An homily for the Sunday of the Paralytic, the Fourth Sunday in Pascha, from St. John’s Russian Orthodox Mission Church in Winfield, PA, by Priest Paul Siewers.
In today’s Gospel our Lord shows us, appropriately for this Pascha season, how He heals us from paralysis—from feeling entombed within a worldly life whether bodily, or in terms of sin and set habits, or the cares of mortal life generally.
Blessed Theophylact in his Orthodox commentary on the Gospel, drawing heavily on St. John Chrysostom, notes that the pool by which the paralytic man lay for years was called the Sheep’s Pool “because the sheep intended for the temple sacrifices were brough there and their entrails were washed in its water. It was the common belief that the washing of the sacrificial entrails imparted divine power to the water, and that after the washing an angel would descend to the water to work a miracle. Here divine providence is plainly evident, guiding the Jews of ancient times towards faith in Christ by preordaining this miracle of the pool. God intended in due time to bestow Baptism, the greatest of gifts, making it full of power to wash away sins and bring souls to life…. God worked this miracle at the pool to prepare the Jews to receive the grace of Baptism…. This miracle was accomplished entirely by the activity and divine energy of the angel. Likewise with us. In Baptism, ordinary water by the divine invocations receives the grace of the Holy Spirit and cleanses us from spiritual disease. The water of Baptism heals all: the blind, whose spiritual eyes are darkened and cannot distinguish good from evil; the lame, who are paralyzed and neither practice virtue nor make any spiritual progress; and the withered, who are in complete despair because of their inability to accomplish anything good. In former times infirmity prevented many from being healed in the waters of the pool, and only one was made whole. But now, we have no obstacle to being baptized. For not only one being healed leaves the rest without healing. Rather, even if the whole world comes together, the grace is in no way diminished.”
So explains Blessed Theophylact. For God so loved the world that He gave us His only beloved Son. The tears of our Lord in His agony in the Garden falling on the earth with bloody sweat, the water from His side on the Cross, these are all the promise of healing and salvation in his co-suffering compassion, the gift of the uncreated grace of the Holy Trinity He opens for us in the Holy Spirit, through His Body the Church. This freeing love is available to all, there is no scarcity and no competition for it, it is wider and deeper than all the seas.
Blessed Theophylact continues that, “The endurance of the paralytic is astonishing. He had thirty-eight years in his illness, and each year, expecting to be freed from his disease, he was thwarted and hindered by those stronger than himself. Yet he did not withdraw, nor did he despair. Therefore the Lord asks him, desiring to show us the patience of the man…”
Thirty-eight years, brothers and sisters. And I will add here on the side, by meaningful coincidence, that there is an inmate in the prison to which our parish now ministers, who has now been there 38 years. She has long patiently waited for Orthodox Confession and the Eucharist. I was corresponding last week with the priest of her family’s home parish, we have her baptism documented, and are preparing soon, God willing, for her to receive the mysteries of Confession and Communion. Long has she waited, serving a life sentence that so far has been as long as the paralytic’s time by the pool, and without the mysteries of the Church. Brothers and Sisters, this is a reminder in one case of how what our parish does through our prayers and support unworthily forms part of the Body of Christ, glory to God.
And glory to God that we have had newly enlightened brothers and sisters baptized into Christ, with one this morning, three others so far earlier this Pascha season, and another coming up soon, God willing. This too is a freeing form the paralysis of worldliness and sin, by which all of us can renew our baptismal vows in this mystery of the Church in Christ.
(Above: Baptism at our mission this morning on the Sunday of the Paralytic)
Blessed Theophylact continues: “From the Lord’s words to the paralytic, ‘See, you have been made well. Sin no more,’ we learn, first, that the disease came upon the man because of sins; and second, that the word concerning Gehenna is true, and that punishment there is everlasting…. Are all sicknesses from sins? Not all, but most. Some are because of sins, as with this paralytic; and in the Book of Kings also we see someone struck with disease of the feet because of sin. Others are for proving and trial, as with Job, in order that his virtue might be shown. And some come from bodily excesses, such as gluttony and drunkenness….
“Understand, then, the Sheep Pool as signifying the grace of baptism, in which the Lamb offered for us, Jesus the Lord, was washed when He was baptised on our behalf. This pool has five porches, for the four virtues together with the contemplative and doctrinal life are signified with baptism.”
Brothers and sisters, I’ll add here a reminder that the four virtues of Scripture include wisdom, understanding, counsel, and might. They also are named prudence, temperance, justice or righteousness, and courage. These are not just legalistic checkboxes in Orthodoxy, they are gifts of the Holy Spirit, virtues that express the uncreated grace of God. They lead us into the Christian virtues of contemplation, namely knowledge, piety, and the fear of God, best known from St. Paul as faith, hope, and love.
