Friday, January 17, 2025
Memorial of Saint Anthony, Abbot
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Rise
Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Rise, take up your mat and walk?’
Jesus did not hesitate to call the earth that God created “holy,” although he knew how much God’s children seek to steal it for their own. Jesus healed all the diseases. Those men and women he touched, like Simon’s mother-in-law, the children he raised from the dead, the lepers and cripples all got up from their beds and went about their work. They leaped and laughed and praised Jesus, then they went about their work.
But Jesus never left us with only our physical healing. He calls us into God’s heaven. The Kingdom of God is at hand! We are citizens of both lands from birth to death. Each moment we can choose to rest in that eternity.
His works were accomplished at the foundation of the world. God rested on the seventh day from all his works. Let us strive to enter into that rest.
Unlike the lifelong rhythm of our night and day, rest comes after we rise. Can I relax into God’s embrace? There is always so much more to God’s power in my life than the thimble-full I recognize. Relaxing requires submission, obedience, childlike-ness – the opposite of control which my experience tries to tell me I must have. Can I trust God, when he gives me so much freedom?
That you may know that the Son of Man has authority to forgive sins on earth, I say to this paralytic, “Rise, pick up your mat and go home.”
Suffering beyond my control is the one-room schoolhouse where I learn to relax (see above for course requirements). God gave me five senses and a competent body in order to … worship him, in order to … bow down, in order to … fall down when the Holy Spirit pushes me. These courses are not electives. They are the only way I will get to graduation.
Saint Anthony’s parents died and left their children the estate. He sold his part, or gave it away, and walked unencumbered into the desert, where he lived alone for eighty-five years. Many uncertain pilgrims came to visit when Rome institutionalized Christianity as the state religion and removed persecution and suffering from their lives.
How then can we live? We have coveted martyrdom for three hundred years, and here we are wined and dined instead. Will we not die when we eat of this comfortable feast served to us by sinners?
Well, St. Anthony said … yes.
Some pilgrims set up their own tents near Anthony’s. They wanted to live. Suffering was not an option – it was what they needed. Sometimes they went too far, whipping their own backs. But God loved them and healed their wounds.
Anthony became famous after his disciple Athanasius told his stories, of the devil visiting and afflicting him with boredom, laziness and lust, of demons beating on him and leaving for dead. He was not dead and lived to pray another day. His desert life with God, his prayers and wise sayings echo today.
Do not forget the works of the Lord!
What we have heard and know, and what our fathers have declared to us, we will declare to the generation to come: the glorious deeds of the LORD and his strength.
(Hebrews 4, Psalm 78, Luke 7, Mark 2)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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