9 March 2027 · Latin Rite
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“When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had been there a long time, he said to him, “Do you want to be made well?”” John 5:6
Today's readings are full of water. In Ezekiel's vision an angel leads the prophet to the door of the Temple, and from under the threshold a stream is flowing east. The angel measures a thousand cubits and the water is ankle-deep; another thousand and it is knee-deep; then up to the waist; then “a river that could not be crossed.” This river flows down into the Dead Sea, the lowest and saltiest water on earth, where nothing lives, and makes it fresh: “everything will live where the river goes.” On its banks grow trees whose fruit never fails and whose “leaves are for healing,” “because the water for them flows from the sanctuary.” Lent is leading the elect toward the waters of Baptism, and leading all of us to renew our own. The Psalm sings of the same river: “There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God,” for “the LORD of hosts is with us.”
The Gospel takes us to a pool in Jerusalem, Beth-zatha, with five porticoes full of the blind, the lame and the paralysed. Archaeologists have uncovered its great basins near the Sheep Gate. One man has been ill for thirty-eight years, almost a lifetime. Jesus sees him, knows how long he has lain there, and asks a surprising question: “Do you want to be made well?” The man's answer is the saddest sentence in the passage: “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool.” Then Jesus does what the water never did for him: “Stand up, take your mat and walk.” At once he is healed. Because it is the sabbath, the authorities object; John, writing after the break between Church and synagogue, often uses “the Jews” for these Temple leaders who opposed Jesus, not for the Jewish people as a whole, whom the Church honours as the people of the covenant. Later Jesus finds the man in the Temple: “See, you have been made well! Do not sin any more.” The healing of the body points to the deeper healing of the soul. The true river from the Temple is Christ himself, and his water reaches us in Baptism and in Confession. Today we also remember St Frances of Rome (1384–1440), a noblewoman married at thirteen, mother of three, who nursed the sick through plague and war, opened her house to the poor, and founded a community of Oblates. She used to say (in substance) that a wife and mother must sometimes leave God at the altar to find him in her housework. For many, she was the someone who carried them to the water.
Theme: “Do you want to be made well?”
The river from the Temple, the man who had no one, and a saint who carried others to the water.
“Wherever the river goes, every living creature that swarms will live, and there will be very many fish, once these waters reach there. It will become fresh; and everything will live where the river goes.” Ezekiel 47:9
“Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb” Revelation 22:1
Apply: Renew your baptismal promises in your own words before the crucifix tonight.
“There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy habitation of the Most High.” Psalm 46:4
“When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had been there a long time, he said to him, “Do you want to be made well?”” John 5:6
Apply: Name the sin you have grown used to, and bring it to Confession this Lent.
“Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin?” Isaiah 58:7
“Bear one another's burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.” Galatians 6:2
Apply: Choose one lonely person and stay close to them for the rest of Lent.
The river of grace flows from Christ, the true Temple, and makes the dead live.
Jesus asks if we want healing, and sends us to those who have no one.
Take-home resolution: Help one person who has no one, every week until Easter.
Dear friends, Ezekiel sees water flowing from under the door of the Temple. It grows from ankle-deep to knee-deep to a river that could not be crossed. It flows into the Dead Sea and makes it fresh: wherever the river goes, every living creature that swarms will live (Ezekiel 47:9). That river is a picture of grace, and we first stepped into it at our Baptism.
In the Gospel there is a pool full of sick people, and one man who has been ill for thirty-eight years. Jesus asks him: do you want to be made well? (John 5:6). It is not a foolish question. Sometimes we grow used to our illness, our sin, our sadness, and we stop hoping.
The man answers: sir, I have no one to put me into the pool. Thirty-eight years, and no one. Then Jesus says: stand up, take your mat and walk. And he walks. Later Jesus tells him: do not sin any more. Jesus heals the body, but he wants to heal the soul even more. That is why we go to Confession in Lent.
Today we remember St Frances of Rome, a wife and mother who nursed the sick through plague and war and opened her home to the poor. She found God at the altar and in the kitchen. Let us ask Jesus to heal us, and let us become, like her, someone for those who have no one. Amen.
Children, a man was sick for thirty-eight years, and he had no friend to help him. Jesus came and said: stand up and walk! And he walked. Jesus is a friend to people who are alone. Can you be a friend to someone who is alone at school?
Lord God, from your sanctuary flows a river that brings life wherever it goes. Let the waters of Baptism heal what is sick in us, and give us the courage to answer Jesus when he asks if we want to be made well. Through the prayers of St Frances of Rome, make our homes places of prayer and service. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.
