Loneliness of People
Sunday of the Paralytic
Acts 9:32-42; John 5:1-15
A weakened, paralyzed man told Jesus that there was no one to help him enter the healing water of the pool of Bethesda when the water was disturbed. For 38 long years, he was a helpless man, alone in his grief, waiting, hoping for someone to help him.
It is difficult to imagine the patience of that man in his helplessness and at the same time what faith he had, that he still hoped! What great faith there was in a man who for over the course of 38 years, had not become disheartened, who had kept hope for help alive, for recovery in the Pool of Mercy - Bethesda!
And how many people are there in this world who, finding themselves in a helpless state, alone, without close friends, fall into despair, despondency. Some begin to seek false comfort in alcohol and drugs, and others commit suicide.
The press reported (Oshawa Times, [...] ) that in America, every 9th doctor is an alcoholic or drug addict. It seems strange: doctors are usually well paid, have material wealth, and benefits. Furthermore, they are all highly educated, they are customarily among people, and they would seem to have no reason to despair and seek false comfort. After all, in treating other people, they know that alcohol and drugs provide only a temporary relief, oblivion, but destroy the body and paralyze the brain.
When people treat other people with medicines, they sometimes become arrogant, alienated, depart from God, and, despite the fact that they are surrounded by people, walking in a city crowd, they are in reality lonely in their hearts.
The feeling of loneliness is unambiguously associated with living alone – one may be lonely in the desert, lonely on a farm. In the modern world, the loneliest people are among the inhabitants of large cities, such as Toronto...
People travel or walk to and from work in a crowd of people; people work in large factories, in offices, often in large buildings, skyscrapers, study in large schools (universities) where there are tens of thousands of people. They are shopping in large stores, where thousands of people walk in an uninterrupted stream; on roads, countless people are rushing by in cars, but despite being surrounded by people, many of these people feel their loneliness.
At work – the expectation is that a person performs their functions, carries out certain duties, and then receives a salary…; in stores – the expectation is that a person pays the amount due for the goods purchased... This same expectation is also evident on a train, bus, airplane, in an apartment building. In large universities a person’s value may be diminished: attend lectures, pay fees, write exams in prescribed formats, and the computer calculates the percentages… The computer also calculates when to pay insurance, “Medicare”, and similar obligations.
Many people live without spiritual closeness with the people they work with. And often a person lives without fellow-feeling towards people and without a connection with God. That is why people, as one famous scientist asserts, suffer from the most common disease of this age – loneliness.
Your life, your problems – are indifferent to all the thousands of people among whom you exist. And the bigger the city, the greater this indifference. In smaller cities in Canada, where most people know each other and also know about each other's problems, there is also a noticeable warmth in the relationships between people.
But a Christian should not only blame other people for their loneliness, alienation. The famous French scientist (mathematician, physicist, and philosopher) Blaise Pascal, 1623-1662, contended that a person who lives only for themselves hates being alone with themselves the most [when alone].
If a person isolates themselves from other people, locks themselves within themselves, and complains only about others, that no one cares about them, no one loves them, that everyone in the Church is such-and-such, when the person themselves does not show love to other people, does not offer their services to other people or to the Church, they themselves surround themselves with a moat of ignorance on their spiritual island of self-love — then this is the least the fault of other people. Man himself must make an effort toward union with other people, with God.
God, the Creator, from the very beginning of creating humanity, affirmed that
“It is not good that man should be alone; I will make him a helper comparable to him.” (Genesis 2:18)
And God created a woman similar to the man, but also different, who differed from him in many ways, but at the same time complemented him. In the union of man and woman, the fullness of the human being is revealed.
Every person in the world is different, both externally and internally, from another, although at the same time, all people are similar. People are with different talents and abilities. What would it be like if we were all very musical, all excellent singers, speakers, mechanics, and so on? In that difference, there is purpose and beauty in the world, the human race, and at the same time, in the greatness of its Creator.
Yet for us, members of the Church of Christ, we are not at liberty to forget that we are called by Christ to call people out of spiritual loneliness and weakness. In our times, there are many people, perhaps more than ever before, who are weak, paralyzed by spiritual inertia, by various theories, and by high-tech achievements; they need to be called, embraced into Christ's brotherhood so that they feel the unity and love of their fellow human beings.
The Lord Jesus Christ healed the crippled, paralyzed man. But let us turn our attention to the fact that bodily weakness was a consequence of spiritual weakness, which is why Christ instructed him:
“Sin no more, lest a worse thing come upon you!” (John 5:14)
The best way to fight disease is to prevent disease, to make it impossible. It is necessary to prevent the bacilli of all-knowingness, self-love, and pride among us; in other words, that there are no illnesses that would separate a person from unity with other people, with the Church.
At the same time, we must strive to find the way to unity with Christ ourselves and direct our efforts to the healing of the spiritually paralyzed in this world. Christ did this when He was physically on earth, and He called us to follow Him.
Amen.
Very Rev. Fr. Taras Slavchenko
Taras Slavchenko was born on March 8, 1918 in Nikopol, Dnipropetrovsk region in Ukraine. After graduating from school and the Pedagogical College, he entered the language and literature faculty of the Scientific Pedagogical Institute. Having successfully completed it in 1938, he served as a teacher in a secondary school.
