Friday in the Fifth Week of Lent, March 27, 2026

John 10, 31-42

The Jews picked up rocks to stone Jesus.  Jesus answered them, “I have shown you many good works from my Father. For which of these are you trying to stone me?” The Jews answered him, “We are not stoning you for a good work but for blasphemy. You, a man, are making yourself God.” Jesus answered them, “Is it not written in your law, ‘I said, You are gods’?” it calls them gods to whom the word of God came, and Scripture cannot be set aside, can you say that the one whom the Father has consecrated and sent into the world blasphemes because I said, ‘I am the Son of God’? If I do not perform my Father’s works, do not believe me; but if I perform them, even if you do not believe me, believe the works, so that you may realize and understand that the Father is in me and I am in the Father.” Then they tried again to arrest him; but he escaped from their power. He went back across the Jordan to the place where John first baptized, and there he remained. Many came to him and said, “John performed no sign, but everything John said about this man was true.” And many there began to believe in him.

While I was reading the Gospel at Mass for the Thursday in the Fifth Week of Lent, a new thought occurred to me.  Jesus tells the Jews, at the end of the reading, “Before Abraham came to be, I AM.”  Now, that “I AM” would outrage the Jews only if they understood that he was speaking the Name of God, which only the high priest was permitted to do.  Since “I AM” does not signify God’s Name in Aramaic, the common language of that time and place, the Lord must have spoken it in Hebrew.  But the St. John wrote his Gospel in the Greek language.  “I AM” in Greek is not the Name of God anymore than in Aramaic.  How, then, could John expect his Greek readers to understand what Jesus had done, and what the Jews tried to do in response?  It seems the only solution is that John was writing primarily for a Jewish readership who could read Greek, and would recognize the Hebrew Name of God in the Greek words John used.  This, coupled with the detailed descriptions of settings within Jerusalem, provides evidence that John wrote his Gospel for Jewish Christians living in Jerusalem.  But the long-standing tradition from the time of the Fathers informs us that John wrote his Gospel in Ephesus.  It may be that John’s original readership consisted of the Jewish Christians of Ephesus, who would have known something of the layout of Jerusalem from pilgrimages there.  That a sizable Jewish community existed in Ephesus during John’s lifetime is clear from the Acts of the Apostles, and that a number of the Jews there converted to Christianity is also clear from that book.  The Letter to the Ephesians seems to suppose that much of the Church there consisted of Gentile Christians, so perhaps the Gospel was written earlier than Paul’s Letter, as the church in Ephesus became predominantly Gentile Christian over time.  I think understanding the history of the writing of the Gospels helps us to appreciate the historical reality of Jesus Christ, and bolsters our trust in the Gospels as authentic documents which tell us the truth about him.

In the Gospel reading for today’s Mass, St. John tells of another occasion on which the Lord Jesus was threatened with death.  We should note that Jesus is never in danger of death from Herod or Pilate during the course of his Public Life, until its end, but is regularly in danger from his own countrymen.  “I have shown you many good works from my Father. For which of these are you trying to stone me?”  The Lord is not appealing to his would-be killers to see ordinary good works, but miracles of great power.  He is both saying that he is a good man doing God’s will, and also that of he chose to, he could stop them from stoning him with further works of power.  “We are not stoning you for a good work but for blasphemy. You, a man, are making yourself God.”  They say that he is “making” himself God.  Instead, he has revealed himself as God by doing the works only God could do.  The Jews never deny the miracles or attempt to explain them away.  They simply ignore them when their reality inconveniences them.  We do something similar when we, knowing God and his commandments, choose to commit sin anyway.  “Is it not written in your law, ‘I said, You are gods’?”  The Lord quotes Psalm 82, 6: “I said: You are gods and all of you the sons of the Most High.”  In the Psalm, Almighty God is speaking to the judges and rulers of the land of Israel.  He tells them that he has called them “gods”, that is, made them “gods”, as with the power of life and death over the people.  He reminds them of the power he has given them which they have misused and with which they render false judgments against the poor.  He says that he has named them “gods” but that “you like men shall die.”  The Lord’s point is that of Almighty God can name some people “gods”, he, Jesus, can claim the title for himself with greater right, since he has shown clear signs of God’s favor and of his power working through him: “Even if you do not believe me, believe the works so that you may realize and understand that the Father is in me and I am in the Father.”  

