JOHN 5:1-16

“GET UP, TAKE YOUR MAT AND WALK.”

Jesus, as a good Jew, is a faithful observer of the Law, so He goes up to Jerusalem to celebrate the feasts. In Jerusalem He meets a paralytic, Jesus looks at him with a compassionate look and asks him a question that seems superfluous: Do you want to be cured? Why does Jesus ask that? Jesus’ question has an intention: to awaken faith and raise hope in the sick, because Jesus seeks the health of body and soul, the integral good of the person, and the requirement that precedes the miracle is always faith.

Jesus commands him to get up, take the mat and walk. At that moment the “zealous of the Law” enter the scene and say to him: “It is Saturday, and you cannot carry your stretcher”, to which the paralytic replies: the one who has healed me has ordered me to do so. For those lawyers, it was breaking the law and, therefore, Jesus had to be prosecuted.

Let us learn from Jesus to always live according to the spirit of the Law, which is none other than Love.