The Feast of St. Joseph the Worker, Monday, May 1, 2023

Matthew 13, 54-58

Jesus came to his native place and taught the people in their synagogue. They were astonished and said, “Where did this man get such wisdom and mighty deeds? Is he not the carpenter’s son? Is not his mother named Mary and his brothers James, Joseph, Simon, and Judas? Are not his sisters all with us? Where did this man get all this?” And they took offense at him. But Jesus said to them, “A prophet is not without honor except in his native place and in his own house.” And he did not work many mighty deeds there because of their lack of faith.

“Is he not the carpenter’s son?”  The people in the synagogue had not seen Jesus for the better part of a year.  Since the death of Joseph and the moving on of Jesus the noise in the carpenter shop there in Nazareth had ceased.  Joseph’s wife, Mary, had moved in with other family members while she waited for the return of her Son.  Now, with a reputation as a miracle-worker, he teaches in the synagogue.  The people are thunderstruck (a word closer to the Greek meaning than “astonished”) by his wisdom and by the deeds he was reported to have performed.  They contrast him and his wisdom to his father the carpenter.  According to the idea of the time, a person continued his father or mother’s work.  If a man worked at blacksmithing, his son became a blacksmith.  If a woman was a seamstress, the daughter took up this work even while still a girl.  A person’s identity very much came from his family, their work, their tribe, and their town.  A person accounted as wise would be expected to come from a father accounted as wise.  If a father was an ordinary carpenter, no one would expect wisdom from the son.  He might show great skillfulness, but not wisdom.  The people therefore do not denigrate the occupation of carpenter when they ask how Jesus could be the son of one.  They simply do not see past their false expectations.

It is interesting that the people identify the (foster) father of Jesus as “the carpenter” rather than from the street the family lived on, or, more to the custom, from Joseph’s own father.  Certainly his name was known.  St. Matthew gives it to us as a man named Jacob.  But for us it is more important to know that Joseph was a carpenter and that the Lord Jesus chose to be known as the son of the carpenter for this tells us of the value of human work.  God did not create the human race in order to its members to wander around the Garden of Eden without purpose.  He created Adam and Eve and placed them in the Garden, giving them the work of tilling it and keeping it (Genesis 2, 15), as if continuing God’s work of creation, or, at least, preserving it.  Of course, God did not need their help but willed for them to have a part in his work.  It is a great dignity that God gives the human race in this way.  Nor did God take this dignity away after the catastrophic sin Adam and Eve committed.  We ought to think about this: God could have cast them out of the Garden and not allowed them to work anymore.  They would have lost their purpose, their role as caretakers of creation.  Certainly it was better for them to get their bread by the sweat of their brows than to drift through the empty land in their remaining days.  But their work, even after the Fall, brought them near to Almighty God who preserves the universe through his own act (or “work”) of conservation.

St. Joseph worked humbly and quietly, not expecting special favors from God to spare him from the labor that was his lot, assisting his neighbors by building doorframes for them or repairing their plows and performing other useful work.  He sought no riches, but only to feed himself, his wife, and his son.  And such a son!  If St. Luke could say of the Blessed Virgin that she looked on Jesus and heard what people inspired by God said about him and “kept all these words, pondering them in her heart” (Luke 2, 19), then certainly this would be true of Joseph.  How many times did St. Joseph look up from his work in his shop and see Jesus next to him or in another part of the shop, working with him, and marvel over him and what he knew of him from the angel in his dreams and from Mary his wife!

You and I in our share in “tilling and keeping” the world around us with our own work, whatever it may be.  We offer our work to the Father through Jesus and ask for its success.  And through our work we imitate the Lord Jesus and his foster father St. Joseph who show us the dignity of the worker,

 The Fourth Sunday of Easter, April 30, 2023

John 10, 1–10

Jesus said: “Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever does not enter a sheepfold through the gate but climbs over elsewhere is a thief and a robber. But whoever enters through the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. The gatekeeper opens it for him, and the sheep hear his voice, as the shepherd calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has driven out all his own, he walks ahead of them, and the sheep follow him, because they recognize his voice. But they will not follow a stranger; they will run away from him, because they do not recognize the voice of strangers.” Although Jesus used this figure of speech, the Pharisees did not realize what he was trying to tell them.  So Jesus said again, “Amen, amen, I say to you, I am the gate for the sheep. All who came before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not listen to them. I am the gate. Whoever enters through me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture. A thief comes only to steal and slaughter and destroy; I came so that they might have life and have it more abundantly.”

The Gospel Reading for today’s Mass follows St. John’s record of the Lord’s healing of the man born blind in Jerusalem.  In his account, John does not tell us that the Lord spoke to the Pharisees, but that they spoke to the blind man and even to his parents in order to discredit the miracle.  Immediately after the blind man recognized Jesus and understood that he was the Son of God, he prostrated himself and adored him.  Jesus then said, “For judgment I am come into this world: that they who see not may see; and they who see may become blind” (John 9, 39).  To this, some Pharisees who were nearby, retorted, “Are we also blind?”  To which the Lord replied, “If you were blind, you should not have sin: but now you say: We see. Your sin remains.”  At this point today’s Reading commences, with Jesus declaring, “Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever does not enter a sheepfold through the gate but climbs over elsewhere is a thief and a robber.”  He is challenging the Pharisees as “the teachers of Israel” (cf. John 3, 10) who have usurped “the chair of Moses” (cf. Matthew 23, 2) though they were not duly appointed by any legitimate authority.  But the Lord Jesus shows that he does possess such authority through the many signs he has performed that show that he has come from God.  To make this clear, he uses a metaphor drawn from everyday life that all people could agree on: the shepherd goes through the sheep gate but those who would steal sheep would have to go over the fence.  They would not attempt to enter through the gate because the gatekeeper would raise the alarm and the thieves would be beaten off.  The Lord is saying that the shepherd goes to the proper entrance, which is opened for him to enter.  He does not go over the fence.  This is the Lord who comes openly to his people in order to lead them to pasture.  