Today both readings are about water, and both reach toward Baptism as Easter draws near. Ezekiel sees a stream from under the Temple door grow into a river that brings even the Dead Sea to life. John sets Jesus beside a pool where a man has lain for thirty-eight years with no one to help him. Psalm 46 sings of “a river whose streams make glad the city of God”. The sick man never gets into the water at all: the life that Ezekiel saw flowing now stands in front of him and speaks.
Setting.
Ezekiel, a priest, was taken to Babylon with the exiles of 597 BC, and there he learned of the destruction of the Temple (587/586 BC). His last great vision (chapters 40–48) is dated in the twenty-fifth year of the exile (40:1), about 573 BC. A heavenly guide leads him through a restored Temple, and the glory of God, which he had seen depart (chapters 10–11), returns (43:1–5). Now comes the fruit of that return.
The geography gives the vision its force. East of Jerusalem the land falls away through bare desert to the Dead Sea, the lowest and saltiest water in the land, where fish cannot live. The vision sends a river straight through it.
Structure.
Key words.
Verse by verse.
“there, water was flowing from below the threshold of the temple toward the east” (47:1)
It begins as a trickle under a door. A Temple needs a great deal of water for its sacrifices, but this water is not brought in; it comes out from the place where God dwells. Compare Joel 3:18 and Zechariah 14:8.
“Again he measured one thousand, and it was a river that I could not cross,” (47:5)
A thousand cubits is roughly half a kilometre. At each stage the prophet goes deeper, until he can no longer stand. God's gift is not something a person can stay in control of.
“Wherever the river goes, every living creature that swarms will live,” (47:9)
The words recall creation, when God filled the waters with swarming creatures (Genesis 1:20–21). The dead place becomes as full of life as the first days.
“Their fruit will be for food, and their leaves for healing.” (47:12)
Revelation 22:1–2 takes up this picture for the heavenly city: a river flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb, and leaves “for the healing of the nations”. The reason is given in the same verse: the water flows from the sanctuary.
How the Church reads it.
In the Roman Rite this vision is heard every Eastertide in the chant Vidi aquam, “I saw water flowing from the Temple”, sung at the sprinkling at Sunday Mass. So the Church reads Ezekiel in the light of Easter: the true Temple is the body of Christ (John 2:21), from whose opened side came blood and water (John 19:34). Jesus says that rivers of living water will flow, and John explains that he meant the Spirit (John 7:38–39). Those preparing for Baptism hear this page as a promise about themselves.
Setting.
Jesus goes up to Jerusalem for an unnamed festival. Near the Sheep Gate, north of the Temple, is a pool with five porticoes. Archaeologists have uncovered a large double pool with colonnades close to the present Church of St Anne, which fits John's description well. The sick waited there because they believed that the stirring of the water brought healing.
A note on the text. The ancient copies spell the name in several ways (Beth-zatha, Bethesda, Bethsaida). The explanation that an angel stirred the water (the end of v. 3 and v. 4 in older translations) is missing from the earliest manuscripts, and most modern editions leave it out, as the NRSV does and as the POC's verses do. It is probably an early note that explained v. 7.
Structure.
Key words.
Verse by verse.
“When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had been there a long time, he said to him, “Do you want to be made well?”” (5:6)
Jesus takes the first step: nobody asks him for anything. The question is not as strange as it sounds. After thirty-eight years a man's whole life may be built around his illness, and healing would mean a new life.
“The sick man answered him, “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up;” (5:7)
He does not say yes. He tells the story of his loneliness, “I have no one”. He can imagine healing only through the pool, and only with someone's help. Jesus will give it without either.
“Jesus said to him, “Stand up, take your mat and walk.”” (5:8)
Three commands, with no water, no touch and no request for faith. The mat that carried him he now carries. Carrying a burden on the sabbath was forbidden on the authority of Jeremiah 17:21–22, which is why the question arises at once in v. 10.
“See, you have been made well! Do not sin any more, so that nothing worse happens to you.” (5:14)
Jesus goes looking for him a second time. The cure of the body is not the end of what he came to give. On what is “worse”, see the question below.
How the Church reads it.
St John Chrysostom and St Ambrose saw this pool as a figure of Baptism: there one person was healed and only now and then, while in the font all are healed, and Christ himself is the one who was missing beside that water (in substance). The Catechism says that Christ's compassion for the sick, and his many healings, are a sign that God has visited his people, and that he goes on touching us in the sacraments to heal us (CCC 1503–1504). Where the first reading shows the water, the Gospel shows the one who gives it.
Is Jesus saying that the man's illness was a punishment for sin?
No. In John 9:3 Jesus rejects that reasoning directly about a man born blind. Here he does not say what caused the illness. He warns that there is something worse than thirty-eight years on a mat, and that is to lose God through sin. Illness must never be used as an accusation against the person who suffers.