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In imitation of our Master, we Christians are called to confront the poverty of our brothers and sisters, to touch it, to make it our own and to take practical steps to alleviate it.
- Pope Francis (How do you do this?)
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Daily Readings
Ez 47:1-9, 12; Ps
46:2-3, 5-6, 8-9
Jn 5:1-16
There was a feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.
Now there is in Jerusalem at the Sheep Gate
a pool called in
Hebrew Bethesda, with five porticoes.
In these lay a large number of ill, blind, lame, and crippled.
One man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years.
When Jesus saw him lying there
and knew that he had been ill for a long time, he said to him,
"Do you want to be well?"
The sick man answered him,
"Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool
when the water is stirred up;
while I am on my way, someone else gets down there before me."
Jesus said to him, "Rise, take up your mat, and walk."
Immediately the man became well, took up his mat, and
walked. Now that day was a sabbath.
So the Jews said to the man who was cured,
"It is the sabbath, and it is not lawful for you to carry your mat."
He answered
them, "The man who made me well told me,
'Take up your mat and walk.'"
They asked him,
"Who is the man who told you, 'Take it up and walk'?"
The man who was healed did not know who
it was,
for Jesus had slipped away, since there was a crowd there.
After this Jesus found him in the temple area and said to him,
"Look, you are well; do not sin any more,
so that
nothing worse may happen to you."
The man went and told the Jews
that Jesus was the one who had made him well.
Therefore, the Jews began to persecute Jesus
because he did this on a
sabbath.
Praying the Daily Gospels: A Guide to Meditation, by Philip St. Romain, 2018 (3rd ed.) John 5: 1-3, 5-16 (A healing in Jerusalem) Jesus found
people suffering and abandoned everywhere. In today’s reading he notes the faith and hope of a man who has been suffering for thirty eight years. Jesus heals him but is criticized for doing so because it is the Sabbath, a day when such works are forbidden. • What “moving waters” are you awaiting so that you can get about the business of living fully? How is this affecting you
now? • Hear Jesus saying to you, ‘Rise, take up your mat, and walk.”
Treatise on the Love of God, by St. Francis de Sales (1567-1622) ____________ BOOK IV: OF THE DECAY AND RUIN OF CHARITY Chapter 8: An exhortation to the amorous submission which we owe to the decrees of divine providence.
Let us cry out then, Theotimus, on all occurrences, but let it be with an entirely amorous heart towards the most wise, most prudent, and most sweet providence of our eternal Father: O the depth of the riches of the wisdom and of the knowledge of God! O Saviour Jesus, Theotimus, how excessive are the riches of the Divine goodness! His love towards us is an incomprehensible abyss, whence he has provided for us a rich sufficiency, or
rather a rich abundance of means proper for our salvation; and sweetly to apply them he makes use of a sovereign wisdom, having by his infinite knowledge foreseen and known all that was requisite to that effect. Ah! what can we fear, nay rather, what ought not we to hope for, being the children of a Father so rich in goodness to love and to will to save us; who knows so well how to prepare the means suitable for this and is so wise to apply them; so good to will, so clear-sighted to ordain, and
so prudent to execute?
Let us never permit our minds to flutter with curiosity about God's judgments, for, like little butterflies, we shall burn our wings, and perish in this sacred flame. These judgments are incomprehensible, or, as S. Gregory Nazianzen says, inscrutable, that is, one cannot search out and sound their motives: the means and ways by which he executes and brings them to perfection cannot be
discerned and recognized: and, clever as we may be, yet we shall find ourselves thrown out at every turn and lose the scent. For who hath known the mind, the meaning and the intention of God? Who hath been his counsellor, to know his purposes and their motives? Or who hath first given to him? Is it not he, on the contrary, who presents us with the benedictions of his grace to crown us with the felicity of his glory ? Ah! Theotimus, all things are from him, as being their Creator; all things are
by him, as being their Governor; all things are in him, as being their Protector; to him be honour and glory for ever and ever, Amen! [215] Let us walk in peace, Theotimus, in the way of holy love, for he that shall have divine love in dying, after death shall enjoy love eternally.
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