“The wound is the place where the Light enters you.”

Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. – St James

Gospel text (Jn 5,1-3.5-16): There was a feast of the Jews and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. Now, by the Sheep Gate in Jerusalem, there is a pool (called Bethzatha in Hebrew) surrounded by five galleries. In these galleries lay a multitude of sick people blind, lame and paralyzed. There was a man who had been sick for thirty-eight years. Jesus saw him, and since he knew how long this man had been lying there, He said to him, «Do you want to be healed?». And the sick man answered, «Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is disturbed; so while I am still on my way, another steps down before me». Jesus then said to him, «Stand up, take your mat and walk». And at once the man was healed, and he took up his mat and walked.

Now that day happened to be the Sabbath. So the Jews said to the man who had just been healed, «It is the Sabbath and the Law doesn't allow you to carry your mat». He answered them, «The one who healed me said to me: Take up your mat and walk». They asked him, «Who is the one who said to you: Take up your mat and walk?». But the sick man had no idea who it was who had cured him, for Jesus had slipped away among the crowd that filled the place. Afterwards Jesus met him in the Temple court and told him, «Now you are well; don't sin again, lest something worse happen to you». And the man went back and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had healed him. So the Jews persecuted Jesus because He performed healings like that on the Sabbath.

Do you really want to be healed?”

In today’s gospel the barrier to healing was two fold; the man’s own inability to enter the pool and no one to help place him in the pool. Yet the man lay there for a long time, in faith, wanting to be changed and waiting for a miracle.

God will not impose change against our will. If we are content to stay as we are or if we lose our will because we have fallen, then no amount of coaxing will change us. If we wish to move to be free from the power of sin and be transformed let us pray for the fire in our hearts to be rekindled for our spiritual growth and change.

Sin paralyzes man, it grows him old, it kills him... We have to fix our eyes on Jesus. We need him —His Grace— to plunge us into the waters of prayer, of confession, of the opening of our spirit.