Tuesday of the Fourth Week of Lent
When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had been ill for a long time, he said to him, “Do you want to be well?” (v. 6)
It is a question put to us as we enter the Eucharist. ‘Do you want to be well?’ Christ asks us: Do you consider it worth your while to look upon me and seek healing? The Church is continually gladdened by that stream which flows into her depths: the saving, healing, encouraging love of the Savior. Yet it cannot be received unless we turn to it and receive it with thanks and desire. Christ desires our response, but we can refuse it!
Strange—Jesus believes in us more than we believe in ourselves! To him we are desirable, but not to ourselves! He comes to awaken us to a great place of meeting; to awaken something beautiful in us which He sees and we do not. Pride stops us, a blindness, a stubbornness, a refusal to let the stream of God’s love irrigate our hearts. One cause of this lies in a failure to contemplate, to pay attention, to reflect, and to ask.
Through the ages, our Lord has appealed to us through his holy ones to come to him. Hear his appeal in Julian of Norwich:
With a kindly countenance our good Lord looked into his side, and he gazed with joy, and with his sweet regard he drew his creature’s understanding into his side by the same wound; and there he revealed a fair and delectable place, large enough for all mankind that will be saved and will rest in peace and love. …. For my delight is in your holiness and in your endless joy and bliss in me.
Reflection by Fr. Xavier Nacke, OSB
Posted in Articles for Lent, Daily Reflections, Lenten Resources