Sunday of the Paralytic
4th Sunday of Pascha
Acts 9:32-42
John 5:1-15

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. Christ is risen! Indeed he is risen. Beloved in the Lord, “This is the first of sabbaths, king and Lord of days. The feast of feasts, holy day of holy days, on this day we bless Christ forevermore.” Why can’t we just get enough of it and move on, already? As I heard from one of our catechumens, whose mother said in surprise, “Didn’t they already have Easter?” I had another conversation with a homeschool mother and evangelical Christian from Ukraine who was helping me to spell “Воистину воскресе” on my cell phone. She was excited to share this moment with another Christian who gets it, who understands the power and significance of the resurrection. Then I said, “We’re just getting this 40-day party started.” She admitted, “You know, there really is something to that idea of feast days. Some members of my church argue that there shouldn’t be special days of remembrance— that we should remember the resurrection all year long.” But in not making any particular day sacred, I responded, they only succeed in making them all the same. It is just another form of the Great Lie, the Great Cosmic cover-up that the resurrection was all a hoax, a mirage, a collective result of wishful thinking on the part of Jesus’ disciples. The Church knows otherwise. And She gives us this 40-day period to celebrate the resurrection, but also to ponder the truth of it, to be convinced by what the book of Acts calls “many convincing proofs that He is alive.” (Acts 1:3)