Invalid?

Today’s Gospel Text:  After this there was a feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.  2 Now there is in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate a pool, in Hebrew called Beth-za'tha, which has five porticoes. 3 In these lay a multitude of invalids, blind, lame, paralyzed. 5 One man was there, who had been ill for thirty-eight years. 6 When Jesus saw him and knew that he had been lying there a long time, he said to him, "Do you want to be healed?" 7 The sick man answered him, "Sir, I have no man to put me into the pool when the water is troubled, and while I am going another steps down before me." 8 Jesus said to him, "Rise, take up your pallet, and walk." 9 And at once the man was healed, and he took up his pallet and walked.

Now that day was the sabbath. 10 So the Jews said to the man who was cured, "It is the sabbath, it is not lawful for you to carry your pallet." 11 But he answered them, "The man who healed me said to me, 'Take up your pallet, and walk.'" 12 They asked him, "Who is the man who said to you, 'Take up your pallet, and walk'?" 13 Now the man who had been healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had withdrawn, as there was a crowd in the place. 14 Afterward, Jesus found him in the temple, and said to him, "See, you are well! Sin no more, that nothing worse befall you." 15 The man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had healed him. 16 And this was why the Jews persecuted Jesus, because he did this on the sabbath. John 5:1-16

Reflection: There was a story told by a religious, of a man who had once gone to a retreat centre and he came back testifying everywhere and to everyone that he was healed of his illness. 

 The reason for the man’s confidence was the absence of the symptoms which accompanied his debilitating condition.

A few months later, the man could no longer testify about this healing, as the sickness had returned.

This was reason enough for the critics to condemn such indiscriminate testimonies which lay claim to healing, when they felt there was no such healing in the first place.

The critics felt that it was never a healing in the first place but may have been a placebo effect on the mind or some sort of amelioration at the psychological level.

What may have happened, in this particular case and which the critics may have never bothered to find out or may have overlooked is this: The concerned person may have actually got the healing but on account of his slip and falling away into sin the sickness may have returned.

But the many critics who passed a judgment against him also did so against the retreat centre and its works.  In other words they considered all the healings as humbug!

In the gospel we could have a similar situation, if not for the warning of Jesus to the man who was an invalid for thirty-eight years:

"See, you are well! Sin no more, that nothing worse befalls you." (vs. 14)

One of the sin that the invalid needed to avoid in his life was not to fail in testifying to what Jesus had done to him. He would thus assert the truth of his new found faith in a God who works in creation; a God who even goes against his own law in order to heal a person.

God heals even in our day if only we believe in his merciful love and put our trust and confidence in him.

Prayer: O Lord of the Sabbath and all that you have created heal the many fears in my heart that I may proclaim you fearlessly. 

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