Rise, take up your mat, and walk

Ez 47,1-9.12; Ps 45; Jn 5,1-3a.5-16
2 APRIL

The paralyzed man under the porticoes of the pool of Betzatà, is a symbol, image and figure of humanity. This is paralyzed not only in the legs, but above all in its soul, spirit, heart, thoughts and will. It is incapable of any true good. If it does not consume its days in vice, in immorality and in idolatry, it spends them in spiritual sloth. It often goes beyond the very limits of evil. It needs to be healed. Healing can take place in only one way: listening to the Word of Jesus, believing in his Gospel, letting itself be baptized in the Holy Spirit and his divine fire, joining the community of believers in Lord Jesus, without ever stopping to feed on the Word, grace, prayer and true brotherly love. This might never happen if the disciple of Jesus does not approach the sick person and does not give him the Word of salvation. In the Church of the living God everyone must approach the sick humanity and make it listen to his personal Word, which is different for each sacrament that is received. One Word is that of a baptized person, another one that of a confirmed person, another that of a presbyter and another one yet that of a bishop. One’s orders differ from the order of the other. Unfortunately today we are witnessing the decommissioning of this very high ministry. We all want the paralytic to start running, jumping for joy and competing in every kind of race. We forget that he must be healed first. The ministers of Christ Jesus cannot ask humanity to act as a Christian if they abandon it to its paganism. Nor can we ask it to behave like a true creature of God, if we abandon it to its atheism and do nothing so that God, the true God, returns to be in the heart of man. The Church must not make Christians, she must create them with the power of the Holy Spirit. This is her ministry. Either she creates Christians, or those few who dare to ask to be Christians will be transformed into sons of Gehenna, twice as much as we are. Either we create, or we have failed.

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.

Jesus warns the healed man so that he may watch himself from every sin. He must not sin anymore. If he sins, something worse might happen to him. This admonition of Jesus today seems to have fallen on deaf ears. Today many children of the Church are opening the doors to all sin. Anyway, it is said, the mercy of God opens the doors of his Paradise, of his pardon and of his benevolence to all. This is great, false testimony against the Word of God. It is a declaration of falsehood and lie of what God has said and taught. It is the destruction of the whole Gospel of Christ the Lord. Jesus is the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world. He came to make us truth of his truth, eternal life of his eternal life, holiness of his holiness and light of his light. Sin is darkness, obscurity and death. Either the Christian is the light of the world or he is darkness. He cannot be light and darkness at the same time. Either he is life or he is death.

Mother of God, Angels and Saints ensure that we never sin of false testimony against God.