Lent - Day Twenty Six - A Deadly Cure

Gospel	John 5:1-3,5-16 ©

The healing at the pool of Bethesda

There was a Jewish festival, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. Now at the Sheep Pool in Jerusalem, there is a building, called Bethzatha in Hebrew, consisting of five porticos; and under these were crowds of sick people – blind, lame, paralyzed – waiting for the water to move. One man there had an illness which had lasted thirty-eight years, and when Jesus saw him lying there and knew he had been in this condition for a long time, he said, ‘Do you want to be well again?’ ‘Sir,’ replied the sick man ‘I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is disturbed; and while I am still on the way, someone else gets there before me.’ Jesus said, ‘Get up, pick up your sleeping-mat and walk.’ The man was cured at once, and he picked up his mat and walked away.

  Now that day happened to be the Sabbath, so the Jews said to the man who had been cured, ‘It is the Sabbath; you are not allowed to carry your sleeping-mat.’ He replied, ‘But the man who cured me told me, “Pick up your mat and walk.”’ They asked, ‘Who is the man who said to you, “Pick up your mat and walk”?’ The man had no idea who it was since Jesus had disappeared into the crowd that filled the place. After a while, Jesus met him in the Temple and said, ‘Now you are well again, be sure not to sin any more, or something worse may happen to you.’ The man went back and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had cured him. It was because he did things like this on the sabbath that the Jews began to persecute Jesus.

We have spent Sunday and Monday at this oasis and the Master does not seem to want to leave today either.  I for one am glad we are getting a few days of rest. Jerusalem grows ever closer and the Master's feet seem to be dragging. 

 I have spent a lot of time in the pool of water here in the oasis where the chill of the spring seems to be taking the pains of my aging body away.  Of course, the effect is temporary. But even temporary relief is good.  I remember in my youth, it seems so long ago now, then I would go into the drugstore and coming out with a shopping bag that contained a large bottle of Bacardi light rum, some Okeydoke popcorn and some Coca Cola.   My buddy and I would order pizza and do what we could do to empty the bottle of rum!  By contrast, today, I go into the drugstore and come out with, capsules, nostrums, and remedies designed to keep this ancient body moving.  So, I could sympathize with the poor guy at the pool of Bethesda. He was there but had no one to shove him into the water once it was disturbed and ready to dispense its healing powers. So, he would always be the bridesmaid and never be the bride as he saw one of his fellow patients collect the cure from the pool.  I felt sorry for the man.  

The Master filled us in on the background of the story.  It seems that when Jesus entered the enclosure where the pool was that He had left the Jewish world and entered the world of the Greeks.  All over the Greek world were pools that were said to have curative properties.  The Greeks believed that the pools were inhabited by spirits that once in a while, when the mood struck them, that they would churn the water up and the first person into the pool would be cured of whatever ailed them.  So, when Jesus entered the area of the pool he was leaving Jewish thought behind and entering the world of Greek superstition.  In doing so and by affecting the cure Jesus was showing that He was the living water and not some spirit that lived in a pool.  It was a challenge to the Greeks and then to top it all off he told the patient to pick up his mat and go home.  When the man did so, the Pharisees caught sight of this man "doing work" on the Sabbath by carrying his mat and they confronted him.  He told them that the person who had healed him had told him to pick up the mat and go home.  They asked him who was the one that cured on the Sabbath?  The former patient did not know because Jesus had slipped away before the man could thank him.  As he was walking, I guess still carrying his mat, he happened upon Jesus and he took a moment to thank Him and asked Him His name.  He then returned to the Pharisees and told them that a man named Jesus of Nazareth had cured them and they began to take notice of this Jesus and the stirrings of a plot against Him began.   

The Master said that when you challenge the culture you are living in just as Jesus challenged the Greek traditions of spirits in the pools you are bound to make enemies.  He pointed out how the  Pro-Life people who prefer life over death and protest the murder of innocent children in the womb are held in special contempt by the people who fight to make it law that the blood of babies can be shed with impunity. These people with the blood of the innocent on their hands are sponsored by the devil who is the author of death and lies.  

