Homily for Tuesday, Week 4 of Lent

Homily for Tuesday
4th Week of Lent

March 12, 2023
John 5: 1-16
Ezek 47: 1-9, 12
Christian Brothers, St. Joseph’s Residence, N.R.

Christ Healing the Paralytic at the Pool of Bethesda
(Murillo)

Today, tomorrow, and Thursday we read thru John 5, which is about who Jesus is.  In today’s passage, Jesus heals a man who’s been sick for 38 years—on the Sabbath.  That riles up “the Jews,” which is John’s Gospel usually means those who don’t accept Jesus as the Messiah.  (“He came to his own people, and they didn’t receive him” – John 1:11.)  This chapter is about Jesus’ identity.  He’s more than a mere healer of bodies, a wonder-worker.  He works even on the Sabbath, and his works are works of salvation.  So he can speak to the man he’s just healed about avoiding sin in the future (John 5:14).  Sin’s penalty is far worse than bodily sickness.

The healing that Jesus offers is like the water in Ezekiel’s prophecy.  That water begins as a trickle flowing out of the Temple until it becomes a massive, life-giving flood that transforms even the Dead Sea.  The water that trickles from the temple of Jesus’ body on the cross, along with a trickle of his blood, becomes a massive, life-giving flood of sacramental grace that transforms and saves believers.  “There is a stream whose runlets gladden the city of God” (Ps 46:5), the heavenly Jerusalem, born from the side of Christ, in fact from his heart.

Christ's Side Pierced
(source unknown)