Do you want to be healed?

Ezk. 47:1-9.12, Jn 5:1-3.5-16. The image of fresh-water envisioned by Ezekiel in today's first reading is a great guide to help reform our ways. Ezekiel offers us reasons to hope and pray. He inspires us to pray and work. We need a stream of fresh-water to flow through our minds and hearts, to bring a new fresh vigor to our attitudes, to enliven and brighten our hopes, to give us new spontaneity within our responses to life. Sometimes we seem only half alive; lamed like the man in today’s Gospel, waiting for the movement of the water. The lame man at the pool of Bethesda shows the value of waiting patiently. This most important virtue is inculcated by the prophets, especially Isaiah who said: “By waiting and by calm you shall be saved. Your strength lies in quiet and in trust” (Ish 30:15).

As we wait, we come to know that is Jesus who can perform the transforming change we need. The lame man could have waited forever and remained lame, if he was not alert for the coming of Jesus. We must also move and do something to help ourselves to get liberated. Sometimes we get so used to our circumstances, however unwholesome and the secondary benefits that it accrues, which can be in form of pity, generous donations, free food and social security, that we do not think of a way out. Just as Jesus commands the paralytic to get on his feet, take up his mat and walk into responsible freedom, Jesus commands us today to get up, stop complaining and find a meaningful solution to our problems on earth for His grace is always with us.

May the knowledge of Christ penetrate our minds and hearts and find its