Friday, April 3, 2020, in the Fifth Week of Lent

John 10, 32-42

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”‘? If 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.

St. Thomas Aquinas comments that the Jews called judges, kings, and also angels “gods”.  The judges and kings because they had the power of life and death, and angels because to mortal humans, the angels were god-like.  Here, Jesus reasons with the Jews on their own level and succeeded in dissuading them from stoning him, though they tried to seize hold of him.  The Lord then refers them back to the miracles he has performed, “the Father’s works”.  Jesus is saying, again, that if he is a blasphemer, he would not be able to perform these miracles.  The fact that he can shows that the Father confirms the statements he makes about himself.  But many of the Jews, probably most of his hearers on this occasion, cannot or will not make the act of faith which the Lord is asking from them.  The works he performs are not persuasive enough for them to believe the incredible claims he makes, not even that of raising a man from the dead.  We might recall the parable of Lazarus and the rich man, in which the rich man, from hell, begs Abraham to send Lazarus from heaven to warn his brothers on earth to repent.  Abraham replies, “If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they believe, if one rise again from the dead” (Luke 16, 31).  

It seems obvious and easy enough to us, with two thousand years of tradition and historical hindsight, but we ought to try and put ourselves in the sandals of these Jews.  Jesus was proposing to them what must have seemed an impossibility, that God could somehow become man, that he could live in a place like Nazareth, that he could look and sound like a man.  And yet, he had this immense power over nature and over the supernatural.  In the moment, they were not ready to make an act of faith.

And so Jesus gives them room.  He gives them time to reflect.  He moves out to the Jordan away from Jerusalem and he waits.  After a time, “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.”  Peter and the Apostles needed time, and Jesus gave them three years.  They pondered, they discussed, they argued among themselves, they asked the Lord questions, they observed his miracles, and they pondered some more.  And in the end, they believed.  This shows us the preciousness of real faith, and that we ought to prize it deeply.  It goes beyond simply knowing.  It is a “believing in” Jesus, a giving over of the self to Jesus.  It is, in fact, overcoming the world.  

We read here of the Jews attempting to seize Jesus.  Many have attempted this before, even in his own town of Nazareth, but he has always walked away from those who would lay violent hands on him.  He only allows himself to be led away when his hour has come.  He wills for his believers to seize him with their hearts, and we do this through violence against ourselves, rejecting the devil and his empty promises and the world and its false pleasures.