In today's Gospel, John 5: 1-16, Jesus goes up to Jerusalem and finds blind, lame, and crippled persons going down to the Bethesda pool. The first person to enter the pool when the waters are stirred up is healed. Jesus notices a man 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, said to him, 'Do you want to be well?'" He answered: "'Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; while I am on the 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."
Jesus noticed the man's inability to get to the pool first and, knowing that he had been ill for a long time, had pity on him. He asks him: "Do you want to be well?" Jesus asks us the same question. "Do you want to healed" of that which holds us back from being made whole, of becoming well so that we, too, can participate fully in life around us! What is crippling us? Do we know? And do we want to be healed? Just sitting around, when other options are possible, is an option but there are other ones if we accept Jesus' invitation!
What is holding you and I back from the pool of graces available to us on a daily basis? What prevents us from "stirring the pool" that will give live to others and to ourselves?
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