Daily Gospel Reflection
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April 1, 2025
There was a feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.
Now there is in Jerusalem at the Sheep Gate
a pool called in Hebrew Bethesda, with five porticoes.
In these lay a large number of ill, blind, lame, and crippled.
One man was 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, he said to him,
“Do you want to be well?”
The sick man answered him,
“Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool
when the water is stirred up;
while I am on my 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.
Now that day was a sabbath.
So the Jews said to the man who was cured,
“It is the sabbath, and it is not lawful for you to carry your mat.”
He answered them, “The man who made me well told me,
‘Take up your mat and walk.'”
They asked him,
“Who is the man who told you, ‘Take it up and walk’?”
The man who was healed did not know who it was,
for Jesus had slipped away, since there was a crowd there.
After this Jesus found him in the temple area and said to him,
“Look, you are well; do not sin any more,
so that nothing worse may happen to you.”
The man went and told the Jews
that Jesus was the one who had made him well.
Therefore, the Jews began to persecute Jesus
because he did this on a sabbath.
There are some passages in the Bible that can be baffling to the modern reader without the aid of footnotes or commentary because they reference customs, idioms, or extra-biblical knowledge far removed from our way of life. The legalism—that holier-than-thou attitude—on display in today’s reading is not one of those passages.
How small-minded do Jesus’ fellow Jews seem when they condemn him for healing on the Sabbath? And yet, how often do we recoil from other people when their apparent holiness challenges us? It can be tempting to label genuine faith for naivety, stupidity, or even false sanctity. Encountering it can prompt a painful self-examination. It’s much easier on our egos to dismiss examples of virtue (or miracles) when we encounter them.
A decade ago, I found myself comparing my own unfavorable attitude toward an awkward person at a dinner to that of my then-acquaintance, another young woman in my study abroad program. I ignored the awkward guest in favor of those I knew and liked better. His awkwardness seemed contagious to me, but she responded to his bids for conversation with kindness and interest. She treated him with the same sincerity I’d seen her display in every other social interaction.
That evening led me to reflect on my immaturity and cowardice. It also left me impressed by the quiet charity that my friend had displayed. She’d previously spoken about her relationship with Christ in a way that was alien to me—an inveterate skeptic from a not-particularly faithful family, clumsily attempting to integrate Catholicism into my otherwise secular life plan. If my memory is reliable, I think I found her unselfconscious piety off-putting when we first met. But her unflagging charity was one of the things that led me to take my faith more seriously that year.
During this penitential season, I feel deep gratitude for those rare (dare I say saintly?) people I’ve encountered who are unmistakably good. Their conduct challenges us to walk, stumblingly, haltingly, with them towards Christ.
Prayer
God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the healing power of your Son was made manifest through signs and wonders during his earthly ministry. Open our eyes to the ways of grace at work among us in these Lenten days. We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen.
Saint of the Day
St. Macarius' legacy is one of working miracles and standing for truth even in the face of torture.
Macarius was born in the ninth century in Constantinople, originally named Christopher. He took the name Macarius when he became a monk.
Eventually, he was selected as abbot of his monastery and became well-known for healing miracles, which is how he earned his title: St. Macarius the Wonder-Worker. Crowds would flock to the monastery to seek cures.
Macarius opposed the emperor’s orders to suppress icons in one of the great iconoclasm controversies. The controversy over icons was a dispute that arose when some misinterpreted the Second Commandment, which forbids the worship of images. The Church has consistently insisted upon the orthodoxy of icons and other religious imagery as a consequence of the Incarnation: Jesus proved that God redeems all of creation, and that all of creation can help mediate God’s presence to us. Icons and religious imagery point our hearts and minds to God and remind us of holy figures, they are not themselves objects of veneration.
Macarius was imprisoned and tortured for defending the use of icons. When the emperor died, the successor released him from prison and tried to win him over. He rejected the new emperor as well and was exiled. He died during this banishment.
The relics of St. Macarius rest in the reliquary chapel in the Basilica of the Sacred Heart on Notre Dame's campus, and this prayer is attributed to him:
“To you, O Master, who loves all humanity, I hasten on rising from sleep. By your mercy, I go out to do your work and I make my prayer to you. Help me at all times and in all things. Deliver me from every evil thing of this world and from pursuit by the devil. Save me and bring me to your eternal kingdom, for you are my creator, and you inspire all good thoughts in me. In you is all my hope and to you, I give glory, now and forever.”
The icon of Saint Macarius featured today shows him standing next to a cherub.
St. Macarius, who suffered torture and exile for your defense of religious images—pray for us!
Image Credit: Our featured image of St. Macarius is in the public domain. Last accessed February 17, 2025 on Wikimedia Commons.