Master pointed out that the guilt of the Pro Murder people in the state of New York was greater because of the law that was recently passed that now allows innocent blood to be spilled up until the very moment of birth. Even Hitler and his cronies would not do this. He mentioned how the Catholic governor of the state who was giddy with joy as he signed this bill into law.  

The Master said that He would imagine that the patience of the Father was growing thinner by the day. He said that America was once the crucible of what was good and proper and good has fallen on hard times where the love of truth has been exchanged for New Age practices and thought is good only because that tickles the ears of the people. Justice was becoming something for the rich and the powerful who have lost sight of just who they are and have begun assuming the power of God, taking control of life and death into their hands even though they cannot restore life nor do they understand death and what the shedding of innocent blood is doing to their souls. The fate of these people, unless they repent, will be horrible on the last day.  

He told us no matter what, always side with the right even though it appears that evil has the might. The right will eventually win out over evil because God is righteous and His victory is assured.  Besides, it only took one man, who was sent and empowered by God to Ninevah and by the call of Jonah the great city put on sackcloth and drenched itself in ashes and withered themselves with fasting so that the hand of God would be stayed and the righteous punishment so richly deserved would not come crashing down upon them.   

One voice joined to another and another will eventually be heard. Link hands and form a living bridge against the raging waters of the advocates of death and destruction.  Raise your voice against their plans and  Be not afraid of what you are to say, because what He did for the Prophet Jonah the Spirit will do for you.  You will be given what to say and so the Holy Spirit will speak for you and your voice will be heard. 

A Lesson in Public Relations ?

Jesus said to the crowd: "They will seize and persecute you, they will hand you over to the synagogues and to prisons, and they will have you led before kings and governors because of my name. It will lead to your giving testimony. Remember, you are not to prepare your defense beforehand, for I myself shall give you a wisdom in speaking that all your adversaries will be powerless to resist or refute. You will even be handed over by parents, brothers, relatives, and friends, and they will put some of you to death. You will be hated by all because of my name, but not a hair on your head will be destroyed. By your perseverance, you will secure your lives."

Okay, I have to say that if I were an average Hebrew and was standing in the crowd that was listening to this talk that Jesus was giving, I might be tempted to continue to look for my messiah elsewhere.  I mean, just listen to what He says.  He says that they will seize you and persecute you, take you to court and even your parents, friends, and relatives will turn you over to the authorities and you will be hated by all because you believe in Jesus.  Where do I sign up?  

Look at today's world and this is what Christians face every day.  In the East our brothers and sisters, Catholics and Protestants alike have endured years of persecution due to the madness of ISIS.  In the United States, we watched during the Obama years as our religious freedoms were eroded and laws and regulations were passed that were completely contrary to Christian teaching and morals.  I include in this abortion under the guise of woman's health, mandatory provision of contraception under the HHS mandate, and the debasement of marriage with the adoption of same-sex marriage and the marginalizing of Christians nationwide. In Canada, a Catholic bishop was taken to court for preaching against same-sex unions under a commonwealth hate law. So, the law was being honed and shaped to disenfranchise and silence Christians and to make null and void the morals we have been living under for centuries. We should expect nothing less.

Our founder came into the world and teaching with authority He scared the powers that ruled His time. The chief priest knew that the Romans had a dim view of a coming Messiah and to protect themselves they had to distance themselves from any of these street preachers that might anger the Romans.  It never occurred to them that one day the real Messiah might appear as promised.  Thus, when Jesus appeared on the scene there was only one road that he could be placed on and that road led to the Cross and Calvary. 

Today, in the United States we are getting a short respite from the evils perpetrated during the Obama years.  But we must remember that it is only a respite and that the hatred of Christian values remains just below the surface and is ready to erupt again once the conditions are ripe for it to do so. We must be ready to bear our burdens cheerfully.  We must trust in the Lord to fill us believers with wisdom that will counteract the evil teachings of the enemy and we must remain strong in our faith and attract as many people as we can to become one with us.  Let our cry be, "This is the day that the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad."  Let our cry be heard in a cheerful voice even as we carry our crosses.  Remember the promise of the Lord, "Be thou faithful unto death and I will give thee the crown of life." 

