LIFE GIVING WATER

LIFE-GIVING WATER
Homily for Tuesday of the 4th Week of Lent,
21 Mar 2023, Jn 5:1-16

Our first reading from Ezekiel 47 reminds me of the song “Gloria, Gloria Labandera”. It is not a serious song at all; it is rather the kind that is sung by drunkards after they have already downed a whole case of beer. It is actually a sexist song that men sing to the tune of “Glory, Glory Hallelujah”, an old triumphant Church hymn.
The Filipino mock version of this song tells a story; it is making fun of a girl named Gloria. Gloria is going out to the nearby stream to wash clothes. As she carries a basin with dirty laundry above her head, she wades into the flowing water. The singers describe how she gets wet little by little as she goes into the stream—first, her ankles, then her legs, then her knees, then her thighs. But they keep repeating in the refrain that she is not fully soaked yet. It is of course a malicious song by men describing themselves ogling at a girl from afar.
In Ezekiel 47, it is the prophet himself who goes into the water, which he sees in a vision, welling up, flowing out of the temple threshold, creating a stream. Ezekiel is told to go into the water that gradually rises—first, up to his ankles, next, up to his knees, then, up to his thighs, then up to his waist, until it turns into a river and he gets totally immersed and forced to swim.
The prophet does not say if he actually swims. He says the angel got him out of the water and brought him to the riverbank. There he was made to observe the trees growing and bearing fruits on either side of the riverbank. He also observes the water flowing out into the sea and freshening up the salt water and causing the fish to multiply in abundance.
In the Gospel, the symbolism of the water is sustained. The prophet is replaced by the crippled beggar who seems familiar with the vision of Ezekiel and the angel in the Bible, suggesting that the Pool of Bethesda is the place in the temple threshold from where the water had