In the name of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Glory to Jesus Christ, dear brothers and sisters!

First of all I congratulate you with the Holy Communion, with consecration of your souls and bodies.

Today we have heard interesting Gospel (Matthew ІХ:1-8 ), where the Lord healed people again. He healed paralytic. We all have heard how it happened:"And when Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, “Take heart, my son; your sins are forgiven." And maybe you noticed that the Lord said later: “According to your faith be it done to you.” (Matthew ІХ:29)

The faith…The faith is first of all. If we have the faith, the Lord will heal us. If we have the faith, the Lord will help us in difficult situations: in our private life, at work or in our country. It will happen.

But everything has its time. We do not know God’s Will. We do not know how much time we must suffer, how much time Ukraine must suffer. We do not know how old was that man, for how long he suffered, for how long he was paralytic and lied on bed. But we know that the Lord made a great miracle – He healed him.

And we all have heard next words of Jesus Christ: “Your sins are forgiven”. So, we all could think that he suffered for his own sins. Do you understand? And when Jesus – Messiah, Savior – forgave sins of that man, he recovered at once.

We all remember how we confessed before the beginning of the Divine Liturgy. Father Maksym carried out the general confession. We all asked God for forgiveness, that the Lord could forgive our sins.

And nafter that we prayed that the Lord bless us. That He would bless and heal us. We do not know all processes that happen in the spiritual world. We do know what processes happen in our physical health and with our soul. But we are sure that the Lord heals us. He heals everyone in a different way. Someone He heals more, someone – less. Because someone opens to God more, he opens his soul, his heart and the Lord blesses such man more. And someone do it less, so he get less blessing. But we have to follow the example of that people and that man, who were healed by Jesus. Maybe there were friends or relatives of paralytic, who brought him to Jesus. We do not know who brought him. But they had the faith. And I am sure that paralytic also had the faith that the Messiah, the Savior will help him.

That is why dear brothers and sisters, lets believe in Our Savior Jesus Christ, who will also heal us. He will help us to be spiritually and physically healthy. And when God be with us, he will protect us, bless with His grace and presence. The main is that we have to believe that He can do it. We also have to ask Him forgiveness for all bad doings, for all sins, which we have done during our life. And He is merciful. He will forgive and bless and will be with us.

To move ahead, to be saved, to try to have a religious life we all have heard the Apostle (Romans ХІІ:6-14), where apostle Paul told us, what we have to do. God gives people different gifts. And every person uses these gifts, talents that the Lord blessed us in a different way: if prophecy, in proportion to our faith; if service, in our serving; the one who teaches, in his teaching; the one who exhorts, in his exhortation; the one who contributes, in generosity; the one who leads, with zeal; the one who does acts of mercy, with cheerfulness.

And next Apostle Paul taught that we have to overcome all trials with the prayer and patience. We must ask God for help. We shouldn’t curse our enemies, the enemies of our country. We have to pray that the Lord stop them and the peace will come in our country.

Do you understand? If we read Holy Gospel attentively, if we read all Acts of Saint Apostles attentively and think over them, if we ask God to help us understand this truth, so everything will become clear. It becomes clear as we understand that one plus one is two. We start to understand the road of life, the road of salvation. But there is one more problem. The problem is that we do not read. The problem is that we hear the Holy Gospel and Acts of Saint Apostles one a week.

We are lazy to open the Holy Writ at home and read and ask: “Oh Lord, set me with Your truth in the right way today.”

I have one friend of mine, he is a Protestant. And he says that he has a lot of work.
- What time do you wake up? – I asked.
- I wake up at 5 a.m. – he answered.
- And what do you do?
- I pray till six in the morning.
- And after?
- I open the Holy Gospel and read. I read a half an hour. And I do it every day. Then I go to work.

So, it is perfect. The man made a perfect morning schedule of private life.

If we want to read in the evening, we happen to be tired. Maybe not all people have enough desire to read after along day. But if you pray in the morning and open the Holy Writ after that, you can read one chapter and I think it will be very good. And if we do it, we will understand the truth more. We will become more spiritual people. We will grow. And then the words of Jesus and Apostles, through whom the Lord talked, will be very warm, confortable and clear for us.

So, dear brothers and sisters, I call you and myself to read the Holy Gospel, to come to the Temple, to pray and ask God for His grace and blessing, to do good things and to be God’s children.

Let the Lord save You!