“The gatekeeper opens it for him, and the sheep hear his voice, as the shepherd calls his own sheep by name and leads them out.”  Sheep as well as other farm animals become excited when they see, hear, or smell the one who customarily feeds them coming towards them, and they even know the times when he comes so that they become agitated if he does not.  They run toward him and cry out in their excitement.  These are the believers who rejoice to go to Holy Mass, to read the Scriptures, to learn about the Faith, and to pray.  “When he has driven out all his own, he walks ahead of them, and the sheep follow him, because they recognize his voice.”  “Driven out” should be “brought forth”, according to the Greek, a very different meaning: “When he has brought out all his own, etc.”  The shepherd walks ahead to lead the sheep to the pasture where he wants them to eat that day, and the sheep know from experience that they will eat well if they follow him.  They do not go out grudgingly or have to be “driven out”, but follow after him gladly.  “But they will not follow a stranger; they will run away from him, because they do not recognize the voice of strangers.”  If two shepherds mix their flocks together in the same pasture, as sometimes happens, and one shepherd calls to his sheep, his own sheep will leave the rest behind and follow him.  The other sheep do not even look up when the shepherd calls.  Each shepherd, of course, has his own voice, but he also uses a certain whistle or grunt or other sound which belongs to him alone and his sheep know it very well.  We might think here of how Mary Magdalene recognized the risen Jesus when he called her name.  She did not recognize his form or his voice, but she did know the way he spoke her name.  Only he ever spoke her name the way he did, and when she heard it, she knew the “gardener” could only be Jesus.  We will thus be called by name when we leave this life if we persevere in the Faith.

“Amen, amen, I say to you, I am the gate for the sheep. All who came before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not listen to them.”  The Lord did not often explain his parables and metaphors unless he was asked, but he wanted the Pharisees to understand exactly what he meant.  The phrase “before me” is not found in the Greek but is understood.  A literal translation of this verse is: “All others, as many as came, are thieves and robbers: and the sheep heard them not.”  We might wonder about these “others”.  These would have been false messiahs and rebels.  The Lord could also be alluding to the chief priests and the Sanhedrin, who were widely distrusted by the people for their corruption.  By contrast, he himself had drawn such crowds as threatened to crush him with their numbers.  When word of his approach spread in any area, people dropped what they were doing and hurried to him.  The jealousy of the Pharisees, the chief priests, and Sanhedrin of his widespread following had much to do with their eagerness to kill him.  If a thief is going to steal a flock, he will have to kill the shepherd.

“I am the gate. Whoever enters through me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture.”  The Lord has identified himself as the shepherd who leads the sheep to pasture, and he now identifies himself as the gate through which the sheep must pass.  That is, he is “the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14, 6).  He is the only way to the pasture where the sheep will graze.  (And he is the Food that they will eat, as well).  

“A thief comes only to steal and slaughter and destroy; I came so that they might have life and have it more abundantly.”  The Lord draws up the distinction between himself and any other who would claim his prerogatives as the Son of God who has come down from heaven to save his people.  These thieves include not only the flock’s enemies from the outside, but those among the Shepherd’s assistants who scheme to seize the flock and exploit them for their own purposes: to “slaughter and destroy” them.  These include heretics and any in the Church who contest the Church’s teachers and propose false teachings in their stead, and attempt to lead the faithful astray.  But those who know the Church’s teachings are like the sheep who know their shepherd’s voice and do not follow strangers.

The Lord teaches the Pharisees in this way not in order to antagonize them but in order to convince them to look hard at themselves and at what they were doing so that they might repent and be saved.  Several Pharisees, including Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea, did.  

 Saturday in the Third Week of Easter, April 29, 2023

John 6, 60-69

Many of the disciples of Jesus who were listening said, “This saying is hard; who can accept it?” Since Jesus knew that his disciples were murmuring about this, he said to them, “Does this shock you? What if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before? It is the Spirit that gives life, while the flesh is of no avail. The words I have spoken to you are Spirit and life. But there are some of you who do not believe.” Jesus knew from the beginning the ones who would not believe and the one who would betray him. And he said, “For this reason I have told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by my Father.”  As a result of this, many of his disciples returned to their former way of life and no longer walked with him. Jesus then said to the Twelve, “Do you also want to leave?” Simon Peter answered him, “Master, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and are convinced that you are the Holy One of God.”

“This saying is hard; who can accept it?”  In today’s Gospel Reading we see how “many are called but few are chosen” (Matthew 22, 14).  The people saying, “This saying is hard; who can accept it?”, are identified as the Lord’s disciples.  That is, these are people who have followed him as pupils attach themselves to star teachers.  They are seeking to learn from their teacher, convinced that he has the truth.  But they come to this “hard saying” that Jesus gives them, that to attain eternal life they must eat his Body and drink his Blood, and their willingness to learn from him stumbles.  The saying is indeed “hard” ( the Greek word also means “violent”, “harsh”, and “stern”), but they do not ask Jesus what he means: they only fight among themselves over his meaning.  This may reveal a certain bad faith on their part, but they were also reacting to the completely unexpected lesson in religion, for they believed that Jesus, the Messiah, had been sent by God to overthrow Roman rule: they expected him to rouse them up to march on Jerusalem.  Their rejection of the Lord’s teaching, then, amounted to their rejection of him as the Messiah, despite the tremendous miracle — the sign — he had performed for them.