“He went back across the Jordan to the place where John first baptized, and there he remained.”  A certain sadness underlines this verse.  The Lord is rejected by the very people who should have known and received him.  He then goes back to where he began his Public Life three years before in order to prepare himself for his Passion and Death.  At the same time, we should recognize that the Lord is not defeated.  He does not leave the Jews for another country.  He does not hide himself away.  He does not give up his work.  He prepares for the greatest of all works, his offering of himself to the Father for the forgiveness of sins.  He has not stopped loving the human race.  He yearns for its redemption more than ever.  His triumph is in his obedience to the Father and the continuation of his love for us, even for those who betrayed and killed him.

“John performed no sign, but everything John said about this man was true.” And many there began to believe in him.”  Out to the wild, rocky places beside the Jordan, people came to him as they had come out to John the Baptist, and they begin to realize the Lord’s greatness.  Perhaps a few of those who had picked up stones against him had a change of heart and began to understand.  But some have always had a stone in their hand against the Lord, ready to launch it when his Godhead and his commandments stand in the way of their wills.

Thursday in the Fifth Week of Lent, March 26, 2026

John 8, 51-59

Jesus said to the Jews: “Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever keeps my word will never see death.” So the Jews said to him, “Now we are sure that you are possessed. Abraham died, as did the prophets, yet you say, ‘Whoever keeps my word will never taste death.’ Are you greater than our father Abraham, who died? Or the prophets, who died? Who do you make yourself out to be?” Jesus answered, “If I glorify myself, my glory is worth nothing; but it is my Father who glorifies me, of whom you say, ‘He is our God.’ You do not know him, but I know him. And if I should say that I do not know him, I would be like you a liar. But I do know him and I keep his word. Abraham your father rejoiced to see my day; he saw it and was glad.” So the Jews said to him, “You are not yet fifty years old and you have seen Abraham?” Jesus said to them, “Amen, amen, I say to you, before Abraham came to be, I AM.” So they picked up stones to throw at him; but Jesus hid and went out of the temple area.

The Lord Jesus concludes his teaching to his followers and the Pharisees.  He is trying to convince him that his kingdom is not of this world, and that he came to deliver them from the devil and sin, not from the Romans.  The people, however, steadfastly misinterpret even his plain speech about who he is and what he came to do.  Some scholars have speculated on whether Jesus was a zealot, a member of a group of fanatics set on the liberation of Israel, but a close reading of the Gospel according to St. John makes it seem rather like many of his disciples were zealots.  One of his Apostles, Simon, is even named a zealot by the Evangelists.

“Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever keeps my word will never see death.”  The Lord makes a promise here.  Now, the Greek word translated here as “keeps” can mean “observe”, as in “obey”, as well as “to guard”.  The Lord is saying that the one who both obeys his commandments and perseveres in his faith until death, despite persecution, will never see death.  “Now we are sure that you are possessed. Abraham died, as did the prophets.”  We find the Lord accused of being possessed in all the Gospels.  But we might wonder about what the Lord means here when he says that those who keep his word will never see death.  It is true that he is speaking of the death of the soul in hell, but the phrase he uses, “never see death” is an interesting one.  The Greek word translated as “see” also has the meaning of “experience”.  But we can think of it this way: the true follower of Jesus shall not “taste” or “see” the bitterness or the horror of death.  He will die, as all humans must, but his death will be a true passing from this world into the next, and not the catastrophic ending dreaded by unbelievers.

“Who do you make yourself out to be?”  They have asked this question a number of times by now but they will not accept the Lord’s answer.  “If I glorify myself, my glory is worth nothing; but it is my Father who glorifies me.”  The Lord offers this as a prelude to his final answer to their question, one which the people will not be able to misinterpret.  The “glory” the Lord speaks of here is the miracles he has performed through the will of the Father.  “Abraham your father rejoiced to see my day; he saw it and was glad.”  The Lord probably said “your father” in a way that indicated his disdain for their claim that they were the children of Abraham.  The verse itself is majestic.  We think back to Abraham, who lived fifteen hundred or more years before the Birth of the Lord, and how he foresaw the Lord’s “day”, and rejoiced in it.  We see the Desire of the nations and the Prince of peace standing before his creatures and teaching them.  God walks on earth as once before he walked in the Garden of Eden.  Then he came to punish.  Now he comes to save.

