Do you want to be made well? “Sir, I have no man.” This question stands between me and God, as though the key to God’s intervention lies in the sound answer I offer to God for Him to intervene in our lives. Jesus asked him: do you want to be made well? So he went further, telling Christ of his helplessness: I have no man, and every time I try to draw near the water, another goes down before me. This question is not so that Jesus might know the desire of man, but so that man might share with God in his sufferings. Many say: does God not know our sufferings, our toils, and our pains? Why does He want us to pray to Him? He knows, but He wants us to share with Him from our thoughts, our pains, and our sufferings, and to tell Him what we have done and where we have fallen short.
This sick man was not lazy, sitting and waiting for healing, but he was trying with all his strength. For he says to Jesus: I have no man, explaining to Him that he is alone, and then he explains to Him: I try with every effort and all my energy to get to the water, but there is someone who gets there before me every time.
We often ask ourselves how we pray to God, or how we take refuge in Him. We take refuge in Him and say to Him: O God, help me, O God. For here I am, for example: I studied and strove and graduated and taught in such and such, and tried here and there, and did everything I am able to do, so help me, You, O God. God wants to see what we have done: were we lazy or merely waiting? Did we do everything we are able to do? For God works when man reaches the impossible; when man is helpless, God intervenes.
Once a man stood praying to God, and said: here I have raised my hands to You, O God. And God said to him: but they are empty. The man who waits for God to fulfill his desires and to work in his place loses God and loses his work. For God does not work instead of us, but with us. God wants man to be responsible; He does not want us to be children waiting for our parents to bring us food and drink.
And before this world, are we responsible? Do we pray for God to change the world, and to feed the poor, and to heal the sick? And before these matters, what do we do? Do we work with God to change the world? Do we establish associations to help the poor? Do we establish associations to comfort the sick and visit them? Do we establish associations to defend the rights of the oppressed and others?
Prayer is not an escape from our responsibilities, but the window that changes our view of the world. Prayer gives us the vision to see the afflicted, and the strength to help them.
Often prayer is an escape from our responsibilities, for we pray: O God, clothe the poor; O God, heal the sick; O God, change our country. This prayer means placing the burden upon God and quieting our consciences, as though we had done what must be done. Prayer, beloved, comes at the end of our works, to tell God what we have done, what we have accomplished, and where we have fallen short. So come, O God, and help us for the sake of Your name. Saint Augustine says: “Work as though everything depends on you, and pray as though everything depends on God.”
Often the problem of the believer is his failure to understand the nature of the relationship between God and man. It is told that once a man stood praying to God, and said to Him: O God, send me money to live on. So God threw down to him a pickaxe. God is not a substitute for striving and labor, but our helper in our works. Neither did God relinquish His own role; rather He willed that man begin, and then God comes. God does not work from nothing; when God created man He created him from dust and not from nothing. In the miracle of the multiplication of the loaves, Jesus did not create bread from nothing, but blessed what existed and multiplied it.
Jesus’ question to the paralytic was not to know what he wanted, but to draw out of this paralytic his effort and strength for work. Behold, Jesus did not intervene with those sick who had someone to help them, nor with the lazy sick, but with the sick man who was alone, yet who was trying with all his effort but had reached the impossible; so Jesus came and healed him.