Daily Gospel Reflection
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March 21, 2023
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.
It started with a simple exchange, just a few phrases, but life-changing. This unnamed man sits among so many, hoping this might be his chance each time. Jesus spots him, singles him out, and then the invitation, “Do you want to be well?” Compassionate love finds a way.
Unable to get to life-giving waters, the life-giving Word comes to him. Despite the day’s impediments and the limitations of his thirty-eight-year illness, this man remains open and receptive. His trusting response, this simple act of faith, brings him into a loving relationship. Wholeness finds a way.
“Rise, take up your mat, and walk.” Jesus says. A simple directive followed without question or doubt. “Immediately, the man became well, took up his mat, and walked.” Once set apart by infirmity, he is now commissioned to action, reintegrating into his community. Healing grace finds a way.
In John’s Gospel, we see the power of Jesus’ healing, reconciling, unifying love. Earthly symbols of water, mud, light, touch, and word become signs transcending experience and pointing to revelation and transformation. We witness Jesus unbound by human definitions of what’s possible or right according to law or cultural norms. His is the law of love, wholeness and grace.
Each of us experiences our own paralysis, times when we feel unable to move through our own life challenges or the troubles of our world. Times when we yearn for wholeness yet feel disconnected, short on hope. It is then that I search out the signs and wonders all around me. I hear Jesus inviting me, “Do you want to be well?”
And I quietly smile as I rise, take up my mat and walk, confident that love, wholeness, and grace always find the way. May it be so for each one of us!
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. Benedetta Cambiagio began her adult life as a wife, and ended it as a nun. Along the way, she continued to work closely with her husband.
She was born in Italy in 1791, and had parents that conscientiously formed her in the faith. When she was 20 years old, she had a mystical experience that encouraged her to pursue a vocation to live as a nun, but her parents preferred that she marry. Out of obedience to them, she married Giovanni Frassinello in 1816.
The couple lived a normal married life for two years, until Giovanni recognized in Benedetta a genuine and deep desire to live as a dedicated religious sister. They decided to live together as brother and sister. Benedetta's younger sister, Martha, was sick with cancer and the couple took her into their home and nursed her through the final stages of the illness until she died.
After Martha died, Giovanni and Benedetta both decided to enter religious communities to live lives consecrated to God alone. The idea did not last long as Benedetta's health failed. She was cured miraculously through the intercession of St. Jerome Emiliani, and rededicated herself to religious life and to the education of young girls.
Working with her bishop, she reformed the approach to educating women. Because of the enormity of the task, the bishop requested Giovanni to help her. The two made a vow of chastity to the bishop as they set out on their work, but that did not stop many from gossiping. Benedetta turned her work over to the bishop so that she would not get in the way, and withdrew to a convent in a different town.
Eventually, Benedetta opened a different school and founded a religious community of her own, which is entirely dedicated to the education of young girls. The spirituality of her community is marked by a confidence in God, and abandonment to God’s will.
St. Benedetta Cambiagio Frassinello, you were the wife who became a nun to transform education for girls—pray for us!
Image Credit: Our featured image of St. Benedetta Cambiagio Frassinello is used with permission from Catholic Online. Last accessed February 6, 2025.