Homily: Tuesday of the 4th Week of Lent 2016 (school mass) - Do you want to be well?

“Do you want to be well?” Jesus addressed that question to the man who had been ill for 38 years, who lay at the pool of Bethesda. What exactly was his illness? Well, St. John doesn’t tell us, but he was certainly counted among the sick, blind, lame, and crippled.  Jesus had known the man had been ill for a long time; it’s quite possible that Jesus had seen him there before he began his public ministry, for we know that Jesus’ parents went to Jerusalem every year for the feast of the Passover.  Yet, often in the Gospels, we see Jesus looking very deeply into peoples’ hearts: Jesus seems to know what they are thinking and feeling before they do.

Jesus asks each of us today, “Do you want to be well?”  Well?  What is your illness? What is your sickness?  For many of us, the illness, the sickness, the blindness, isn’t so much physical, but spiritual.  A mind, a heart diseased with selfishness, afflicted with impatience, blind to the needs of others, deaf to the cries of the poor, a will crippled and unable to do the good we so desire to do.

For some of us, we might not even know how sick we are, but Jesus does.  He knows our illness, the cause of our illness, he knows the open wounds in our hearts which we fail to recognize.  “Do you want to be well of those too?”

Each of us do well today to acknowledge our spiritual ills to Jesus: name them, be honest about them, own up to them.  We also do well to say to Jesus: heal me of the illnesses I don’t even know about, that’s I’m not aware of, that I have a hard time admitting. 

Jesus is the medicus animae—the healer of souls, and he is able to heal us because he is God, and he wants to see us whole and healthy. 

Most of all, he wants to heal us from that part of us that says, “I don’t need him. I can do it on my own.” That part of us that says, I don’t need to pray, I don’t need to go to mass, I don’t need to go to church, I don’t need to study the Catholic faith, I don’t need to practice fasting, I don’t need to keep myself pure, I don’t need to perform works of charity. That’s the sickest part of us that needs to be healed the most. 

“Do you want to be well?” 

Jesus heals that sickest part of us primarily in the sacrament of reconciliation.  Even though many of us have gone to reconciliation already this Lent, we may need to go again if we’ve fallen into serious sin.  In the Eucharist, Jesus strengthens the part of us that is recovering from being seriously ill, the part of our souls traumatized by sinful behavior. 

As Jesus comes to us in the Eucharist today, let us open our minds, hearts, bodies, and souls to his healing, his strengthening, that we may be devoted to the work of Gospel for the glory of God and salvation of souls.