24 March 2020 – Tuesday of 4th week of Lent – John 5:1-16

      The pool at Bethesda is located just outside the city walls of Jerusalem.  The pool was originally built to supply water for the Temple, but by Jesus' time, it no longer served this function. In Jesus’ day, sick people came to the pool to be healed.  Jesus singles out one man from the many who are gathered there.  This man acknowledges that he has no one to put him in the pool, a direct admission that there are no family or friends to help him. It's difficult for us to imagine how he would survive there very long by himself without anyone to help him.  This man did not know that it was Jesus talking to him, so he obviously did not anticipate being healed by Jesus.  Although the man expects to be cured by the waters of the pool, Jesus bypasses the pool altogether and cures him directly. It is interesting that, unlike some other healing miracles Jesus performs in the Gospels, Jesus doesn’t link the cured person with his or her faith.   Jesus just cures him because he needs healing. The cure that happens in this Gospel passage has a very reassuring and positive message to all of us as we continue our Lenten journey. The man is cured, he is saved, because he merely wanted to be well.

So often we take our faith for granted, don’t we?  I remember that when I was in Tupelo, we had eight different Masses throughout the week, including four weekend Masses.  When I had to move Sunday morning Mass to Sunday evening in order to help out at the Masses in Ripley, one of the ladies told me she was a refugee because I had canceled the Mass that was most convenient for her and her family.  Now, Masses are suspended all throughout the world.  It is a very surreal situation, isn’t it?  It is not a reality most of us would have imagined.  But I would still not call us refugees.  God does not abandon us.  We still have a spiritual homeland.  We are still the body of Christ here on earth.  

         The holy season of Lent is always an annual opportunity for us to grow closer to Jesus and to contemplate the great love God shows us through his beloved Son.  This year our Lenten journey takes on particular significance, doesn’t it?  May our Lenten prayer today be that we may be able to recognize the ways Christ is calling out to us in our reality.