Thursday in the Fourth Week Of Lent, March 18, 2021

John 5:31-47

Jesus said to the Jews: “If I testify on my own behalf, my testimony is not true. But there is another who testifies on my behalf, and I know that the testimony he gives on my behalf is true. You sent emissaries to John, and he testified to the truth. I do not accept human testimony, but I say this so that you may be saved. He was a burning and shining lamp, and for a while you were content to rejoice in his light. But I have testimony greater than John’s. The works that the Father gave me to accomplish, these works that I perform testify on my behalf that the Father has sent me. Moreover, the Father who sent me has testified on my behalf. But you have never heard his voice nor seen his form, and you do not have his word remaining in you, because you do not believe in the one whom he has sent. You search the Scriptures, because you think you have eternal life through them; even they testify on my behalf. But you do not want to come to me to have life.  I do not accept human praise; moreover, I know that you do not have the love of God in you. I came in the name of my Father, but you do not accept me; yet if another comes in his own name, you will accept him. How can you believe, when you accept praise from one another and do not seek the praise that comes from the only God? Do not think that I will accuse you before the Father: the one who will accuse you is Moses, in whom you have placed your hope. For if you had believed Moses, you would have believed me, because he wrote about me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe my words?”

“But I have testimony greater than John’s. The works that the Father gave me to accomplish, these works that I perform testify on my behalf that the Father has sent me. Moreover, the Father who sent me has testified on my behalf.”  The Lord speaks of his miracles and preaching as “the works that the Father gave me to accomplish.”  The miracle of the wine at Cana was predestined by the Father before all ages, as was the healing of the paralytic on the mat at Capernaum, and the healing of the woman with the blood disease.  Likewise, all the good we have received was predestined for us from before time began, that is, foreseen and planned.  The Father shows his love for each of us in this way, and he gives all things to us through his Son, who came down to us.  The powerful works which the Lord Jesus performed long ago proved his divinity at that time, and prove his divinity again to us through the historical record of the Gospels as well as in the lives of the saints.  He reveals himself as divine so that we may know him as a most trustworthy witness when he tells us about the Father and about the things of heaven.  Jesus, the Son of God, loves the Father with all his being, with unimaginable might, and glories in him: and like anyone in love, he tells us all about the one he loves.  In fact, he only talks about himself in order to talk about the Father.

“But you have never heard his voice nor seen his form, and you do not have his word remaining in you, because you do not believe in the one whom he has sent.”  In order to know the Father, we must know the Son.  That is, we can only know God as Father by knowing his Son.  Otherwise, the idea of God as Father is merely an abstract term.  God need not be a Father.  God as Father of the Son does not exist for the Jews or Moslems.  They only know God as solitary.  But to know God as Father of the Son tells us that this is a God of love.  The Father willed the begetting of his Son.  The Father did not “need” the Son.  He begot him because he loved him.  To know the Son as begotten by the Father tells us much about the Son, as well.  We can know that the Son is loved by the Father with a love beyond all telling.  That the Father sent his Son to die for our salvation, then, tells us how much we are loved by him.  These are truths worth dwelling on in the weeks before the Passion.