DGEMs

Paralytic man – Bethesda Pool: In today’s Gospel, Jesus cured the paralytic man at the Bethesda Pool who was paralysed for thirty eight years and no one helped him to get into the pool.  Ponder on: We have our needs, but if we do not care for the needs and sufferings of others, God’s graces cannot fill our lives with His Compassion and Mercy.

There was a Jewish festival, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. Now in Jerusalem next to the Sheep Pool there is a pool called Bethesda in Hebrew, which has 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 around.’ The man was cured at once, and he picked up his mat and started to walk around. Now that day happened to be the Sabbath. It was because he did things like this on the Sabbath that the Jews began to harass Jesus.