“Does this shock you? What if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before?”  The Lord chides them, reminding them of what the Scriptures actually say about the Messiah, the Son of Man.  Certainly, the Son of Man’s visible return to the court of heaven would astonish or shock them far more than the teaching on his Body and Blood had.

“It is the Spirit that gives life, while the flesh is of no avail.”  To believe in the truths of the Faith requires the gift of the Holy Spirit.  One can know these truths and understand them to be reasonable, but to believe them is quite another thing.  The failure of these disciples to believe is a sign that they lack this gift, or that they had received the gift but rejected both the truth and the gift of faith because what the Lord said did not line up with what they wanted him to say: “But there are some of you who do not believe.” 

“For this reason I have told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by my Father.”  Many are called, but few answer the call, the draw, of the Father through the Holy Spirit to believe in the Son.  These disciples were willing to go a certain distance towards Jesus, but refuse to go beyond that because they wish him to change himself to suit them.  Few are “chosen”, that is, those who choose, through grace, to follow the Lord “wherever he goes” (Revelation 14, 4).  These chosen say with St. Peter: “You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and are convinced that you are the Holy One of God.”

 Friday in the Third Week of Easter, April 28, 2023

John 6, 52-59

The Jews quarreled among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us his Flesh to eat?” Jesus said to them, “Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat the Flesh of the Son of Man and drink his Blood, you do not have life within you. Whoever eats my Flesh and drinks my Blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day. For my Flesh is true food, and my Blood is true drink. Whoever eats my Flesh and drinks my Blood remains in me and I in him. Just as the living Father sent me and I have life because of the Father, so also the one who feeds on me will have life because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven. Unlike your ancestors who ate and still died, whoever eats this bread will live forever.” These things he said while teaching in the synagogue in Capernaum.

“How can this man give us his Flesh to eat?”  The Jews ask a good question, but they do not ask the only one who could answer it.  Instead, they “quarreled among themselves”.  The Greek text is stronger, saying that they “were fighting” or “battling”.  The use of the imperfect tense indicates that this went on for an extended time: “The Jews were fighting among the,selves, saying, etc.”  That is, they did not all reject the Lord’s words out of hand, though some undoubtedly did, but argued heatedly about what they meant.  

“Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat the Flesh of the Son of Man and drink his Blood, you do not have life within you.”  The Lord reiterates on his teaching and insists on the literal meaning of his words.  He also claims to be the Son of Man, which reminds them that he is far more than a prophet.  He is the Messiah from God.  His teaching them that they must eat his Body and drink his Blood does violence to their idea of the Messiah, however, and this also inflamed members of the crowd against him.  The “life” the Lord speaks of is the life of grace, a sharing in the divine life which confers eternal life in heaven on the who possesses it.  “Whoever eats my Flesh and drinks my Blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day.”  John’s Gospel is the only one of the four that does not contain an extended teaching on the end of the world — for that we must go to the Book of Revelation, a collection of visions which John received years later.

“For my Flesh is true food, and my Blood is true drink.”  That is, the food you and I eat is modeled after the Body of Christ.  It is the Body of Christ which is true food; what we eat and drink shares a couple of properties with it but is still a faint copy.  Perhaps all we can can really say they have in common is that they both nourish.  “Whoever eats my Flesh and drinks my Blood remains in me and I in him.”  Thus, the Flesh and Blood of the Lord is greater than us: it does not remain with us, but we remain in him through it.  We receive him in order to be received by him.  This remaining and the nourishment that accompanies it lasts through our lives unless we fall into the serious misfortune of sinning.  “Just as the living Father sent me and I have life because of the Father, so also the one who feeds on me will have life because of me.”  “I have life”: the Greek says, “I am living”.  The first means something like, I have life now, at this moment.  The second means that the Father is sustaining his life.  Life is not a feature or quality that we can have, as though possessing it.  It is a gift from God who continuously gives it, sustaining us in every moment.  God does not give life as though it were a one-time gift but which he showers upon us for as long as he wills.

“Unlike your ancestors who ate and still died, whoever eats this bread will live forever.”  While God indeed gave manna to the Hebrews, it had as a more important purpose that of God’s preeminent sign to the Chosen People of the Body of Christ which he would offer them.  Jesus fulfills the sign with his own Body and Blood, and he makes this abundantly clear to the Jews.  Protestants who think the Lord is speaking symbolically here err in that the Lord would hardly say that he was fulfilling a sign with another sign (or, even weaker, a “symbol”).

Let us be very conscious of who we are receiving when we present ourselves for Holy Communion, and who it is who receives us.

 Thursday in the Third Week of Easter, April 30, 2020

John 6:44-51

Jesus said to the crowds: “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draw him, and I will raise him on the last day. It is written in the prophets: “They shall all be taught by God.”Everyone who listens to my Father and learns from him comes to me. Not that anyone has seen the Father except the one who is from God; he has seen the Father. Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life. Your ancestors ate the manna in the desert, but they died; this is the bread that comes down from heaven so that one may eat it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give is my Flesh for the life of the world.”

