The Paralytic and the Pool

          One wonders sometimes about why the gospel story of the healing of the paralytic was chosen for the paschal season.  One understands why the stories of Thomas and the Myrrh-bearers were chosen, but the paralytic?  Perhaps our incomprehension is rooted in our modern separation of Pascha from baptism.  In the early Church from at least the time of Tertullian (d. 220), Pascha was considered as the time for baptism, and the spectacle of many catechumens lining up to be baptized in the baptistery (a separate building in those days) and then processing with solemn joy into the church to be anointed with laying on of hands by the bishop forged an indelible link in people’s minds between Pascha and baptism.  Even now in our Pascha-night Liturgy, in place of the Trisagion hymn we sing “As many as have been baptized into Christ”.  In early tradition, Pascha meant baptism and baptism always had a paschal feel to it.  The two were inextricably linked.

            That might explain why all the Sunday gospels in the Paschal season after the Sunday of the Myrrh-bearers focus upon water:  the Samaritan woman finds Christ by the well, and the blind man finds salvation as he washes in the pool of Siloam.  Similarly, the paralytic encounters Christ as he sat by the waters of Bethesda.  In all these gospels, we find water, a clear echo of baptism for those to whom baptism was linked with Pascha.  As early as Tertullian (in his book On Baptism, chapter 5), the presumed descent of the angel into the Bethesda pool foreshadowed the spiritual and transformative power of Christian baptism.

            As we examine the story of the paralytic in greater depth, it is important to see that in its original context the Bethesda pool was not a source of salvation for the paralytic, but a rival alternative to it, if not its positive impediment.  Remember the details of the story:  the paralytic sat languishing by the pool, thirty-eight years in his wretched condition, hoping for healing.  When the pool’s waters were stirred (by an angel, as everyone thought), he hoped to be the first one into the pool to soak up the angel’s divine power and be cured, but being paralyzed, he was too slow, and someone always beat him to the pool.  So, he waited and waited, hoping to find salvation one day in the pool.

            It was there that Jesus found him.  When Jesus asked him, “Do you want to be healed?” (John 5:6), he didn’t say, “Yes Lord, please heal me!”  He was still hoping to get into the pool, and he answered, “Sir, I have no man to put me into the pool when the water is troubled, and while I am going another steps down before me.”  But salvation wasn’t in the pool.  It was in Jesus.  Jesus simply said, “Rise, take your pallet, and walk”, and the man did.  He didn’t need the pool after all.  All he needed was Jesus.

            In John’s subtext, the pool functions as an image of the Law and the man as an image of Israel hoping to find salvation in the Law.  The paralytic had been long in his condition, even as Israel had long been waiting for divine salvation.  The Bethesda pool was thought to have been stirred by an angel, even as the Law had been given by angels (Acts 7:53).  The pool even had five porticoes (John 5:4), even as the Mosaic Law had five books—a detail noticed by St. Augustine.  Like the paralytic who had to stop relying on the pool for salvation and turn instead to Christ, so Israel had to stop relying upon the Law to save them, and also turn to Christ.  The old was giving place to the new.

            We see this contrast between the old and the new throughout John’s Gospel:  not Jewish water, but Christ’s wine, not the old Temple, but Christ’s body, not the manna in the wilderness, but Christ’s flesh.  Christian faith involved turning from the old ways to the new, as sacred Jewish history veered upward into the Kingdom and the eschaton.  It was as Isaiah foretold long ago:  “Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old.  Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you know perceive it?” (Isaiah 43:18-19)  This is the newness of Pascha, and the new life given to us in baptism.  The paralytic found this life not in the old pool, but in the living Christ.  Our Paschal season reminds us that this is where we find new life and constant renewal as well.

             

The Western War against Men and the Sinking of the Titanic

         

One of the current social realities is the war against men—or in you prefer, the war against masculinity as traditionally defined.  Confirmation of this comes from an unusual source—from Camille Paglia.  In an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal, associate editorial features editor Ms. Weiss writes about Paglia in an article entitled, “Camille Paglia:  A Feminist Defense of Masculine Virtues”.   She relates that Paglia has noted with alarm certain features of western society, such as “society’s attempts to paper over the biological distinction between men and women” which she connects with “the collapse of Western civilization”.  For Paglia, the cultural attempt to refashion society and eliminate traditional masculinity begins early.  In the educational system, for example, “They’re making a toxic environment for boys. Primary education does everything in its power to turn boys into neuters.”  Paglia sees the concentration on “female values”—such as sensitivity, socialization and cooperation—as the main aim of teachers and of society.  
          For those not familiar with Paglia’s work, she is no mere mouthpiece for the Christian right.  She is a lesbian, and a self-described “notorious Amazon feminist”.  Her criticisms of the feminist movement come from her long involvement in that movement.  But she wants feminism to be “open to stay-at-home moms and not just the career woman” and suggests that to be taken seriously feminism must take on matters like rape in India and honour killings in the Muslim world, which she describes as “more of an outrage than some woman going on a date on the Brown University campus.”

