Tuesday in the Fifth Week of Lent, March 28, 2023

John 8, 21-30

Jesus said to the Pharisees: “I am going away and you will look for me, but you will die in your sin. Where I am going you cannot come.” So the Jews said, “He is not going to kill himself, is he, because he said, ‘Where I am going you cannot come’?” He said to them, “You belong to what is below, I belong to what is above. You belong to this world, but I do not belong to this world. That is why I told you that you will die in your sins. For if you do not believe that I AM, you will die in your sins.” So they said to him, “Who are you?” Jesus said to them, “What I told you from the beginning. I have much to say about you in condemnation. But the one who sent me is true, and what I heard from him I tell the world.” They did not realize that he was speaking to them of the Father. So Jesus said to them, “When you lift up the Son of Man, then you will realize that I AM, and that I do nothing on my own, but I say only what the Father taught me. The one who sent me is with me. He has not left me alone, because I always do what is pleasing to him.” Because he spoke this way, many came to believe in him.

The Gospel Reading for today’s Mass is taken from a confrontation by the Jews of the Lord and his reply to them.  This took place in the treasury section of the Temple building.

“I am going away and you will look for me, but you will die in your sin. ”  The Lord is speaking to the Jewish authorities.  St. John simply calls them “the Jews”, which would remind the Jewish Christians for whom he was writing that they were Jews no longer but believers in the Lord Jesus Christ and members of his Body.  These authorities would have included members of the Sanhedrin, who were mostly Sadducees, and the Temple elders.  In saying to the, that he was departing, he was speaking of his coming Death.  In his telling them that they would seek him, he perhaps is saying that they will look everywhere for his Body so that they could point to it and prove that he had not risen.  But by rejecting his Resurrection they would die in their sin — that of arresting him and handing him over to Pilate and pressing for his execution.  “Where I am going you cannot come.”  They cannot go, but they would also not choose to go to a heaven in which he ruled.  The damned are not to be pitied in their torments.  They hate God and would not be happy in heaven.  It would be a torment to them to see the just rejoicing in him.  There is nothing to do in heaven but to praise Almighty God and bask in his torrent of love, but those who rage in their wickedness would find this intolerable.

“He is not going to kill himself, is he?”  Of the question is sincere, it shows that some of the Jewish leaders thought that he was mad or possessed.  Since they were Sadducees it did not occur to them that he could depart from the earth and this life and still live.  “You belong to what is below, I belong to what is above. You belong to this world, but I do not belong to this world.”  The Lord explains how he can live outside of this world and how they will perish in it.  He has assumed a human nature, but he is a divine Person and as such cannot he contained by the world.  He “.belongs” to what is “above”, that is, beyond.  Those baptized into his Body, therefore, do not belong to this world.  By “the world” the Lord means not the earth but the world people who do not believe in God create for themselves, one in which self-indulgence is applauded.  “For if you do not believe that I AM, you will die in your sins.”  The Greek text is properly translated as “I am”, which would be one way to translate the name God gives himself in Hebrew.  Unlike the pagan gods who had proper names, the true God cannot be contained or limited in any way and so expresses his identity in terms of his infinite being.  The Greek present tense, in which this verb is set in this verse, has the sense of continuation.  In English when we say “I am”, we are speaking of a state of being that is fixed for a moment or possibly permanently.  “I am” in Greek implies “always continuing”.  This points to his infinity.  The Greek verb translated as “will die” has an imminent tone to it, as though they are dying even now.  

“So they said to him, ‘Who are you?’Jesus said to them, ‘What I told you from the beginning.’ ”  The Lord Jesus is shown by all the Evangelists to have made claims consistent with divinity: he forgives sins, he calls himself the Lord of the Sabbath, and so on.  He did this from the beginning of his Public Life.  Their hatred of him is so great that they cannot begin to accept this.  The Lord addresses this, telling them, “I have much to say about you in condemnation.”  The Lord has not let their hatred of him prevent him from doing his Father’s will: “But the one who sent me is true, and what I heard from him I tell the world.”  John comments, “They did not realize that he was speaking to them of the Father.” The Greek verb translated here as “realize” can also mean “learn”, as though they had not learned that he spoke of God as his Father and so they did not understand what he was saying at this time, for, as St. John recounts, they had wanted to kill him because he had “made” God his Father, thereby claiming equality with God (John 5, 18).  They had heard him speak.  His words were validated by his miracles.  He claimed that God was his own Father, but they kept themselves from accepting this.  “When you lift up the Son of Man, then you will realize that I AM, and that I do nothing on my own, but I say only what the Father taught me.”  The “lifting up” refers to the crucifixion.  And at the Second Coming, they will recognize the One who comes as the One who was crucified by his wounds, which he will still bear on his glorified Body.  “The one who sent me is with me. He has not left me alone, because I always do what is pleasing to him.”  The Lord speaks of his relation to the Father: he himself is not the Father but the Son.  They are in union with each other: the Father never leaves the Son whom he has begotten and the Son always pleases the Father.

“Because he spoke this way, many came to believe in him.”  John may mean that many came to believe in him on this particular occasion or later, after reflection on his words.  The Lord’s presence and his words upon people had a tremendous effect on people, his ordinary appearance and Galilean accent notwithstanding.  We can get a sense of this if we regularly pray before him exposed on the altar for adoration.