Tuesday, March 24, 2020

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.

St. John adds these words to his account of this miracle: “Because he did this on a sabbath.”  John takes for granted that his original readers, the Jewish Christians of the first century, would have understood his implication.  John is referring to the fact that the Pharisees — and this is who John means when he says “Jews”, here — understood the Sabbath in their own way, and taught this to others, insisting that this was the authentic teaching of the law.  Jesus challenged their interpretation on this and other points of the law throughout his public life.  We can thus read this Gospel account as Jesus proposing the proper understanding of the law regarding the Sabbath.  More than that, though, Jesus, indeed, is showing himself to be the Lord of the Sabbath himself (cf. Matthew 12, 8).  He tells the lame man, on his own authority, to pick up his mat and walk.  He doesn’t quote the law to show that this is permitted, he simply issues a command.  And let us note that it is a command.  Jesus does not heal the man and then walk away, leaving the man to decide what to do with his mat.  He tells him directly to carry it, knowing that this will attract the attention of the Pharisees.  Now, John does not show the Pharisees as praising God for his mercy to this man.  He shows them instead fastening on what they consider a breach of the law.  This ought to strike us as remarkable.  One would think that they would be so amazed at the healing that they would completely forget that he was carrying the mat.  As learned men, we might also expect that understanding the lame man to be healed, and that the healing could only be done by God, they should conclude that God would not have healed him if he knew the man was going to break the law immediately afterwards.  The miracle is quite extraordinary.  The attitude of the Pharisees is nearly so.  It reminds us that the Jewish leaders did not strive to kill Jesus because they didn’t know who he was, but because they did.

One of the reasons John and the other Evangelists include the disbelief of the Pharisees in their accounts of the Lord’s miracles is to show that the obstinate blindness that led them to demand the Lord’s crucifixion was also behind the early persecutions.  As the Lord tells his disciples in John 15, 20: “If they have persecuted me, they will persecute you.”  We Christians ought to keep this in mind as we go about our business in the world.  There are people who turn themselves inside out in their desperation to suppress our Faith.  While their actions are sometimes harmful and even deadly, these people themselves are actually rather pathetic.  They are like small children throwing temper tantrums and whom nothing will calm down.  While we pray for the strengthening of our faith and the peace of Christ’s Church, we pray also for the conversion of these unhappy folks.

Today is the traditional date for the Feast of St. Gabriel the Archangel.  It was moved to this date by Pope Benedict XV in 1921, after having been celebrated on March 18 for many centuries.  With the reform of the Church calendar after the Second Vatican Council, the feasts of the three archangels were merged into one, and their collective feast is celebrated on September 29.  It is appropriate for his festival to be placed on the day before the Solemnity of the Annunciation of the Lord, since he had carried the message of the conception of Jesus to the Blessed Virgin Mary and received her answer.  We also read of Gabriel in the Book of Daniel, where he shows signs to the Prophet.  His name, in Hebrew, means “God is my strength”.  He is thought to have been the angel who appeared to St. Joseph, confirming that the Virgin Mary had conceived by the Holy Spirit, and also to the shepherds at Bethlehem.  In addition, some speculate that he was the angel sent by the Father to comfort his Son in the Garden of Gethsemane (cf. Luke 22, 43).  Finally, the prayer, Regina Caeli, contains the words believed to have been spoken by Gabriel to the Virgin Mary in announcing to her the Resurrection of her Son.