Please remember the poor souls in Purgatory today. Challenge yourself to take two minutes to pray for your friends and relatives that might be there.  Please say a special prayer for the soul that has been there the longest and has no one to pray for him or her.  

A Clear Case of Discrimination !

Pharaoh then commanded all his subjects,

"Throw into the river every boy that is born to the Hebrews,


but you may let all the girls live."

Today's first reading at mass relates the story of how the Children of Israel fared after a new pharaoh came to power who did not know the deeds of Joseph.  The first thing that the pharaoh did was to make sure that he had slaves but not people that could rise up against him should an enemy come to attempt to take over Egypt. He proclaimed that all of the Hebrew boys should be drowned in the river.  This eliminated the chance that the Hebrews would get strong enough to eventually raise up an army against Pharaoh but kept the girls around to act as slaves and probably as entertainers on those long cold nights along the Nile.  He was sacrificing the future of the Hebrews to ensure the continued greatness of the Egyptians.  The Lord arranged a powerful good to come out of this murder of innocent infants and that good was Moses.  Moses would grow up in the house of Pharaoh and become one of the most powerful men in Egypt.

God can make good happen where we see only bad.  I do not know what it is about mankind that through the years we see that there is a hostility against the infants of his kind.  We have our story above, we have Herod killing the boys in the time of Jesus, and today, we have caused the deaths of millions of babies under the guise of "women's health" in the death chambers of Planned Parenthood. 

To sacrifice the future for convenience sake is a horrible thing. The right to life is something that is guaranteed by God because it is He that gives us children.  Pray for an end to abortion in the world and especially in America.  Pray for us to return to God in tears and repentance for what we have done since the dark day of Roe v Wade.  Find your voice and speak out for the unborn. 

The Poor Souls in Purgatory - Remember them and pray for them today! 

And Now For The News

Jesus said to his Apostles:
"Behold, I am sending you like sheep in the midst of wolves;    
so be shrewd as serpents and simple as doves.
But beware of men, 
for they will hand you over to courts
and scourge you in their synagogues,
and you will be led before governors and kings for my sake
as a witness before them and the pagans.
When they hand you over,
do not worry about how you are to speak
or what you are to say.
You will be given at that moment what you are to say.
For it will not be you who speak

Christians being persecuted for their faith in Jesus is nothing new. The founder of Christianity was Himself hung by nails on a cross and left to die.  Die he did.  The life forces that animated the body of Jesus of Nazareth left His body and he was truly as dead as could be. This was not some simple trick that a magician might pull, no, Jesus suffered the reality of death of His body, experiencing every ounce of pain in the cup he drank for us.  He, of course, used this very set back to achieve final victory when he defeated death itself and rose on the third day. 

In our reading today, Jesus warns us that He is sending us out into a world that will be hostile to us because of Him and because of His message. Throughout the centuries we have been persecuted and martyred for our faith. What Jesus said came to pass. 

Today we face a world that grows ever more intolerant of the Laws of God. We have been called hate mongers when we point out that God created man and women and marriage can only between people of the opposite sex.  We are hated when we point out that the murder of the unborn in the womb is just that, murder.  We are told that our antiquated beliefs have no place in the modern world and that our Church should reform our teachings to conform more exactly to what the majority of people believe.  Unfortunately for those that want this change, God's Kingdom is a kingdom and not a democracy.  Where other denominations once stood side by side with the Church on these issues, now, they, after convening a meeting and voting, have voted themselves on to the side of the pagans.  They in effect voted themselves out of God's kingdom and the word Protestant takes on a new and more sinister meaning. 

If we pick and choose the laws of God that we will obey and discard the ones that are inconvenient, then we no longer believe in God, we believe in ourselves.  I am so glad that I am a Catholic and that I can believe in the authority of the Church to guide me.  The day may come when I will have to stand and either acknowledge the authority of the Church in my life or accept the punishment of the mob that hates God and His Church.  I pray that when that time comes, I have the faith of our fathers and I can depend on the Holy Spirit to tell me what to say and to hold fast to my course no matter what the consequences shall be.    God Bless. 

