Water Walk # 8, Lourdes

In Jerusalem, a crowd of paralysed, lame and blind – invalids as we call them today, used to gather around Bethesda pool which was very close to the Temple. Rumour had it that, from time to time, the water was stirred up and whoever steeped in first afterwards was then healed.
Jesus comes to this place where misery and hope meet. He sees a man who has been crippled for 38 years. This man has no hope left. Misery is his lot.
- Do you want to be made well?
The sick man answers him:
-I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is rising.
Jesus is not going to put him into the pool. He only says to him:
-Stand up, take your mat and walk! (John 5:1-9)

This man is old. He is an invalid and has no one. He would like to be healed. Otherwise, he would not be there. But he has no hope left. When Jesus asks him the questions: Do you want to be made well? He does not dare answer “yes.” He does not want to be disappointed, once more. As the prophet says, “you are this man.” Like him, we tend to be disillusioned men and women, without help, without hope.

But Jesus arrives unexpectedly. He gives the word which frees. After that, it is up to the invalid to believe the word of Jesus, obey his order and get up. If we do not walk further on God’s paths, it is because, deep down, we have given up. We do not believe any longer that God can revive our tired souls.

It is interesting to have used the name of Bethesda here, on the Water Walk in Lourdes, since Jesus did not plunge the invalid into the pool. This is to keep us from a magical interpretation. The water is a sign, but the reality, it is the grace of God. When Bernadette was questioned about the miracles, she said that they were not to be attributed to the spring itself, but to faith and prayer.

Whatever the sites of Apparition, Mary never appears as an old woman. She is not old because as George Bernanos said, she is “younger than sin, younger than the race from which she is descended, she is the youngest of the human race.” Today, by her Assumption into heaven, she has entered God’s Eternity.
Eternity is an everlasting youth, an inexhaustible spring, like that of the Grotto.