(Audio)
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?”
Some of us have waited so long for healing that we no longer even desire it. We still go to the right places and go through the motions. But we no longer have much expectation that anything will happen. Our desire gives way to a certain numb acceptance. This can be true of physical, emotional, and spiritual suffering. It only makes it easier to give up when we see others who haven't waited as long being healed first.
while I am on my way, someone else gets down there before me.
We need to be like the insistent widow with the unjust judge or the neighbor that keeps knocking at midnight for the favor he needs. We must not let our desires collapse but rather grow and be refined to want the things that God wants to give us. The renewal he has in store for us is always more than the specific symptoms we want to have treated.
Wherever the river flows,
every sort of living creature that can multiply shall live,
and there shall be abundant fish,
for wherever this water comes the sea shall be made fresh.
When God allows us to wait on something he is giving us the opportunity to grow in faith, hope, and in love. We learn to believe with the eyes of faith that our healing will come even more certainly than the sun will rise tomorrow. We learn to hope for great things even beyond the narrow confines of our own expectations. Our sense of being loved becomes untethered from the gifts we receive and we are thus empowered to love more freely ourselves.
God is our refuge and our strength,
an ever-present help in distress.
Therefore we fear not, though the earth be shaken
and mountains plunge into the depths of the sea.
God is our refuge and strength, even in a world that seems to be so subject the sin and death that there is no refuge to be found, no strength that can overcome them.
There is a stream whose runlets gladden the city of God,
the holy dwelling of the Most High.
We need this stream that gladdens the city of God. This is the living water that is ever fresh. Unlike the pool in Bethesda, its waters are always in motion with healing. This is the water of the Spirit poured out by Jesus himself. We need to be attentive when we find it.
“Have you seen this, son of man?”
When we are stuck so close to the pool of healing but can't go to it, where do we find the living waters that heal us? Whether in live-streaming masses, rosaries, prayer of the Divine Office, online fellowship with brothers and sisters, or wherever else, we need to attune ourselves to the stream and sink down our roots into it and drink deeply of the waters that quench all thirst.
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