Letter 863

To Nilus the Presbyter. "I have no man, so that, when the angel stirs the water, he may put me into the pool of healing" [John 5:7] -- so said to the Lord the gray-haired paralytic who lay beside the Sheep Pool [the pool of Bethesda by the Probatic, or Sheep, Gate in Jerusalem]. Therefore, since for many years, through faith and patience, willing himself toward the better hope, he passed nobly through that great infirmity, and endured giving thanks, and confessing his own faults, mindful of the men of old as of prophets, and was at a loss for a man -- after so long a time he obtained God, who had become man, or rather the Lover of mankind, as the pool of his own acts of compassion, loosing him from every sickness of soul and body alike, and leading him by the hand to the city on high.

Ἄνθρωπον οὐκ ἔχω, ἵνα σημάνῃ ὁ ἄγγελος, ἐμβάλῃ με εἰς τὴν τοῦ ἰάματος κολυμβήθραν, ἔλεγε τῷ Κυρίῳ ὁ πεπολιωμένος παρὰ τὴν Προβατικὴν κείμενος παράλυτος. Οὐκοῦν ἐπειδὴ πολλοῖς ἔτεσι διὰ πίστεως καὶ ὑπομονῆς βουλόμενος τῇ χρηστοτέρᾳ ἐλπίδι γενναίως διήλθησε τῇ μεγάλη ἀσθενείᾳ, καὶ διεκαρτέρησεν εὐχαριστῶν, καὶ ἐξομολογούμενος τὰ οἰκεῖα πταίσματα, μεμνημένος τῶν παλαιῶν ὡς προφάτων, ἀπορήσας. ἀνθρώπου, μετὰ τοτοῦτον χρόνον, ἐπέτυχε Θεοῦ ἀνθρώπου γενομένου, μᾶλλον δὲ φιλανθρώπου τὴν κολυμβήθραν τῶν ἑαυτοῦ οἰκτιρμῶν, λύοντος αὐτοῦ πᾶσαν ἀῤῥωστίαν ψυχῆς τε καὶ σώματος, καὶ πρὸς τὴν ἀνωτάτω χειραγωγούντος πόλιν.