John 5:1-16

Ezekiel 47:1-9, 12

Psalm 46:2-3, 5-6, 8-9

John 5:1-16

There was a feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.

Now there is in Jerusalem at the Sheep Gate

a pool called in Hebrew Bethesda, with five porticoes.

In these lay a large number of ill, blind, lame, and crippled.

One man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years.

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?”

The sick man answered him,

“Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool

when the water is stirred up;

while I am on my way, someone else gets down there before me.”

Jesus said to him, “Rise, take up your mat, and walk.”

Immediately the man became well, took up his mat, and walked.

Now that day was a sabbath.

So the Jews said to the man who was cured,

“It is the sabbath, and it is not lawful for you to carry your mat.”

He answered them, “The man who made me well told me,

‘Take up your mat and walk.’”

They asked him,

“Who is the man who told you, ‘Take it up and walk’?”

The man who was healed did not know who it was,

for Jesus had slipped away, since there was a crowd there.

After this Jesus found him in the temple area and said to him,

“Look, you are well; do not sin any more,

so that nothing worse may happen to you.”

The man went and told the Jews

that Jesus was the one who had made him well.

Therefore, the Jews began to persecute Jesus

because he did this on a sabbath.

Opening Prayer: Lord God, I am like the blind and lame in the Gospel. I need you and your healing touch. I need to see with eyes of faith and need to be strengthened to walk in your ways. Search for me when I am lost, comfort me when I am found.

Encountering the Word of God

1. The Third Sign: Today’s Gospel narrates the third sign in John’s Gospel – the healing of the paralytic – so that we may believe in Christ and in believing have eternal life. The healing is accompanied by references to water and the forgiveness of sins. The First Reading brings out the theme of water. The prophet Ezekiel sees water flowing from the new Temple that God will establish. This recalls the river that flowed out of the first temple, the Garden of Eden (Genesis 2:10), and looks forward to the New Jerusalem and its “river of the water of life” (Revelation 22:1). The river in Ezekiel flows from the altar of God; the river in Revelation flows from the Throne of God and the Lamb. In Revelation, then, the distinction between the throne of God in the temple and the throne of God in heaven has been overcome – which is part of the reason why there is no need for a separate temple in the New Jerusalem. The river in Ezekiel flows into the Dead Sea: the waters we are told empty into the sea, the salt waters. The Edenic Paradise of Genesis is restored and outdone: along the stream’s banks flourish not one tree of life but whole groves of them. And when the stream enters the Dead Sea, it is transformed into a sea teaming with life.

2. Water in John’s Gospel: Water is an important theme in John’s Gospel. The Gospel opens with John baptizing the people in the Jordan River and calling them to repentance. In Chapter Three, Jesus tells Nicodemus that the condition for entering the Kingdom of God is being born again of water and the Spirit. In Chapter Four, Jesus then offers the gift of living water to the Samaritan woman. Whoever drinks this water, Jesus says, will never be thirsty again. Today we read in Chapter Five that Jesus accomplishes for the sick man what the man had hoped to receive from the healing water of Bethesda. In Chapter Seven, Jesus proclaims on the Feast of Tabernacles: “If anyone thirst, let him come to me and drink. He who believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart shall flow rivers of living water’” (John 7:37-39). John identifies this living water flowing from us with the Holy Spirit. Chapter Nine tells us that Jesus commanded the man born blind to wash in the Pool of Siloam: “The whole chapter turns out to be an interpretation of Baptism, which enables us to see. Christ is the giver of light, and he opens our eyes through the mediation of the sacrament” (Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth, 242). At the Last Supper, Jesus pours water into a bowl and washes the feet of the disciples. Being washed by Jesus enables us to share in him and his divine life. Finally, when Jesus’ side is pierced, “there came out blood and water” (John 19:34). Jesus’ risen body, the New Temple, will become the source of living water and eternal life for us. The physical water of creation cleanses and sustains earthly life. The spiritual water of recreation cleanses us from sin, enlightens our minds with faith, and sustains our eternal life.

3. Jesus as the New Moses: Jesus is the new Moses who gives us bread from heaven and living water from the rock. He is the true bread and the life-giving rock (1 Corinthians 10:3). Our deep thirst for eternal life is only able to be satisfied by God: “Faith in Jesus is the way we drink the living water, the way we drink life that is no longer threatened by death” (Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth, 245). In the Gospel, Jesus heals the paralytic in his body, but also commands him to sin no more. We need to realize that being paralyzed spiritually is worse than being paralyzed physically. We can look at our own lives today, see where we are paralyzed, and ask Jesus to heal us.

Conversing with Christ: Lord Jesus, give me to drink the living waters you offer from your side. Wash me and purify me with your love. Help me today to bring others to share this life-giving water.

Living the Word of God: The healing of spiritual paralysis, after Baptism, often takes place in the Sacrament of Reconciliation. This is where, like the paralyzed man, we tell God with simplicity and contrition what sins we have committed against God and against our brothers, what afflicts us, and what keeps us from following him more closely. And like the paralyzed man, we too will be told, “Rise, take up your mat, and walk.” If I have not gone to the Sacrament of Reconciliation yet this Lent, when can I make time to go? If I have already gone, how have I lived since that encounter with God’s mercy?