“You are not yet fifty years old and you have seen Abraham?”  This is an important verse in that it tends to confirm St. Luke’s statement about the  Lord’s age (cf. Luke 3, 23).  These people have heard the Lord tell them that he was God’s Son, but they had chosen not to understand what that meant.  “Amen, amen, I say to you, before Abraham came to be, I AM.”  This is perhaps the most beautiful verse in the Holy Scriptures.  It is succinct and powerful.  It is pure revelation.  Now, the Lord was speaking to the Jews in Aramaic at this point.  If he had said “I am” in Aramaic, they would have waited for him to finish his sentence.  But he says this in Hebrew, and this is the name God called himself to Moses at the burning bush.  No one was allowed to speak it except for the high priest in the holy of holies in the Temple.  The Lord Jesus, in speaking the Name and using it to refer to himself, outraged the Jews, who immediately sought to stone him.  “But Jesus hid and went out of the temple area.”  The Evangelists tell us of how the Lord was nearly killed on numerous occasions.  This reinforces for us the fact that he was crucified only because he himself willed it.  If he had not, he could have escaped again.  But he does not now depart from Jerusalem.  He remains because he still has work to do there.

The Solemnity of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Wednesday , March 25, 2026

Luke 1:26–38

The angel Gabriel was sent from God to a town of Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man named Joseph, of the house of David, and the virgin’s name was Mary. And coming to her, he said, “Hail, full of grace! The Lord is with you.” But she was greatly troubled at what was said and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. Then the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. Behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall name him Jesus. He will be great and will be called Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give him the throne of David his father, and he will rule over the house of Jacob forever, and of his Kingdom there will be no end.” But Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I have no relations with a man?” And the angel said to her in reply, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. Therefore the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God. And behold, Elizabeth, your relative, has also conceived a son in her old age, and this is the sixth month for her who was called barren; for nothing will be impossible for God.” Mary said, “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word.” Then the angel departed from her.

The Church calls St. Paul “the Apostle of Grace” because of his development of the doctrine of grace in his Letters, particularly in that to the Romans.  He adapts the common Greek word charis (Latin gratia), meaning “favor” or “free act of good will”, to mean the free gift of God which forgives sin and imparts divine life.  As Paul writes in Romans 5, 17: “If, because of one man’s trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ.”  Paul is speaking of the Original Sin, committed by Adam and Eve, which brought death to themselves and their descendants, as overpowered by the grace which was won for us by the Lord Jesus.  Although we do find other Apostles and Evangelists also speaking of grace, Paul emphasized it in his teaching and it became an important part of what his disciples, such as St. Luke, also taught.  

The account of the Annunciation in St. Luke’s Gospel comes across in Greek as spoken with a heavy Hebrew accent.  That is, the text reads as though it were largely translated from Hebrew into Greek.  We may account for this by considering that it was the Virgin Mary herself who related her experience of this event to Luke.  He could easily have met her among the relatively small groups of Christians that existed during that time.  Also, he must have talked to her, for after the death of her husband Joseph, only Mary would have known what had occurred when the archangel visited her.  Gabriel would have spoken to her in Hebrew or Aramaic, and Mary, who probably did not know Greek, would have spoken to Luke in one of those languages.  Luke, then, would have translated what Mary told him into Greek for his readers.  And he used the Greek charis to translate the Hebrew word Gabriel used when he addressed the Virgin Mary, which we translate as “Full of grace”.  There are those who would translate this as “Highly favored”, but Luke, the disciple of the Apostle of Grace, knew exactly what he was doing when he used the word Paul had adapted, and which his readers would also have understood. Simply put, it is impossible that what Gabriel said to Mary was, “Greetings, you who are (highly) favored”.

