Is health the most important thing?
I often hear that health is the most important thing. If there is health, the rest will be.
In the Gospel we see a sick person, just one who would say that health is the most important thing in life. In his expectation of health, miracle and help, he spent thirty-eight years of his life. This is a resigned man. We do not know for sure if he has been lying there for so long, because he has been fighting for his place all these years, or maybe because he gave up the fight already thirty years ago and got used to his situation?
One day someone showed up who just asked him: Do you want to be well? And he was healed. Just like that. After thirty-eight years, it was time to get up and go to work and change everything in life. Nothing was there as before. Nothing. He also had to deal with a stupid interpretation of the law. He lived the best moments of his life, and the Pharisees confront him with idiotic problems.
Sometimes one gets the impression that our prayer for health, not only physical, but also spiritual and mental, ends with the first sentence of this man: Lord, I have no man to help me. Many time we say: God, the circumstances of my life are hopeless, I am not doing well, everyone is stuck with me, the government is not helping, the Church does not care about my needs, my wife does not want to talk to me, my superiors take care of the better ones.
Jesus takes an interesting attitude. We can get the impression that he does not feel sorry for this man, does not enter into his lamentation. He only asks one rather strange question: do you want to be healthy. Lord, I have been lying here for thirty-eight years waiting for healing,and you ask me if I want to be healthy? You think that I have been lying here for thirty-eight years for fun? Man, of course I want to be healed. There is something like a second meaning in Jesus' question: do you really want to be healthy, or do you just want to make it more pleasant and easier?
And here I come back to our talk that health is the most important thing. Do we really want to be healthy? After all, when we are healthy, it will suddenly turn out that there is nothing to complain about, nothing to talk about, nothing to brag about and to bid on what is worse.
You can sing endlessly, listen, listen Lord to the people who is begging You, please perform a miracle ... And not accept a miracle. After listening to this Gospel, it is easy to identify with that sick person. It is easy to be indignant at clinging Pharisees. However, there is one more character there. Nameless. The man waited thirty-eight years because, as he says himself, I have no man to lead me into the pool. Nobody helped this poor man in thirty-eight years. None of the pious people who came to Jerusalem wanted to help him.
Perhaps healing for us is to come precisely in opening ourselves to other people. Not necessarily sick. But the one that we still have not wanted to see for thirty-eight years. This Gospel is not to please us. This Gospel comes into our lives to convert us. Sometimes a good word spoken in the heart is enough. Sometimes it is enough to look for good in another person. Health is important, but what is more important is whether I really want healing and what comes after it.
“Rise, take up your mat, and walk.”
How good that the Father has sent us his only-begotten Son. He comes to become the Man who will lead us to the pool, to the Source of living water. From the Incarnation and Birth of the Son, the cry: “there is no man” is unjustifiable. And I do not have to push my way towards the surface of the pool anymore. Nobody comes in before me. Here is the Lord speaking to me with the power of God: Get up, take your bed and walk! Take what makes you blind, what makes you limp, what makes you paralyzed, and walk with it! It is not about flaunting it, but about taking it in your arms (on your shoulders) and going on the road with Jesus. You do not have to lie in these porticoes. Cleanliness is not about sterilization, because then you die much faster. So, take what you are (your past and present), take what you have (both good and difficult) and move! Do not lie down! Wake up from this paralyzing dream which is the simplest form of escape from reality.
Take it and get up! Do not look at others who are reluctant or do not want to change (prefer to lie in the porticos). This change invites you to do great and difficult things. What is easy, convenient and pleasant ends quickly and, in addition, ends badly, although at the beginning it has quite good appearance. Become aware of whom you are healed from and remember well that it is not forever and ever. The Lord Jesus warns the healed one: Look, you are well; do not sin any more, so that nothing worse may happen to you.
Until Tomorrow
fr. george