Tuesday, April 05, 2011
Lenten Weekday
By Lorenz S. Centino, Jr.
John 5: 1 - 16
1 After this there was a feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem
2 Now there is in Jerusalem
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13 Now the man who had been healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had withdrawn, as there was a crowd in the place.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.
PERSONAL REFLECTIONS:
A BLESSED TUESDAY TO ALL!!!
There are people who are condemned, persecuted, even killed, because they do something considered by the majority as “unlawful.” We can simply recall how the early Christians in Rome Rome
However, many of the early Christians in Rome took the persecution against them as an OPPORTUNITY to SHINE in the FAITH. In the midst of the series of persecutions against them, the Christians considered themselves like GOLD TESTED in FIRE so that the PURITY and LUSTER of their FAITH will gleam and become living testimonies of their LOVE for Jesus who died for them first because he was considered doing something “unlawful.”
The Gospel today ended by categorically stating a fact, after giving an account of how Jesus healed a man who was ill for 38 years, that Jesus was persecuted by the Jews for breaking their Sabbath Law. What makes this case, the unlawful healing, very interesting is the manner how Jesus did it DELIBERATELY. Jesus himself is the one who APPROACHED the sick man when he saw him lying on the roadside. It is Jesus who asked the man if he WANTED to be HEALED. In other healing stories it is the sick who always come to Jesus for healing. In the Gospel, Jesus is the one who offered his SERVICE because of what he SAW and KNEW. Jesus saw that the man cannot come by himself to the pool and he knew that he was lying there for a long time. Here Jesus is showing to us the RESPONSIBILITY we have for each other, especially to those who are HELPLESS and DISREGARDED. Moreover, Jesus is showing us the PRO-ACTIVE attitude every Christian must have in becoming of help to anyone. A Christian is one who will never wait for anyone to ASK for HELP and ATTENTION. Furthermore, Jesus invites us to be become CRITICAL and PRUDENT not to compromise what is GOOD and NOBLE with blind obedience to the law. By his example, Jesus is challenging us to be wise and discerning NOT to consider everything that is made into law promotes what is truly good in the eyes of God. That is why we see how the Church is very prophetically and pro-actively vocal on certain legislative issues, like the death penalty and the proposed RH bill, which do not conform to the Will of God.
Now, after Jesus own example, can we also risk ourselves facing persecutions and any form of animosity in GOING AGAINST the tide of majority opinion just to promote the TOTAL WELFARE and WELL-BEING of persons? May the BLOOD of Jesus and the Christian MARTYRS inspire and arouse in us the zeal to be SIGNS of CONTRADICTION to WORLDLY VALUES and THINKING.
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