Today’s Reflection
Gospel: Jn 5:1-16 “Cure on a Sabbath“
April 2, 2019 | Tuesday

Today’s Gospel

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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Today’s Reflection

A homeless man wanted to enter the church to join the Sunday mass. But he looked dirty. He smelled bad. He was not properly dressed. He really wanted to enter the Church, but hesitated because it was not the first time he was ushered out due to his unpleasant look and smell. Only because he didn’t look good, he didn’t smell good, he did not dress properly. This story is just one of the many stories there is of people wanting help to be placed to the pool. In many ways than not, our rules in life exclude people rather than accommodate. Lent is a reminder for all of us to be part of something bigger than our rules.