For anyone who has been on pilgrimage to Lourdes, there is one miracle of Jesus in the Gospel - (John, Chapter 5) - they should find very easy to visualize: the healing of the man at the pool of Bethzatha.

Bethzatha was an area in the North East of Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate. The pool was said to have curative properties, so it was thronged with the sick who flocked there to find a remedy for their illnesses

Some think the name Bethzatha may mean House of Mercy, so called because of the building nearby set up to accommodate the elderly, the lame, the paralysed and the blind who were laid out on stretchers in the porticoes that surrounded the pool.

Others say it means Place of the Double Gusher, because of the two-fold drain that fed the pool from the natural spring at its source. Every now and then this spring would suddenly become active, causing the water to bubble. It was believed that the first person in when this happened would be restored to health.

Archaeologists have found the remains of the site. It is near the Church of St Anne. They discovered the ruins of a four-sided cistern intersected by a wall that divides it in two. They also found the base of five colonnades that once supported the five porticoes mentioned in St John's account, where the crippled and ailing were placed.

No one to help
Probably there was a system of helpers at Bethzatha, as there is at Lourdes today, to facilitate the patients when the water began to move. They would ease the disabled into the pool and keep order in the queue. In all likelihood those who could afford it brought their own helpers to look after them when their turn came.

One patient was there who had no one to put him in. As he said himself, 'I have no man to put me into the pool when the water is troubled, and while I am going down another steps down before me'. He had been a sufferer for thirty-eight years, and Jesus knew - as he passed by that day - that he had been waiting there for a very long time.
 
A strange question
Given this fact, the question he asked him was a curious one. 'Do you want to be healed?' Curious because you would imagine the answer was pretty obvious. Why else would he have gone so often to the pool of healing? Why do people go to Lourdes? Or to the doctor? Or to a counsellor or psychiatrist?

Beneath Jesus' question lies a bubbling spring of wisdom and insight.

Are there some illnesses people do not really want to get over? Take the man in the Gospel for instance. Could it be he was quite comfortable in his disablement? Might it have been his way of opting out of life? Did he enjoy being dependent on others, not having to face the responsibilities of caring for anyone other than himself? Did he like to feel sorry for himself, like to feel abandoned, to feel pitied?

It is interesting that it was Jesus who approached him rather than he who called on Jesus - as so many others did in the New Testament. After thirty-eight years had he given up praying? Did he think it was too late to be made right again, that life had already passed him by?

Personal encounter
Whatever the answer to these questions, Jesus said to him, 'Rise, take up your pallet and walk', and at once he was healed and walked. No dip in the pool was needed; the personal encounter with Christ was enough.

His specific illness is not named. It may have been paralysis, some spinal disorder, crippled feet or a defect from birth. Whatever it was, it kept him down, immobile. His main problem seems to have been that he had no one to help him. This was the only disadvantage he complained of. Perhaps he was too poor to hire a helper.

In Christ he found a man to help. God-made-man. The incarnate Son of the Father. 'My Father is working still,' Jesus said later by way of explanation, 'and I am working'. Through the humanity of Jesus the divine love of God set this cripple on his feet, made him mobile, gave him heart, renewed his quality of life, restored his youth, brought him back to active community.

A change of attitude
Many who go to Lourdes do not come back again healed of their physical infirmity. But almost all come back altered in outlook. They speak of a change of attitude - to life, to their illness, to themselves.

And that is truly miraculous. To be lifted up in one's spirit out of depression and hopelessness, to be relieved of the sense of uselessness infirmity often causes, is real healing. Whether we are disabled or not, what matters is how we cope. Being healthy does not in itself bring happiness - frequently people who are physically well are miserable.

What matters is finding a purposefulness to our life, a way of turning each disadvantage into an opportunity for good, a way of expressing what is good in our personality: compassion towards others, a sense of humour, an optimism that is healthy and fresh and infectious, and youthful and vital and flowing with hope.

Starting again
'My Father is working in you still,' Jesus is continually saying today through the Gospel, 'and I am working. Do you want to be healed? Then take up your life and walk'.