Blessed Schuster’s Daily Thoughts on the Rule: Friday after the First Sunday of Lent
Ember Friday of Lent
Station at the Holy Apostles
The Pool of the Sheep
1. The station is at the Apostoleion [Basilica of the Apostles] of Narses, as on all the Ember Fridays preceding the Sacred Ordinations.
The Gospel reading—with a clear allusion to the Easter Baptism of the Catechumens—is that of the paralytic of the pool of Bethesda, healed by the Lord after thirty-eight years of his ailment.
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The sacred text describes first of all the miraculous pool, girded all around by a portico and divided also in the middle by a fifth colonnade. There lay there on the ground, on straw mattresses, among stretchers, on poor seats, a great multitude of infirm, lame, paralytics, blind, arthritics, who had had themselves brought there from every region of Judea, in order to obtain the miracle.
From time to time, the waves of the reservoir would ripple, the water would bubble up from the bottom and froth, because there was the angle of the Lord had descended to them and conferred healing power on them.
The first one to be immersed in them was healed of whatever was his infirmity.
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The pool of Bethesda with its five porticoes full of every sort of sick person is an exact image of this poor globe, with its five parts.
It is already thirty-eight years that we are ill, because we have been sick since [the time of] the earthly Paradise. The two years which are still lacking to the perfect number of forty represent the New Covenant, first of grace, then of glory.
We must have compassion on one other and bear one other up in turn, because we are all infirm and unhappy. Alter alterius onera portate, et sic adimplebitis legem Christi. (Gal 6:2: ‘Bear one another up, fulfilling the precept of Christ.’)
Saint Benedict also wrote: Infirmitates suas sive corporum sive morum patientissime tolerent. (Rule, Ch. 72: ‘With great patience let each one bear the others’ weaknesses, whether physical of or character.’)
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2. Saint Benedict recommends this compassion especially to the Abbot:
‘Let the Abbot know that he has accepted the care of infirm souls, and not indeed the power of tyrannising over the healthy. Let him fear the threat of the Prophet, who says on God’s behalf: you took for yourselves all the fattest part, casting aside that which was leaner.’ (Rule, Ch. 27)
In the following Chapter, the Holy Patriarch adapt to spiritual maladies the contemporary treatment of wounds and of tumours.
‘Let the Abbot act as a wise physician. After having fruitlessly tried fomentations, ointments (=spiritual counsels), medicines (=Sacred Scriptures); after having had recourse to cauterising irons (=excommunications) or to incisions (=floggings), if sees that all his industry is on the point of proving useless, let him have recourse to that which is even more effective: his own prayer and that of the Community, so that the Lord Who can do all may restore health to the infirm brother.’ (Rule, Ch. 28)
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3. Around the pool of Bethesda there are so many people: multitudo magna; but the poor paralytic does not find even one who will take an interest in him: hominem non habeo. Everyone attends to his own affairs, and for him there is no one!
Sad to say, it is always thus. Omnis homo mendax. (Ps. 115: ‘Deceptive is every mortal.’) Every human support is deceptive; like one who leans on a fragile reed, which from one moment to the other breaks under the weight, and wound the hand with splinters.
It is only Jesus Who does not abandon us: Qui omnia potest, operetur salutem circa infirmum fratrem. [Rule Ch. 28: ‘…He Who can do all things, may He bring about health for the infirm brother.’—tr.]
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What do the people say now about the miracle that has happened?
Those who before did not move a finger to help one who was infirm for a full thirty-eight years are now agitated, they consult among themselves, they are all in motion. Why?
To acknowledge perhaps the divinity of the Miracle-worker?
Not at all: to quibble insidiously over the texts of the Law; to deduce from them that a preacher who violates the sabbath rest cannot be an authentic prophet.