Carmelite homily for Tuesday of the Fourth Week of Lent, March 12, 2024 – Lectionary 245 (John 5:1-15)
We all know someone who is stuck. Maybe stuck in an abusive relationship where there’s no life, or damage. Or stuck in the past. They cannot let it go; they cannot forgive. Or stuck in an addiction that just is destroying everything around them and themselves. Or stuck in always needing to have the last word or control everybody. There’s a lot of ways to just get stuck and be unhappy and not be alive. In today’s gospel, there’s a man, a cripple, at the side of pool in Bethesda. And the thought then was, probably a popular devotion thing, that when the water was disturbed – it could have been by a frog or by wind or something – but whenever the water was disturbed it represented an angel in the water. And the first person in got healed. It could’ve been a psychosomatic thing. But the guy was never in first because he was a cripple. So when Jesus comes by and says, “Do you want to be healed?” the guy gets all whiny and says, “Everybody gets in before me; no one helps me; oh, poor is me.” And Jesus says, “Do you want to be healed?” The guy is stuck, though, in old ways of thinking. He did not see what was right in front of him – a new solution. Saint John of the Cross says, “Travelers cannot reach new territory if they do not take new roads and unknown roads and abandon the familiar ones.” Oftentimes that’s us. We’re not happy, but we do not want to change. We’re scared of something new; we’re scared of the unknown. That’s what Jesus is there for. Jesus is there to take our hand. To offer us the new road, to offer us the solution, to offer us to be healed. That’s the gospel for today – to be more alive, more happy, more filled, more whole. That’s the gift that Jesus is offering each of us.
