John 5:1-16

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 New Bethesda: The Gospel of John today narrates the third sign that Jesus performed. Like the first two signs, it also looks forward to the Sacraments of the Church. In particular, the third sign – the healing of the paralytic on the sabbath near the pool of Bethesda – draws our attention to the Sacrament of Reconciliation. We find, here, an important comparison between two sacraments: It is not necessary for the paralyzed man to enter the water, which would be like a form of Baptism. “Instead, it’s just the word of Jesus that heals. This is like Reconciliation, which the Church Fathers called a ‘second Baptism,’ but doesn’t require us to enter the water once again” (Bergsma, New Testament Basics for Catholics, 231). At the end of the passage, the man who was healed is admonished to sin no more, so that nothing worse may happen to him. In the same way, we are told in the Sacrament, “Go and sin no more.” The same power of Jesus that healed the paralyzed man is offered to us in the Sacrament of Reconciliation (see Bergsma, New Testament Basics for Catholics, 231).

2. The Word of Mercy: John 5 is an encounter with divine mercy. The healing of the paralytic demonstrates God’s initiative in forgiveness. Jesus approaches the man first, asks about his desire to be healed, and then simply commands him to rise, take up his mat, and walk – offering restoration through a word of power and mercy without any prior ritual immersion. Christ continues to act through his Church, where the priest, acting “in the person of Christ,” pronounces absolution and restores the sinner to full communion. Throughout the Bible, there are patterns of divine mercy that respond to human weakness. We are called to repent and to be restored through the Sacrament of Reconciliation. We are called to ongoing conversion and a renewed relationship with God. 

3. The New Sabbath: Jesus chooses to work this third sign on the Sabbath during an unnamed feast. Just as the original Sabbath was a sign of the covenant of creation and the invitation to human beings to enter into the eternal rest of divine life, the New Sabbath that Jesus establishes will be a sign of our redemption and the New Covenant. Every Sunday, we celebrate what God the Father has done for us, what Jesus, God’s Son, has accomplished, and what the Holy Spirit does throughout human history. The Judean religious authorities reacted negatively to Jesus' work on the Sabbath. They resisted the newness that Jesus brought. They were happy with the Old Law and the legislation they built up about how to live the Sabbath rest. They began to seek to kill Jesus because, according to them, he broke the Sabbath (John 5:18). They were oblivious to the fact that Jesus, by curing on the Sabbath, was indicating that he was restoring the Sabbath to its original purpose and elevating it to something new.

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 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?