21 March 2023
Tuesday of the Fourth Week of Lent
“Do you want to be well?” (John 5:6). This question, addressed to the sick man at the pool of Bethesda in today’s Gospel reading, is a question Jesus addresses to us too. And while it might seem that the answer is obvious, as it was for the sick man at Bethesda, to truly “be well” in the way that Jesus offers entails a change on our part of the whole way that we live. The wellness that Jesus offers is not merely physical or psychological; it is a spiritual wellness that reaches to the core of our being; furthermore, it requires that we live in accord with that wellness, setting aside the vices and sins which have become comfortable or familiar to us and embracing Jesus’s ways of being and acting. The man in today’s story seems not to have understood this completely, since he gives the name of Jesus to the authorities as soon as he knows it, which leads to their persecution of Jesus (5:12–16).
So again, Jesus asks us: “Do you want to be well?” Will we each let Jesus heal and transform those parts of ourselves that we have become used to and might want to keep hidden or unwell? Let us ask for this grace today.