Daily Gospel Reflection: Monday of the Fourth Week of Lent
Bishop Robert Barron
March 11, 2024
Monday of the Fourth Week of Lent
Gospel: Jn 4:43-54
At that time Jesus left [Samaria] for Galilee.
For Jesus himself testified
that a prophet has no honor in his native place.
When he came into Galilee, the Galileans welcomed him,
since they had seen all he had done in Jerusalem at the feast;
for they themselves had gone to the feast.
Then he returned to Cana in Galilee,
where he had made the water wine.
Now there was a royal official whose son was ill in Capernaum.
When he heard that Jesus had arrived in Galilee from Judea,
he went to him and asked him to come down
and heal his son, who was near death.
Jesus said to him,
“Unless you people see signs and wonders, you will not believe.”
The royal official said to him,
“Sir, come down before my child dies.”
Jesus said to him, “You may go; your son will live.”
The man believed what Jesus said to him and left.
While the man was on his way back,
his slaves met him and told him that his boy would live.
He asked them when he began to recover.
They told him,
“The fever left him yesterday, about one in the afternoon.”
The father realized that just at that time Jesus had said to him,
“Your son will live,”
and he and his whole household came to believe.
Now this was the second sign Jesus did
when he came to Galilee from Judea.
*United States Conference of Catholic
Bishop Robert Barron
Friends, in today’s Gospel, Jesus heals the son of a royal official.
Healer: that’s why he’s come; that’s who he is. In Jesus, divinity and humanity meet. His whole body—his hands, his mouth, his eyes—becomes a conduit of God’s energy. What’s God’s energy, God’s purpose? To set right a world gone wrong, a suffering world. Out of every pore of his body, Jesus expresses the healing love of God.
Jesus’ ministry of healing expresses in history God’s ultimate intention for the world. In Jesus we see a hint of that world to come where there will be no more suffering, no more sadness, no more sickness.
He does not wait for the sinner, the sufferer, the marginalized to come to him. In love and humility, he goes to them. This same Jesus, risen from the dead, present and alive in the Church, is still seeking us out, coming into our homes—not waiting for us to crawl to him, but seeking us out in love and humility.
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