For 38 years the man has been trying to get into the water when it is "disturbed" but someone else always gets in before him. Jesus, however, wastes no time. "Rise up! Pick up your sleeping-mat and walk." The man is immediately cured and walks away. Again we have in the words of Jesus the intimation of resurrection to new life of which Jesus is the Source. "I am the Resurrection and the Life."

However, it is at this point that the legalists step in. On his way the man is challenged for carrying his sleeping mat on a sabbath day. How petty one can get! Here is a man who has been a cripple for 38 years and is now taken to task for carrying his sleeping mat on a sabbath. The wonder is that he can do it at all!

It is the legalists who are rigid and crippled. They need the healing power of God, but they are too proud to accept God's mercy and love! Aren't these legalists like those people who get upset because the vestments the celebrant is wearing at Mass is not the right colour for the day or those people who are ill but worry that they have not been fasting for the full hour before Communion.

During this Lenten season let each one of us hear Jesus asking us the question he puts to the man: "Do you want to be well again? Do you want to be made whole again?"