The texts from the Roman Catholic Lectionary today challenge us to expand our sense of love to bring more abundant life to the people we encounter on our journey.
Love in the community
The reading from the Prophet Ezekiel describes life giving water flowing from the Temple.
* [47:1–12] The life and refreshment produced wherever the Temple stream flows evoke the order and abundance of paradise (cf. Gn 1:20–22; 2:10–14; Ps 46:5) and represent the coming transformation Ezekiel envisions for the exiles and their land. Water signifies great blessings and evidence of the Lord’s presence (cf. Jl 2:14).1
Psalm 46 praises God’s defense of His City and People.
* [Psalm 46] A song of confidence in God’s protection of Zion with close parallels to Ps 48. The dominant note in Ps 46 is sounded by the refrain, The LORD of hosts is with us (Ps 46:8, 12). The first strophe (Ps 46:2–4) sings of the security of God’s presence even in utter chaos; the second (Ps 46:5–8), of divine protection of the city from its enemies; the third (Ps 46:9–11), of God’s imposition of imperial peace.2
In the Gospel of John, Jesus Heals on the Sabbath.
* [5:14] While the cure of the paralytic in Mk 2:1–12 is associated with the forgiveness of sins, Jesus never drew a one-to-one connection between sin and suffering (cf. Jn 9:3; Lk 12:1–5), as did Ez 18:20.3
Eileen Wirth comments that the church of her childhood was strictly “letter of the law”. Girls would put a tissue on their heads before entering a church even if it was just to pay a quick visit. Did you dare attend a Protestant wedding or even a funeral? Had you committed a sin by opening a King James Bible? Vatican II freed us from a lot of this nonsense, and she rejoices every time Pope Francis says something like “who am I to judge?”
It’s easier to be a letter of the law person because you can go strictly by the book. You don’t risk suffering any consequences as Jesus did for violating regulations in order to obey the Great Commandments to love God and other people. Saints throughout the ages including our own era have suffered for breaking rules in the name of obeying those greater commandments. Heroes like Dorothy Day and the late Rep. John Lewis were beaten and jailed for refusing to practice a bland form of Christianity that followed legal rules but never challenged injustice. They spent their lives making “good trouble” at great personal cost, as Jesus did.4
Don Schwager quotes “Christ our physician,” by Saint Augustine of Hippo, 430-543 A.D.
"Our wound is serious, but the Physician is all-powerful. Does it seem to you so small a mercy that, while you were living in evil and sinning, He did not take away your life, but brought you to belief and forgave your sins? What I suffer is serious, but I trust the Almighty. I would despair of my mortal wound if I had not found so great a Physician." (excerpt from Sermon 352,3)5
The Word Among Us Meditation on John 5:1-16 comments that so often we turn to God to solve some problem or to grant us a blessing. Of course this is not bad in itself—Jesus started with the man’s natural desire: “Do you want to be well?” (John 5:6). But if our relationship with Jesus is limited to such prayers, it may mean that we are seeking him because of what he can do for us, not because of who he is.
Like the man by the pool, we can miss Jesus standing before us, the source of life and healing. He can quench our thirst for love, for forgiveness, for freedom and meaning. His presence can soothe us like living water. He can fill us with a peace that doesn’t come and go. In him we can find answers; we can find hope. We can find him who satisfies us like nothing else can. Jesus is offering you his living water today. You may see obstacles in your life; you may be waiting for the pool to stir or for someone to carry you. But Jesus stands ready to cut right through your circumstances, to heal and restore. “Jesus, Healer, I thirst for your living waters.”6
Friar Jude Winkler notes the distance in time and space between Ezekiel and Jerusalem during the Exile to underline the cosmic nature of worship. The chiastic structure of the signs in the Gospel pairs the healing today with that of the man born blind. Friar Jude notes the ambiguous approach to the relationship between sin and health.
Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM, reflects that after years of counseling both religious and nonreligious people, it seems to him that most humans need a love object (which will hopefully become a mutual subject!) to keep themselves both sane and happy. That love object becomes our “North Star,” serving as our moral compass and our reason to keep putting one foot in front of the other in a happy and hopeful way. All of us need someone or something, or an animal (did anyone ever tell you that our English word animal comes from anima, the Latin for soul?) to connect our hearts with our heads. Love grounds us by creating focus, direction, motivation, even joy—and if we don’t find these things in love, we usually will try to find them in hate. We can certainly see the consequences of this unmet need for love in our society today!
In some ways, the object of our affection is arbitrary. It can begin as a love of golf, a clean house, your cat, or a desire to cultivate a certain reputation for yourself. Granted, the largeness of the object will eventually determine the largeness of the love, but God will use anything to get us started, focused, and flowing. Only a very few actually start this journey with God as the object. That is fully to be expected. God is not in competition with reality, but in full cooperation with it. All human loves, passions, and preoccupations can prime the pump, and only in time do most of us discover the first and final Source of those loves. God is clearly humble and does not seem to care who or what gets the credit. Whatever elicits the flow for you—in that moment and encounter, that thing is God for you! I do not say that without theological foundation, because my Trinitarian faith says that God is Relationship Itself. The names of the three “persons” of the Trinity are not as important as the relationship between them. That’s where all the power is—in the “in between”!7
Love calls us to extend our reach and become open to the Spirit of full life.
References
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