The Paralytic at the Pool

Sunday, May 10, 2009

Today’s Gospel was the healing of the paralytic by the Pool of Bethesda. He had lain there for so many years, waiting for a chance to be healed in its miraculous waters. But only the first person in the water when it became “troubled” was ever healed, and this man never made it into the water in time.

“Do you want to be made well?” Jesus asks him.

Do you? Do you want to be made well? Because Jesus can definitely accomplish that, but He isn’t going to without your permission. Your free choice is not the cause of anything, but it is the precondition.

From The Gurus, the Young Man, and Elder Paisios, by Dionysios Farasiotis (St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, Platina, California, 2008, pp. 293-294):

Indeed, His power is everywhere present, yet beyond all perception and beyond the reach of arrogant human attempts to discover it, able to be known only when it reveals itself. This power is what brought the trees, the mountains, the stars, and man himself into existence and what sustains them. In a moment, this power could make them all vanish without any uproar, any tumult, or any resistance, as easily as the flick of a light switch can plunge a well-lit room into total darkness.

Simultaneously, I felt in my heart that God’s almighty power is also infinitely noble, with a refinement that could never allow His power of His presence to pressure anyone. Although He is so very near us, He remains unseen, so that we feel neither weighed down nor obligated even by His presence – for He in no way wishes to restrict us, but instead desires us to be completely free to do as we wish. He not only avoids compelling us through fear, power, and might, but He even avoids swaying us with His beauty, His love, and the irresistible sweetness of His presence. He does this out of an unfathomable respect for human freedom. Of course, He loves us with a fiery love and desires to draw us towards Himself, resorting to manifold other ways that reveal His boundless wisdom, personal attention, and tender loving care for each one of us. Indeed the vastness of the universe which He watches over in no way lessens His love and concern for us. In turn, He seeks, but does not demand, our love, which can be found only with complete freedom.

The Way of Salvation is the Way of Love, and as this author notes, love is only to be found in complete freedom. That is why God graciously preserves the free will of each and every person, so that even though our pride, greed, lust, envy, and so forth, are lobbying hard for the evil, the will still can still heroically resist these and choose the good. Put another way, God has not permitted us to descend to the level of brute beasts (for that is what we would be, if we had no free will). We are still men and still made in His Image.

If anybody tells you some such thing as that the will is indeed free, but not capable of choosing good, that is a sophistry, a word game, because there is no true choice where there is no ability; and where there is no freedom, there is no Love, and where there is no Love, there can be no salvation. Reject such a doctrine, and answer the Lord’s question; tell Him yes, please make me whole!

And if your cry is sincere, is heartfelt, He will.


P.S. Demetrios bought me this book several days ago, and I gobbled it up! It's the story of young man, Greek, who set out to find Truth, and spent yearts in the world of the New Age, of the occult -- finally, in the end, embracing Holy Orthodoxy by the help of the blessed Fr. Paisios. (The book recounts many of the miracles Fr. Paisios did.) I heartily recommend it to anybody, who like me and like this author, has traveled the New Age path. And I plan to publish several excerpts from it here.