Daily Gospel Reflection

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March 12, 2024

Tuesday of the Fourth Week of Lent
Jn 5:1-16
Listen to the Audio Version

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.

Reflection

Ann (Weber) O’Rourke '11
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“Mom, cheating is bad, right?” My four-year-old always asks me what is right and wrong and tells me when someone breaks the rules at daycare. Knowing the rules gives him a feeling of structure and security as he learns to navigate the world around him.

It is human nature to want that sense of reassurance and structure that clear rules provide. It gives us a sense of control. If we follow the right formula, we can achieve salvation. Make it to the water first, and you can be healed. Both the Pharisees and the man who is healed long for this sense of control, and we do, too—a way to ensure our own physical and spiritual well-being.

When I read this passage, though, I can almost hear the exhaustion in the voice of the man lying by the pool at Bethesda. “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.” No matter how hard he tried to follow the formula, he could not heal himself—and his attempts to do so were isolating.

Rules in the absence of a relationship with God cannot save us. In one encounter, Jesus did for this man what he could not do for himself for thirty-eight years, providing both physical healing and forgiveness of sins.

As we reflect on today’s gospel passage, let us pray for the ability to let go of our sense of control, to share the parts of ourselves that need healing, and to open ourselves to authentic encounters with God.

Prayer

Rev. Paul Kollman, C.S.C.

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. Seraphina

St. Seraphina, also known as Fina, is venerated for the courage with which she endured the suffering of illness.

Fina was born to a poor family in the town of San Gimignano, in the Tuscan region of Italy, in the 13th century. She was a beautiful child and had a strong devotion to prayer and to serving others. Even though her family was poor, she always kept half of her food to give to those who were also hungry. She helped her mother with chores and sewing during the day.

Her father died when she was still young, and at about that same time, she was struck with a mysterious disease that deformed her head, hands, eyes, and feet. Her physical appearance changed drastically and she eventually suffered paralysis and had to be carried around on a plank. The slightest movement caused great pain.

Though her mother had to leave her for hours on end to work or beg, Seraphina never complained. She strove for peace in her terrible pain by identifying her own suffering with Jesus’, saying, “It is not my wounds but thine, O Christ, that hurt me.”

When her mother died suddenly, she was left in utter poverty, reliant on other neighbors who were poor and who did not want to be exposed to her sores. She learned about St. Gregory the Great, who also suffered from a debilitating illness, and she developed a devotion to him, asking him for prayer that God might grant her patience in her suffering.

St. Gregory appeared to her to foretell the day she would die, which came to pass on this day in 1253. When her body was removed from the plank on which it rested, the wood was found to be covered with white flowers. Her relics rest in the reliquary chapel of the Basilica of the Sacred Heart on Notre Dame's campus.

St. Seraphina, who even in weakness became a strong sign of hope to the town of San Gimignano—pray for us!


Image Credit: Our featured image of St. Seraphina is in the public domain. Last accessed February 6, 2025 on Wikimedia Commons.