The Pool at Bethesda

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In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

My Lord and my God, I firmly believe that you are here, that you see me, that you hear me. I adore you with profound reverence. I ask your pardon for my sins and grace to make this time of prayer fruitful. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

“After this there was a Jewish festival, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. Now in Jerusalem, next to the Sheep Gate, there is a pool called Bethesda in Hebrew, which has five porticoes. Under these were crowds of sick people—blind, lame, paralyzed. One man there had an illness which lasted thirty-eight years.

“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” (John 5:1-9).

Our Lord is always willing to listen to us and to give us whatever we need in any situation. His goodness always exceeds in excess of our calculations. But at the same time, it requires our correspondence, a response on our part. We have to do what we can to give what we can.

We need to have a desire to get out of the situation we are in. St. Josemaria in The Forge says: “Lazarus rose because he heard the voice of God and immediately wanted to get out of the situation he was in. If he hadn't wanted to move, he would just have died again. A sincere resolution: to have faith in God always; to hope in God always; to love God always; he never abandons us, even if we are rotting away as Lazarus was” (J. Escrivá, The Forge, Point 211).

When Our Lord called out to Lazarus and Lazarus heard His voice, he might not have felt like moving. He might not have felt like beginning again or starting his life over. He might have felt comfortable where he was. He might have wanted just to turn over and go back to sleep.

But he wanted to get out of the situation he was in. So Lord, give me that desire to want to be better.

St. Thomas Aquinas was asked, What is the most important factor in achieving holiness? He said, “To want it with all your heart and soul.”

St. Josemaría in The Way asked the question: “Do you want it like a miser wants his gold...like a sensualist wants his pleasure?” (J. Escriva, The Way, Point 316).

That's how we have to desire the goal of holiness in our life and be ready to do whatever it is that God asks of us. It doesn't matter what situation we may be in.

This man beside the pool of Bethsaida was thirty-eight years in his infirmity. There might be some addiction or some vice or some habit that we've been immersed in for most of our life, for decades. Our Lord is telling us with this parable that there is hope for us.

This paralytic was full of hope. Each time, his hope and his desire to be healed was greater than his disappointment, greater than his sadness and his failure. There were many, many times he went down to the water, but somebody always got there before him. He never quite managed it.

He failed and he failed and he failed, but he kept at it. He didn't give up. The secret of his life was that one day, Christ was passing by. Jesus saw him lying there and knew he'd been in that condition for a long time. And He said: “Do you want to be well again?”

Our Lord comes to us through our spiritual reading, through our periods of prayer, maybe through a retreat, perhaps through a friend who reaches out to us in deeper spiritual matters of the soul, pushes us in the right direction. It's the Holy Spirit speaking to us and saying, “Do you want to be well again?” Come up onto a new level. Start over. Begin the race again.

Any Olympic athlete who won a gold this year failed many times before they won the gold. God has permitted our miseries, our shortcomings, our difficulties and challenges, so that we have a specific area of fight, a specific area where He wants us to do battle and to show with our deeds that we want to be better. We want to be holy.

There can't be any pact with our defects and errors. You can't say: ‘Look, that's the way I'm made, that's the way I am. I can't help it!’

We have to try and make an effort to overcome those shortcomings, particularly shortcomings and weaknesses that separate us from God and from others. We can't give the excuse that we've tried several times to tackle them without any positive results.

‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is disturbed. While I'm still on the way, someone else gets down there before me. I've tried and tried again. But I'm still here.’

It's the heart that moves us to improve our interior dispositions through that conversion of the heart to God and to works of penance, and in this way, preparing our souls to receive the graces that God wants to give us.

Jesus asks us to persevere in the struggle, and to begin again as often as necessary, realizing that it is in struggle that love grows.

St. John Chrysostom says, “The Lord doesn't ask the paralytic in order to learn—this would be superfluous—but to make his patience known to all, for that invalid for thiry-eight years had hoped, without ceasing, to be freed from his illness.”

