Ukrainian Catholic ChurchAustralia, New Zealand and Oceania
Homily by Fr. Andriy Mykytyuk on the Fourth Sunday after Easter
April 20, 2024
I wish all of us to be able to take responsibility for our lives. So that we don’t look for excuses why we can’t be with God, but look for opportunities to be with him and to witness this to everyone we meet.
Christ is Risen!
Beloved in Christ!
This Sunday, we hear the Gospel about the paralysed man. We hear about a man who could not move but wanted to and who found a way to become healthy. He would come to this pool of Siloam and wait, like everyone else, for an angel to come and move the water. But at this moment, he never had time to enter, or even could not. As he says, there is no one to help him enter.
On the one hand, in this Gospel, God appeals to us to be able to notice people who need help. It is very important. We often turn our eyes away from those people, and they can wait for help from us for several years. And not something extraordinary, but sometimes an ordinary smile, a kind word, or some kind of support.
However, I want to draw your attention to another aspect. What dialogue took place between this man and Christ? When Christ asks the man, “Why are you lying here?” and he explains his situation, Christ says, “Rise, take up thy bed, and walk.” It sounds simple, but apparently something incomprehensible was going on in this man’s head. He did not know who Christ was. He didn’t know what he was doing. He could not understand how it is that I cannot walk, and here they tell me: get up, take it, and walk. But he listened, and a miracle happened.
In our lives, we want to be healthy. Healthy not only physically but also in all aspects of our lives. We want to be happy or have a joyful life; we want to live carefree. And we look for all this in different ways and in different places. Someone in pleasure, someone in social status, someone in money, someone in material things, someone in fame. Everyone looks for these things in different sources — in different pools. But we must learn to see that the only source of joy and happiness is our Lord Jesus Christ, who came, died on the cross, and rose again for each of us so that we may have eternal life. Therefore, when he comes into our lives and sees what is happening to him, he asks, “Why are you lying down?” and we look for an excuse: because we are busy, because we have work, because we have a family, because we have many obligations and we do not have time to come to Christ, we do not have time to live. And he says, “Rise, take up thy bed, and walk. Rise, take your life, go, and be with me. Live.” God invites us to life, not to refusals or excuses, but to live with and in him.
Our sins are our sickness, which keeps us down and prevents us from seeing Christ. Christ says, “Rise; I will make you free.” But we have to hear. We have to come and say, “I’m sorry,” rise, and move on. And to walk and to live, because God calls us to that. He came to give us life. Can we hear it? This is a question for each of us.
So this Sunday, I wish all of us to be able to take responsibility for our lives. So that we don’t look for excuses why we can’t be with God, but look for opportunities to be with him and to witness this to everyone we meet. This man did not know who told him to rise and go, but when he found out, he praised God. We know God; we know about him, so now we have to hear him, rise, and go.
