The Healing of Peter at the Beautiful Gate

I was already inside the outer courts when the afternoon prayers drew closer. The sun had moved past its height and the stones underfoot held the warmth from the morning. I had come early to find a place near the steps where the air moved and the voices carried less.

A pair of men passed me carrying the beggar between them on a folded cloak. They set him down at the Beautiful Gate as they did every day. His legs lay straight out in front of him, ankles thin and turned inward. He settled his back against the wall and arranged the small bowl in his lap with the same motions I had watched for years.

People streamed past him toward the inner courts. Some dropped coins without slowing. Others stepped wider to avoid the reach of his hand. He kept his eyes on the flow of sandals and hems.

Two men approached the gate together. One was taller, with a voice that carried even when he spoke low. The other walked a half step behind, watching the crowd the way a man watches for trouble. The beggar lifted his head and spoke the usual request. His words were quick and practiced.

The taller man stopped. He looked straight at the beggar and said something short. The beggar looked back. For a moment the line of people behind them had to shift around the three of them like water around a stone.

Then the taller man reached down. He took the beggar by the right hand and pulled. The beggar’s body came up in one motion, faster than the men who carried him usually managed. His feet found the pavement. He did not fall.

The ankles that had always sagged now held. The knees that had never straightened locked and took weight. He stood on his own.

A sound came out of him that was not words. He took one step, then another. The third step became a jump. He landed and did it again, testing the ground that had never held him before. People nearest the gate stopped walking.

He followed the two men through the gate and into the courts, still jumping, still making that sound. The bowl stayed on the ground where it had fallen. No one picked it up.

Word moved ahead of them faster than they walked. Men and women turned from the colonnades and from the treasury boxes. Some pointed. Others simply stared. I heard the name the beggar had always been called, spoken now as a question.

He kept moving. Every few steps he would stop, look down at his own feet, and then push off again as if he needed to prove they were still under him. The two men stayed beside him, one on each side, but they did not hold him anymore.

By the time they reached Solomon’s Portico the space in front of them was filling. People pressed in from both ends of the walkway. The beggar stayed close to the taller man, one hand on his arm, the other still gesturing at his own legs.

The taller man turned to face the crowd. He spoke loud enough for the nearest rows to hear and for the words to carry further back. He said the healing had not come from him or from his companion. He named the source as the servant of the God of Abraham, the one the rulers had handed over.

The crowd stayed quiet while he spoke. Some faces showed the same astonishment that had been on the faces at the gate. Others looked toward the beggar as if checking that he was still standing.

The beggar himself did not speak. He kept one hand on the taller man’s sleeve and shifted his weight from one foot to the other, small movements that seemed to satisfy him.