Sunday of the Paralytic
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On the Sunday of the Paralytic and for the rest of the Paschal season, Sundays deal with the theme of water. At these Divine Liturgies, the newly baptized adults who had been catechumens were given further instruction in the Christian faith, and so the Sundays all deal with the symbolism of water used in Baptism. These are: the Sunday of the Paralytic, For the previously baptized Christians, these teachings also served as a reaffirmation of their faith in Jesus and His Church. For them, these Sundays and Mid-Pentecost fortified them and renewed them in their preparation for the great feast of Pentecost. Note that the mid-point of the Easter season is itself called Mid-Pentecost, not Mid-Pascha. The Church is getting ready, through the power of the new life in the Risen Lord, to receive the Holy Spirit and be lifted up in the Gifts of the Spirit to go forth into the world, as the Apostles, Our Lady, and the disciples did after that first, awesome Descent of the Holy Spirit.The pool of Bethesda did not have the power to heal the man paralyzed for thirty-eight years, but the pool of the waters of baptism, touched by Christ, risen from the dead and by the power of the Holy Spirit, have the power to heal our souls of sin and bring us to eternal life. In the fourth week after Pascha, we learn of the grace of baptism.In John’s gospel, this healing is the first public miracle performed by Jesus, one which immediately got the attention of the Jewish leadership. The site was lost to the many destructions of oldThe double pool is found inside a ruined Byzantine basilica, and nearby is a pagan temple to the Romans’ god of healing. Obviously, Jews, pagans, and Christians all realized that something marvelous happened in the rushing of the water when “the angel stirred the waters.” This stirring probably came about when water from the upper pool shifted into the lower, healing pool, and for some reason an angel was associated with that movement. Icons often show the pool in the form of a cross, the design used in ancient baptismal fonts, driving home the point of the miracle’s spiritual aspect.