If we're looking forward, as Pope St. John Paul says, to the eternal wedding feast, then everything is worthwhile—every struggle, every beginning again, every bit of hope, every clinging to the teaching of the Church in different areas about what is right and what is true, because that's where love resides.

Sometimes Our Lord might ask us to struggle in a very difficult situation, and maybe we don't feel like struggling.

There was a book I read many years ago called The Battle of Monte Cassino. Monte Cassino was an abbey just south of Rome. St. Benedict is buried there; I think his sister also. The abbey of Monte Cassino has a commanding view over the approach road to Rome from the south.

The Nazis occupied this monastery. The Allies landed, I think, in the winter of 1944. They landed in a place called Anzio, and they began to make their way up the center of Italy. It was cold, it was winter, it was very uncomfortable.

The Poles, the Americans, the British, the French, the Australians, New Zealanders—they were all fighting to make a stand there in Italy. The Nazis had a commanding view over this approach road, so they were picked off like flies.

One journalist who wrote this book was in the front lines, and he described the conditions in the front lines:

“The shells were landing all around them. The soldiers were cold, battle-weary. Anyone in his right mind would want to be out of that hellhole. And at night, during dark, the mules would come to bring supplies. Then they would bring the dead and the injured back to the home camp.”

He said the temptation to desert was very great, to get out of that place. There was a sergeant checking all the wounded to make sure they were really wounded. One day, two soldiers feigned being injured. But the sergeant caught them and he ordered them back to the front lines.

Those tired, battle-weary soldiers went back and retook their positions in the front lines. They began again. But that was the last thing they felt like doing. They persevered in the battle.

Eventually, over time, the Nazis were pushed back off that promontory and they withdrew to the north of Italy. Rome was spared. It was one of the most decisive battles of the Second World War, won with tired soldiers who fought on.

Our love for Christ is shown in our decisiveness, in the effort we make to root out as soon as possible our dominant defect, or to obtain the virtue that for us might seem so difficult to practice.

But our love for Christ is also shown in our patience—our patience in the ascetical struggle, to let time pass.

Very often truth is the daughter of time. Victory is the daughter of time. Patience can be a great social force. Over time we change ourselves, we change our family, we change society, we change our profession.

It's possible that Our Lord may ask us to struggle over a long period, perhaps for thirty-eight years, maybe more, so that we grow in a particular virtue, or to overcome some negative aspect of our interior life.

A certain spiritual writer called Joseph Tissot has taught the importance of being patient with our defects so as to develop “the art of profiting from our faults.” He has a book entitled How to Profit from Your Faults.

We shouldn't be surprised or scandalized or discouraged when we see or discover the depth of our miseries, the depth of our weak humanity, or when we've used all the means that are within our reach. We haven't managed to reach the goal that we may have set ourselves.

We leave our spiritual progress in the hands of God. He's the one that looks after everything. He brings the fruit.

We shouldn't just simply get used to our defects, but rather, use our faults to grow in humility, in experience, in maturity of judgment.

We know that this man was constant over thirty-eight years, and maybe he could have continued until the end of his days. But the reward for his constancy was the meeting with Jesus.

Lord, give me patience in my interior life. Help me to return to you as often as necessary.

St. James says: “Be patient, therefore, brethren, until the coming of the Lord. Behold, the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, being patient over it until it receives the early and the late rain” (James 5:7).

We sow the seeds. Then God wants us to give things time to ripen and to mature. At the same time, He wants us to aim high.

There's a story of a farmer who had no food for his family. So he went out to hunt and he had three bullets in his rifle. He saw a rabbit but missed. Then he saw a fox and he missed. And then he saw a big fat turkey up in a tree.

He lifted up his rifle to shoot the turkey. But then as he was about to shoot the turkey. he heard a voice within him that said, ‘Aim high. Pray first. Aim high. Carry on struggling.’

