Tuesday March 28
Jesus’s question and the paralyzed man’s answers are revealing. The man does not beg Jesus to heal him. Instead, Jesus goes to him and asks: “Do you want to be healed?” Quite a straightforward question that deserves a clear ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer; but the man beats around the bush. He says, “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is disturbed.” Really? For 38 years, he lay there with no Plan B? Sometimes we get so used to our circumstances, however unwholesome, and the secondary benefits that accrue (in the form of pity, generous donations, free help, etc.) come to be more attractive than the painful efforts to get well and take responsibility for our lives. Jesus would have none of it. He commands him to get on his feet, take up his mat, and walk into responsible freedom.
Jesus asks us the same question: “Do you really want to be healed?” What would such healing entail?
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In Jerusalem, one can visit the ruins of the pool of Bethesda (House of Mercy) between the Sheep Gate and the Church of Saint Ann. Jesus was moved by a paralytic, forgotten by all, who only desires to be cured if only someone can submerged him into the pool when the water stirs.
Popular tradition claims a supernatural intervention happens in this sudden movement. Without this magical intervention, Jesus heals him and invites him to live a blameless life because sin is the worst disease. Before this gesture of love reappears a cruelty connected to a ruthless and wicked religious formalism.
