Tuesday of the Fourth Week of Lent.

GOSPEL John 5:1-3,5-16

The healing at the pool of Bethesda

There was a Jewish festival, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. Now at the Sheep Pool in Jerusalem there is a building, called Bethzatha in Hebrew, consisting of five porticos; and under these were crowds of sick people – blind, lame, paralysed waiting for the water to move. One man there had an illness which had lasted thirty-eight years, and when Jesus saw him lying there and knew he had been in this condition for a long time, he said, ‘Do you want to be well again?’ ‘Sir, replied the sick man I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is disturbed; and while I am still on the way, someone else gets there before me.’ Jesus said, ‘Get up, pick up your sleeping-mat and walk. The man was cured at once, and he picked up his mat and walked away.

Now that day happened to be the sabbath, so the Jews said to the man who had been cured, It is the sabbath; you are not allowed to carry your sleeping-mat. He replied, ‘But the man who cured me told me, “Pick up your mat and walk.” They asked, ‘Who is the man who said to you, “Pick up your mat and walk”?? The man had no idea who it was, since Jesus had disappeared into the crowd that filled the place. After a while Jesus met him in the Temple and said, Now you are well again, be sure not to sin any more, or something worse may happen to you. The man went back and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had cured him. It was because he did things like this on the sabbath that the Jews began to persecute Jesus.

PRAYER:

Jesus, source of light and grace,

you restored the sight of the man born blind.

Take away our spiritual blindness.

Allow us to see your radiant presence in the world around us. Help us to see you present in those around us,

and to treat them with profound respect.

Take away the blindness that prevents us from seeing our own sins. Let us see them clearly, and so beg your forgiveness.

O Lord, that we may see again.

Terry Mc Namee