God's Desire for His Healing Power to Flow into and out of Us

In today's first reading, Isaiah 35: 1-10,  Isaiah says to us: "Here is your God, he comes with vindication; with divine recompense he comes to save [us]. Then will the eyes of the blind be opened, the ears of the deaf be cleared; then will the lame leap like a stag, then the tongue of the mute will sing....A highway will be there, called the holy way; no one unclean may pass over it, nor fools go astray on it. No lion will be there, nor beast of prey go up to be met upon it.  It is for those with a journey to make and on it the redeemed will walk. Those whom the Lord has ransomed will return and enter Zion singing, crowned with everlasting joy; they will  meet with joy and gladness, sorrow and mourning will flee."

I read that with intense gratitude for God's graciousness to us, His immense love.  God held nothing back to secure salvation for those who believe!  God showed His love to us in Jesus' life, death and resurrection!  In today's Gospel, Luke 5: 17-26,  the love of God for His people is shown in Jesus' healing all those  who personally sought Him out or of those brought to Him by others, including the paralyzed man dropped in front of Him through the roof of the house in which Jesus was sitting. The people who brought this paralyzed man to Jesus would let nothing stop them from getting this man the help for which he longed. They were as persistent to receive God's gift of healing as God is persistent to give us this gift, be it physical, psychological, or spiritual healing.

I believe! What about you?

"Stirring the Pool of Life-giving Water"

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?