Bishop Maximos of Melitini: "The burden carried by others"translated

"The burden carried by others"

Maximos Pafilis, Bishop of Melitini

Speech on the Gospel passage Matt. (9:1-8)

In the gospel passage of the sixth Sunday of Matthew, we see the power of friendship. The power of those who love us and who can lead us to truth and salvation. Some picked him up, says the Gospel, without questions and credentials. This is the first event of the passage, before every word and every miracle, a man is carried by others, "ἐπὶ κλίνης βεβλημένον" (Matt. 9, 2). The stock has its own cruelty, it says "discarded", i.e. thrown on the bed, as you leave something that you no longer expect to be useful for anything. How many years his immobility lasted, the narrative does not reveal. He leaves us, however, to understand clearly that he himself did not ask for any miracle, he did not say a word. They carried him. The movement towards Christ was made with strange feet.

Hope rarely dies suddenly, it diminishes, as the light diminishes in a room where no one opens its windows anymore. The paralytic of the Gospel had reached, as it seems, that inner region where man ceases to expect, and this cessation is disease...