We can get bogged down in the readings from John’s gospel these last days of lent, long and often difficult to understand as they are. Today’s reading (John 5, 31-47) seems like a record from a court trial, and in many ways it is. Jesus presents witnesses to testify for him, vouching for his claims.

He claims to be God’s Son, true God from true God.

Unfortunately, lengthy readings cause us to forget what sparked them.  Jesus has come up for a feast; on a Sabbath day during that feast he meets a poor fellow who’s paralyzed, who can’t get into a pool of healing water to be cured.  For 38 years he’s been there. Jesus cures him and tells him to take up his mat and go. The man’s confronted by the Pharisees who criticize him for carrying his mat on the Sabbath and criticize Jesus for curing on the Sabbath. ( John 5,1-14)

It’s a dispute about the Sabbath Rest  and Jesus takes the side of God. He cures the man because mercy doesn’t take a day off. God’s merciful every day and so should we be. But Jesus doesn’t leave it at that, he takes it much further. He is the Lord of the Sabbath, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God. He makes a divine claim. (John 5,17-30)

Father Francis Maloney in his commentary on John’s gospel ( The Gospel of John, Francis Moloney, S.D. B. Sacra Pagina, Liturgical Press) suggests we look at the issues a gospel raises. Don’t give up on readings hard to understand.

There’s the issue of the Sabbath Rest, for example. I’m sure Jesus kept the Sabbath Rest all his life, but he kept it in a merciful way, as his cure of the paralyzed man shows. At the same time, he recognized the value to the Sabbath Rest. It wasn’t a slavish law; it was a call to rest in a special way.  

In his encyclical Laudato si, Pope Francis says the Sabbath Rest is still needed today “when many people sense a profound imbalance which drives them to frenetic activity and makes them feel busy, in a constant hurry, which in turn leads them to ride rough shod over everything around them.”    

The law forbidding work and calling for rest on the seventh day arose “so that your ox and your donkey may have rest, and the son of your maidservant, and the stranger, may be refreshed” (Ex 23:12). Rest opens our eyes to the larger picture and gives us renewed sensitivity to the rights of others.” (LS 237)

That’s what the Sabbath Rest means. We need contemplative time that “opens our eyes to the larger picture and gives us renewed sensitivity to the rights of others.” We also need contemplative time to recognize the claims of Jesus. God and man, divine and human, he came to live and die for us. We need time to know him.