5/15/2022
St. Ignatius (Brianchaninov)
Rating: 9.1|Votes: 20
This commandment of the Lord has enormous importance for us. It teaches us that we are subjected to sickness and other catastrophes of this earthly life for our sins. When God delivers us from sickness or catastrophe but we return to a sinful life, we are again consigned to catastrophes that are more onerous than those which were our first punishments sent from God to bring us to our senses.
Archimandrite Tikhon (Shevkunov)
Rating: 8.8|Votes: 5
In the lives of each one of us there will still be moments of weakness and failures, of what we call paralysis. They can last for many years, just as with the paralytic at the Sheep pool, of which the Gospel speaks. This paralytic lay for many years awaiting healing. But he believed that a messenger of God would come and heal him.
Archpriest Andrew Phillips
Rating: 5.5|Votes: 2
Today's miracle of the healing of the paralytic is most apt for today's world, for this world lies like a paralytic, in a spiritual and moral paralysis, seeming not to know how to overcome the problems that it has invented for itself.
Metropolitan Vladimir (Sabodan)
Rating: 10|Votes: 1
Christ worked many miracles During the time of His earthly life, healing all manner of illnesses in people. In the Lord’s eyes a person is, first and foremost, God’s creation, a son or daughter of the Heavenly Father. Earthly parents forgive their bad children no matter what they’ve done, and the love of the Heavenly Father also forgives us disobedient children. The Lord gave us life and He has provided in abundance everything necessary for life. However, we do not appreciate this and do not respond to God’s great love even in the least.
Fr. Milan Medakovic
All too often, when we examine the causes of our sufferings, we try to find causes outside of ourselves. In short, we try to place blame on someone or something other than ourselves.
Valery Dukhanin, Igumen Nektary (Morozov), Priest Sergei Begiyan, Priest Dimitry Fetisov
Rating: 6|Votes: 2
The fourth Sunday after Pascha is dedicated to the Gospel of the paralytic, who spent thirty-eight years by the pool of Siloam waiting for healing, and was finally delivered from his serious infirmity by the Savior Himself. That unfortunate man was physically paralyzed, while we are spiritually paralyzed to one or another degree.
Bishop Silouan (Nikitin)
We know, dear brothers and sisters, how unpleasant and hard it is when in a holy place—in the Lord’s church—instead of love and mutual respect, magnanimity and reverence for sanctity, we see audacity and brusqueness, people pushing forward with the desire to be first to the Holy Chalice or to venerate the cross.
Hieromonk Ignaty (Shestakov)
Today we are experiencing a wave of trials and events that are changing the life we are used to; that way of life, which has existed for probably the last fifteen to twenty years, has suddenly been shaken.
St. Innocent of Kherson
Whoever sincerely desires his own salvation does everything that serves for his salvation. Whoever sincerely desires his salvation distances himself from everything that hinders the work of salvation. These two signs are as true as they are simple.
Hieromonk Kirill (Popov)
Why is God silent? This is a question we’re used to asking everyone, not just ourselves. If God is silent, there are definite reasons for it. But what if it’s not about God, but about us?
Priest Ioannis Fortomas
Paralysis is the inability of the body’s members to have their properly ordained mobility. This is a succinct definition of the term paralysis. And today is the Sunday of the Paralytic.
Archpriest Alexander Shargunov
The paralytic man continued year after year to lie by the waters, hoping that sooner or later help would come to him. And it is revealed to us that the first is not the one who comes first to the shrine, pushing others aside, but the one who confesses himself to be the first of sinners, and for this reason considers his situation to be the most hopeless.
Fr. James Guirguis
Rating: 8.4|Votes: 14
The simple fact remains, according to the words of the Lord “Without Me you can do nothing.” Christ asks each of us if we want to be healed, let’s not fall into the trap of looking for healing in all the wrong places.
Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh
Rating: 9|Votes: 20
We are responsible, mutually, for one another—because when we look right and left at the people who stand by us, what do we know about them? Do we know how broken they are? How much pain there is in their hearts? How much agony there has been in their lives?
Fr. George Calciu
Rating: 10|Votes: 10
What is most dramatic throughout this entire Gospel reading is the loneliness of the sick man. Did you hear it? The impotent man answered him, Sir, I have no man, when the water is troubled, to put me into the pool: but while I am coming, another steppeth down before me (Jn. 5:7). The most tragic state a person can be in is loneliness, total isolation.
Rev. Gregory Jensen
No one comes to the Church except by the prompting of God and because of an experience, however obscure, of His great mercy. It is our great privilege—mine as well as yours—to help people discern the presence of God in their lives. It is our calling as Orthodox Christians first to help people understand the faith that God has planted in their hearts.
Rating: 5.6|Votes: 12
What is the spiritual knowledge which the Church wishes to plant in each of our hearts by means of the Paschal light shining through today’s Gospel reading? Well, after all this is not so complicated. The Scriptures always reveal to us both our own souls on the one hand, and the glory and mercy of God on the other.
