Tuesday in the Fourth Week of Lent, April 1, 2025

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. Augustine tells us that the cure in today’s Gospel Reading occurred on the Feast of Passover, this being the second Passover during the Lord’s public ministry.  On the first of the three Passovers he cleansed the Temple of the money changers and those selling animals (cf. John 2, 13-15), and on the third he gave up his life for the sins of the world.  A progression arises from this order: first, the cleansing of sin; second, the doing of good works, third, the Death and Resurrection.  This is the pattern of the life of those who strive to become saints, serving as Jesus has served.

The Sheep Gate was located in the northern wall of the ancient city of Jerusalem.  The Pool of Bethesda lay just outside the city wall, near the Sheep Gate.  The Pool was used primarily to wash sheep which would be sacrificed in the Temple.  Text found in the Old Latin translation of the Gospel and retained by St. Jerome in the Vulgate (and so found in the Douay-Rheims English translation) relates that an angel would stir up the water of the Pool from time to time and that the first person to bathe in the waters at that time would be healed from whatever malady afflicted him.  For this reason, crowds of sufferers camped around the Pool, for that reason.  This is what is behind the lame man’s answer to Jesus: “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.” 

“Do you want to be well?”  Literally, Are you desiring to become whole?  That is, Have you been desiring to become well, not, Do you now wish to become whole?  Jesus is asking about the man’s perseverance in his wish to become healthy.  The lame man does not know who Jesus is and tells how he can never get to the Pool in time.  A tone of frustration or annoyance may have inflected his voice, or perhaps hope in the possibility that this man might help him.  

The scene must have been a dreadful one: several dozen or perhaps a few hundred adults and children lying on mats or on their rags or perhaps naked.  The air would have been foul and the moans of the suffering would have filled it.  Out of all the crowd, the Lord Jesus picked this one man to talk to and heal.  Or, John only records the cure of the one man who answered the Lord’s question and expressed his longing to be healed by obeying the Lord’s command.  Perhaps Jesus picked him because he had suffered the longest of anyone there, so that his cure would be all the more remarkable.

“Rise, take up your mat, and walk.”  We should note the Lord’s concision.  It is a regular feature of his cures: “Little girl, I say to you, arise.”  And, “Lazarus, come forth.”  Many other times he says nothing at all but only lays his hands on the one who seeks a cure.  This contrasts sharply with the attempted cures and exorcisms by Jewish rabbis, who performed elaborate prayers and rituals without success.  The Lord’s concision demonstrates his omnipotence, his supreme power.  Jesus says all that is necessary and nothing more: Rise.  Take up your mat.  Walk.  And the man does just this.  Though he would have felt a sensation of healing as did the woman cured of her blood issue (cf. Mark 5, 29), it took an act of faith for one who had not been able to move his legs for thirty-eight years to rise, let alone walk.  But “immediately”, John reports, “the man became well, took up his mat, and walked.”  He did not stagger, he did not limp, he did not need to be led by the hand.  He walked as well as any healthy human, without any need of therapy or recovery.

The man walks away from Jesus, perhaps in a bit of a daze.  The Pharisees (whom John merely calls “the Jews”) are enraged that the man seems to be breaking the Sabbath by carrying his mat.  At any rate, he is breaking their idea of the laws regarding the Sabbath.  We can understand the mat as our former selves before we began to live according to our Faith: Jesus wants us no longer to lie in our former condition but always to keep in mind the sinfulness from which he has rescued us, and so we should take very personally the warning, “Look, you are well; do not sin any more, so that nothing worse may happen to you.”