On Mark
2:1-12
Second Sunday of the Great Fast
Our Holy Father Gregory Palamas
When
we look at each other – especially when we look at strangers or people on the
street – we often don’t really see the person before us. We might see someone
in our way, someone we have to wait behind in line at the grocery story, or we
might see the apparent poverty of a beggar, or the
struggles of a blind person preparing to cross at a busy intersection.
We
may tend to see the condition of human bodies, while having little regard for
human spirits. We may be attracted to some and repelled by others. We may
automatically judge one other on the basis of appearance.
We
may keep our heads down in a crowd, afraid of making eye contact, because
sometimes that’s the moment when we see a bit more than the body, which can be
unnerving or make demands upon us. Jesus even says that “the eye is the lamp of
the body,” which, if sound, fills the whole body with light. So when we look
another in the eye, sometimes we see not only a body, but also catch a glimpse
of the light (or the darkness) that fills a body.
But
when Jesus looks at us, he always
sees us entirely as we are. When four men lay down their paralyzed friend
before him on a pallet, Jesus sees
the man. If it had been one of us, most would first have seen the man’s
paralysis. But that is not what Jesus first sees. Rather, he sees their faith, and he says to the man
immediately, “My son, your sins are forgiven.”
When
Jesus looks at the scribes sitting there, he doesn’t only see their silent
lips, but sees in his spirit that they question him in their hearts. Again, he
sees the whole person before him, whether they are filled with light or with or
darkness. He knows us inside and outside. He knows us in spirit and in
body.
Jesus
then demonstrates that he does also see
the paralytic’s need for healing and he tells the man to rise, take up his
pallet, and go home. So Jesus is able to see the whole man and he can see that he needs two kinds of healing. He needs healing of both body and soul. He needs to rise and walk, but
he first needs forgiveness of his sins.
These
things do not exist in isolation from one another. As long as we are living
this life, we need continual healing of both body and soul. We need repentance,
which is therapy for our soul, as much as we need any kind of physical therapy
for our bodies. Our need for forgiveness and our need for healing are really
the same need, because our bodies and our souls are not two separate things but
one thing, mysteriously interconnected.
Our
holy father Gregory Palamas, who we
always remember and celebrate on this second Sunday of the Great Fast,
recognizes the gift of healing as one of those charisms of the Spirit that “operate
through the body.” He writes,
“Healings and miracles never take
place unless the soul of the one exercising either gift be in a state of
intense mental prayer and his body in perfect tune with his soul…. The
communication [of the Spirit] takes place… not only during the mental prayer of
the soul, but also at moments when the body is operating.”[i]
Our
bodies and souls work in conjunction to bring God’s healing into our lives.
Palamas writes about this in his work on “the
Hesychast method of prayer and the transformation of our bodies.” The
Hesychasts’ prayer does not disregard the body, but incorporates both breath
and posture into prayer. We pray in spirit and in body. And we experience God
in spirit and in body. Because we are
spirit and body. And because God, who is spirit, has become man, who is body
and spirit.
We
are body and spirit at the same time. Our bodies and souls are meant for each
other. We are a psychosomatic unity. We are not only bodies animated by
electrical impulses and controlled by our brains, as the materialists would
have it. Nor are we only immaterial spirits inhabiting or trapped in bodies that
confine us until our release from them at death, when they will pass away, as
the Platonists and Gnostics would have it.
A
soul is the life of a body and the human soul is also an immortal and
everlasting spirit, which means that the body – though it dies, and thus
experiences an entirely unnatural separation from its soul – will naturally
rise again and live forever. There will be resurrection. It’s not the
resurrection that is unnatural; it is death that is unnatural. Resurrection is a
natural response to the unnatural reality of death.
Our
veneration of relics – of the dead bodies of the saints – of the relics of St. Gregory Palamas – is not merely a
remembrance of what they were but also an expectation of what they will be
again. Our bodies will rise again. Our bodies have a place in everlasting union
with our immortal souls.
I
emphasize this because both materialism and disregard for the body have strong
footholds in our culture and even among some people in the church. These ideas
deny or ignore the resurrection and the natural unity of our bodies and our
souls. And it is essential to our faith to get right this this understanding of
our human nature – this Christian anthropology.
If you gloss over the
importance of our bodies as well as our souls, you miss the whole purpose of
Christ’s resurrection. You miss what he has accomplished for us by rising from
the dead in his body – which is our salvation - our salvation - the salvation of us who are bodies and are souls and are spirits.
Let
me give some examples of the disregard for our bodies found all around us. First, one from our culture:
a few times I’ve seen this new-agey bumper sticker (maybe you have too), which
states, "We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are
spiritual beings having a human experience."
Second,
one from among Christians: C.S. Lewis is often misquoted as saying: ““You don’t
have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body.” When
you see this quote floating around the internet, be aware that he never said
this.
These
quotes are both half-truths. It is true that we are spirits. It is true that we
are souls. I don’t merely have a
soul, I am a soul: that much is true.
But I am also a body. It is the way that God has made us from the beginning. And
it is part of the human nature that God takes on in his incarnation.
Finally,
an example regarding attitudes toward fasting. The great fast is a great time
for reflecting on the importance of both body and spirit in human nature. A
coworker of mine and I were discussing the great fast and she told me about
how, at a local community she used to belong to, they would emphasize that we
are to fast from fear. They’re not wrong that we are to fast from fear. Paul
told us to have no anxiety about anything. And John teaches us that perfect
love casts out fear. This kind of fear, as opposed the holy fear of the Lord,
is born from a failure to trust in God. To that I would add that we are to fast
also from all the other sins and vices of the spirit: malice, envy, rage,
despair and so on.
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