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Encountering the Word

After this there was a festival of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. Now in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate there is a pool, called in Hebrew Bethzatha, which has five porticoes. In these lay many invalids—blind, lame, and paralysed. One man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had been there a long time, he said to him, “Do you want to be made well?” [Full text: John 5:1-16]

Contemplating the Word

Those of us who are physically able, and who take pride in our ability to get things done with ease, may resist the observation that, from the perspective of the God who loves us and calls us into being, we are blind, lame and paralysed. Our inability to see the presence of God around us and to consistently identify what’s really important is indicative of our blindness. Our halting attempts to reach out to others and to take the journey beyond ourselves and our habitually narrow worldview is indicative of our lameness. Our unwillingness to go the extra mile and genuinely stand beside those in need in spite of the cost to ourselves is indicative of our paralysis. We resist the thought that we are the blind, the lame, and the paralysed referred to in the reading today, and yet isn’t that precisely the problem: that we cannot see that this is most often our reality?

In this, I’m reminded of an earlier reading – the Transfiguration (see Sunday Week 2 of Lent). There we noted the disciples’ inability to process what was happening before their eyes. James and John are rendered mute, and Peter completely misunderstands what is required of him. Most of us, most of the time, have very little idea of what God is doing, much less have much awareness of how we are to respond. We are the blind, the deaf, the lame, the leper, the paralysed and the possessed that feature regularly throughout the Gospels.

Another way of looking at it is that we suffer from a crisis of imagination. We cannot imagine that God wants to work in and through us as he reaches out to everyone we come in contact with. Our relationship with God is like swimming in a pool. We are content to play around in the shallow end of the pool, imagining that it is not our place to take our feet off the bottom of that pool and swim into the deep. The problem is that playing around in the shallow end of the spiritual pool is not going to satisfy most adults. We have to go deep – where it is challenging, a little dangerous, but ultimately much more satisfying. If we do not, our spiritual lives are in danger of withering up and dying.

But how do we do this? Paul describes it perfectly in his letter to the Romans (12:1-2). On the surface of it, it is so simple. Paul says that you are to ‘give yourself completely to God…do not compromise…if you do this, God will transform you and your life’. So simple and yet, where do we start? I invite you to try it today and see how you get on. If you are anything like me, you will form all sorts of good intentions and then find yourself stumbling at almost every hurdle. Years of failure can wear you down. You start to wonder whether what Paul is describing is possible, or even desirable. You relax, you compromise, and you go back to the shallow end of the pool.

This is an important moment. It is the moment when we realise that without grace there is nothing we can do. Left to our own devices we can achieve very little when it comes to the life God is offering us. In fact, without grace we can achieve nothing. But that is alright. The life of faith has very little to do with our personal achievement. On the contrary, all we can do is believe that God wishes to fill our lives to the brim with his love and his presence, and then ask him to bring this about in us. The people in the deep end of the pool (the saints) are not heroic, strong people in their own right. They are just people who said ‘yes’ and allowed God to lead them into the deep. The proclamation of the Gospel to all people all of the time can be an overwhelming prospect, until we recall that all we are being asked to do is to trust God to lead us. The rest is up to God.

That we are blind, lame and so on inevitably impacts on our ability to carry out our mission. The problems our inabilities cause are myriad, but there is one in particular that Pope Francis often asks us to think about. It concerns our collective inability to see past our long established ways of doing things, and our desire to preserve our structures in preference to truly responding to the needs to those around us:

“‘The Church is called to be the house of the Father, with doors always wide open… Everyone can share in some way in the life of the Church; everyone can be part of the community, nor should the doors of the sacraments be closed for simply any reason…The Eucharist, although it is the fullness of sacramental life, is not a prize for the perfect but a powerful medicine and nourishment for the weak’ (EG 47). Grace and mercy come before ‘holiness’ and judgement in the Kingdom of God”.[2]

In this we are to be constantly open to being a Church that is not monochromatic in its self-expression. Pope Francis notes:

“If we are to open to a less monocultural and monotonous Church we need to be aware and open to the everyday encounters which hold the promise of change. I am drawn to the words of Benedict XVI who speaks of this. ‘Being a Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction’ (EG 7)”.

That the Pope is challenging us to move out of our cultural comfort zone is clear:

“The message that we proclaim always has a certain cultural dress, but we in the Church can sometimes fall into a needless hallowing of our own culture, and thus show more fanaticism than true evangelising zeal’ (EG 117)”.[3]

Speaking to the Word

Spend a few minutes in prayer to the God who is as close to you as your breath. Ponder the reality of God’s presence and contemplate the thought that God has something for you – a plan that is as unique as you are. Don’t worry about what that plan is nor about what you are to do. Your role is simple: sit in God’s presence and wait for him.

Remain silently in God’s presence for as long as you feel inclined or opportunity will allow. Then bring before God any sincere prayers of intercession that you have. Instead of asking God to do things for you, ask that he might achieve whatever he wishes through you.

Finish by praying the great yet simple prayer of praise to the Blessed Trinity: Glory be to the Father, to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen

[1] Connolly., p. 10.

[2] Ibid., p. 10.

[3] Graeme Mundine, “Leadership for Mission with Aboriginal Peoples,” in Living the Joy of the Gospel: The Francis Effect, ed. Danielle Achikian, Peter Gates, and Lana Turvey(Sydney: Catholic Mission & Catholic Religious Australia, 2013)., p. 15.

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