Today's Gospel

Find Your Spiritual Cure

Welcome back. Today, Jesus talks about the Sabbath. Remember each day we're listening for a word, a phrase, or an idea that the Holy Spirit uses to capture our imagination so that we can live the gospel more fully today than we did yesterday. Today's reading is from the Gospel of John 5:1-16. After this, there was a feast of the Jews and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. Now there in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate a pool in Hebrew called Bethesda, which has five porticos. In these lay a multitude of invalids, blind, lame, paralyzed. One man was there who had been ill for 38 years. When Jesus saw him and knew that he had been lying there a long time, he said to him, "Do you want to be healed?" The sick man answered him, "Sir, I have no man to put me into the pool when the water is troubled, and while I am going, another steps down before me." And Jesus said to him, "Rise, take up your mat and walk." And at once, the man was healed, and he took up his mat and walked.

Now, that day was the Sabbath, so the Jews said to the man who was cured, "It is the Sabbath. It is not lawful for you to carry your mat." But he answered them, "The man who healed me said to me, 'Take up your mat and walk.'" They asked him, "Who is the man who said to you, 'Take up your mouth and walk?'" Now the man who had been healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had withdrawn as there was a crowd in the place. Afterward, Jesus found him in the temple and said to him, "See, you are well. Sin no more that nothing worse befall you." Man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had healed him, and this was why the Jews persecuted Jesus, because he did this on the Sabbath.

What jumps out at you today? Is there a word, phrase, or an idea? The sick man says he's been ill for 38 years, so imagine being ill for 38 years. Imagine lying there for 10 years, trying to get put into the waters, which they obviously believed had some sort of healing properties, but didn't have a friend to carry you down to the healing waters. 38 years. Who do you know who has been ill for 38 years? Do you know anyone who's been ill for 38 years? I've been ill for 38 years, and my illness is a spiritual illness, right? You've been ill for however long. We don't think of ourselves in those terms, right? And when we're not thinking of our spiritual illness, we're not looking for our spiritual cure, and that's a mistake.

I've been ill for 38 years long. I've been ill for 51 years, and I need healing. I need spiritual healing today. I know I need it again tomorrow. Let's be mindful of our spiritual illness so that we can seek the cure to that illness that God wants to, yearns to, longs to freely give us. Have a great day. And remember, Be Bold, Be Catholic.