1 March 2027 · Syro-Malabar 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
The fourth week of the Great Fast opens with a journey. God speaks to a man of seventy-five who has every reason to stay where he is: “Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you.” The promise is enormous, “I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing”, but the map is blank. And the most important sentence in the reading is the shortest: “So Abram went, as the LORD had told him.” Notice what Abram does at every stop. At Shechem “he built there an altar to the LORD”, and near Bethel he pitched his tent “and there he built an altar to the LORD and invoked the name of the LORD.” Wherever his tent goes, an altar goes with it. The Syro-Malabar families who left Travancore in the last century to clear the forests of Malabar and the high ranges did the same: before the houses had proper roofs there was a small chapel, and the Holy Qurbana was offered among the stumps and the new rubber. The Great Fast asks each of us where God is asking us to go, and whether our tent still has an altar beside it.
Last Sunday we heard that one man had hidden plunder in his tent and that all Israel was weakened by it. Today the hidden thing comes out. Tribe by tribe, clan by clan, household by household, the lot narrows until Achan stands alone. Joshua's words to him are surprisingly gentle: “My son, give glory to the LORD God of Israel and make confession to him. Tell me now what you have done; do not hide it from me.” Achan answers: “It is true; I am the one who sinned against the LORD God of Israel.” The ending of this ancient story is grim, and the place is named the Valley of Achor, the valley of trouble. But the prophets did not leave it there. Through Hosea God promised to “make the Valley of Achor a door of hope” (Hosea 2:15). In the Church of Christ that promise is kept every time a sinner kneels in confession: the valley of trouble becomes a door of hope, and the one who says “I am the one who sinned” goes home forgiven.
Paul begins the great chapters of Romans on Israel with tears: “I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart.” He loves his own people, and he lists their gifts with pride: “to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises; to them belong the patriarchs, and from them, according to the flesh, comes the Messiah.” The Church has learned from him to speak of the Jewish people with reverence, never with contempt. In the Gospel Jesus goes to a pool where the sick lay waiting for the water to be stirred. One man had been ill “for thirty-eight years.” Jesus asks him what sounds like a strange question: “Do you want to be made well?” The man does not say yes; he explains why it has never worked: “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up.” Jesus does not need the pool. “Stand up, take your mat and walk.” Later he finds the man in the temple and adds: “See, you have been made well! Do not sin any more, so that nothing worse happens to you.” When John writes that “the Jews” began to persecute Jesus, he means certain religious authorities in Jerusalem, not the Jewish people as a whole, for Jesus, his mother and all his apostles were Jews (Catechism 597). Halfway through the fast, the same question is put to us: do you want to be made well, or only to explain why you are still lying by the pool?
Theme: “Do you want to be made well?”
Abram's journey with an altar, Achan's confession, Paul's love for his people, and the man by the pool who was told to stand up and walk.
“Now the LORD said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you.” Genesis 12:1
“By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to set out for a place that he was to receive as an inheritance; and he set out, not knowing where he was going.” Hebrews 11:8
Apply: Set apart one place and one fixed time for prayer wherever you are this week.
“Then Joshua said to Achan, “My son, give glory to the LORD God of Israel and make confession to him. Tell me now what you have done; do not hide it from me.”” Joshua 7:19
“Therefore confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, so that you may be healed.” James 5:16
Apply: Make a careful examination of conscience and go to confession before Palm Sunday.
“then the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy. For waters shall break forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert;” Isaiah 35:6
“Jesus said to him, “Stand up, take your mat and walk.”” John 5:8
Apply: Name the excuse you give most often, and replace it this week with one act of obedience.
God calls us to go, to confess, and to stand up.
Abram went, Achan confessed, the sick man walked: halfway through the fast, it is our turn.
Take-home resolution: This week, answer Jesus' question with a confession and one concrete step.
Dear friends, God says to Abram: go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you (Genesis 12:1). Abram is seventy-five, the map is blank, and yet he goes. At every place he pitches his tent, he builds an altar. A Christian life is a journey with an altar at every stop.
Achan had hidden stolen things in his tent. When the truth comes out, Joshua says: my son, give glory to the Lord and make confession; do not hide it from me (Joshua 7:19). The place of his punishment was called the Valley of Achor, the valley of trouble. But God promised through Hosea to make the Valley of Achor a door of hope (Hosea 2:15). Confession is that door.
Paul speaks of his people Israel with great sorrow and great love, for to them belong the covenants, the worship and the promises, and from them comes the Messiah (Romans 9:4–5). We learn from him to honour the people of the first covenant.
