April 1, 2025 // Tuesday of the Fourth Week of Lent
Read the Word // Open your Bible to today’s Gospel: John 5:1-16
Reflect on the Word //
The makeshift chapel was dim and the crowds of people had dwindled down to a few stragglers. It was Holy Week and this was my favorite night of the year. The night when the Garden of Gethsemane is recreated through the altar of repose.
As I prayed in the back of the room, looking up toward the tabernacle, I felt an intense need to be closer to Him. Approaching the altar, my heart started to race. I knelt down just a few feet from Jesus in the Eucharist, and pain started welling up in my chest.
I brought Him the most sorrowful mysteries of my life, and He looked at me with the most sorrowful eyes of His pierced Heart. They were His knowing eyes. The ones that deeply understood the grief of my recent miscarriage. The eyes that saw the depth of my disappointment every month my prayer for a child wasn’t answered. The eyes that knew exactly what my suffering looked like, and just how long I had been there, desperately waiting to be healed.
The sick man in today’s Gospel encountered these eyes too.
We don’t just witness Jesus healing him from thirty-eight years of illness. We witness His Heart for this man, and just how familiar He is with his mat.
“When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had been there a long time, he said to him, ‘Do you want to be made well?’” (John 5:6, emphasis added)
Sister, you know what your mat looks like. That place in your life where you feel sick, stuck, paralyzed, broken, or forgotten by God.
You know how long your “thirty-eight years” has felt. You know how many times you’ve asked the Lord for healing and answers. You know how much pain it has caused you. You know how many sacrifices you’ve made.
Are we willing to trust that our Divine Healer knows this too? Are we ready to believe that the Lord, Who is intimately familiar with the most sorrowful mysteries of our lives, desperately wants to make us well?
Jesus sees you, and He knows.
Relate to the Lord // Pause right now, look to Jesus interiorly, and receive His understanding gaze.
Jana Zuniga Pingel is an artist and designer based in Colorado Springs, where she resides with her husband. She earned her B.A. in Studio Art from Saint Mary’s College in South Bend, Indiana. She is the founder and owner of January Jane Shop, an online boutique for Catholic art and goods. When she isn’t busy doing entrepreneurial things, she’s cooking a new recipe, hiking a mountain, or party planning.
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