But this translation — “Full of grace” — does not quite suffice either.  The actual Greek word is a perfect passive participle, meaning that an action has been completed in the past and its effect is enduring.  With St. Paul’s understanding of “grace” in mind, we can see, from Gabriel’s greeting, that the Virgin Mary was given the gift of divine life at some point in the past, that this action was completed (or, “perfected”), and the effect of this gift of divine life continues in her up to the present.  She was perfected in grace at the instant of her creation and remains in that state.  This describes not only an action that was done to her but it becomes her name as well, as we can also see from Gabriel’s greeting.  He wishes her peace (“hail”) and then instead of calling her “Mary”, he calls her “the one who has been perfected in grace” (which, in Greek, is one word).  This is not simply what happened; this is who she is.  Just as Almighty God is “I am”, so Mary is “the one who has been perfected in grace”.  In fact, the more we know about sanctifying grace, the more we can know about her.  Romans 5 is a good place to start learning more.

“Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word.”  In response to Gabriel’s name for her, the Virgin Mary gives her name for herself: the handmaid of the Lord.  We may see the two names as opposed to each other, for one speaks of greatness and the other of lowliness, but they are the same name in different words, for the one who is perfected in grace becomes, of her own volition, the handmaid of the Lord.  The service of God obtains for us grace, which in turn enables us to perform more and greater service for him: “To every one who has, more shall be given, and he shall abound” (Luke 19, 26).  And the Virgin Mary abounds more than any of us in the love of Almighty God.

Tuesday in the Fifth Week of Lent, March 24, 2026

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 Lord continues his discourse directed mainly to the Pharisees and other Jewish leaders.  He is explaining to them that while he is the Savior, he is not the Messiah they had imagined for themselves and taught to others — he is much greater too, for he was the Son of God.  But they ignore or explain away the evidence of the Father’s validation, his miracles, and judge him according to his flesh: that he seems in every way merely a man.  

“I am going away and you will look for me, but you will die in your sin.”  This is more literally translated, “I am departing and you will search for/desire me, but you will die in your sin.”  He is not only separating himself from them in terms of distance, but he is departing their lives.  They have seen his works and heard his words and they have rejected him.  There is no more he can do for them.  He will leave them as thoroughly as he left Nazareth, years before, when its inhabitants rejected him.  He will respect their choice.  “You will search for/desire me”, that is, they will not search for him out of curiosity or to do him harm, but with desire.  Their very being will yearn for him despite their sins.  This is perhaps like the greatest torment in hell, when the soul still desires to be in the presence of God but will never attain this.  “You will die in your sin.”  “Sin” is in the singular.  We can think of one’s sins in a general way, or this might indicate their sin of rejecting Jesus, or the Lord may have meant Original Sin, which must be forgiven in baptism so that the soul may enter heaven.  “Where I am going you cannot come.”  More literally, “Where I am departing to, you are not able to come.”  The Lord is departing this world for heaven; the Pharisees will not be able to go there.  They are unable to go there because they do not have faith and have scorned the One who rules there.  They could hardly face Christ in heaven if they have hated him on earth, and there would be no happiness in heaven when they are surrounded by myriads of angels and saints singing his praise forever.

“He is not going to kill himself, is he?”  They seek to mock his words here, but in fact if he did kill himself, he would go down to the Jewish underworld Sheol, but eventually they would follow too, so they should know that he is speaking of something else.

“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.”  More literally, “You are of those below.  I am of those above.”  This could mean “of those things” or “of those persons”.  The verb to-be is used so that the Lord identifies the Pharisees as “those below”, and himself as above.  The meaning is much stronger than using the verb “to belong”.  A person can belong to a group while desiring not to be, but one cannot escape one’s identity.  We might ask in what sense the Pharisees could be held as culpable for rejecting Jesus if they are already “those below” — the wicked, destined for hell.  The answer is that they chose this identity for themselves throughout their lives until they can hardly be separated from it.  Even so, they could repent at the end of their lives, though it would be very difficult for them to do so.  And so the Lord says to them: “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.” Jesus is speaking either Greek or Aramaic and so does not say the name of God, which is in Hebrew, but gives its equivalent in one of these languages.  The Lord says that unless we believe in his divinity, we will die in our sins.  Because his hearers do not immediately stone him for what they would consider blasphemy, they must have understood him to mean something else, possibly that unless they believe that he is the Messiah they will die in their sins.  To their repeated question, “Who are you?” the Lord replies, “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.”  He has already told them that he was the Son of God, and they had refused to believe, despite the evidence of his miracles.  Rather than dignify their question by repeating himself, he speaks of the veracity of his Father in heaven.  “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 Lord here speaks of his crucifixion and Sacrifice.  He says, “When you lift up the Son of Man”.  The Greek word translated here as “Lift up” can also mean “exalt”, so that another meaning to his words was possible.  Jesus means that there are those standing there who will convert when they see him offering himself on the Cross, either at that time or after the Resurrection when they consider what he had done.

