Reflection for Tuesday March 28, Fourth Week of Lent: John 5:1-16

Gospel: 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.

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Reflection:

Imagine that Jesus is in front of you and He tells you this question:  “Do you want to be well?” How would you reply? Of course you will say, Yes I want to be well! After which Jesus will tell you, then go humble yourself before me in the Sacrament of Confession. Then you tell Jesus some other time Jesus I’m busy right now and with the passing of days you eventually forgot about the command of Jesus to go to the Sacrament of Confession.

Many of us want to get closer to Jesus and we want to be healed by Jesus. Yet we don’t bother to humbly submit ourselves to the healing Sacrament of Confession. In this sacrament we are healed from our spiritual sickness and we may not know it that through His infinite grace we are also healed from our many physical sickness.

When we humble ourselves through this sacrament we allow Jesus to wash away all our sins no matter how severe. We entrust ourselves to the healing mercy of Jesus. Saint John Paul II once said:  "Confession is an act of honesty and courage - an act of entrusting ourselves beyond sin, to the mercy of a loving and forgiving God." 

The disabled man in our gospel for today who had been sick for thirty eight long years was instantly healed by Jesus because he obeyed His command. The disabled man did not care if it was a Sabbath day, a day of rest for them. What was important for him was to obey the command of Jesus.

Often times we also create our own Sabbath day and it’s none other than our own preoccupations. We are so busy with so many passing and temporal activities that we don’t anymore have time to submit ourselves to this healing Sacrament.  

Would you submit yourself to the Sacrament of Confession this Lent? – Marino J. Dasmarinas