But then out of the left corner of his eye he saw a deer. That deer had more meat than the turkey. So he lowered his rifle to shoot the deer. And he heard the voice again deep down inside him. ‘Pray first. Aim high. Stay focused.’

But then he noticed there was a rattlesnake between his feet. That posed the greatest danger to life and limb. So he lowered the rifle to shoot the snake. But again he heard that voice speaking a third time. ‘Pray first. Aim high. Stay focused.’

He decided to obey this voice of conscience. So he lifted up the rifle to shoot the turkey. He shot the turkey.

The bullet ricocheted off a bone in the turkey, hitting the deer and killing the deer. The impact of shooting the rifle made him lose his balance and so he stepped on the snake and killed it. And he fell backwards into a pond that was full of fish

And so when he stepped up out of the pond, he had a dead turkey, a dead deer, a dead snake, and plenty of fish with which to feed his family.

The moral of the story is ‘we pray first, we aim high, we stay focused’ irrespective of our failures and our mistakes. All sorts of things can go wrong.

In the London Olympics a number of years ago, somebody said they noticed a man with a tattoo on his arm. It was a tattoo that was specially made for the Olympics, except that Olympics was not spelt O-L-Y, it was spelt O-Y-L. Imagine if somebody puts a tattoo and then makes a misspelling. Horror of horrors!

Or another thing that happened at that Olympics that got global news was: somebody from South Korea won a gold medal, and when they stood up on the podium to receive the gold, the national anthem that was played was the national anthem of North Korea. Imagine the embarrassment in the London Olympics. This went viral all over the world.

A lot of records broken and other athletes did not quite make global news, but that little mistake did. When moments come when we make big mistakes and we have to hang our head in shame, it's a moment to grow in humility.

St. Francis de Sales used to say, “One has to suffer, in patience, the setbacks to our perfection, doing whatever we can to make progress in good spirit. We hope with patience, and instead of getting frustrated at having done so little in the past, we try diligently to do more in the future.”

The great way to look—to look to the future—to make up in the future for the things of the past.

Jesus, help me to hope, to struggle with persevering patience, realizing that that is something that gives you great joy.

Usually the virtues that we have to acquire are not acquired through sporadic bursts of effort. Rather, they're acquired with continuity of the effort, the constancy and trying again each day, each week, helped by grace. Hence, the benefit of weekly sacramental Confession, so that we get all the help from the graces that the sacraments have to give us.

In Friends of God, St. Josemaría says, “To win the battles of the soul, the best strategy is often to bide one's time and to apply the suitable remedy with patience and perseverance. ... Let me remind you that in your interior life you will suffer defeats, and you will have ups and downs—may God make them imperceptible—because no one is free from these misfortunes. But our all-powerful and merciful Lord has granted us the precise means with which to conquer. All we have to do is to use them, resolving to begin again and again at every moment, whenever necessary” (J. Escrivá, Friends of God, Point 219).

The heart of constancy lies in love. St. Thomas says, “Only with love can one be patient” and struggle, without accepting failures and defeats as inevitable, as baffling difficulties that don't have a solution.

We can't become like those Christians who, after many skirmishes and battles, find, as St. Teresa of Avila says, “their strength has come to an end; their courage has failed them” when “they're only a couple of steps from the fountain of living water.”

To be patient with ourselves while uprooting unwholesome tendencies and defects in character implies an unyielding approach and an acceptance of the fact that we'll often have to present ourselves before God, “like the servant who had no resources with which to pay” (cf. Matt. 18:23-25)—with humility, seeking new graces.

On our way towards the Lord, there will be many defeats that we suffer. Many of those defeats will be of no consequence, but perhaps some will. There might be big defeats, but the atonement and the contrition for those defeats will bring us even closer to God.

“Peter went out, and he wept bitterly” (Luke 22:62), but this was the moment of his gracious conversion. From that denial he went on to become a great saint and a great apostle.

