“May God help us understand from the sufferance and patience of this paralysed man, who waited for 38 years, that the most important relationship of our life is the relationship with God and our friendship with Him. Blessed are those who look for this friendship and secure it!”, His Grace Timotei Prahoveanul, Assistant Bishop to the Archdiocese of Bucharest, told the faithful present at the Divine Liturgy in the Patriarchal Cathedral today, 22 May 2016.
On the 4th Sunday after Easter (22 May 2016) the Divine Liturgy was celebrated at the Patriarchal Cathedral by the Assistant Bishop to the Archdiocese of Bucharest.
In our time Bethsaida is the Church that Jesus Christ, our Saviour, founded
While referring during the sermon delivered, for those present, to the Gospel parable (see the text below) of this Sunday – the healing of the paralysed man at Bethsaida – His Grace showed that the Bethsaida of nowadays is the Church, the place where we obtain the healing of our body and soul.
“In our time, Bethsaida, or the house of healing, is the Church which Jesus Christ, our Saviour, founded. I remind you the words of a holy father who said that the Church is not a tribunal, it does not judge, but heals all those who come to it of their helplessness. It is in the Church that we receive, first of all, the forgiveness of our sins. We all need the forgiveness of God. It is here that we also receive the spiritual and physical healing, as well as the gift and blessing of God through our participation in the Divine Liturgy. We have this Bethsaida, this place of healing in the church, and this is why lots of people, even those with no more patience after much sufferance, found their healing in the Church, especially after insistent prayers said with faith to God, the only one who can heal the souls and bodies”, His Grace said.
Nobody can be healed without patience
The Assistant Bishop to the Archdiocese of Bucharest has also underlined the importance of patience for getting salvation and emphasised that our patience must be over only at the door of the grave.
“We have a lot to learn from today’s Gospel text. We have to learn that patience must never be over. Father Cleopa urged the faithful who came to him to practice this virtue of patience and repeated this word many times, sometimes even 30 times, to show that nobody can be saved without patience. One’s patience must be over only at the door of his grave. It is up to there that we must fight and have this holy virtue that today’s Gospel text preaches”, His Grace Timotei explained.
The most important relationship of our life is the relationship with God
His Grace Timotei Prahoveanul has also spoken about a great issue many of our fellow human beings are faced with, namely loneliness.
“Loneliness is one of the great problems of the century we live in. We are, just as His Beatitude Patriarch Daniel said, a lonely crowd. This lonely crowd needs the love of God and our attention. No matter how little it may be, our attention could change the world around us, not the whole world, but the world around us”, His Grace said.
The 4th Sunday after Ester (of the paralysed man)
Sometime later, Jesus went up to Jerusalem for one of the Jewish festivals. Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool, which in Aramaic is called Bethesda and which is surrounded by five covered colonnades. Here a great number of disabled people used to lie — the blind, the lame, the paralyzed. And they waited for the moving of the waters. From time to time an angel of the Lord would come down and stir up the waters. The first one into the pool after each such disturbance would be cured of whatever disease they had. One who was there had been paralysed for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, “Do you want to get well?” “Sir,” the invalid replied, “I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me.” Then Jesus said to him, “Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.” At once the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked. The day on which this took place was a Sabbath, and so the Jewish leaders said to the man who had been healed, “It is the Sabbath; the law forbids you to carry your mat.” But he replied, “The man who made me well said to me, ‘Pick up your mat and walk.’ ”So they asked him, “Who is this fellow who told you to pick it up and walk?” The man who was healed had no idea who it was, for Jesus had slipped away into the crowd that was there. Later Jesus found him at the temple and said to him, “See, you are well again. Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you.” The man went away and told the Jewish leaders that it was Jesus who had made him well.