In the preceding verses, Jesus has spoken of the desire of the Father for the salvation of the human race, and of the Jews in particular.  In saying that, “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draw him”, Jesus asserts that a person receives this salvation as a personal call from God.  We might rewrite this verse in this way: Everyone who comes to me is drawn by the Father.  First Jesus arouses the crowd’s hunger for the Bread that “comes down from heaven” and “gives life to the world”, and then he says that the person who comes to this Bread, to Jesus, is drawn to It by the Father.  The “hunger”, then, comes from the Father, just as the satisfaction for that hunger, Jesus, comes from heaven, from the Father.  Jesus is not offering himself as a mere teacher in the way the Pharisees did or even as John the Baptist had.  The crowd knows this, and many become restless.  To show them how much more he is, the Lord adds, “And I will raise him on the last day.”

I think that Jesus must have paused here before continuing, letting the people absorb what he has told them.  When he resumes, he elaborates on what he has already told them about those who come to him.  John tells us that he said, “It is written in the prophets: They shall all be taught by God.”  Evidently Jesus is quoting Isaiah 54, 13, in which the Prophet says, literally, as I translate it, “All your sons the taught of the Lord”.  There is no verb in the verse, as is often the case in Hebrew sentences.  Since the prophet is speaking of a future time in the context, the verb to-be in the future tense could be understood here.  It isn’t merely that the sons will be taught but that they will have been educated — they would have accepted the teaching and would then be “disciples”.  It would be worthwhile at this point to read Isaiah 54.  The Lord may have quoted the whole of it to the crowd, and John gives us the shorthand version, assuming his first readers knew the reference.  Isaiah 54 is in the last part of the book and it describes the time of the Messiah and the time of the judgment of the nations.  What Jesus is saying here in quoting these words, is that the time of the Messiah has indeed come, and that those who follow him are the “taught of God”.  He reiterates with, “Everyone who listens to my Father and learns from him comes to me.”  We might rewrite this sentence as, “He who does not come to me does not listen to my Father.”  Jesus speaks of the Father as his own, not as “our” Father, but as “my” Father.  To show what he means when he says this, he explains, “Not that anyone has seen the Father except the one who is from God; he has seen the Father.”  God is his Father in a significantly distinct way than he is their Father.  Later, at the time of the Resurrection, he will tell Mary Magdalene, “Go to my brethren and say to them: I ascend to my Father and to your Father, to my God and to your God” (John 20, 17).  God is our Father as our Creator, and by adoption, in baptism; but Jesus is his natural Son, co-eternal from all the ages.

Because he is the Son of God who has seen the Father, he is able to solemnly declare to the crowd, “Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever believes [in me] has eternal life.  Knowing that the people before him are struggling with the immensity of what he is telling them and demanding from them, the Lord reminds them of the miracle of the loaves and fishes in which they participated and he goes back over what he has already explained about the manna of Moses: “Your ancestors ate the manna in the desert, but they died; this is the Bread that comes down from heaven so that one may eat it and not die.”  I have always imagined that at the point where Jesus says, “This is the Bread of heaven” that he pounded his chest or grabbed his arm in order to ensure that the people knew that the “this” was himself.  

He says, as a sort of summary, “I am the living bread that came down from heaven”, which he had already said before.  But then he adds this: “Whoever eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give is my Flesh for the life of the world.”  Now, he had said a little earlier that, “I am the bread of life. He that cometh to me shall not hunger.”  But there was no mention of “eating”, let alone of him giving this flesh of his for the life of the world.  The people had listened to him, had tried to follow him, had tried to reconcile his claims and miracles with his ordinary human appearance.  We see this in their earlier words, “Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How then does he say: I came down from heaven?” (John 6, 42, inexplicably left out of this reading). This, however, is too much, and they will object, argue, ridicule, and many will walk away.  The Lord could not be more clear in what he was telling them, and the crowd knew very well what he was saying.  If they thought he was speaking symbolically or in parables, or even in the prophetic mode, they would not have been outraged as they were.

 “The Bread that I will give is my Flesh for the life of the world.”  He has said that the manna preserved the Hebrews in the wilderness; he has said that his Flesh will confer eternal life; now he says that his Flesh will be offered up as a Sacrifice.  His Flesh will be eaten in the way that the sacrifices in the temple were eaten, once they were offered to God.  It was this sacrificed Flesh that would be eaten.  What is said would certainly be outrageous if the One who said it had not shown that he was God himself.

 Wednesday in the Third Week of Easter, April 26, 2023

John 6, 35-40

Jesus said to the crowds, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me will never hunger, and whoever believes in me will never thirst. But I told you that although you have seen me, you do not believe. Everything that the Father gives me will come to me, and I will not reject anyone who comes to me, because I came down from heaven not to do my own will but the will of the one who sent me. And this is the will of the one who sent me, that I should not lose anything of what he gave me, but that I should raise it on the last day. For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in him may have eternal life, and I shall raise him on the last day.”

