Time Alone and Time with Others

My how we need each other! How dependent upon one another the Lord has made us!  The paralyzed man in the gospel needed his friends (Mark 2: 1-12). Through their help and because of their faith, he is forgiven and healed. 

True, we are ultimately dependent on the Lord for everything and we may rely on him to provide.

We are like helpless baby birds in a nest, unable to fly, waiting with mouths open, for our mother bird to bring us back the food that sustains us. She has left us for a time. And her absence may fill us with longing for her return. But we may hope for that return expectantly. And trust in it. And know that she is coming back and that she is bringing with her the stuff of life. And that when she comes, she will not only feed us but she will also teach us to fly.

Our Lord is like this mother bird. He does not fail us. When the Israelites were hungry in the desert, the Lord rained manna down upon them – bread from heaven. Let us never forget the care he shows for us – the good he gives us directly and personally.

We must keep a direct and personal relationship with God alive. In obedience to Jesus Christ and in imitation of him, we must go often into our room and close the door – or go away to lonely places to pray and be alone with God.

Yet, meanwhile, wherever two or three are gathered in his name, there he is in the midst of them. And also, whatever we do for the least of his brethren – that we do for him.

Our real need for solitude with God does not exclude the importance of coming together – of praying together – or of attending to each other’s needs. The truth is, we need both time together and time alone. God is with us at all times. By his grace, let us come to know and experience his ever-present presence.

Saint Gregory Palamas Fresco 
in Saints Three Church in Kastoria
15^th century

This tension between our need for solitude and our need for community has been lived out especially by monastics since the beginning. The earliest monastics were hermits and anchorites who dwelt alone in caves and huts in the desert and the wilderness. Yet, they were very soon organized into communities. Because, as St. Basil says, “If you live alone, whose feet will you wash?” There is a need to serve your brother and sister as well as a need for solitude to do battle in your own heart.

The holy Hesychasts strongly emphasize this need for solitude – but they do find a balance. Our holy father Gregory Palamas, who devoted much of his life to the defense of the holy Hesychasts, lived alone and practiced great askesis usually for five days out of the week, coming down to celebrate the Eucharist and to have fellowship with the brothers only on Saturday and Sunday and on great feast days.

In prayerful time alone with God, we can really experience God, who communicates himself to us in our whole being – spirit and body. As St. Gregory teaches us, God allows us really to experience himself in his energies  – to see his uncreated light in our hearts. He gives us himself – reveals himself to us – not just a created thing like himself, but his own uncreated energies. Grace is not a thing God gives us but is really himself – his own life – life in the Spirit, and life in Christ – which he enables us to live.

Our real experience of God in solitary and silent prayer in no way excludes the experience of God we have through others. We need both. St. Gregory sees the Hesychasts’ experiences of God through their solitary practice of the Jesus prayer united to their breathing (which is one means, but not the only means toward experiencing God) as possible for them because of the grace of baptism, which is a holy mystery of the Church and only possible through others. God is always working through his people. 

So it is with the paralyzed man. God provides forgiveness and healing, and he does it through the intercession of the man’s friends. We are dependent on God for everything, but he has also made us dependent on each other.

Those of us who are healthy and strong in body sometimes pretend that we are independent individuals, but this paralytic does not have that option. He is able to do nothing with his body but lie upon his bed. He is dependent upon his friends, who feed him and wash him and clothe him while he waits for the Lord to come – like a helpless baby bird crying out for the return of the mother bird.

But in this case, the Lord waits for the friends of the paralyzed man to help him – and to go to great lengths – climbing onto a roof, dismantling it, and lowering their friend on his pallet before Jesus. Only then and under these circumstances, does Jesus forgive and heal the man. 

In this way, the Lord shows us that, as good and important as it is, solitary prayer alone is not enough. This isn’t a “Jesus-and-me” spirituality that he’s revealing to us. We also need the prayer, action, and intercession of others, just as the paralyzed man needed his friends. Because of their faith, Jesus forgives the man’s sins and heals his paralysis.  

The blessed Theophylact suggests that the Lord forgives and heals many not only on account of their faith but also on account of the faith of those who bring them to the Lord for healing.[i] The gospel says, “When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, "My son, your sins are forgiven.” It does not say, “when Jesus saw his faith” but “their faith.” It’s in the plural.

Think of this the next time someone asks you “Why can’t I just confess my sins to Jesus in prayer? Why do I need to go to a priest?” Jesus does want us to come to him alone in prayer, but he also made us to need each other. We are not individuals in division from one another with private pipelines to God. We are persons in relationship with one another with a communal connection to the Lord which is what we know as the Church.

The friends of the paralytic are like priests to him. They bring him to Jesus for forgiveness and healing. When we confess or when the priest anoints us, this is what happens. The priest lays us before Jesus for healing. We confess to Christ before His icon with the priest at our side – as a necessary witness to the confession. Because it is when Jesus sees our faith – not just the faith of one but the faith of more than one – that he says “your sins are forgiven.”

The paralytic’s useless body reveals his dependence on others – a dependence we all share spiritually, even if our bodies are strong. Spiritually, we are lost without others, without community, without the Church. Even the good and necessary experience of God we have when we are alone is made possible by the faith of others and the mysteries of the Church.

---

[i] Theophylactus, Bl. Theophylact's Explanation of the New Testament, trans. Christopher Stade, vol. 2, The Explanation of the Holy Gospel According to Mark (House Springs, MO: Chrysostom Press, 1993), 24.