“Because he spoke this way, many came to believe in him.”  The verb tense is aorist, so the text should read, “Many believed in him”.  That is, at that time.  No one had ever spoken like this or had performed such works as he had.  They believed in him at least as the Messiah, and perhaps a little more than that.  The people would not yet understand that he came to save them not from the Romans but from the devil, but the beginnings of faith in “many” in the crowd were there.

Personal Note: I’m sorry for posting yesterday’s reflection late. It was already written up and I thought I had posted it, but evidently I did not. In terms of my health, I am feeling stronger than last week. It takes a few days after the injection in the eye to start seeing and feeling better. I have one more injection at the end of April. Thank you for your prayers!

Monday in the Fifth Week of Lent, March 23, 2026

John 8, 1-11

Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. But early in the morning he arrived again in the temple area, and all the people started coming to him, and he sat down and taught them. Then the scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery and made her stand in the middle. They said to him, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the very act of committing adultery. Now in the law, Moses commanded us to stone such women. So what do you say?” They said this to test him, so that they could have some charge to bring against him. Jesus bent down and began to write on the ground with his finger. But when they continued asking him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let the one among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” Again he bent down and wrote on the ground. And in response, they went away one by one, beginning with the elders. So he was left alone with the woman before him. Then Jesus straightened up and said to her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” She replied, “No one, sir.” Then Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you. Go, and from now on do not sin any more.” 

“Then the scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery and made her stand in the middle.”  The Lord is teaching in the Temple area.  The Greek text simply says he was teaching “in the Temple”, but this probably means outside in one of the courtyards.  The Greek text also gives us a better idea of the numbers people who came to him: “a whole crowd”, or “a crowd of every kind of people”.  The whole Temple complex including the courtyards came to about a thousand feet long by a thousand feet wide, and the Temple itself only takes up a portion of that so even a large crowd would not fill the grounds.  Now, a group of scribes and Pharisees have apparently been summoned to advise on the case of a woman caught in adultery.  Knowing that the Lord is teaching on the Temple grounds and desiring to put him in difficulties, they dragged her through town and then through the grounds until they come before him.  They interrupt his teaching, showing disrespect at the outset, and then put the case before him.  To us, the question seems clear: “Moses commanded us to stone such women. So what do you say?”  However, the Romans had abolished the power of the Jewish rulers to put anyone to death.  The Sanhedrin itself had mostly given up the death penalty by the time of the Lord’s ministry, as is clear from the Mishnah.  This does not mean the woman’s life was not in jeopardy, for she could have been stoned in a mob action.  But we can see what the scribes and Pharisees were trying to do.  If the Lord meant what he said when he declared that he had not come to do away with the Law but to fulfill (that is, “perfect”) it, then he must rule for the woman to be stoned, which would put him against Roman rule and the interpretation of the Law by the Jews at the time.  It seemed the perfect trap.  

“Let the one among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.”  The Lord’s answer and the manner in which he answers shows his lack of concern with the public stature of these scribes and Pharisees.  He also evades the narrow answer they expect, whatever it might be, by turning the focus from a question about the Law to a question involving human life: the lives of the people who would stone the woman and repent too late as well as the woman herself.  

