A Site of Mercy.

Antarctica holds 90 percent of the earth’s ice, which accounts for nearly 69 percent of all freshwater. With 30 percent of freshwater in the ground, we depend on a mere 1 percent of the earth’s fresh surface water for our health and well-being.

Today’s readings draw our attention to healing and life-giving waters. In the Gospel, poor access to the healing waters at Bethesda is a problem for the man who has been ill for thirty-eight years. At least this is the excuse and indirect answer he gives when Jesus asks, “Do you want to be well?” Mercifully, Jesus gives him a second chance. The man listens, takes up his mat, and walks. His place of misery becomes a site of mercy and belief.

This occurred in Jerusalem, not long after a woman in Samaria had begged Jesus for his living waters so she would never thirst again. From her initial confusion comes recognition of Jesus as the Messiah. In an intervening episode in Cana, where Jesus earlier had transformed water into wine, he assured a royal official that his child would be healed. Believing, the official walked home. Failing to believe in Jesus is a great sin, the one that he asks the cured man, seen later in the temple, to do no more “so that nothing worse may happen to you.” One after another, these stories in John’s Gospel are about coming to believe in Jesus.

Just as in Ezekiel’s vision abundant water flows from the Temple, making arid land flourish and changing the salty sea into freshwater, so for us in baptism. Blessed, even before many of us could believe, by the life-giving waters of baptism, we can choose to make excuses for any debilitating unbelief, or we can hear, believe, and go forth.

John Borelli. Taken from Give Us This Day.

John Borelli, a historian of religions and a theologian, is currently at Georgetown University, where he serves as the president’s special assistant for dialogue and Catholic identity.