The Healing of the Paralytic

The Healing of the Paralytic

From Translating the Tradition by Fr. Justin (Edward) Hewlett

May 3, 2026 · 6 min

About this episode

Fr. Nathanael delivers a homily on the Gospel reading about the healing of the paralytic at the pools of Bethesda.

We were blessed, today, to have Fr. Nathanael, one of the founding members of St. John’s, with us. Here is his homily on the Gospel for today. Our Gospel reading today was a composite one. The first part is the commemoration of the paralytic, where Christ heals a paralyzed man at the pools of Bethesda. Now, like all the Gospel readings, this is a treasure chest full of jewels. All I’m going to do today is take one or two jewels out of that chest — but there’s a lot more there, and you have to go digging for it yourself. This is why I always encourage people to make it a practice through the week leading up to Sunday: take the Gospel that’s going to be read and read it every day, think about it, meditate on it, try to plumb its depths. That way, when you get to the sermon on Sunday, you’ll already have a pretty clear idea of what the priest is going to talk about. But today — this is the Sunday of the Paralytic. This man was at a pool in the vicinity of Jerusalem, and he had been waiting there for 38 years. That’s amazing. 38 years waiting for his healing. Now, is there significance to that number? I don’t know — there probably is, but I haven’t figured it out yet. What I did want…

People in this episode

Host: Fr. Justin (Edward) Hewlett

Guest: Fr. Nathanael

Topics covered

  • healing
  • faith
  • scripture
  • meditation
  • symbolism

Keywords

  • paralytic
  • healing
  • Gospel
  • Bethesda
  • meditation
  • symbolism
  • scripture

Mentioned in this episode

Books & works: Gospel

Places: Jerusalem

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