By the pool lies a man who has been ill for thirty-eight years. Jesus asks him: do you want to be made well? (John 5:6). He answers with an excuse. Jesus answers with a command: stand up, take your mat and walk. Halfway through this fast, Jesus asks us the same question. Let us not answer with excuses. Amen.
Children, a man had been sick for thirty-eight years, and Jesus asked him: do you want to be well? Then Jesus said: stand up and walk, and he did! Is there something you would like Jesus to make well in you? Tell him tonight.
Lord Jesus Christ, you saw the man lying by the pool and knew how long he had waited. Look on us too, and ask us again whether we want to be made well. Give us the faith of Abram to go where you send us, the honesty of a sinner who confesses, and the courage to stand up and walk. Turn every valley of trouble in our lives into a door of hope. Amen.
This week the Great Fast walks with Abram. Today God calls him to leave everything on the strength of a promise, and in John a man who has waited thirty-eight years is told to stand up. The second reading shows the opposite of that trust, Achan’s hidden theft and its bitter end in the Valley of Achor. In the epistle Paul grieves for his own people and insists that God’s word has not failed. Both main readings begin with a word from God to someone who has nothing to offer in return.
Setting.
Genesis 1–11 tells of a world spreading away from God, and it closes with Babel, where people said, “let us make a name for ourselves” (11:4). Now God says to one man that he will make his name great (12:2). Abram’s father Terah had left Ur for Canaan and stopped at Haran (11:31), and Abram is called from there. He has no child, for Sarai is barren (11:30). That makes the promise of a great nation seem impossible from its first word.
Structure.
Key words.
Verse by verse.
“Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.” (12:1)
The list moves inward: country, clan, home. Each step costs more than the last. God does not name the land yet: he says only, “that I will show you”.
“in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” (12:3)
This is the widest line in the chapter. The call of one man is for the sake of all the families scattered at Babel. St Paul reads it as “the gospel beforehand”, and quotes it in Galatians 3:8.
“So Abram went, as the Lord had told him;” (12:4)
Abram asks nothing and says nothing. The next thing we learn is his age, seventy-five, which tells us that this call does not come too late for anyone.
How the Church reads it.
The Catechism sees in this call the beginning of God’s answer to a scattered humanity: God calls Abram “in order to gather together scattered humanity” (CCC 59), and his descendants are the trustees of the promise (CCC 60). Abraham is its great example of the obedience of faith (CCC 144–146), as in Hebrews 11:8: he set out, “not knowing where he was going”. Nostra Aetate 4 recalls that the beginnings of the Church’s faith are already found among the patriarchs, Moses and the prophets.
Setting.
Jesus goes up to Jerusalem for a festival John does not name. The pool lay near the Sheep Gate, north of the Temple. Excavations near the Church of St Anne have uncovered a large double pool of the right period, which fits John’s description well.
The oldest manuscripts have no explanation of the moving water. A later addition, found in some copies, says that an angel stirred it, and many Bibles omit this as v. 4; the verse numbers of the NRSV and the POC differ here. John’s story depends only on what the sick man says in v. 7.
Structure.
Key words.
Verse by verse.
“Do you want to be made well?” (5:6)
Jesus speaks first; the man has asked for nothing. The question is not a foolish one. After thirty-eight years a person can stop hoping. The man does not answer yes. He explains why it has never happened: “I have no one” (v. 7). The Lord then becomes that someone.
“See, you have been made well! Do not sin any more, so that nothing worse happens to you.” (5:14)
Jesus looks for him a second time, because the bodily cure is not the whole gift. See the question below on sickness and sin.
“My Father is still working, and I also am working.” (5:17)
Jewish teachers of that age also reflected that God keeps the world in being even on the sabbath. Jesus places his own work beside the Father’s. That is why John says the claim went further than the sabbath: he was “making himself equal to God” (v. 18).
How the Church reads it.
The Catechism says that Jesus never fails to respect the holiness of the sabbath, and that he gives its true meaning (CCC 2173; see also 582). John’s phrase “the Jews” in vv. 10–18 means here the authorities in Jerusalem who opposed him, not a whole people: the man, the disciples and Jesus himself are Jews, and the Church firmly rejects any blame laid on the Jewish people (CCC 597–598; Nostra Aetate 4). St Augustine took the five porticoes as a figure of the five books of Moses, which show us our sickness and lead us to the healer (Tractates on John 17; in substance).
Does this mean that sickness is a punishment for sin?
No. In John 9:3 Jesus says of the man born blind, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned”. The word in 5:14 is addressed to this one man and warns of something worse than illness: to lose what God has given. The Church does not teach that each illness comes from a person’s own sin (see CCC 1502–1505).