DGeMs- Daily Gospel eMessage
Dear Friend in the Lord,
Faith – Compassion: In today’s Gospel, Jesus cured a sick man out of great compassion for him, because for thirty-eight years, no one had helped him to get into the pool, called Bethesda. Ponder on, “God’s Compassionate Healing care for us, depends on our deep faith in Him, and also on our compassionate care for others.
Fr Philip Heng, S.J.
John 5:1-3a, 5-9, 16
There was a Jewish festival, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. Now at the Sheep Pool in Jerusalem there is a building called Bethesda in Hebrew, consisting of five porticos; and under these were crowds of sick people – blind, lame, paralysed.
One man there had an illness which had lasted thirty-eight years, and when Jesus saw him lying there and knew he had been in that condition for a long time, he said, ‘Do you want to be well again?’ ‘Sir,’ replied the sick man, ‘I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is disturbed; and while I am still on the way, someone else gets down there before me.’
Jesus said, ‘Get up, pick up your sleeping-mat and walk.’ The man was cured at once, and he picked up his mat and walked away. Now that day happened to be the sabbath. It was because he did things like this on the sabbath that the Jews began to persecute Jesus.