Wednesday in the Fourth Week of Easter, April 24, 2024

John 12, 44-50

Jesus cried out and said, “Whoever believes in me believes not only in me but also in the one who sent me, and whoever sees me sees the one who sent me. I came into the world as light, so that everyone who believes in me might not remain in darkness. And if anyone hears my words and does not observe them, I do not condemn him, for I did not come to condemn the world but to save the world. Whoever rejects me and does not accept my words has something to judge him: the word that I spoke, it will condemn him on the last day, because I did not speak on my own, but the Father who sent me commanded me what to say and speak. And I know that his commandment is eternal life. So what I say, I say as the Father told me.”

The Lord Jesus spoke these words on the day he triumphantly entered Jerusalem on a donkey.  At the time he was probably standing in the Court of the Gentiles, the outer court in the Temple complex, as John 14, 20 reports that some Gentiles had approached the Apostles, seeking to see Jesus.  He speaks openly about his being sent into this world in order to save it, and for the need of all to believe in him and to obey his commandments.

“Whoever believes in me believes not only in me but also in the one who sent me, and whoever sees me sees the one who sent me.”  The Lord Jesus elaborates on his previous declaration that “the Father and I are one.”  This unity is so complete, he is saying, that belief in him, the Son, is the same as belief in the Father.  But since all must believe in the Father, and the Jew never questioned the existence of God, then all must believe in the Son as well.  As a result, worship and adoration and obedience are as much owed to the Son as to the Father.  Only one who could raise the dead could say something like this.  But this must be the response to the one who could raise the dead — for he must be God.

“I came into the world as light, so that everyone who believes in me might not remain in darkness.”  He casts the light of grace about him, enabling people not only to see him raising the dead and giving sight to the blind and expelling demons, but enabling them to believe what they see as well as to believe in the one who performs these deeds.  The grace is of such power that only those who refuse and reject it do not see and do not believe: for they cannot see and cannot believe without it.  The Lord acknowledges this: “Whoever rejects me and does not accept my words has something to judge him: the word that I spoke.”  People reject God not because of some failing of God’s, but because of their own self-inflicted failing.  We try to help them by giving good example, by living lives of gratitude despite adversity, and by praying for them, most important of all.

“I did not speak on my own, but the Father who sent me commanded me what to say and speak.”  The Lord’s words to us are contained in the Gospels.  The Gospels are not mere historical records but are vessels of the living Word of God which he continuously speaks to us.  The words contained in the Gospel reading for today’s Mass are meant by Almighty God for us to hear now and to ponder now as though he had come down bodily to speak them to us.  And he does this through his Body the Church.  

“The Father who sent me commanded me what to say and speak.”  So let us say and speak the Father’s words, joined to his Son through our baptism, through our words and works.

The fifteenth article in our continuing series on the Holy Mass:: The Second Eucharistic Prayer

The Second Eucharistic Prayer was created by a commission in charge of the reform of the Mass ordered by the Second Vatican Council.  The commission took as its primary goals simplicity, educating, and conducive to what it deemed active participation by the congregation.  This last was problematic because while the council certainly desired it, the term was never defined and so it was left up to the commission to define it for itself.  The basis for this prayer is a text once ascribed to St. Hippolytus (d. 235), but which scholars admit is not by him.  The original text is part of a collection of texts called the Apostolic Constitutions which comes from Syria around the year 400.  In the 1960’s this was regarded as part of an esrly Eucharistic Prayer but it is not.  The whole right of the sacrifice and the newly created “Memorial Acclamation” as well as various intercessions were added to it in order to make a proper Eucharistic Prayer out of it.  It is the shortest of the four Eucharistic Prayers.  It is also probably the most frequently used of the prayers.  It succeeds in the committee’s desire for simplicity and directness, though its brevity prevents it from revealing the meaning and purpose of the Sacrifice and so thwarts the goal of educating the Faithful as to what it really taking place on the altar.

Next: The Third Eucharistic Prayer