Today, 9 December 2012, the Orthodox Christians are on the 27th Sunday after Pentecost. The Evangelical pericope of Saint Evangelist Luke, chapter 13:10-17, presenting the Healing of the crippled woman was read in all churches.
In the sermon delivered in the Chapel of the Patriarchal Residence with Saint Gregory the Enlightener as saint patron, His Beatitude Daniel, Patriarch of Romania, showed that the wonder of the healing of the crippled woman teaches, first of all, how important the faith is as a premise for getting healing: “The healing power of Jesus Christ, our Saviour, is shown on the basis of a living faith, not confessed directly by the crippled woman, but found out by Jesus Christ, and certainly, by those who knew that this woman came regularly to the synagogue. Thus, Jesus Christ, our Lord, has the initiative of healing; He knows the sufferance of every person and settles, at the same time, the place, time and way of comforting sufferance and healing the human’s disease. In this case, the initiative to heal the woman also shows the freedom of God, as well as the sympathy for the one who suffers, for the sick one.
The fact that the Saviour reproves the leader of the synagogue, who said that healings should not be done during a Sabbath day, He shows that good must be done any time, on a feast day too, His Beatitude also said, showing that: “We must do good to our fellow beings both on a week day and on a feast day because merciful love for our fellow beings must be shown all the time which fact makes us be like the Merciful God. Because man was created in the image of the Merciful God, he must be merciful too.”
His Beatitude Patriarch Daniel said that this work of Jesus Christ, our Saviour, of straightening the sick body is done also because the soul of the crippled woman was straight, and this is why: “The Saviour relates a straight soul to a cripple body straightened, and so the Gospel teaches us that when we have a straight body, but a cripple soul, this one must be healed and improved.”
Today’s Evangelical pericope calls the faithful, during this period of the Advent, to improve the soul through the Sacrament of the Holy Confession, through the confession of the sins and receiving the forgiveness of the sins by the father confessor. We are also called to do good and merciful deeds, to help the sick, helpless, and cripple. So, the Gospel of the healing of the cripple woman is a Gospel of mercy, of doing good. The cripple woman is a teacher of the strong faith, of the humble prayer and of long patience, His Beatitude also said.
Having known these virtues of the cripple woman and healing her Jesus Christ reveals one more virtue, namely gratitude, showed the Patriarch of Romania. “The Gospel says: and she began praising God. So, we also learn from her the need to be grateful; when we receive an advantage from God, we should not rejoice and forget about the benefactor, but thank God, the benefactor and giver of life and salvation. Let us praise God as a gratitude to Him and it is through this gratitude that we show the confirmation of the good received, that we spiritually grow, that we spiritually edify ourselves through the fact that the gifts received from God – over which gratitude comes – are gifts open to other gifts added if we thank God. This is why the Romanian people have the saying: the gift is taken from the one who is not pleased with it, namely he does no longer spiritually grow and is no longer opened to some other gifts from God”.