The Lord thoroughly disarms the scribes and Pharisees and they slink away before the assembled crowd, their perfect trap shown to be a thing of vapor.  St. John tells us, “He was left alone with the woman before him.”  From this it is not clear if the crowd he had been teaching also left or if they remained, but the area immediately around the Lord was clear except for the woman.  We can try to imagine her devastation and shame.  Perhaps the man with whom she had cavorted had been beaten up by a betrayed husband.  It is hard to see how she could go back to either man now, or whether any of her family would take her in.  She has her life, but very little else.  She stands before the Lord, still awaiting judgment.  He tells her he does not condemn her, that is, to death.  She is free to go, but he warns her before she does, “Go, and from now on do not sin any more.”  After her harrowing experience we might think that she would never sin again, but we know from our own lives how soon we resume sinning when we have made a solemn promise not to.  

We do not know what happened to this woman.  Did she beg forgiveness from her husband? Did he take her back?  Or did she wind up homeless and begging?  Or, did she ask the Lord for help of some kind?  A couple of early writers thought this might be Mary Magdalene and that she was converted afterwards, but there is no evidence for this, as attractive as it idea might be.

We see here how the Lord gives us many chances throughout our lives to convert.  We only bring ourselves greater misery when we put it off.  It is essential to grasp our chance now and repent while we have time.

The Fifth Sunday of Lent, March 23, 2026

John 11, 1–45

Now a man was ill, Lazarus from Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. Mary was the one who had anointed the Lord with perfumed oil and dried his feet with her hair; it was her brother Lazarus who was ill. So the sisters sent word to Jesus saying, “Master, the one you love is ill.” When Jesus heard this he said, “This illness is not to end in death, but is for the glory of God, that the Son of God may be glorified through it.” Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. So when he heard that he was ill, he remained for two days in the place where he was. Then after this he said to his disciples, “Let us go back to Judea.” The disciples said to him, “Rabbi, the Jews were just trying to stone you, and you want to go back there?” Jesus answered, “Are there not twelve hours in a day? If one walks during the day, he does not stumble, because he sees the light of this world. But if one walks at night, he stumbles, because the light is not in him.” He said this, and then told them, “Our friend Lazarus is asleep, but I am going to awaken him.” So the disciples said to him, “Master, if he is asleep, he will be saved.” But Jesus was talking about his death, while they thought that he meant ordinary sleep. So then Jesus said to them clearly, “Lazarus has died. And I am glad for you that I was not there, that you may believe. Let us go to him.” So Thomas, called Didymus, said to his fellow disciples, “Let us also go to die with him.” When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days. Now Bethany was near Jerusalem, only about two miles away. And many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to comfort them about their brother. When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went to meet him; but Mary sat at home. Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now I know that whatever you ask of God, God will give you.” Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise.” Martha said to him, “I know he will rise, in the resurrection on the last day.” Jesus told her, “I am the resurrection and the life; whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” She said to him, “Yes, Lord. I have come to believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, the one who is coming into the world.” When she had said this, she went and called her sister Mary secretly, saying, “The teacher is here and is asking for you.” As soon as she heard this, she rose quickly and went to him. For Jesus had not yet come into the village, but was still where Martha had met him. So when the Jews who were with her in the house comforting her saw Mary get up quickly and go out, they followed her, presuming that she was going to the tomb to weep there. When Mary came to where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet and said to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” When Jesus saw her weeping and the Jews who had come with her weeping, he became perturbed and deeply troubled, and said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Sir, come and see.” And Jesus wept. So the Jews said, “See how he loved him.” But some of them said, “Could not the one who opened the eyes of the blind man have done something so that this man would not have died?” So Jesus, perturbed again, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone lay across it. Jesus said, “Take away the stone.” Martha, the dead man’s sister, said to him, “Lord, by now there will be a stench; he has been dead for four days.” Jesus said to her, “Did I not tell you that if you believe you will see the glory of God?” So they took away the stone. And Jesus raised his eyes and said, “Father, I thank you for hearing me. I know that you always hear me; but because of the crowd here I have said this, that they may believe that you sent me.” And when he had said this, he cried out in a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” The dead man came out, tied hand and foot with burial bands, and his face was wrapped in a cloth. So Jesus said to them, “Untie him and let him go.”  Now many of the Jews who had come to Mary and seen what he had done began to believe in him.