“I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me will never hunger, and whoever believes in me will never thirst.”  We should note that the Lord Jesus says, “I am the bread of life.”  But  if Jesus is “the bread of life”, what is other bread, for it also gives life?  It is significant that the Lord does not merely say that he is “bread” rather than the “bread of life”.  He speaks as he does to show that he is not like bread, but that bread is, in a limited way, like him.  We might think of God, when he created the plants, at the beginning of time, created wheat that would be used for bread based on the model of his Son, who would one day take on human flesh.  We might also think of Jesus as the perfect Bread and of the bread that we eat to nourish our bodies as a distant relation.  For this reason, the Lord is the bread of life which is more than mortal, physical, life: he is the bread of eternal life.  He will nourish us body and soul for our growth into the life of heaven.  “[He] will never hunger.”  That is, one who eats the bread of life, who receives life from Jesus Christ, will receive the fullness of life which lacks nothing.  “Whoever believes in me will never thirst.”  The Lord ties the reception of his Body and Blood to faith.  In order to receive the Body of the Lord a person must possess faith, and the reception itself is an act of faith.  It is for this reason that when a member of the faithful comes to receive Holy Communion the priest who administers it holds up the Host and declares, “The Body of Christ”, and the communicant responds, “Amen”, registering his belief that the Host is the Body of Christ.

“But I told you that although you have seen me, you do not believe.”  The Lord warns the crowd that their mere looking upon him does not qualify as an act of faith and that more is required.  

“Everything that the Father gives me will come to me, and I will not reject anyone who comes to me, because I came down from heaven not to do my own will but the will of the one who sent me.”  The Greek word here translated as “everything” is in the neuter gender so that the phrase could be translated as “Everything that, etc.”, but it is more reasonably translated as “everyone whom”.  The sense of the phrase is that the Father gives to the Son human persons and these the Son receives and gives life to.  As it the Lord will say later in this discourse, “No man can come to me, except the Father, who has sent me, draw him” (John 6, 44).  The Father gives — or “draws” — all people to the Son, but not everyone wants to be “given” and “received” by them.  But all those who truly desire to be received by the Son, will be.  This is the will of the Father which the Son always obeys.

“And this is the will of the one who sent me, that I should not lose anything of what he gave me, but that I should raise it on the last day.”  The Father wills that the Son not lose anyone, but there are those who will reject the Son even after having accepted him.  We call this apostasy.  This is the will of a man or woman and not God’s will.  The point of the verse is that no one can be lost despite his abiding desire for Jesus Christ, only through sin and the loss of faith.  It is furthermore the will of the Father that the Son raise those whom he receives on the last day for the judgment at which their good deeds will be shown to the world and they will be brought into heaven.  The Son now claims a prerogative greater than the Messiah taught by the Pharisees was said to possess, that of raising the dead.  Thus, the Lord Jesus shows himself to be the successor of Moses through miraculously feeding the crowd in the wilderness and therefore the Messiah, and also that he is far greater than any human messiah could be.

“For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in him may have eternal life, and I shall raise him on the last day.”  The Lord returns to his opening words, that the people whom he had fed saw but did not believe.  Now, seeing him, if they would believe, they might have eternal life.  It is up to them.  Seeing alone does not suffice for we can see thing by accident or see things and not recognize them.  Here, seeing (or hearing) followed by believing leads to eternal life.  This believing is that Jesus is the Son of God whom the Father sent into the world.  Believing is not simply an intellectual act, although that is one component in it.  It is also professing this belief through words and actions.  

Our knowing and believing in the Son of God is a result of God’s drawing us to him throughout our lives, sometimes very subtly and on occasion dramatically, accompanied by our response to this being drawn.  It is an aid to our faith to look back down the road to see how God has drawn us and how we have assented to him.

 Tuesday in the Third Week of Easter, April 25, 2023

The Feast of St. Mark

Mark 16, 15-20

Jesus appeared to the Eleven and said to them: “Go into the whole world and proclaim the Gospel to every creature. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved; whoever does not believe will be condemned. These signs will accompany those who believe: in my name they will drive out demons, they will speak new languages. They will pick up serpents with their hands, and if they drink any deadly thing, it will not harm them. They will lay hands on the sick, and they will recover.”  Then the Lord Jesus, after he spoke to them, was taken up into heaven and took his seat at the right hand of God. But they went forth and preached everywhere, while the Lord worked with them and confirmed the word through accompanying signs.

St. Mark was the son of a woman named Mary who owned a large house in Jerusalem.  Since his mother is spoken of and her name given, the absence of any mention of his father leaves us to suspect that he was not alive by the time of the Lord’s last year of public ministry, at the latest.  During that time Mark would seem to have been young and not married, for we find later that he went off with the unmarried St. Barnabas and St. Paul to preach the Gospel in faraway lands.  His later break with St. Paul seems to have been caused by an urgent need to return to Jerusalem.  This may have come as the result of the death of his mother, who left him the house and other property.  While it is easy to take the side of St. Paul on this issue, Mark’s mother’s house was an important meeting place for the Christians of Jerusalem, and it probably served as a church for them as well.  Securing his rights as heir so that the house might continue to be used for this purpose would have made a compelling reason to return to the city.  St. Paul must have come around to this conclusion because we find him and Mark reconciled later on.  It is very possible that Mark became associated with St. Peter at his time.  Peter had made forays into foreign lands, such as to the Syrian city of Antioch, to preach the Gospel but regularly returned two Jerusalem before embarking a new expedition to preach the Gospel.  He may have been mindful of the Lord’s return in glory, which was thought for a long time to take place at Jerusalem or at the Valley of Jehoshaphat situated in the Judean wilderness, eleven miles of Jerusalem): “Let the nations come up into the valley of Jehoshaphat: for there I will sit to judge all nations round about” (Joel 3, 12).  Between the years 42 and 50, Peter made up his mind to go to Rome, and he took Mark, a seasoned proclaimer of the Gospel, with him.  St. Irenaeus (d. 206 A.D.) calls Mark “the interpreter and follower of Peter” which leads us to think that his Greek, if not his Latin, surpassed that of Peter, and to preach to the Romans would have required a fair ability in either language.  That may be so in terms of the spoken language, but his Gospel, written in Greek, is notable for its rough style.  It is clearly written by someone more comfortable In Aramaic or Hebrew than in Greek.  

