An Instruction for the Sunday of the Paralytic: On the Chastisements of God
“See, you have been made well; do not sin any more, so that nothing worse happens to you” (Jn. 5:14). Such was the commandment given by the Lord to the paralyzed man whom He had healed, as we heard today in the Gospel.
Beloved brethren! This commandment of the Lord has for us significance of the greatest importance. It announces to us that we are subjected to illnesses and other misfortunes of earthly life because of our sins. When God delivers us from illness or misfortune and we again begin to live a sinful life, we are again subjected to misfortunes more severe than the first punishments and warnings sent to us by God.
Sin is the cause of all human sorrows both in time and in eternity. Sorrows compose as it were the natural consequence, the natural attribute of sin, similar to how the sufferings produced by bodily illnesses constitute the inevitable attribute of these illnesses, their proper effect. Sin in the broad sense of the word, or the fall of mankind, or mankind’s eternal death, encompasses all men without exception; certain sins constitute the sad possession of entire human societies; finally, each man has his own particular passions, his own special sins belonging exclusively to him. Sin, in all these various forms, serves as the source of all the sorrows and misfortunes to which mankind in general is subject, to which human societies are subject, to which each man individually is subject.
The state of fall, the state of eternal death, which has infected, struck, and slain all mankind, is the source of all other human sins—both social and private. Our nature, thrown into turmoil by sin’s poison, has acquired the capacity to sin, has acquired inclination toward sin, has submitted to sin’s violence, cannot help but produce sin from within itself, cannot dispense with it in any form of its activity. None of unregenerate men can avoid sinning, even though they wish not to sin (Rom. 7:14–23).
Three punishments have been determined by Divine justice for all mankind for the sins of all mankind. Two of them have already been accomplished; one must yet be accomplished. The first punishment was eternal death, to which all mankind was subjected in its root, in the forefathers, for disobedience to God in paradise. The second punishment was the universal flood for mankind’s allowing the domination of the flesh over the spirit, for reducing mankind to the life and dignity of the irrational beasts. The final punishment must be the destruction and end of this visible world for apostasy from the Redeemer, for mankind’s final inclination into communion with rejected angels.
Often a particular kind of sin encompasses entire human societies and brings upon them the judgment of God. Thus the Sodomites were burned with fire descending from heaven for lustful gratification of the flesh; thus the Israelites were repeatedly delivered to foreign peoples for turning to idolatry; thus not one stone remained upon another in the magnificent Jerusalem, built of wondrous stones, and its inhabitants perished by the sword of the Romans for the rejection of the Saviour and deicide. Sin is contagious: it is difficult for a private person to stand firm against sin in which an entire society is implicated.
An example of punishment for sin committed by a man individually, punished by Divine justice also individually, we see in the prolonged illness of the paralyzed man healed by the Lord.
Having said as much as is necessary to know and as much as could be said now about the sinfulness of all mankind and the sinfulness of human societies, let us direct special attention to private sinfulness, which each man has his own. This consideration is essentially necessary for us and essentially beneficial. It can have a saving influence on our activity, turning it from the path of lawlessness and directing it by God’s will. Illuminated by God’s law, we shall learn that God, with unlimited mercy, is also completely just, that He will assuredly repay sinful life with corresponding punishment. Such conviction will inspire us to make all efforts to free ourselves from attraction to our own passions and from the vicious customs of society, to deliver ourselves from temporal and eternal punishments of God.
The holy Fathers104 affirm that before redemption all men were possessed by sin and did the will of sin even against their own wishes. After the redemption of mankind by the God-man, those who have believed in Christ and been renewed by holy Baptism are no longer forced by sin, but have freedom: freedom either to resist sin or to follow its suggestions. Those who voluntarily surrender to sin again lose their freedom and fall under the violent predominance of sin (Mt. 12:43–45). Those who under the guidance of God’s Word wage war with sin, resist it, in their time achieve complete victory over sinfulness. Victory over one’s own sinfulness is at the same time victory over eternal death. One who has achieved it can easily turn away from social sinful attraction. We see this in the holy martyrs: having conquered sin in themselves, they resisted popular delusion, exposed it, did not hesitate to seal their holy testimony with blood. One seduced and blinded by his own sin cannot help but be attracted by the social sinful disposition: he will not perceive it with clarity, will not understand it as he should, will not renounce it with self-denial, belonging to it in his heart. The essence of the struggle against sin, the struggle which every Christian must undertake, consists in war against sin, in severing friendship with it, in overcoming it in the very soul, in the mind and heart, with which the body cannot help but sympathize. “Eternal death, says the Venerable Macarius the Great, lies hidden within the heart: by it man is dead, though appearing to be alive externally. Whoever in the secret of his heart has passed from death to life will live forever and never die. Though the bodies of such men are separated for a time from their souls, they are sanctified and will rise with glory. For this reason we call the death of the saints sleep”105.
