ICEMANforChrist

EMBER FRIDAY OF THE FIRST WEEK OF LENT Station "With the Twelve Apostles" Save Thy servant, o my Lord (gradual). Today, thirty-eight days before Easter, the Church reads to us the account of the cure of a man sick for thirty-eight years. This miracle occurred at the pool of Bethsaida. The merciful Jesus healed body and soul of the friendless sufferer. A little later, seeing the man in one of the five porches of the temple, the Savior said to him: "Behold thou art made whole; sin no more, lest some worse thing happen to thee." Surely, this sick man is a picture of the world, especially of the pagan world, at the time of Christ, a world in a state of utter helplessness, laden with sin, steeped in despair, with no one to help it but Him who is "the expectation of all nations and their Savior." But is not this poor man also the picture of millions in our own day, who look no longer "for the blessed hope and the coming of t...