My Beloved the benevolent                          March 2026

Grace and peace, wishing you a blessed and accepted fasting period.

• The Great Lent is a time for spiritual growth and attachment to the Lord, and the heart that is attached to the Lord expands to include others. The closer a person draws to God, the closer he draws to his fellow human being.

• Saint John the Beloved, in his First Epistle, linked God’s love for us with our love for God and our love for one another, saying: “We love because He first loved us.” If someone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen? And this commandment we have from Him: that he who loves God must love his brother also (1 John 4:19–21).

• Saint John calls us to love our brothers with practical love, saying: “My little children, let us not love in word or in tongue, but in deed and in truth” (1 John 3:18). Saint John gave us this commandment to love one another with practical love after posing this question: “But whoever has this world’s goods, and sees his brother in need, and shuts up his heart from him, how does the love of God abide in him?” (1 John 3:17).

• The Holy Bible presents to us the story of the rich man who had this world’s goods and saw his brother Lazarus in need and shut up his heart from him: “There was a certain rich man who was clothed in purple and fine linen and fared sumptuously every day. But there was a certain beggar named Lazarus, full of sores, who was laid at his gate, desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man’s table” (Luke 16:19–21). What was the fate of the rich man who did not care for poor Lazarus laid at his gate? “The rich man also died and was buried. And being in torment in Hades, he lifted up his eyes” (Luke 16:22–23).

• During the fasting period, the Church reminds us of the importance of works of mercy and caring for the needy with the response: “Blessed are those who have mercy/Who give to the poor and fast and pray/ The Holy Spirit will fill their hearts/ The Son will show them mercy on Judgement Day “. The Holy Bible also reminds us: “Whoever shuts his ears to the cry of the poor will also cry himself and not be heard” (Proverbs 21:13).

• The Lord Jesus Christ gave us an example of caring for a special group — those who have no one to care for them.

The Gospel of the Fifth Sunday of the Great Lent, which falls this year on Sunday, March 22, presents to us the miracle of the healing of the paralytic. He had been laid at the Pool of Bethesda, paralyzed for thirty-eight years. The Lord Jesus came to this man and said to him, “Do you want to be made well?” (John 5:6). The question may seem strange, for the sick man who was lying at the Pool of Bethesda. The Pool of Bethesda was not an ordinary pool, “for an angel went down at a certain time into the pool and stirred up the water; then whoever stepped in first, after the stirring of the water, was made well of whatever disease he had” (John 5:4). That is, the pool granted healing to any sick person, provided that he entered first after the stirring of the water when the angel come down and stirred it. The coming of the angel happened sometimes, not always, and there was a great multitude of sick people — blind, lame, and paralyzed — waiting for the moving of the water.

There was intense competition among the sick over who would go down first after the stirring of the water to receive healing. The paralyzed man was unable to move and unable to compete to go down into the pool first after the stirring of the water by the angel. Therefore, he needed someone to help him, but he had no one to help him. So, the sick man said to the Lord Jesus, “Sir, I have no man to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; but while I am coming, another steps down before me” (John 5:7).

The Lord Jesus’ question to the sick man, “Do you want to be made well?” reveals to us the depth of the suffering of this poor man, who not only suffered from paralysis for 38 years but suffered even more from the neglect of others and from having no one to care for him. He saw the opportunity for healing before him, yet he was helpless. The Lord Jesus cared for him and healed him, not through the pool, but by saying to him, “Rise, take up your bed and walk. And immediately the man was made well, took up his bed, and walked.” (John 5:8–9).

Our good God calls us during the fasting period to seek out those who have no one to remember them. The programs of Santa Verena Charity provide us with many opportunities to care for and help those in need.

May the Lord bless your offerings to support Santa Verena’s charitable programs.

Metropolitan Serapion