All the saints, without exception, though they conquered eternal death and revealed in themselves eternal life even during this temporal life, were subjected to many and severe sorrows and temptations (Heb. 12:8). Why is this? It is proper for sinners to draw upon themselves God’s punishment; for what reason then does the rod of God not pass over God’s chosen ones, but strikes them with blows? This question is resolved, according to the teaching of Holy Scripture and the holy Fathers, as follows. Though sinfulness is conquered in righteous men, though eternal death is destroyed by the presence of the Holy Spirit in them, they are not granted unchangeableness in goodness throughout the whole of their earthly sojourn: neither is freedom in the choice between good and evil taken from them106. Unchangeableness in goodness is an attribute of the future age. Earthly life to its last hour is a field of voluntary and involuntary struggles. “I discipline my body and bring it into subjection”, says the great Paul, “lest, when I have preached to others, I myself should become disqualified” (1 Cor. 9:27). The Apostle speaks this of a body seasoned and sanctified by Divine grace, to which the venom of the serpent could do no harm, whose clothing produced healings. And such a body needed to be brought into subjection and mortified, lest its mortified passions revive and eternal death rise again! As long as a Christian, though he be a vessel of the Holy Spirit, sojourns on the earth, so long can eternal death rise again in him, sinfulness can again seize both body and soul. But even his own struggle alone is insufficient for God’s servants to subdue the fall nestling in their nature, constantly striving to restore its dominion: they need help from God. God assists them with His grace and with the rod of fatherly chastisement proportioned to the grace of each. To the great Paul “there was given to me a thorn in the flesh”, he witnesses, “a messenger of Satan, to torment me” (2 Cor. 12:7) on account of the most exalted spiritual progress, on account of the multitude of Divine revelations granted to him, on account of the multitude of spiritual gifts he possessed, on account of the multitude of miracles he performed. So corrupted is our nature by sin’s poison that the very abundance of God’s grace in man can serve as a cause of pride and destruction for man. Not honours, not glory, not unquestioned obedience greeted Paul when he preached Christ to the universe, proving the truth of his preaching by signs: a messenger of Satan everywhere prepared for him snares, opposition, humiliation, persecution, afflictions, death. Understanding that this was done by God’s permission, Paul exclaims: “I am well satisfied with weakness, with insult, with hardship, with persecution, with difficulties; for the sake of Christ” (2 Cor. 12:10). Paul found it necessary to mortify his body lest from indulgence of the body fleshly passions arise: the eye of Divine Providence perceived that the time was needed to guard Paul’s soul from pride by sorrows. Even the purest human nature has something proud in it, observes the Venerable Macarius the Great107. Here is the reason why the servants of God subject themselves to voluntary privations and sorrows—at the same time are subjected to various sorrows and temptations by Divine Providence’s permission, assisting with sorrows the struggle of God’s servants, protecting their struggle with sorrows from corruption by sin. The path of earthly life for all the saints was a path of great labour, thorny, full of deprivation, beset with countless afflictions. “Others” among them, says the Apostle, “were beaten, while others faced jeers and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. They were stoned; they were sawed in two; they were put to death by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated—the world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains, living in caves and holes in the ground” (Heb. 11:35–38). The blessed Symeon Metaphrastes notes in the biography of the great martyr Eustathius: “It is not pleasing to God that His servants, for whom He has prepared in heaven eternal, unchanging honour and glory, should remain honoured and glorified by vain and temporal honour in this perverse and unstable world”108. Why is this so? Because there is no man who can remain at the height of earthly greatness and well-being without harm to his soul. Even if someone were equal to the angels in morality, he would still be shaken109. In us, in our souls, has been implanted by our fall the capacity to change110. We cannot help but correspond and conform the disposition of our spirit to external circumstances and our material situation. “My soul clings to the dust” (Ps. 118:25; cf.: Ps. 137:7) confesses the prophet to God on behalf of every fallen man: lift me from the earth, tear me from it, lead me to salvation—“Your right hand”, Your most holy Word and Your most holy Providence, blending my temporal well-being with sorrows and at the same time comforting me with graceful spiritual consolation, breathing into my heart a longing for heaven. Without this help of God, by my unhappy inclination, which I cannot resist by my own strength alone, I would have attached myself in mind and heart exclusively to the material and would have terribly, ruinously deceived myself, forgetting about eternity, about the goods prepared for me there, losing them irretrievably.
With submission to God, with thanksgiving and glorification of God, true servants of God received the sorrows permitted to them by Divine Providence. They “were pleased”, as the holy Apostle Paul expressed it, about their sorrows; found them useful, necessary, indispensable for themselves; recognized their permission as right and beneficial. They joined the striving of their own will to the action of God’s will: in the true sense they were pleased with the punishments and instructions sent by God.
