed” from its goal, just like when we “sin” we stray from our end-goal; we stray from the purpose for which we were made. In fact, some church fathers say that our illnesses mean we don’t even know what our purpose is.
Why do we think of this as illness? Because if we don’t know our purpose, we turn to all sort of things to fill the void. For most of us, we turn to sensual pleasures to make us happy. Different fathers give sorts of lists, but they usually fall into three major categories—gluttony, greed, and vainglory—and these lead to other sorts of vices.
Now, all this can get very complex, just like physical medicine, but what’s important to know is that when we look for a purpose, our end-goal, outside of Christ, we will never be satisfied. Replacing our true end-goal with a false one means that we see a distorted world. We become delusional. And, when we can’t find true happiness, then we become anxious and fall into depression. In short, we become ill.
What Christ does is show us what our true purpose is. He shows us that to become fully human—that is, healthy—we need to imitate him. We need to love God and neighbor. Not only that, but by through his teachings and by his death on the cross, he shows us how.
Additionally, through the sacraments of the Church, we are reminded in which direction we should be headed. They serve to unite us to Christ, and point us down the right path. The sacraments of the Church become the means by which we heal spiritual illnesses.
Yeah!
As I think about and ponder Larchet’s books more, I hope to speak more about spiritual illnesses and how to heal them in the coming months.
But, for today, it’s important to remember the message of today’s epistle lesson: because of Christ’s resurrection, healing has entered into the world.
While we fully believe that God can heal our physical ailments, what’s more important is that our spiritual illness are healed.
Because of what happened on the cross and the resurrection, we now know that God loves us. We now know that our souls are ill as well; we had turned away from God. But, now, because of what Christ did, we can reorient ourselves towards God, keep his commandments, and walk the Way to find union with him.
As we do so, we’ll find that God fills that void in our lives that’s been missing. We’ll find that our souls are healed and spiritual health returns. And, we’ll find that we’re on the path to union with God.
Amen.