            I’m with Camille.  I agree that western society is bent on turning men into neuters.  All mysticism has been stripped from gender, which is now reduced to simple anatomical differences, and even these are no longer definitive.  No roles are more suited to men than to women, as no roles are more suited to women than to men—at least that’s the party line.  Anciently (i.e. before the late 1960s) all gender had a mystical aspect.  Men had a life and secrets of their own that they would not share with the women, and women had lives and secrets not for sharing with the men.  Certain mystical (and therefore culturally arbitrary) rituals ruled interactions between the genders:  a man, for example, would hold a door open for a woman, and would remove his hat in her presence, or stand up when she approached (as he would remove his hat and rise for his sovereign).  Any man worth his masculine salt would instantly come to the aid of any woman in distress, even at the possible cost of his own life.  It was not a matter of bravery, but of simple masculinity.  That’s what it meant to be a man.

            Such mystical behaviour can become very practical, as it did one day in 1912.  

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The White Student Union and the Kingdom of God

              A young man who is a student at Towson University is concerned about the level of crime afflicting his campus and the seeming inability of the police to stem the tide.  So, he is arranging for a series of unarmed student foot patrols around the university to increase student safety.  The problem?  The student arranging for the foot patrols heads a group called the “White Student Union”, and its blog warns that the university is experiencing a “black crime wave”, with “black predators” preying upon the “white majority student body”.  Ouch.  To make matters worse, the young man, Mr. Mathew Heimbach, is an Orthodox Christian, who stated his desire to enter seminary to become an Orthodox priest.  Double ouch.

            What are we to make of all this?  It seems that the fallen tribalisms of this age are hard to eradicate from the human heart, and sadly, can even survive conversion to the Orthodox Church.  It is commendable that someone might want to arrange for student-led patrols of the campus to increase safety.  It is less commendable that anyone would define himself, especially today, in terms of colour or race.  Why have a White Student Union?  Why call the “crime wave” a black crime wave?  Presumably no one, of any colour or race, cares much about the colour of the person beating them about the head and taking their money.  Defining the criminals and the victims in terms of their colour seems unnecessarily provocative, if not incendiary.  Why describe the situation on campus in terms calculated to increase racial tension?

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Understanding Thomas

St. Thomas, it seems, can never catch a break, at least in popular culture.  Our culture knows him as “doubting Thomas”, and one single and uncharacteristic lapse has forever labelled him as a doubter and made him the patron saint of sceptics.   He is regarded as suffering from an innate tendency to doubt and to faithlessness, as if he somehow loved his Lord less than the other apostles.  A quick look through the other pages of John’s Gospel reveals it is not so.  If anything, Thomas loved Jesus more.

            Remember how a few short days before the catastrophic events of Christ’s arrest, trial, and crucifixion all the other disciples hung back in fear when their Master spoke of leaving the safety of their place across the Jordan to return to Bethany in Judea to visit Lazarus?  Jesus told them plainly that Lazarus was dead, and then said, “let us go to him”.  The apostles all thought that He meant visiting Lazarus’ bereaved family in Judea and being stoned to death for it, as He almost was before (John 11:7-8, 14-15).  They all hung back, aghast at their Master’s determined plan.  It was Thomas who refused to let Him go and die alone:  “Let us also go,” he told them, “that we may die with Him” (v. 16).

            Thomas’ famous lapse therefore did not spring from a cold heart, nor from a deficit of love.  When the other apostles told him after the Resurrection that they had seen the Lord, and when Thomas responded, “Unless I see in His hands the print of the nails, and place my finger in the mark of the nails, and place my hand in His side, I will not believe” (John 20:25), this was not the voice of scepticism.  If Thomas were a despairing sceptic, he would not then have been with the other apostles at all.  He would have said, “I’m done”, and returned to Galilee.  No, this was not the voice of scepticism.  It was the voice of desire.

            That is, Thomas desired more than anything in the world to see His Lord alive again.  His poor heart had sustained such a pounding and been broken into so many tiny pieces by the events of that last terrible Friday that he could not risk having it broken again.  He dared not believe this latest report, for fear that it was wrong.  He felt that if he raised his hopes again only to have them dashed, he could not survive.  No more risks, no more taking chances.  From now on, seeing was believing.  But he clearly wanted to see and to believe.  When he drew his line in the sand and said he would not believe this report unless Christ appeared to him personally, he wanted more than anything for it to be so.  He drew this line, hoping beyond hope that Christ would cross over it.  When Christ did, and offered His risen flesh to Thomas for inspection, Thomas sank to his knees, exclaiming, “My Lord and my God!”  Here was everything he ever wanted.

            Thomas’ desire for Christ challenges us today—and not just to believe in Christ without seeing Him for ourselves.  Thomas challenges not just our faith, but our priorities.  Thomas wanted Christ more than anything else, and everything else grew dim in the face of that desire.  What do we want?  What is our deepest desire?  Is it for money?  For health and happiness?  Is it for the health and happiness of our children?  Is it for success and recognition in our chosen field?  Thomas would cheerfully have sacrificed all these things, if only he could have his Jesus back again.  For Thomas, nothing was more important than Jesus.  After falling down before Christ with his confession, he turns to us with a question:  what is our deepest desire?  How important is Jesus to us?