"Rise Up, Lazy Complainer!" Uncle Jorge vs. St. John Chrysostom

One of the biggest buffoons in modern American politics is former Vice President Joseph Biden. So common were his gaffes that he earned the nickname, Uncle Joe, referring to goofy uncles that many of us have who are an embarrassment to have around at family gatherings. One of his early faux pas occurred in his initial run for Vice President in 2008, when the then-candidate urged Missouri State Senator Chuck Graham, a paraplegic, to stand up at a campaign rally. Spotting the senator in the crowd Uncle Joe called out, "Stand up, Chuck, let ‘em see ya!" To his credit, once Biden realized his blunder he said, "Oh, God love you. What am I talking about? I’ll tell you what, you’re making everybody else stand up, though, pal," Good ole Uncle Joe then led the crowd in a standing round of applause for the cripple in the chair.

Perhaps we should give a pass to poor ole Uncle Joe for his gaffe, especially in light of his quick recovery—though he gets no pass for his phony Catholicism and perverse politics. But in the case of another individual who insulted a cripple, Uncle Jorge, The Last Word is unwilling to give him a pass. As reported by Vatican Radio, Uncle Jorge Bergoglio preached the following Lenten weekday sermon:

The Gospel story at the heart of Pope Francis’ reflection tells of a man who had been ill for thirty-eight years. He was lying at the side of a pool called Bethesda with a large number of ill, blind, lame and crippled who believed that when an angel came down and stirred up the waters the first to bathe in the pool would be healed. When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had been ill for a long time, he said to him: "Do you want to be well?" "It’s what Jesus repeatedly says to us as well; do you want to be well? Do you want to be happy? Do you want to improve your life? Do you want to be filled with the Holy Spirit?" When Jesus asked that strange man if he wanted to be well, instead of saying "yes" he complained there was no one to put him in the pool while the water is stirred up and that someone else always got there before him. His answer, Francis said, was a complaint; he was implying that life had been unjust with him. "This man, the Pope noted, was like the tree planted along the bank of the rivers, mentioned in the first Reading, but it had arid roots, roots that did not reach the water, could not take nourishment from the water". The Pope said this is clear from his attitude of always complaining and trying to blame the other. "This is an ugly sin: the sin of sloth" he said. Pope Francis said this man’s disease was not so much his paralysis but sloth, which is worse than having a lukewarm heart. It causes one to live without the desire to move forward, to do something in life, it causes one to lose the memory of joy. "Sloth, he said, is a sin that paralyzes us, stops us from walking."

the current Vicar of Christ, who no doubt would have said, "Stand up, you lazy complainer. It is your sloth that has paralyzed you!" Now I am not opposed to allegorical interpretations, an interpretive approach employed even by some of the Church Fathers. But in the hands of a Modernist like Uncle Jorge, allegory is typically twisted into pure fiction.

As a corrective to the misinterpretation of Uncle Jorge, read what St John Chrysostom wrote on this text:

Great is the profit of the divine Scriptures, and all-sufficient is the aid which comes from them…For the divine oracles are a treasury of all manner of medicines, so that whether it be needful to quench pride, to lull desire to sleep, to tread underfoot the love of money, to despise pain, to inspire confidence, to gain patience, from them one may find abundant resource. For what man of those who struggle with long poverty or who are nailed to a grievous disease, will not, when he reads the passage before us, receive much comfort? Since this man who had been paralytic for thirty and eight years, and who saw each year others delivered, and himself bound by his disease, not even so fell back and despaired, though in truth not merely despondency for the past, but also hopelessness for the future, was sufficient to over-strain him.

Hear now what he says, and learn the greatness of his sufferings. For when Christ had said, Will you be made whole? Yea, Lord, he says, but I have no man, when the water is troubled, to put me into the pool. What can be more pitiable than these words? What is sadder than these circumstances?

Do you see a heart crushed through long sickness? Do you see all violence subdued? He uttered no blasphemous word, nor such as we hear the many use in reverses, he cursed not his day, he was not angry at the question, nor did he say, Have You come to make a mock and a jest of us, that Thou asks whether I desire to be made whole?

but replied gently, and with great mildness, Yea, Lord; yet he knew not who it was that asked him, nor that He would heal him, but still he mildly relates all the circumstances and asks nothing further, as though he were speaking to a physician, and desired merely to tell the story of his sufferings. Perhaps he hoped that Christ might be so far useful to him as to put him into the water, and desired to attract Him by these words.

So, was the crippled man beside the pool a lazy complainer who represents the deadly sin of sloth or was he a helpless man to be pitied for his terrible plight who spoke to the Lord as to a physician? In a choice between Uncle Jorge and Saint John, the Church Father wins, hands down. And for those who have been insulted over the years by Uncle Jorge, consider that not even a poor paralytic is immune from his abuse. ■