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Tuesday of the Fourth Week of Lent
Ezekiel 47:1-9, 12
Psalm 46:2-3, 5-6, 8-9
John 5:1-16
S
UMMARY
How to keep the Lord’s Day holy.
R
EFLECTION
In the Gospel, Jesus is in Jerusalem at a pool called Bethesda in Hebrew. There lay a
number of the ill and lame. Jesus found a man who had been waiting thirty-eight years
to be cured after the water in the pool had been stirred. The issue was that there was
no one to help the man enter the pool.
After the man told Jesus that he wanted to be well, Jesus told the man to rise up, take
his mat and walk. This was on
the Sabbath when the man
was cured and was carrying
his mat. The carrying of your
mat was something that was
not to be done on the Sab-
bath and the cured man was
confronted about this. Later
those who con-
fronted the man
found out that Je-
sus had cured him
and instructed him
to carry his mat.
So after all of this,
again Jesus was
looked poorly upon for curing on the Sabbath, not keeping the command-
ment of keeping the Lord’s Day of rest holy.
When we think of keeping the Lord’s Day holy, we usually associate it with
going to Mass. But there are additional ways that this can be done.
As many come to Mass, they bring items for the Giving Bank. These include
food items, coupons, toiletries, and some clothing items such as socks for
the homeless.
Midmorning on Sundays, without any fanfare, a group of dedicated individu-
als show up at St. Joseph Center and prepare the grocery bags that will be