29/03/2022

Water is so important to life that it becomes an image of God. The first reading is Ezekiel's vision of the stream of living water flowing out of the Holy of Holies and filling the whole world with the goodness of creation. It is God's love for his people. It is the living water that Jesus offered to the Samaritan woman.

Many are waiting for the movement of the waters in the Sheep pool but the sick need help to get to it to find healing. The man sick for 38 years had in fact outlived his helpers and couldn't make it to the pool. Jesus cures him even though it is the Sabbath and Jesus knows that this will cause him some trouble with "the keepers of the Jewish conscience" particularly with the Pharisees. How far is the Sheep Pool from the Temple? It must be less than a Sabbath Journey as Jesus meets the same man in the Temple on the same day and tells him the reality which is God's message to us all. Sin no more.

St John tells us that it is this and similar  "profanations" of the Sabbath that is the cause of the "Jews"increasing enmity towards Jesus.

Dear Lord today let me live in your Love knowing that all that is good is brought to us by You the Holy Spirit working through Father and Son. May Mary and the Saints continue to plead for us faced with the difficulties and sins of this world to make us ready to be welcomed into the world to come.