👉🏾👉🏾👉🏾 The Fourth Week of Great Lent: #Më'tsagu – The Healing Power of Christ
Beloved brethren in Christ,
Grace and peace be upon you in the name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. As we continue our Lenten journey, entering into the fourth week known as Më'tsagu, we are called to reflect on the boundless mercy of our Lord, who came to seek and to save the lost, to heal the afflicted, and to restore the broken. In this sacred time of fasting, prayer, and repentance, we turn our hearts to the Gospel account of the paralytic at the Pool of Bethesda (John 5:1-15), a story rich in divine mystery, filled with the profound wisdom of God’s providence, and revealing the great patience of the suffering soul.
Let us, then, incline our hearts and minds to the sacred Scriptures and uncover the depths of this holy lesson.
The Suffering of the Paralytic and the Long Wait for Healing
The Gospel tells us of a man who had been afflicted with sickness for thirty-eight years. His suffering was not short-lived, nor was it momentary; it was a burden carried for nearly four decades—a time of prolonged endurance, of painful waiting, of silent cries that seemed unheard. And yet, in the midst of such suffering, we see neither rebellion nor despair. Instead, we see a man who waited. He lay at the Pool of Bethesda, where the sick, the blind, the lame, and the paralyzed gathered, hoping for healing when the angel of the Lord stirred the waters. But he had no one to help him into the pool. Each time the waters moved, another would step in before him, and so he remained in his affliction, longing for salvation that seemed just beyond his reach.
Does this not reflect the state of many souls today? How many among us have waited for deliverance, for relief from the burdens of sin, for the healing of our wounded hearts? How often have we struggled alone, watching others receive what we long for, feeling abandoned, forgotten, unable to lift ourselves up? But, brethren, our Lord is not deaf to our cries. He delays not because He has forgotten, but because He has prepared something greater.
Christ the Healer: The One Who Sees and Knows
"When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had been like that for a long time, He said to him, ‘Do you want to be made well?’”
What a question! Did not the Lord already know his desire? Did He not see the years of suffering etched upon the man’s face? Indeed, Christ knows all things, but He asks not for His own knowledge, but to awaken the man’s faith, to stir in him a response of longing, to remind him that healing comes not merely from the stirring of the waters but from the hand of the Living God Himself.
And how does the man respond? Not with boldness, not with a demand, but with the voice of a heart that has waited too long:
“Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; but while I am coming, someone else steps down before me.”
He does not complain. He does not curse his condition. He simply speaks the truth: he has no helper. He has been left behind. And to this humility, Christ responds not with water, but with the power of His word:
“Rise, take up your bed, and walk.”
And immediately, the man was made well. Not after hours, not after days, but instantly. The years of waiting were wiped away in a moment. The decades of suffering were undone by a single command.
Here we see the boundless mercy of Christ. While the angel descended at times unknown to stir the waters, Christ Himself—the Lord of angels—came directly to the suffering man, bringing healing not through water but through His divine word.
The Sabbath Controversy and the True Meaning of Rest
But even in this miracle, the hardness of men’s hearts is revealed. The Jews, upon seeing the man carrying his bed on the Sabbath, accuse him of breaking the law. They do not rejoice in his healing. They do not praise God for His mercy. Instead, they cling to their traditions and fail to see the Lord of the Sabbath standing before them.
Continues 👇🏾