With this Ember Friday we are 38 days out from Easter. In the Gospel for today in the Traditional Latin Mass we have the scene from John 5 about the paralytic man waiting by the pool for the angel to stir the healing water. He has been waiting for years… 38 years.
I sense the reason why this Gospel was chosen for this day.
In his Tractates on the Gospel of John, St. Augustine of Hippo interprets the 38 years of the man’s infirmity in John 5 as a symbolic number.
Augustine argues that 40 signifies the Law (especially the Decalogue fulfilled in the fourfold world, that is the four compass points, the whole world), while 38 is 40 – 2, thus indicating the Law lacking the two precepts of charity.
From In Ioannis Evangelium Tractatus 17, 4:
“The number forty is consecrated to the Law… For forty signifies the Law. But the Law is fulfilled in two precepts, that is, in the love of God and in the love of our neighbor… Therefore that man was infirm thirty-eight years, because he had not yet the two which complete forty.”
Augustine’s reasoning is this:
40 = the Law in its fullness.
2 = the twin commandments of love (cf. Matt 22:37–40).
38 = the Law without charity, hence spiritual paralysis.
The paralytic represents humanity under the Law without grace. Knowledge of commandments alone does not heal. Sacrificial love, charity, love infused by Christ perfects and vivifies. When Christ commands, “Rise,” He supplies what was lacking, the charity that fulfills the Law.
Hence, for Augustine, the 38 years signify a spiritual deficiency. Moral structure without the animating principle of love are inadequate.
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