Please pray for the Holy Souls in Purgatory, they cannot help themselves. 

A New Day In America (?) Let's Wait and See

I was at the doctor's office when Donald John Trump placed his hand on the Bible and took the oath of office making him the forty-fifth president of the United States.  In my sixty plus years on this earth, I have seen presidents come and go.  The first president I remember caring anything about was John F. Kennedy.  Everyone was excited when he was elected president.  Of course, I lived on the Southwest side of Chicago so the fact that he was a Catholic AND a democrat made him the perfect man to be president of the United States.  In Chicago you were democrat and if you lived on the Southwest side of Chicago, you were most likely Catholic.  I remember the day he was killed.  The nuns ushered us into the church where we prayed for him, to no avail, as he died anyway.  Next came LBJ who I think was really glad to take over. LBJ did not work out so well and Nixon next infested the White House.  He did get us out of Viet Nam, the place that Kennedy and Johnson got us into but beyond that, he was a bully and as the tapes revealed he suffered from a potty mouth.  He resigned and Ford stumbled into office, did not do a whole lot and was followed by Jimmy Carter.  In my opinion, Jimmy Carter was the most honest president that served during my lifetime. He was a bit of a bungler and was in the White House during the Iran Hostage Crisis.  He lasted just four years when an actor turned politician Ronald Regan entered the White House.  Many have good thoughts about him but I am still waiting for some of the trickle-down to trickle-down to me. Then came Bush the Elder, followed by Bill Clinton a sex maniac who almost achieved fame at becoming the first president to be impeached. Billy did win reelection and turned his office over to George Bush the Younger who got us embroiled in the Middle East. George moved out of the White House and Barack Obama moved in and for the next eight years presided over a legislative branch that blocked him at every turn.  He did get his health care initiate passed and spent the rest of his time chipping away at religious freedom.  Mandating that religious groups would have to go against the conscience and supply contraception through their insurance plan.  While he was in office it almost became against the law to be a Christian or to support Christian values.  Those that did were accused of promoting hate speech. The democratic policy during the eight years of Obama deserted the working people of the land.  Instead, it pulled its support from those whose agenda contained traditional American values and gave their support whose beliefs included abortion on demand, gay rights, gay marriage, and mandated every sort of thing the Christian working man was against.  Obama was a good orator.  I admired his ability to turn a phrase.  Unfortunately, I believe that that is all he was good at, speaking. I do not think that he had a clue what the working class Americans were thinking.  It was his blindness to the needs of the common person that cast the democrats into the cold at the mid-term elections and finally gave the GOP power in both houses. That brings us up to today.

Today we have a president in office that is different than any other president that we have had in modern times.  He is a president who does not necessarily follow the beliefs of the GOP in full.  He is a man that is used to winning, a businessman who likes the thrill of the deal.  He is not so much of the diplomat but is rather more of a man filled with thunder and bombast.  I have not made up my mind about Donald John Trump yet.  In his first days, he and his vice president have done things to promote Life.  The president himself mentioned the Walk for Life and challenged the press to cover it and the vice president actually gave a speech at the event, the first time that has happened, ever.!  He also has recognized that the Syrian Christians are being slaughtered for their faith and has said that they will receive preference in immigration matters.   In this respect, DJT is a breath of fresh air for those of us concerned with the sanctity of life from conception to natural death and for those of us concerned about the Christians being martyred in the Middle East. For eight years under Obama, we had to watch while abortion was touted under the name "women's health care" and the family and the law of God was trampled upon under the guise of "equality.  Marriage in America will never be the same, it has been changed forever with the legalization of same-sex "marriages."  We saw under Obamacare the mandate that even the Little Sisters of the Poor would have to provide contraception to their employees in spite of their religious views opposing it.  DJT will disable this clause and help build up the right of a Christian to be a Christian.

