Deacon: Wisdom! Arise! Hear the Holy Gospel!

Priest:    Peace to you all. 

People:  And to your spirit.

Deacon:  A reading from the Holy Gospel according to Saint John (5:1-15)

People:  Glory to You Lord. Glory to You.

Priest:   Listen!

Deacon:

At that time Jesus went up to Jerusalem.

At the Sheep Pool in Jerusalem is a building called Bethesda in Aramaic. It has five verandas and under these, crowds of sick people, blind, lame, and paralysed, wait for the waters to be stirred. At different times an angel of God came down into the pool and the water was stirred up. The first person to enter the water after it was stirred up was cured of any physical problem the person was suffering.

One man there had an illness for 38 years. Jesus saw him lying there, and knew he had been sick for a long time.  He said, 'Do you want to be well again?'  The sick man replied, 'Sir, I have no one to put me in the pool when the water is stirred up. While I am still getting there, someone else gets in before me.' 

Jesus said to him, 'Get up, pick up your sleeping mat, and walk.' The man was cured at once, picked up his mat, and walked off.

Now that day was a sabbath, so the Jews said to the cured man, 'It is the sabbath. You are not allowed to carry your sleeping mat.' The man replied, 'But the man who cured me told me, "Pick up your mat and walk".'  

They asked, ' What man said to you "Pick up your mat and walk"?'  The cured man had no idea, since Jesus had mingled into the crowd that filled the place.

After a while Jesus met him in the Temple and said, 'Now you are well again, be sure not to sin any more, or something worse may happen to you'.

The man went back and told the Jews that Jesus had cured him.

People: Glory to You Lord. Glory to You.