Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Christ is Risen!

Congratulations with the fourth Sunday of Pascha!

In today’s Gospel reading we heard how our Lord Jesus Christ healed the unfortunate paralytic man, who lay by the sheep pool in Jerusalem for thirty-eight years, waiting for miraculous healing. Today we can focus our attention on this paralytic and on the wondrous spiritual traits of his character.

The Holy Hierarch John Chrysostom rightly notes that this man was especially meek. When Christ came to him and posed the insensitive question, “Do you wish to be healed?” we feel in the answer not anger, but meekness. Probably many would answer curtly, for it is obvious that anyone who suffers from an ailment wants and dreams of his health returning to him. Although the paralytic did not know who was standing before him, he calls Him Lord and meekly answers that he wishes to be healed, but has no one who could help him. Along with meekness, the paralytic also shows a particular courage and daring. When after the miraculous healing the Jews reproach him for carrying his bed on the Sabbath day, he does not try to justify himself, nor does he obey them, but simply declares that He who healed him commanded him to carry his bed.

For us, Brothers and Sisters, the paralytic can become a marvelous example. For each person, throughout the course of his life, difficult moments come up. Someone has health issues, another is unable to deal with stress, a third finds it difficult to find a job, etc. Often these unpleasant situations lead to us becoming not meek, but more irritable. In such moments, it would be good to remember today’s paralytic and how he humbly, calmly, meekly, without a great amount of hope, waited for thirty-eight years for a miracle from God. This meekness and inner peace led to the Lord God truly visiting and healing him.

We can also learn from his daring. Believing Christians that live in the 21st century do not particularly fit into to the surrounding world. Our morals and values are at best ignored, or as is more often the case, considered outdated, harmful, dangerous, and absurd. In such an environment we hide ourselves; sometimes we attempt to justify our Christian values, or somehow reconcile them with the values of the 21st century. Perhaps we sometimes even pretend or say that we support the morals of the surrounding world and renounce, though not in our hearts, but with our words or actions, Christian morality and join ourselves to the “enlightened modern world.” Of course, it would be better to act as the paralytic did and meekly and simply, but with courage, answer that we are holding fast to our Christian morality because Christ commanded us to act so.

Dear Brothers and Sisters, let’s try through prayer and at least some kind of small ascetic struggle, to acquire a small morsel of the meekness and courage of today’s Gospel hero, the paralytic, so that with time, Christ will come to us also and will heal us of our spiritual ailments.

priest Alexis