There is something almost unsettling at the beginning of this Gospel: “Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. So . . . he remained for two days.” We would expect the opposite. Because he loves, he should hurry. Because he loves, he should prevent suffering. But instead, because he loves, he delays. This is one of the hardest lessons in the spiritual life. 

The sisters believe in the Lord’s power: “Lord, if you had been here.” They are not wrong. Their faith is real — but it is still measured by time and circumstance. It assumes that the presence of Christ means the avoidance of loss. But the Lord intends something deeper. He does not come merely to prevent death, but to enter into it and transform it.

When He finally arrives, everything seems lost: Lazarus is not merely dead, but four days in the tomb. Martha speaks of decay. Hope has passed into resignation. And it is precisely here —cbeyond all natural hope — that Christ reveals Himself: “I am the resurrection and the life.”

We should notice: He does not say, I will give resurrection. He says, “I am.”

The miracle is not first the raising of Lazarus. The miracle is the unveiling of who Christ is. And yet, before the great sign, there is a quieter moment — perhaps the most revealing in the whole passage: “And Jesus wept.” This is not weakness. It is not hesitation. It is divine compassion entering fully into human sorrow.

Christ does not stand outside death as a distant conqueror. He stands before the tomb and shares the grief of those who mourn. And this is important for us: He delays, yes. He permits suffering, yes. But he does not remain untouched by it He enters into it, even when he knows he will overcome it.

Then comes the command: “Take away the stone.” Even here, Martha hesitates. The realism of death resists hope: “Lord, by now there will be a stench.” This is the voice of experience, of reason confronted with corruption. And Christ answers with a call to trust:

“Did I not tell you that if you believe, you will see the glory of God?” Faith,  then, is not the denial of reality —

but the willingness to let God act within it,  even when it seems too late.

Finally, the word is spoken: “Lazarus, come out!” And the dead man comes forth. But even here, Christ involves others: “Untie him and let him go.” The work of resurrection is divine — but the unbinding belongs, in part, to us.

Perhaps this is the deepest thread running through the passage: Christ delays—not to abandon, but to deepen faith. He permits darkness—not to destroy, but to prepare for light. He enters sorrow — not to affirm death, but to transform it from within

And when he finally speaks, his word does not merely console — it calls forth life where there was none.

Saturday in the Fourth Week of Lent, March 21, 2026

John 7:40-53

Some in the crowd who heard these words of Jesus said, “This is truly the Prophet.” Others said, “This is the Christ.” But others said, “The Christ will not come from Galilee, will he? Does not Scripture say that the Christ will be of David’s family and come from Bethlehem, the village where David lived?” So a division occurred in the crowd because of him. Some of them even wanted to arrest him, but no one laid hands on him. So the guards went to the chief priests and Pharisees, who asked them, “Why did you not bring him?” The guards answered, “Never before has anyone spoken like this man.” So the Pharisees answered them, “Have you also been deceived? Have any of the authorities or the Pharisees believed in him? But this crowd, which does not know the law, is accursed.” Nicodemus, one of their members who had come to him earlier, said to them, “Does our law condemn a man before it first hears him and finds out what he is doing?” They answered and said to him, “You are not from Galilee also, are you? Look and see that no prophet arises from Galilee.”   Then each went to his own house.

The first part of this Gospel reading describes the confusion and mass of opinions regarding the identity of the Lord Jesus.  We see this reflected in the other Gospels as well, as in Matthew 16, 14, where the Apostles answered him that some people regarded him as John the Baptist, Elijah, Jeremiah, or one of the other Prophets.  St. John saw the battle over identifying Jesus as central to salvation.  John is handing on what he himself has seen and heard so that others may have life, but this can only be so if the one he has seen and heard is the Son of God incarnate.  Thus, John begins his Gospel by identifying the Lord: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”  Throughout the rest of his Gospel, he shows this Word in action among the Jews and Gentiles.

