Do you want to be well? John5:6

Today's Gospel Jn. 5:1-16 and reflection made me think. Jesus is the master of asking the obvious!

He goes to the pool and 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?”

If I read this reading 2 years ago (before mid-2007), to me it would be that God can heal. It would be more of mind than heart. I can say then, that I believe in God in my head but not yet in my heart. I had not discovered or spend enough time to seek Him and know Him as a person, as a Father. The pilgrimage in 2007 started me seeking and wanting to know God as my Father in my heart not only my head.

Ask me today, I will say that God Can Heal both spiritually and physically. He has been by my side and asking me this question. He has sent angels and saints to support me, He has sent doctors to treat, He has provided the money for the treatments, He has provided the spiritual food and strength to believe and trust in Him, He has put my spouse and family to be there with me. Do I want to be well? Am I grateful ? Yes! I want to be well and Yes! I am grateful.

What about you?

Today's reading, Jesus was probing the man's heart. Interestingly, the man didn't answer the question. He complained about not having anyone help him into the water. Jesus cured the man and told him to go home. The man did not know his heart well enough to know what he really wanted in life. Was the man grateful for the healing?

Around the pool are large numbers of people — blind, lame and paralysed. These are the ailments that we Christians often suffer from: blindness, we cannot see where Jesus is leading us; lameness and paralysis, perhaps we can see but have difficulty walking or even moving along Christ’s Way. During this Lenten season let us hear Jesus asking us the question he puts to the man: “Do you want to be well again? Do you want to be made whole again?” Jesus wastes no time. “Rise up! Pick up your sleeping-mat and walk.” The man is immediately cured and walks away. Again we have in the words of Jesus the intimation of resurrection to new life of which Jesus is the Source: “I am the Resurrection and the Life.” Later, Jesus and the man meet in the Temple.The man is told to complete his experience of healing by abandoning a life of sin, bringing body and spirit into full harmony and wholeness. This is not to say that Jesus is implying that the man had been a cripple because of his sin. But what he is saying is that physical wholeness needs to be matched by spiritual wholeness, the wholeness of the complete person.

Take time next week to be healed, make use of the sacrament of reconciliation that will be held in preparation for Easter, our resurrection from the dead.