Donald also has some things on his agenda that are downright silly.  The so-called wall between Mexico and the United States is dumb.  I believe that we should keep illegal aliens out of our nation. My grandparents, on both sides of my family, immigrated to the United States and were admitted legally.  They were honest, hard-working people who obeyed the law.  There was one minor incident when my grandmother was told to stop making bathtub gin, she was turned in by her best friend.  Other than that, they all learned the language and became naturalized American citizens.  For those who are here and are undocumented, DJT proposes to round up the ones who are criminals, are in gangs, who are violent, and to send these illegals back to where they came from.  I support this idea but I do not support deporting families that are here that are working to make something of themselves, who are obeying the law.  These are the types of people we need to have in America.

DJT also wants to make sure that the Muslim immigrants granted entrance to America are vetted to make sure that they pose no threat.  These immigrants are coming from lands that have been traditionally hostile to America.  I see nothing wrong with this. America gathers its strength and power from its diversity. Every one of us here (except Native Americans) are the result of people who left their homes and came to America to embrace life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We do not need people who are radically opposed to our ideals and who would resort to violence to attempt to bring their radical form of Islam to the forefront.

I am not going to tell you whom I voted for in the past election. It is my business and I will allow you to conjecture on your own.  For now, I have to say that I am going to take a wait and see approach to our new president.  I am going to pray for him and our country.  I am going to wish him good health and a clear mind.  To do otherwise would be like wishing the pilot of the airplane you are riding in to crash the plane.  There are interesting times ahead for Americans.  By the way that is an old Chinese curse, "May you live in interesting times."

Attitude Is Important

The Sodom Chamber of Commerce Welcomes You!
What happens in Sodom stays in Sodom. 

Today in this world we have created for ourselves, a world where little by little God is being edged out and being replaced with what seems good, or feels good, or doesn't offend, we Christians have a grave duty.  It is a duty to our to our God, to our Church and to our fellow human creatures.  Our duty is to be the pain in the ass for the world. (I cam't believe he said that!) It is the easiest thing in the world to be politically correct, just sitting back and letting what happens around us happen. We need not participate. No we just need to stand by and watch it happen. This will promote peace and harmony among all of the people and isn't that what we are after?  Peace is a good thing after all isn't it? Well, there is peace and there is peace. In 1938 Neville Chamberlain stumbled off of his airplane clutching a piece of paper in hand and proclaimed that he had brought back "peace in our time." We all know what happened. On September 1, 1939 NAZI Germany started World War II which caused millions of deaths world wide. 

The men and women living in ancient Sodom kept things politically correct, they were at peace with one another and we know what happened to them. I am afraid that peace is something that is going to be hard to achieve in our world. We Christians have the duty to point the way, to be a lighthouse that points out the rocky outcrops that litter the pathways of life. This duty is not going to make us popular with the people around us that have chosen to turn their back on the law of God and to follow their own law. It is very important that in being a PIA we do so keeping in mind that those we are trying to help are beloved by God our Father just as we are. The most rabid homosexual activist, the Muslim who bathes in the blood of the innocent, the abortion doctor who has filled his wallet with money by creating baby cadavers, all of these are loved by God who is just one step away from them with His arms outstretched waiting for them to return to Him. 

In a soul where God is absent, ego grows to imperfectly fill His place. A soul without God can never be satisfied because no matter what he/she obtains in gratification of their wants still leaves them wanting more.  They are in a most pitiful shape because they cannot see the trouble that they are in. When we point out an issue where Christians and they are on opposite sides their ego shuts off their ability to see and they that cannot see, will not see. 

Okay, lets get to the bottom line. We must love our brothers and sisters back to life. Do you remember Chinese handcuffs? You put your fingers in them and if you pull hard, they hold more tightly to your fingers and you cannot get out of them. Release the pressure and your fingers slip right out. While we have to confront people about behavior that is sinful we must do it in a loving and respectful way. We must always remember that we are the planters and God Himself is the harvester. If we sit back and say nothing then we are guilty as if we committed the sin ourselves.  If we attack frontally and insult our brothers and sisters, we can only expect them to hold on to their beliefs even more strongly. We must love them back to health. Our good example and gentle prodding will do more good than anything else. 

God bless all of you. Please leave a comment, even if it is only to say you think I am nuts! Michael