“This is truly the Prophet.”  That is, Elijah, whom Malachi promised would come before the end of time.  Elijah performed miracles as well as preached repentance.  “This is the Christ.”  Those who recognized John the Baptist as Elijah would have concluded that Jesus was the Christ, as indeed John himself pointed out.  “The Christ will not come from Galilee, will he?”  Some among the crowd knew and understood Micah 5, 2 as indicating where the Messiah would be born, and the verse says nothing about Galilee, a land depopulated of Jews by the Assyrians hundreds of years before and resettled by them only relatively recently.  “Does not Scripture say that the Christ will be of David’s family and come from Bethlehem, the village where David lived?”  From this we can tell that the Lord did not publicize his ancestry.  We might wonder why not, since it would seem that if he had, more people would have recognized him as the Messiah.  But during his Public Life, the Lord strove to play down that he was “the Messiah” because of the false expectations people had for that figure.  Returning to Matthew 16, after Peter had declared him to be the Son of God, the Lord forbade the Apostles to speak of this to anyone.  He knew that his followers were always on the verge of making him king: “Jesus therefore, when he knew that they would come to take him by force and make him king, fled again into the mountains, himself alone” (John 6, 15).  He had not been sent into the world to restore the kingdom to Israel (cf. Acts 1, 6), but to redeem the world from sin.  “So a division occurred in the crowd because of him.”  The Greek word translated here as “division” does not mean a clean cut, but a ragged one with jagged edges, a “rent”.  It is the basis for our word “schism”.  The people were sharply, even violently, divided about him.  This brings to mind Matthew 10, 34-36: “Do not think that I came to send peace upon earth: I came not to send peace, but the sword. For I came to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law. And a man’s enemies shall be they of his own household.”

“Some of them even wanted to arrest him, but no one laid hands on him.”  The Jewish leadership sought to kill him because he challenged their teaching on the Sabbath and also because he spoke of himself as equal to the Father.  Neither the people nor the guards the leadership had sent would touch him, though.  They found themselves more amazed at him than enraged by him.  The leadership, however, had closed their ears to him as later they would close them to St. Stephen: “And they, crying out with a loud voice, stopped their ears” (Acts 7, 56).  With such an attitude they demanded of the guards why they had returned to them empty-handed.  The guards, in their amazement at him, replied: “Never before has anyone spoken like this man.”  The guards so not even seem dazzled by any miracles they may have seen.  His words alone made them hold their peace.  One wonders if any of these guards were later involved in the Lord’s arrest at Gethsemane.  “Have you also been deceived? Have any of the authorities or the Pharisees believed in him?”  The words of the chief priests accord a certain respect to the guards, for the chief priests imply that they were capable of not being deceived.  At the same time, they rebuke them for being “deceived” by the Lord.  We might wonder in what way the chief priests thought the guards were deceived by Jesus.  Deceived into thinking or believing what, exactly?  The Greek word can also mean “led astray”, so perhaps the guards were being accused of being led from the teachings of the Pharisees to the teachings of Jesus.  “But this crowd, which does not know the law, is accursed.”  The guards may be a step above the crowd in their ability to understand, but the crowd, not knowing the Law, was accursed.  But if the crowd did not know the Law, it was the fault of the chief priests, scribes, and Pharisees, and if tue crowd is indeed accursed, so much more so the people who failed in their responsibility to teach them.

“Does our Law condemn a man before it first hears him and finds out what he is doing?”  Nicodemus counters his brother Pharisees by pointing out to them their own lapse in knowing the Law and its procedures for judging a case.  “You are not from Galilee also, are you? Look and see that no prophet arises from Galilee.”  In fact, both Elijah and Elisha came from places that would later be called Galilee, as well as the later Prophet Hosea.  Again, they prove their own ignorance, undermining their claim that others are ignorant.

“Then each went to his own house.”  That is, they each went their way.  They had gathered in order to kill, and now they scatter in their defeat.  We also see that all that held these faithless men together was their hatred of Jesus.  Otherwise, each was devoted to his own interests, which might be in conflict with those of the others.  In addition, we can see them going, each “to his own house” as their destruction, in the way a piece of pottery shatters when dropped on a hard floor.  The pieces go everywhere.  By contrast, those who believe in Jesus Christ are united as members of his Body and belong to his Church, his ecclesia, his “assembly”.

Personal Note: Still some pain this morning but my vision had largely cleared and as the day went on the most of the pain diminished. I can see more clearly than two days ago, so this treatment is working. My vision has come a long way in the last month when I could hardly read at all. Thanks for all your prayers!