Editorial
Rise up and Walk
The city of Jerusalem was caught
up in the hustle and bustle of a festal celebration. However, there pervaded
an atmosphere that surpassed the festal air. In the eyes of the people
shone the gleam of expectation. As if the very grains of sand seemed to
proclaim that the holy city was going to be the venue of a great event.
The divine radiance of the King of kings who came down to earth to wipe
away the tears of men, engulfed the gates of the Temple of Jerusalem. Were
not the perennial streams of mercy in those blessed eyes, searching out
the poor and the abandoned?
There was a big crowd of
the blind, the crippled and the paralysed on the precincts of the pool
of Bethsaida. They were waiting to be the first to be healed with the divine
stirring of the waters. When would the angel come and move the waters of
the pool? However long might be the wait, they were determined to return
home only after a cure. Among them was an old man . One who had been ailing
for thirty eight years. "When Jesus saw him and knew that he had been lying
there a long time, he said to him, 'Do you want to be healed'"(Jn 5:6)?
Is not Jesus looking at
us waiting on the banks of the Bethsaida of our life, bearing the weight
of pain-ridden days and sufferings and asking us, "Do you want to be
healed? " He has seen our wounds, pain and tribulation. He knows that
we are the victims of our own misery.
Jesus lived in this world
only for thirty three years. But his eyes spotted the man who had been
afflicted with illness five years before he was born, knew about his helplessness,
and let the channels of mercy and providence flow into him. Jesus comes
into the Bethsaida of our daily life where we wait endlessly with expectation
and hope. Seeing our brokenness, and our adversities, Jesus cannot but
look at us and have compassion on us. That is why Jesus said to the man,
bed -ridden for thirty-eight years on the streets of Bedthsaida, "Rise,
take up your pallet and walk." Here is Jesus intervening in our life. He
sees our pain, our trouble, our hesitation, our failure and speaks the
word of deliverance to liberate us ,to heal us .He tells us to rise up
and walk. His voice resounds with power on our ears. Jesus enters our life
here and now with healing, with his consoling words, to release us from
the strain, the sickness and stagnation of our life as he did in the life
of the sick man of Bethsaida.
It is only one month since
the dawn of the new year. Let us remember that, if the sighs and sorrows
of the past year relentlessly pursue us and afflict us, Jesus is waiting
to instil joy in us in the coming days, through the showers of his unspeakable
mercy and compassion and to bestow on us peace and wholeness. Like the
Psalmist let us say,"Thou hast kept count of my tossings; put thou my
tears in thy bottle"(Ps 56:8)!
-Editor