Full text of the Catechesis of Leo XIV about the healing of the paralytic

We offer the full text of the catechesis that Pope Leo XIV preached at the General Hearing on Wednesday, June 18, 2025 on the evangelical passage in which the healing of the paralytic in the pool is narrated.

Dear brothers and sisters, we continue to contemplate Jesus who heals. Today I would like to invite them in a particular way to think about the situations in which we feel “blocked” and locked in a road without exit. Sometimes it seems to us that it is useless to continue waiting; We resign ourselves and we don’t want to fight.

This situation is described in the gospels with the image of paralysis. For this reason I would like to stop today about the healing of a paralytic, narrated in the fifth chapter of the Gospel of John (5,1-9).

Jesus goes Jerusalem for a party of the Jews. It does not go directly to the temple; He stops at a door, where he was surely washed to the sheep that were later offered in sacrifice. Near this door, there were also so many patients, who, unlike the sheep, were excluded from the temple because they were considered impure! It is then Jesus himself who reaches them in his pain. These people expected a prodigy that could change their destiny; In fact, next to the door was a pool, whose waters were considered taumaturgical, that is, capable of healing: at some point when the water was stirred, according to the belief of time, who first divered, was cured.

In this way a kind of “war of the poor” was created: we can imagine the sad scene of these patients who dragged with fatigue to try to enter the pool. That pool was called Betesda, which means “House of Mercy”: it could be an image of the Church, where the sick and the poor get together and as far as the Lord arrives to heal and give hope.

Jesus specifically addresses a man who has been paralyzed for thirty -eight years. It is already resigned, because it fails to immerse yourself in the pool when the water is stirred (cfr v. 7). Indeed, what many times paralyzes us is precisely disappointment. We feel discouraged and run the risk of falling into the neglect.

Jesus directs this paralytic a question that may seem superficial: “Do you want to heal you?” (v. 6). Instead, it is a necessary question, because, when one has been blocked for so many years, the willingness to heal can also be missing. Sometimes we prefer to remain in the condition of sick, forcing others to take care of us. It is sometimes also a pretext for not deciding what to do with our life. Jesus instead redirects this man to his truthful and deep desire.

This man in fact responds more articulated to Jesus’ question, revealing his vision of life. First of all, he says that he has had no one to immerse him in the pool: then he is not his fault, but of the others who do not care about him. This attitude becomes the pretext to avoid assuming one’s responsibilities. But is it true that there was no one to help him? Here is the illuminating response of St. Augustine: «Yes, to be healed I had absolutely the need for a man, but of a man who was also God. (…) therefore the man who was necessary has come; Why postpone healing again?

The paralytic adds that when he tries to immerse himself in the pool there is always someone who arrives before him. This man is expressing a fatalistic vision of life. We think things happen to us because we are not lucky, because fate is adverse to us. This man is discouraged. He feels defeated in the struggle of life.

Jesus instead helps him discover that his life is also in his hands. He invites him to get up, to win his chronic situation, and to collect his stretcher (cfr v. 8). That field is not left or is thrown out: it represents its past of illness, it is its history. Until that moment the past has blocked it; He has forced him to lie as a dead man. Now he is he who can load that stretcher and take it wherever he wants: he can decide what to do with his story! It’s about walking, assuming the responsibility of choosing which way to go. And this thanks to Jesus!

Dear brothers and sisters, let’s ask the Lord to understand where our life has been blocked. Let’s try to give voice to our desire to heal. And let’s pray for all those who feel paralyzed, who do not see an exit. Let us ask to return to live in the heart of Christ that is the true house of mercy!