MEDITATIONS ON THE LIFE OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST. JULY 1. SECOND EASTER AND SECOND YEAR OF OUR LORD'S MINISTRY: MIRACULOUS CURE OF THE PARALYTIC AT THE POOL OF JERUSALEM. 1st Prel. Imagine you hear Jesus saying to the man paralysed for thirty-eight years, 'Take up thy bed, and walk." 2d Prel. Beg for unshaken confidence in the goodness of Jesus Christ. POINT I. Our Lord takes notice of the Paralytic. CONSIDERATION. 'After these things,' says St. John (ie., after the cure of the issue of blood, the two blind men, and the deaf and dumb), there was a festival-day of the Jews, and Jesus went up from Capharnaum to Jerusalem. He went to celebrate the Pasch publicly for the second time. From this Pasch began the second year of His ministry. He chose to inaugurate it, if we may so speak, by a wonderful miracle, which will form the subject of our Meditation. At one of the gates o Jerusalem there is, says the Evangelist, a pond, whick in Hebrew is named Bethsaida, having five porches. In these lay a great multitude of sick, of blind, of lame, of withered, waiting for the moving of the water. And an angel of the Lord descended at certain times into the VOL. II. A |