Opening the Roof

In the Name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, One God. Amen.

May the blessing of the Father who calls us, and His Only Begotten Son who saves us, and the Holy Spirit who sanctifies and transforms us be with us all, that we may hear His word and bear fruit—thirty, sixty, and a hundredfold. Amen.

Introduction

My dear beloved,

Have you ever prayed the same prayer for months? Lord, change this situation. Fix this job. Heal this relationship. Make this worry go away.

And have you ever noticed that, while we are asking Him to rearrange the house, there may be something much deeper that we are quietly keeping from Him?

Today the Church places before us a house with a crowded door and a hole in the roof. She does it on purpose. She has been preparing us for this moment since the first day of the year.

1. The Church Is Leading Us Somewhere

Our Church never chooses her readings at random. Every month carries a message, and the months are like steps on a journey.

Last month was Tout, the first month of the Coptic year. It is the month of beginnings. The Church sat us down, so to speak, and said: a new year is more than a new date on the calendar. Examine your heart. Return to the Father. And the voice of Saint John the Baptist echoed through the month:

“Therefore bear fruits worthy of repentance,”

Matthew 3:8

But listen to how honestly the Church spoke to us. Even our return is not our own achievement. The prophet Jeremiah prays:

“Restore me, and I will return, For You are the LORD my God.”

Jeremiah 31:18

We cannot even come back unless He begins the work in us.

Now we enter Paope. And the Church turns our eyes from our need to the One who meets it. In Tout, she asked: will you return? In Paope, she shows us Who is waiting.

Over four Sundays she places four encounters with Christ before us. Today, He forgives sins and heals. Next Sunday, in the great catch of fish, we meet His authority over nature and over our livelihood. Then, His authority over the demonic. And at the end of the month, at the gate of Nain, His authority over death itself.

Health. Work. Spiritual battle. Death. These are exactly the places where we feel most afraid. And the Church is saying, with great tenderness: there is no corner of your life that lies outside His authority.

Yet notice what happens in each encounter. Christ goes deeper than the request. The paralytic comes for his legs, and Christ begins with his sins. Peter needs fish, and Christ gives him a calling. The widow of Nain asks for nothing, and He gives her son back.

That is the journey. Repentance is not the destination. Repentance is the opening of the roof. And on the other side of the roof, Christ is waiting.

Here is why this matters for us. It is possible to treat Tout as a month of self-improvement: resolutions, lists, a stronger will. And by the end of a month, many of us are tired, because we have tried to lift ourselves. The Church knows this. So she does not leave us at the edge of the pit, shouting, “Try harder.” She walks us through the door of repentance and into the presence of a Person.

Repentance says, “Lord, I need You.” Paope answers, “I am here, and I have authority.” One without the other is incomplete. Repentance without Christ becomes exhaustion. And admiration of Christ without repentance stays at a safe distance. The Church joins them, month after month, so that we do not only hear about Him. We meet Him.

2. Four Friends and an Open Roof

Imagine the scene. Jesus is in a house in Capernaum. The crowd has filled it so completely that there is no room even near the door. And the Gospel tells us what He is doing: He is preaching the word to them.

Outside, four men are carrying a friend who cannot walk. We are not told their names. The text does not tell us how far they carried him, but we can picture the effort, the hurry, the hope. And then they reach the door, and the door is blocked.

Most of us know this moment. We tried. The way is closed. Perhaps another day. Perhaps it is not God’s will. How quickly an obstacle becomes an excuse!

They did not stop. They went up, opened the roof, and lowered their friend in front of everyone, right at the feet of Jesus.

And now watch Christ. The Gospel says:

“When Jesus saw their faith, He said to the paralytic, ‘Son, your sins are forgiven you.’”

Mark 2:5

He did not begin with “Rise and walk.” He began with the deepest need of all: to be restored to communion with God. This does not mean that every sickness comes from a personal sin; the Gospel does not teach that. It means that the greatest tragedy is not a body that cannot walk, but a life that is separated from God.

Saint John Chrysostom notices one more thing. The sick man himself must have believed, or he would never have allowed himself to be lowered through that roof.

Think about that. Some of us are much better at carrying than at being carried. We insist that we are fine. But allowing ourselves to be carried is itself an act of faith and humility. God carries us through His Church, through a father of confession, through a faithful friend, and sometimes through a physician or a counselor. The four friends opened the roof. The paralytic only had to be willing to be lowered.

3. The One Who Has Authority

Then the scribes begin to murmur in their hearts:

“Who can forgive sins but God alone?”

Mark 2:7

They are right! That is the astonishing thing. They are right about God, and they are standing a few feet from God, and they do not know it.

Saint John Chrysostom, preaching on this same miracle as Saint Matthew records it, says that Christ “healed first that which is invisible, the soul, by forgiving his sins” (Homily 29 on Matthew). Then, he explains, the Lord proved the unseen by the seen, raising the body to show that the soul had been healed.

So Christ turns to the paralytic, and says that the Son of Man has power on earth to forgive sins. The man rises, takes up his bed, and walks out in front of them all. The one who was carried now carries.

My dear beloved, this is not only a story from Capernaum. The Church reads the Gospel to place us on that mat before Him. The same Lord who spoke those words still forgives, in the Sacrament of Confession. And He still feeds us with His own Body and Blood in the Holy Eucharist.

Many of us come to confession carrying the same sins again. We say, “I keep falling. Perhaps I will never change.” Hear the Gospel. The paralytic did not heal himself. He did not first make his legs work. Christ spoke, and he rose. Our hope is not our strength. It is His authority, and His mercy.

Let me ask you three questions, and let them stay with you.

What has been paralyzing me? A hidden sin, a grudge, a fear, a shame?

Who might carry me to Christ, and have I allowed them?

And who has been waiting for me to carry them?

Conclusion

Last month, the Church called us to open the roof. This month, she shows us Who is waiting on the other side.

The paralytic came into that house carried. He left carrying his bed. But the greater miracle was a single sentence: “Son, your sins are forgiven you.”

In a few moments the Church will bring us to the altar. We will not come as people who have repaired ourselves. We come as the paralytic came: carried, empty-handed, lowered at His feet. And the same Lord who spoke those words then will give us His Body and Blood for forgiveness and eternal life.

Then, like the paralytic, we will be sent home. Christ did not say, “Stay here and admire the miracle.” He sent the man back to his own house, to the people who knew him, to the ordinary place where the new life would be lived. So we go back to our homes, our work, our families, and our own weak places, no longer alone in them, but standing in the presence of the One who has authority over them.

This is the journey the Church has been walking with us since Tout. From the repentance that opens the roof, to the Christ who forgives, to the altar where He feeds us, and to the home where we begin to live as a new creation.

“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.”

2 Corinthians 5:17

Christ is waiting, my beloved. He forgives. He raises. He feeds. Come, and be lowered at His feet.

O Lord Jesus Christ, who forgave the paralytic and raised him from his bed, look upon each of us with Your abundant mercy. Forgive our sins, heal the wounds of our hearts, and give us the grace to carry one another to You. Make our repentance fruitful and our service faithful, and lead us into the fullness of Your eternal life.

May the Lord bless us and transform us — that our homes may stand on the Rock, our hands may serve in the harvest, and our hearts may long for Heaven. Through the intercession of our Lady, the Theotokos Saint Mary, and the prayers of Saint Peter and Saint Andrew. Glory be to God forever. Amen.

Prepared and presented by Hegumen Fr. Andrew Awad, D.Min.