Rise, take up your mat, and walk

TUESDAY 24 MARCH (Jn 5,1-16)

That when man is in sin thinks and acts like a fool, is a fact of everyday evidence. Today we see evil, we hate it, we tear our clothes, from excellent preaching we also know how to sing funeral lamentations. But all these things are visions of foolishness. We see evil, we do not see the cause that produces it. We rebel against evil, but pay all attention so that no one reveals and manifests the tree that produces it. Then, if a person, due to lightness, inadvertence, unconsciousness, or even with will, were to reveal the cause, he is immediately accused of homophobia or even of wanting to impose his vision on others. And meanwhile evil devours its victims every day. But we also see this mode of sin in the Pharisees and scribes of the time of Jesus. There is a man who has been unable to walk for thirty-eight years. He wishes he could go down into the water to be healed. But even this he cannot do. Being in no chance to move, he would need help. But nobody cares for him. Instead everyone is interested in his illnesses and worries.

Jesus is under the arcades of the pool, called Betzatà. He sees this man. After a brief dialogue, he gives him an order: “Get up, take your stretcher and walk.” The command is immediately executed. The man gets up, takes his stretcher and heads home. He immediately comes out of the darkness of the world of foolishness and sin. This world sees a man walking and is not even interested in his previous state. He had been a motionless man for thirty-eight years. What is it worried about? That he brings a stretcher on a Saturday. It is not at all interested in the other command given by Jesus: “Get up and walk”. If only it had dealt with the first command, it could have understood that a person who gives such an order and the word is fulfilled, cannot but be a prophet sent by God. If he is a true prophet, his Word is the true Word of the one that sent him and consequently there might never be conflict between the written Word of God and the oral Word. In fact, carrying a stretcher does not create any conflict with the Law of Sinai, whose spirit is very different than the thought of the scribes.

After this, 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 anymore, 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.

Whoever wants to see wisely, act wisely and reason with wisdom, must leave the world of sin, vice and the transgression of the Commandments. These Pharisees and scribes so zealous for their Sabbath law disobeyed the greatest commandments of the Law of the Lord. Their prescriptions on the Sabbath were only a mask to hide their spiritual emptiness and their sin rot. Jesus reveals their great and universal hypocrisy and for this they desire his death. They are the world of darkness that stands against the world of light. This truth must also be shouted to the Christian. If he enters the world of evil and becomes evil with evil, he too will wear the mask of obedience to his law of sin and death, presented as a true interpretation of the Holy law of the Lord. Falsehood is worshiped in the name of God. The truth is killed in the name of God. This makes the man of sin.

Mother of God, Angels and Saints arrange that Christians are men of most pure truth.