It was from such a pledge of the heart, from such a manner of thinking that the saints gazed upon the afflictions that befell them. Spiritual consolation and joy, the renewal of the soul by sensations of the age to come were the consequences of the disposition inspired by humble-mindedness. What shall we, sinners, say about the sorrows that meet us? What, first, is their primary cause? The primary cause of human suffering, as we have seen, is sin, and it will be very right for every sinner, when sorrows befall him, to turn his mental gaze immediately to his sins, to acknowledge his sins, to accuse his sins, to accuse himself for his sins, to recognize sorrow as a righteous punishment from God. There is also another cause of sorrows: this is the mercy of God toward weak humanity. In permitting sorrows to come upon sinners, God stirs them to come to their senses, to pause amid their uncontrollable attraction, to remember eternity, their relation to it, to remember God and their obligations toward Him. Sorrows permitted to sinners serve as a sign that these sinners have not yet been forgotten, have not been rejected by God, that there is perceived in them a capacity for repentance, correction, and salvation.
Sinners who are punished by God, take courage: “for the Lord disciplines those he loves, and punishes everyone he accepts as his children” (Heb. 12:6). This is proclaimed to us by Holy Scripture, teaching us, consoling us, strengthening us. “Accept discipline and live; do not despise the Lord’s correction, lest his wrath break out” (Ps. 2:12); accept the punishment with the understanding that you deserve punishment; accept the punishment with glorification of the punishment, with glorification of the God who is just and in His justice merciful; accept it with an unbiased examination of your past life, with confession of your transgressions, with washing away your sins by the tears of repentance, with correction of your behaviour. Often it needs little external correction but very much internal correction: correction of your manner of thinking, your direction, your motivations, your intentions. You have turned from the path of righteousness by your sins: do not lose it finally through murmuring, through unjust justification of yourself before yourself and others, through despair, through despondency, through blasphemy against God. Do not turn to your ruin the means of aid given to you for leading you to the path of piety, the means employed by the Lord Himself; do not make it a means of your certain destruction, a means of your ruin. Otherwise the Lord will be angry with you. He will turn His face from you as from those estranged from Him; He will not send you sorrows as forgotten and rejected (Heb. 12:8); He will permit you to squander earthly life according to the lusts of your sin-loving heart, and He will command death to reap you suddenly, like tares that have become through their own free will and choice the possession of hell-fire.
Those who endure as they should the temptations permitted to them by God draw near to God, acquire boldness toward Him, become united to Him, as the Apostle testifies: “if you are submitted to discipline, then God is treating you as his children” (Heb. 12:7). God fills with spiritual blessings him who bears sorrow in humility of spirit; He hearkens to his contrite prayer; often He turns away the scourge and rod of punishment if it is no longer needed for greater spiritual progress. This occurred with the paralyzed man who had lain thirty-eight years in the portico of Solomon among a multitude of other sick people, who, like the paralyzed man, awaited the healing movement of the waters wrought by an angel’s hand. What a sorrowful state, compelled by illness and poverty! Clearly: those afflicted with disease had no other means of healing and therefore resolved to wait long for the miracle that was accomplished once a year, which provided true and complete healing from every disease, but to only one sick person. The paralysis of the sick man was punishment for his sins, which is evident from the instruction given by the Lord to the healed man: “See, you have been made well; do not sin any more, so that nothing worse happens to you”.
The Lord, who gave the commandment to the healed paralyzed man that he not fall again into those sins for which he was punished with illness, gave the same commandment to the sinful woman to whom He forgave her sins. “Go”, said the Saviour of the world to her condemned by earthly righteous men to be stoned, “and from now on do not sin” (Jn. 8:11). Healing of the soul and healing of the body are given by the merciful Lord under a condition, under one and the same condition. The sin of the woman was a mortal sin; clearly, the sin of the paralyzed man also belongs to the category of mortal sins. These are the sins that most invoke the punishment of God. For one who has sunk into the pit of mortal sins, special help from God is needed, and this help appears openly in punishment, secretly in a calling to repentance. Man is called to repentance either by illness sent to him, as happened to the paralyzed man, or by persecution permitted to him from men, which befell David, or in some other way. In whatever form God’s punishment manifests itself, it should be received with humility and one should immediately strive to fulfill that Divine purpose for which the punishment is sent: have recourse to the cure of repentance, having placed in one’s soul a covenant to abstain from the sin for which the Lord’s hand chastises us. With certainty this sin will be pointed out to us by our conscience. Forgiveness of sin and deliverance from the sorrow by which we are punished for sin are granted to us by God solely upon condition of the abandonment of the sin, which is destructive to us and abominable before God.
The return to sin, which has brought God’s wrath upon us, which has been cured and forgiven by God, serves as the cause of the greatest misfortunes, misfortunes chiefly eternal and in the realm beyond. The paralyzed man languished in disease for thirty-eight years because of his sin. A considerable punishment! But the Lord proclaims an even greater punishment for a return to sin. What is this punishment, more severe than the disease that kept the sick man throughout his life on a bed, amid all deprivations? Nothing other than eternal torment in hell, awaiting all unrepentant and incorrigible sinners. Amen.
The Venerable Dorotheus. Instruction 1.
Homily 1, Chapter 2.
The Venerable Macarius the Great. Homily 7, Chapter 4. Saint Isaac the Syrian. Homily 1.
Homily 7, Chapter 4.
Menaion (Reader), September 20.
Saint Isaac the Syrian. Homily 1.
Saint Isaac the Syrian. Homily 1.