ACC ~ John 5 v7

CHRIST PROVIDES A SYMPATHETIC EAR, AND MORE

CHRYSOSTOM: What can be more pitiable than these words? What more sad than these circumstances? Do you see a heart crushed through an extended illness? Do you see all the pain and violence he suffered subdued? He utters no blasphemy. He does not curse the day of his birth or get angry at the question, “Will you be healed?” … Instead, he replies gently and with great mildness, “Yes, Lord.” And yet, he did not know who it was that asked him, let alone that he would heal him. Rather, he still mildly relates all the circumstances, asking for nothing further as though he were speaking to a physician and merely wanted to tell the story of his sufferings. Perhaps he hoped that Christ might be of some use to him in putting him into the water and hoped to stir up some sympathy with his words.

Some are of the opinion that this is the same incident that Matthew records of the one who was “lying on a bed.” [1] But he is not since…. that paralytic man had many to wait upon and carry him, whereas this man had not a single one…. The places too were different: one was cured in a house, the other by the pool. HOMILIES ON THE GOSPEL OF JOHN 37.1-2. [2]

[1] Mt 9:2.

[2] NPNF 1 14:128**.

Jn