According to Bishop Papias (d. 130 A.D.), whom the early Church historian Eusebius quotes, Mark wrote his Gospel at the request of the Roman Christians who desired a written record of St. Peter’s memories of the Lord Jesus.  Mark does this principally regarding the acts of the Lord, as Peter remembered them.  Mark tells the story of the very first part of the Lord Jesus’s public ministry’s beginning with his Baptism, then quickly moves through some of the early miracles and the calls of the first Apostles.  Much of his Gospel is devoted to the last journey of the Lord to Jerusalem, and his subsequent arrest, and Passion and Death.  His Gospel, as we now have it, tells us very little about the Resurrection of the Lord.  What we do have from him seems rushed and unfinished.  This may mean that he died before completing his Gospel, or that he suddenly had to travel and did not resume its composition.  Mostly it is thought that he finished his Gospel before Peter died and that Peter read it and neither praised nor condemned it, but let it be read by the people.  We might also conjecture that the people asked Mark to write the Gospel after Peter’s martyrdom in order to preserve his memories of the Lord.  

The Egyptian Christians have a firm tradition that Mark came to Alexandria from Rome and there are those who say he wrote his Gospel there.  By the time Mark arrived, the Holy Faith had already been introduced to the city and was spreading.  The Christians there, called the Copts, hold that St. Mark taught their ancestors how to celebrate the Mass, which was called “the Liturgy”.  This “Liturgy of St. Mark” is said to be the original Divine Liturgy of the Coptic Church In Egypt.  By the 500’s, however, the Copts composed liturgies in their own language (that of St. Mark being in Greek) and it fell into disuse, although it is still celebrated in certain places at certain times in the Church calendar.

St. Mark did not long survive his masters, St. Peter and St. Paul, and died in Alexandria in the year 68, dragged by a rope through the streets of that city by the pagans until he was dead.  His remains are said to be enshrined in Venice at the wonderful basilica.

The Church calls him an “evangelist”, from a Greek word meaning a messenger or herald of (usually good) tidings, especially regarding royal marriages, coronations, and battlefield victories. St. Mark is best known as the author of a Gospel, and you and I are also called to be evangelists, though we will never write Gospels.  We witness the Gospel that we have received.  We live out the good tidings we have heard.  We preach with word and deed that Jesus Christ is Lord.

 Monday in the Third Week of Easter, April 24, 2023

John 6, 22-29

[After Jesus had fed the five thousand men, his disciples saw him walking on the sea.] The next day, the crowd that remained across the sea saw that there had been only one boat there, and that Jesus had not gone along with his disciples in the boat, but only his disciples had left. Other boats came from Tiberias near the place where they had eaten the bread when the Lord gave thanks. When the crowd saw that neither Jesus nor his disciples were there, they themselves got into boats and came to Capernaum looking for Jesus. And when they found him across the sea they said to him, “Rabbi, when did you get here?” Jesus answered them and said, “Amen, amen, I say to you, you are looking for me not because you saw signs but because you ate the loaves and were filled. Do not work for food that perishes but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For on him the Father, God, has set his seal.” So they said to him, “What can we do to accomplish the works of God?” Jesus answered and said to them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in the one he sent.”

Many of the crowd that the Lord had fed with the bread and fish slept overnight in the field where he had fed them.  As this event had occurred in the Spring, which we know because St. John told us that this was done near Passover, the season would have cooperated with temperate weather.  But they did not retire until after they had seen the Apostles push off in their boat.  Their descent from the mountain would have been noticed, as would the Lord’s absence from the group.  Only after it had grown very late and dark did the Lord steal down the mountain to walk across the water.  When the sun rose, the people saw that no boat had come back for Jesus, but evidently Jesus had departed.  They waited some hours for him in case he had remained on the mountain, but after a time they gave up and themselves left, many of them on boats that were then arriving, but many others making their way around the sea on foot.  They all headed for Capernaum, where the Lord had taken up residence in the house of Peter and Andrew.

“Rabbi, when did you get here?”  They did not know that he had walked across the sea but they sensed that he had come there by miraculous means.  The Lord does not answer their question for this sign was meant exclusively for the Apostles while the sign of the feeding of the five thousand was meant for the Apostles as well as for the crowd.  The feeding shows his love of the people and also his limitless ability to care for them.  His walking on the water shows the Apostles his divinity, for while Elijah performed a miracle involving the multiplication of food, he did nothing like that.  The Apostles, though, seeing Jesus and hearing him call our to them would have recalled these words from the Book of Job: “Then the Lord answered Job out of a whirlwind” (Job 38, 1), and then the words of God, addressed to Job, who represents the human race: “Have you entered into the depths of the sea, and walked in the lowest parts of the deep?” (Job 38, 16).

