Ukrainian Catholic ChurchAustralia, New Zealand and Oceania
Homily by Fr. Andriy Mykytyuk on the Sixth Sunday after Pentecost
June 29, 2024
If our faith becomes a deep relationship with God, without which we cannot live, then we can show this faith to others. And I am sure that such faith will lead other people and show the way, because they will also want to try that the Lord is good.
Glory to Jesus Christ!
Beloved!
This Sunday, we heard the Gospel about the healing of the paralysed. The evangelist Matthew tells us that a paralysed man was brought to Christ, and He, seeing the faith of those friends who brought him, said, “Cheer up, son, your sins are forgiven.” And complaints about Christ were heard. But Christ says, “What is easier to say? But so that you may know that the Son of Man has the power to forgive sins, he says to the paralytic, Get up and walk.” He got up and walked.
You know, this is such a short gospel — only nine verses — but it gives us a lot to think about. First of all, about sin. Unfortunately, we often think that sin is something personal to us. What I do is only about me. But this is not true. Sin destroys everything. Sin destroys us, destroys our relationship with God, and also destroys our relationship with other people. They say that we suffer for our sins. And this is not true. Because God does not punish us. But we have the consequences of our sins. And very often, we experience the consequences of other people’s sins in our lives. Therefore, when Christ says that He forgives sins, it means that He frees us from the power of this evil one. So that we can live the life to which He called us and to which He created us. Therefore, it is important to be aware of your actions. Therefore, it is important to come to confession and ask for forgiveness. To not be relaxed. Not to be distorted by the life for which the Lord created us.
Another important point that I want to draw our attention to is the faith of friends. In my opinion, this Gospel answers the questions we often ask in our lives. Why are so few people coming to church these days? Why do few people believe in God? I think it is because of our little faith. Because if we had faith like those friends, the people who are looking at us, they would want to come to Christ.
Those friends brought the crippled man on a stretcher because they believed that Christ was the one who could help. We may not have the opportunity and cannot physically bring anyone to church, drive them to church, or to prayer. But we can show what our Lord is like with our lives. We can show with our lives that, without God, nothing else can be. He is the one who heals us; He is the one who delivers us; and He is the one who gives us life.
If our faith becomes a deep relationship with God, without which we cannot live, then we can show this faith to others. And I am sure that such faith will lead other people and show the way, because they will also want to try that the Lord is good. It is not for nothing that the psalmist says, “Try and see how good the Lord is.” We will not know his goodness until we are with him. We will reject it. We will look for various justifications and explanations for why something happens in our lives and why it is like this and not otherwise. But we will not see the God who wants to be there for us to live a full life.
Therefore, on this Sunday, I want to wish all of us that our faith is strong and that we are able to see Christ, who is the source of our life, come to that source and draw. But the most important thing is that we know how to testify our faith with our lives, our actions, and our words so that others, looking at us, can see how good the Lord is and also come to Him.