Until Jesus Christ came, these gifts of the Holy Spirit lay dormant in the paralytic, as Blessed Theophylact observes, reading the Gospel symbolically as well as literally in Orthodox fashion. The paralytic also symbolizes human nature, which, he writes, “neither humbly believed in the Trinity, nor in the eternal age, I mean the resurrection and the judgment of deeds done, and so found no healing. [Human nature] had no man to put it into the pool—that is, the Son of God had not yet become man, Who was about to heal it through baptism. But when He became man, He sanctified our nature, and commanded the bed to be taken up—that is, the body to be made light and unburdened, raised from earth, no longer weighed down with fleshly cares, but awakened from sloth toward what is good, and made to walk, that is, to move in the practice of virtue. The troubling of the water of the pool signifies the disturbing of the spirits of wickedness, shattered and drowned by the grace of the Holy Spirit. And He teaches us also to find health: those who are weak, and unmoving toward every good work, and having no ‘man’—that is, no human reasoning—but joined with mindless beasts, that they might be cast into the pool of tears of repentance, in which the one who first enters is healed…. Therefore be the first to enter, lest death overtake you.
“This pool of repentance is stirred by an angel. Who? The Angel of the Great Counsel of the Father, Christ the Saviour. For unless the divine Word touches our heart, and causes disturbance in it through the remembrance of future punishments, this pool will not be stirred, nor will health come to the soul that lies idle. This pool is rightly called ‘Sheep,’ for in it the entrails and thoughts of the saints who are living sacrifices, pleasing to God and harmless as sheep, are washed clean. May it be ours, then, to obtain this healing, and after our healing to be found in the temple, lest a worse punishment come upon us. May we no longer defile ourselves with unholy thoughts. And when the Jews accuse Christ as a breaker of the Sabbath, He shows Himself equal to the Father: ‘My Father is working until now, and I am working.’ ‘For as the Father governs creation even on the Sabbath, so also the Son works with Him.’
The relation of today’s Sunday of the Paralytic to baptism and Resurrection should also remind us of the upcoming Feast of Mid-Pentecost, which we will mark God willing with services Tuesday night and Wednesday morning. That beautiful quiet feast evokes in its hymns the Living Waters given us by our Lord, linking the Resurrection with Pentecost. The Mid-Pentecost service includes a Lesser Blessing of the Waters. It marks the midpoint between the First Sunday of Pascha and Pentecost. It reminds us of the timeless relation between Baptism and Resurrection, and how the Holy Spirit moved upon the waters of Creation just as in the waters of Baptism in our little country mission this morning. In addition, this Mid-Pentecost is also the Feast of the Great-Martyr George. He is the patron of both England and Russia, two nations which play a role in the background of our own English-speaking Russian mission in Appalachia. St. George as patron saint of England and Russia is a reminder of the baptism of both those nations, including of England in Orthodox times, as we work to bring America today to Orthodoxy.
In our mission work, we proclaim our Lord’s healing baptism and resurrection of paralyzed human nature this Pascha in a simple phrase. “Christ is Risen! Truly He is Risen!”
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Translation of commentary by Blessed Theophylact of Ochrid from Blessed Theophylact, The Collected Commentaries of the Gospels, Nun Christina, and The Explanation by Blessed Theophylact of the Holy Gospel According to St. Matthew, trans. C. Stade.
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The Reading from the Holy Gospel according to John, § 14 [5:1-15]
At that time, Jesus went up to Jerusalem. Now there is in Jerusalem by the sheep market a pool, which is called in the Hebrew tongue Bethesda, having five porches. In these lay a great multitude of invalid folk — blind, halt, withered — waiting for the moving of the water. For an angel went down at a certain season into the pool and troubled the water. Whosoever then first stepped in, after the troubling of the water, was made whole of whatsoever disease he had. And a certain man was there who had an infirmity for thirty and eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there, and knew that he had been in that state a long time, He said unto him, ‘Wilt thou be made whole?’ The infirm man answered Him, ‘Sir, I have no man, when the water is troubled, to put me into the pool; but while I am coming, another steppeth down before me.’ Jesus said unto him, ‘Rise, take up thy bed, and walk.’ And immediately the man was made whole, and took up his bed and walked. Now it was the Sabbath on that day. The Jews therefore said unto him that was cured, ‘It is the Sabbath day; it is not lawful for thee to carry thy bed.’ He answered them, ‘He that made me whole said unto me, “Take up thy bed and walk.”’ Then they asked him, ‘What man is that who said unto thee, “Take up thy bed and walk”?’ And he that was healed knew not who it was, for Jesus had removed Himself away, a multitude being in that place. Afterward Jesus found him in the temple and said unto him, ‘Behold, thou art made whole. Sin no more, lest a worse thing come unto thee.’ The man departed, and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him whole.