“Amen, amen, I say to you, you are looking for me not because you saw signs but because you ate the loaves and were filled.”  The Lord makes no accusation but simply states the fact.  He does this in lieu of answering their question.  “Do not work for food that perishes but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you.”  The Lord now takes up the subject on which he will spend some time speaking: that his Body was the Bread that they should eat and which would satisfy them forever.  The Lord is saying, You are hungry again and this is why you came back to me.  The bread you consumed last night is of the earth and only satisfies for a short time.  I can give you Bread that will satisfy you forever.  This is very much like his words to the Samaritan woman at the well: “Whosoever drinks of this water shall thirst again: but he that shall drink of the water that I will give him shall not thirst for ever” (John 4, 13).  In the case of the water the Lord generally, of grace.  Here he speaks particularly, of his Body.

“What can we do to accomplish the works of God?”  This is the great question each of us must ask God in prayer: What can I do to accomplish your work, O God?  Here, the people ask Jesus for direction.  We should keep in mind that they believed that he was the political Messiah and so they expected him to preach against the Romans and urge them to arm themselves for the coming rebellion which he would lead.  “This is the work of God, that you believe in the one he sent.”  They did not expect this answer, and their unhappiness with his answer underlies their reaction to everything the Lord says afterwards about his Body being real food and his Blood being real drink.  But this was the answer their Messiah gave them and if they truly believed in him, they would have taken hold of any answer he gave to their question.  But he had essentially told them that the work of the Messiah was nothing so little as the redemption of Israel.  They were to believe in him, the one God had sent.  This is where their salvation lay, not in feats of arms.

When we eat and drink our ordinary human food we ought to think of how the Lord continuously nourishes us with grace so that we can believe, we can hope, we can love.  We take such things as eating and drinking for granted in our society but let us not fall into taking God’s grace for granted.

 The Third Sunday of Easter, April 23, 2023

Luke 24, 13–35

That very day, the first day of the week, two of Jesus’ disciples were going to a village seven miles from Jerusalem called Emmaus, and they were conversing about all the things that had occurred. And it happened that while they were conversing and debating, Jesus himself drew near and walked with them, but their eyes were prevented from recognizing him. He asked them, “What are you discussing as you walk along?” They stopped, looking downcast. One of them, named Cleopas, said to him in reply, “Are you the only visitor to Jerusalem who does not know of the things that have taken place there in these days?” And he replied to them, “What sort of things?” They said to him, “The things that happened to Jesus the Nazarene, who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, how our chief priests and rulers both handed him over to a sentence of death and crucified him. But we were hoping that he would be the one to redeem Israel; and besides all this, it is now the third day since this took place. Some women from our group, however, have astounded us: they were at the tomb early in the morning and did not find his body; they came back and reported that they had indeed seen a vision of angels who announced that he was alive. Then some of those with us went to the tomb and found things just as the women had described, but him they did not see.” And he said to them, “Oh, how foolish you are! How slow of heart to believe all that the prophets spoke! Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?” Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them what referred to him in all the Scriptures. As they approached the village to which they were going, he gave the impression that he was going on farther. But they urged him, “Stay with us, for it is nearly evening and the day is almost over.” So he went in to stay with them. And it happened that, while he was with them at table, he took bread, said the blessing, broke it, and gave it to them. With that their eyes were opened and they recognized him, but he vanished from their sight. Then they said to each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he spoke to us on the way and opened the Scriptures to us?” So they set out at once and returned to Jerusalem where they found gathered together the eleven and those with them who were saying, “The Lord has truly been raised and has appeared to Simon!” Then the two recounted what had taken place on the way and how he was made known to them in the breaking of bread.

We have already seen this Gospel Reading used for an Easter weekday Mass, but there is so much to consider in it.

One thing to think about is that the two men left Jerusalem even after they had heard the reports of the women that they had seen a vision of angels who announced that the Lord Jesus was alive.  The fact that the tomb had been opened was verified by the Apostles.  These men did not wait to find out more or to see what would happen next.  That they had no pressing need to return to Emmaus at that time is made clear through their swift return to Jerusalem after they knew that they had seen Jesus.  Were they lacking at least in curiosity?  Was their disappointment in the Lord’s Death so severe that they felt they had to leave Jerusalem?  But they did not leave right away; they waited until late afternoon.  They must not have stayed with the Apostles during that time, though, for when they return, they are told that the Lord had appeared to Peter, which they had not known before they left.

Another thing to consider is this: why did the travelers to Emmaus think to run back to Jerusalem?  What urged them on to return?  Their experience seems to have filled them with so much excitement that they had to share it with those most likely to understand and share it.  Their experience also would confirm the reports of the women who had seen the angels and it would make sense of the incredible fact that the tomb had been opened and no one could explain how.

“Are you the only visitor to Jerusalem who does not know of the things that have taken place there in these days?”  The question Cleopas asks the Lord, not knowing that he was the Lord, tells us of how wrapped up Cleopas and his friend were in the events of Holy Week.  Jesus was their whole world.  Estimates of the population of Jerusalem during the life of Jesus range from 20,000-40,000 people, swelling to ten times that number during festivals such as the Passover.  Much could happen in a city of this size that would not be known to most of its inhabitants, especially during holy days.

“Oh, how foolish you are! How slow of heart to believe.”  In the Old Testament, a “fool” was one who did not have God before his eyes: “The fool has said in his heart: There is no God” (Psalm 14, 1).  Jesus calls them “fools” (literally, “O foolish men and slow of heart”) because even after his miracles and preaching, they still thought of him merely as “the one to redeem Israel”, that is, to fight the Romans.  They were thinking of him not in spiritual terms but in material terms, for they thought of nothing in spiritual terms.

