Saturday, April 4, 2020, in the Fifth Week of Lent

I can’t believe that tomorrow is Palm Sunday.  No processions with the palms, no sprinkling with holy water, no fervent “Crucify him!” from the congregation during the reading of the Passion.  We have cases of palms at the church and no idea what to do with them.  Let this time help us to think about Christians persecuted throughout the world, especially in China, where Masses are small, secret, and infrequent, and let us pray for the conversion of their persecutors.

John 11:45-56

Many of the Jews who had come to Mary and seen what Jesus had done began to believe in him. But some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done. So the chief priests and the Pharisees convened the Sanhedrin and said, “What are we going to do? This man is performing many signs. If we leave him alone, all will believe in him, and the Romans will come and take away both our land and our nation.” But one of them, Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, said to them, “You know nothing, nor do you consider that it is better for you that one man should die instead of the people, so that the whole nation may not perish.” He did not say this on his own, but since he was high priest for that year, he prophesied that Jesus was going to die for the nation, and not only for the nation, but also to gather into one the dispersed children of God. So from that day on they planned to kill him. 

So Jesus no longer walked about in public among the Jews, but he left for the region near the desert, to a town called Ephraim, and there he remained with his disciples. 

Now the Passover of the Jews was near, and many went up from the country to Jerusalem before Passover to purify themselves. They looked for Jesus and said to one another as they were in the temple area, “What do you think? That he will not come to the feast?”

Joseph ben Caiaphas, whom we simply know as “Caiaphas”, was appointed high priest in place of his father-in-law Annas in the year 18 A.D. by the Roman prefect who governed the region before Pontius Pilate.  Beginning a hundred and fifty years, when the Greeks ruled, the high priesthood had been a political position more than a religious one.  Men who desired it would offer bribes or make deals to obtain it, whereas since the time of Moses it had been hereditary within a particular family.  Caiaphas does not seem to have taken his religious responsibilities seriously but did concern himself with preserving the status quo with the Romans until the Messiah came to lead a war against them.

We see his secular mind at work when he says, “It is better for you that one man should die instead of the people, so that the whole nation may not perish.”  This was in answer to the words of the chief priests and the Sanhedrin, “This man is performing many signs.”  If he were religious, he would have said, “Let us look at what these signs mean.”  For a sign to be a sign, it must point to some meaning.  The leading Jews of the time were calling his miracles “signs”.  They were signs of power.  But Caiaphas does not speak of the signs.  He is not even mildly curious about them.  He speaks of the possibility of civil disturbance and rather blandly talks of killing one man “so that the whole nation may not perish.” 

This concern about Jesus as a political agitator should strike us as bizarre. Not only has Jesus nowhere spoken against the Romans, but he has performed miracles for centurions and advocated paying the tax to Caesar, besides seeming to aid the Romans by eating with and speaking well of their tax collectors.  His assemblies are peaceable and are wholly about the need to repent and to follow the law.  In this respect Jesus was no more a threat to the civil order than John the Baptist had been.

What Jesus threatened, in fact, was the religious order.  This is what made the religious leaders with the secular mindset anxious.  They knew the law and observed it according to the practices of their sects, but on the whole these were not pious, religious men who sought to do the will of God.  God’s will is never a consideration in their debates about Jesus.  The members of the Sanhedrin, with Annas and Caiaphas at their head, feared a religious revolution more than a political one.  It is often this way with non-religious folks, whether they consider themselves secular, or humanists, or atheists, or agnostics.  They do not want to be bothered with God.  At the root of this is pride, and also a fear of being held accountable.

We find very secular people among the most influential in our society, and it can be very hard for the Christian to see the world as the Lord would have us do.  It is necessary for us to immerse ourselves in the Scriptures, the lives of the saints, the life of the Church, in heart-felt prayer before the Blessed Sacrament, in order to form our minds aright, to allow our Lord to form them.  These days with so many churches locked up and all church activities on hiatus, it may be easier to slip away from making progress in our spiritual lives, but we all still have many aids.  Let us consider the words of St. Paul, addressing the early Christians living in Rome: “The night is passed and the day is at hand. Let us, therefore, cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light. Let us walk honestly, as in the day: not in rioting and drunkenness, not in formication and impurities, not in contention and envy.  But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ: and make not provision for the flesh in its unruly desires.”