Do You Want to be Well?

Gospel Reflection March 12, 2024

Daily Readings USCCB

“Do you want to be well?” Jesus asks the sick man.

Well, do you?

Do, I?

I am spiritually a sick man. My sins are habitual to the point where I don’t even have to look at an examination of conscience before I go to confession. It’s the same sins I confess every time. I am contrite every time, I want to be a saint—but the journey is proving difficult. My biggest daily challenges are gossip and backbiting.  The Letter of St. James tells us, “Consider how small a fire can set a huge forest ablaze. ⁶ The tongue is also a fire. It exists among our members as a world of malice, defiling the whole body and setting the entire course of our lives on fire, itself set on fire by Gehenna.”^[1]

You see what is at stake? I am a sick man. Sacred Scripture tells me my sins are serious to the point of hell.

Healing at Bethesda Public Domain

Friends, I am also an optimist who continues to cultivate the three theological virtues in my life: faith, hope, and love. When we’re down on the mat—hope is important—because it is the fighter’s virtue. It is the virtue that combats despair and scrupulosity. I am a spiritually sick man, but I have faith and hope through God’s grace, provided in the sacraments of confession and the Eucharist, will make me a saint.

And what happens when I pick up the mat? What really happens when I stop engaging in the “water-cooler” gossip? I become more Christlike and as the gospels remind us, then persecution follows the followers of Christ—that’s the issue here, fear.

May God give me the grace to overcome this fear and become His saint.

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^[1] New American Bible, Revised Edition. (Washington, DC: The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, 2011), Jas 3:5–6.