This type of sorrow and reparation for our sins and shortcomings are not useless modes of gloom; rather, they are sorrow and tears born of love. It's the heavy thought of not returning as much love as Our Lord merits; it's the sorrow of returning evil for good to one who has loved us so much.

Jesus, give me the heart with which you want me to love you. Help me to see my shortcomings, defects, failures as things you have permitted so that the pathway of my struggle is very clear. I know what I have to fight on. I have to use all the means. I have to be heroic because you've called me to a heroic sanctity.

After patience with ourselves, we have to also try and have patience with others: patience and constancy in the apostolate; patience with those whom we most frequently deal, our children perhaps, our colleagues, and particularly with those to whom we may have a special obligation to give formation, or to help in some illness.

We have to take into account the defects of those around us. Our fortitude and our understanding will help us to remain calm, correcting when necessary, and also at the right time and in the right way, waiting a little, perhaps, before mentioning certain things, giving a positive reply, smiling, encouraging, always encouraging. Children need encouragement. Teenagers need encouragement.

If we do this in this way, then that approach allows our words to touch the hearts of those to whom we're speaking—hearts that otherwise might have remained closed. Then we can help them with much greater effectiveness.

Impatience, on the other hand, makes mutual relationships difficult, and can render any possible help and correction ineffective.

St. John Chrysostom says, “Continue making the same exhortation and never lazily. Always act amiably and pleasantly. Do you not see how often painters will erase their sketches and at other times retouch them, when they are trying to portray a beautiful face?

“Don't let the painter be one up on you. For if they make so much of an effort for a bodily image, how much greater reason do we have when we try to form the image of a soul, leaving no stone unturned in trying to perfect it.”

People need time. Souls, like good wine, improve with time, and God is patient. At every moment He gives His grace. He pardons offenses, encourages progress.

He has had—with each one of us—and he continues to have, limitless patience. And we ought to have that same patience with those that we want to bring closer to Him.

Though at times it might seem that they're not listening, or that the things of God do not interest them, we can't abandon them just for this reason.

It may be that Our Lord wants us to turn to prayer, a more silent prayer, a more patient prayer. We may need to intensify our prayer and our mortification, and also our charity and our sincere friendship, so that none of our friends should ever be able to say to Our Lord the words that the paralytic told him: “Sir, I have no one to help me. I have no one to let me down into the water when the water is stirred” (cf. John 5:7).

God has placed certain souls around us—children, relatives, friends, colleagues, people we come in contact with—who have a right for us to be that person who helps them into the water, to bring them closer to the source of the eternal happiness that they're looking for.

In Furrow, St. Josemaría says: “‘I do not have anyone to help me.’ This, unfortunately!, could be said by many who are spiritually sick and paralytic, who could be useful—and should be useful. Lord, may I never remain indifferent to souls” (J. Escrivá, Furrow, Point 212).

That's why we have to be attentive, attentive to the souls that God brings into our path, we come in contact with. Everybody is important.

Jesus, help me to be sufficiently concerned about all those who accompany me on my journey through life. Help me to be concerned about their formation. Help me not just to get used to their defects, as something they may regard as incorrigible. Help me to be really patient with them.

That soul might be one of our children, one of our relatives, or somebody very close to us.

In Christ lies the remedy for all the evils of which humanity complains. In Him everyone can find life and help. He's the fountain of the waters that give life to everything.

And so, when that paralytic was spoken to by Christ, that meant everything. John Paul II liked to say, “In Christ we find the meaning and the purpose of our life.”

We can ask Our Lady, that she might help us to begin over and over, even in our weakest moments with our greatest defects, drawing strength from this parable.

The man, the patience of him who never gave up, as he was looking for the waters of eternal life, the truth, the meaning, and the beauty that he would only find in that healing, that he would only find in Christ.

Mary, may you lead me to keep on fighting always, so that I may merit and find that wonderful reward.

I thank you, my God, for the good resolutions, affections, and inspirations that you have communicated to me during this meditation. I ask your help to put them into practice. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

GD