“He was made known to them in the breaking of bread.”  Luke points out the realization of the Lord’s very real appearance by the two disciples in their supper as a sign of the Lord’s very real appearance on the altar during Holy Mass, which was sometimes called “the breaking of the bread” at the time.

We ought to give thanks to our almighty Lord who appears to us today, who fills us with his grace, who speaks to us through the Gospels, and who longs to greet us in heaven.

 Saturday in the Second Week of Easter, April 22, 2023

John 6, 16-21

When it was evening, the disciples of Jesus went down to the sea, embarked in a boat, and went across the sea to Capernaum. It had already grown dark, and Jesus had not yet come to them. The sea was stirred up because a strong wind was blowing. When they had rowed about three or four miles, they saw Jesus walking on the sea and coming near the boat, and they began to be afraid. But he said to them, “It is I. Do not be afraid.” They wanted to take him into the boat, but the boat immediately arrived at the shore to which they were heading.

“When it was evening, the disciples of Jesus went down to the sea.”  This episode takes place after Jesus fed the five thousand and then hid on the mountain so that the people could not seize him and carry him off to make him king.  The Apostles must have found Jesus on the mountain or perhaps the crowd began to break up and he was able to show himself to them in order to instruct them to cross over the sea to Capernaum in their boat.  They would have assumed that he would rejoin them later, crossing the sea in one of the other boats which members of the crowd had used to come to him.  

“It had already grown dark, and Jesus had not yet come to them.”  This is a verse to which all of us can relate: some darkness has come into our lives and we have prayed and were awaiting a response from the Lord but it has not come and it feels like it will not come in time: “The sea was stirred up because a strong wind was blowing.”  “When they had rowed about three or four miles, they saw Jesus walking on the sea and coming near the boat, and they began to be afraid.”  The location where the Lord had fed the crowd to Capernaum, through the Sea of Galilee, comes to about seven miles, so they had traveled halfway.  In other words, miles separated them from the safety of the coast as the winds blew hard and the sea swelled.  But what caused them fear was the sight of Jesus walking on the water.  They must have seen him in the moonlight as it peeked out through breaks in the clouds.  He came near enough to them so that they could make out the figure of a man walking on the water but not so near that they knew who it was.  In Matthew 14, 26, the Evangelist recalls that they thought he was a ghost.  For the Apostles, the stormy conditions and the appearance of a ghost meant their doom and we can excuse them if they began to panic.  We should try to imagine the scene: the wind howling, the darkness, the heaving water, the bounding boat, the scattered moonlight, the figure of a man walking nearby on the water.  He would have appeared to him as very darkened with his clothes whipping about.  He does not struggle to walk, however, but comes across the water as though traversing an open field.  His calmness clashed with the desperation the Apostles were starting to feel.  He must have seemed like an executioner, axe in hand, approaching them, trapped in their jail cell; or as a harbinger of their imminent extinction.

“It is I. Do not be afraid.”  The Lord called out to them in a loud voice, and they knew at once that it was his.  They would have called back to him to come into their boat and they would have tried to row to him, but then another miracle occurred and “the boat immediately arrived at the shore to which they were heading.”  In an instant they were transported from danger in the middle of the sea to the shore, where they could tie up their boat and rest.  The Lord answers our prayers and his good time and when it is best for us for him to do so.  And his answer is better than what we could have imagined praying for.

 Friday in the Second Week of Easter, April 20, 2023

John 6, 1-15

Jesus went across the Sea of Galilee. A large crowd followed him, because they saw the signs he was performing on the sick. Jesus went up on the mountain, and there he sat down with his disciples. The Jewish feast of Passover was near. When Jesus raised his eyes and saw that a large crowd was coming to him, he said to Philip, “Where can we buy enough food for them to eat?” He said this to test him, because he himself knew what he was going to do. Philip answered him, “Two hundred days’ wages worth of food would not be enough for each of them to have a little.” One of his disciples, Andrew, the brother of Simon Peter, said to him, “There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish; but what good are these for so many?” Jesus said, “Have the people recline.” Now there was a great deal of grass in that place. So the men reclined, about five thousand in number. Then Jesus took the loaves, gave thanks, and distributed them to those who were reclining, and also as much of the fish as they wanted. When they had had their fill, he said to his disciples, “Gather the fragments left over, so that nothing will be wasted.” So they collected them, and filled twelve wicker baskets with fragments from the five barley loaves that had been more than they could eat. When the people saw the sign he had done, they said, “This is truly the Prophet, the one who is to come into the world.” Since Jesus knew that they were going to come and carry him off to make him king, he withdrew again to the mountain alone.

“Jesus went across the Sea of Galilee.”  Previous to writing about the feeding of the five thousand, John the Apostle had written of the Lord disputing with the Jews in Jerusalem, so his appearance now in Galilee comes abruptly.  “Across the sea” may indicate its eastern side, south of Bethsaida, a little fishing town on the coast.  Here John calls the freshwater lake of the region “the Sea of Galilee”, although he will call it “the Sea of Tiberias” at another time.

“A large crowd followed him, because they saw the signs he was performing on the sick.”  The crowd followed him across or around the sea “because they saw the signs he was performing”, and not to be cured themselves.  They wanted to see more signs, or learn more about the man who had performed them.  Some may have connected the miracles with the possibility that this man was the Messiah.  “Jesus went up on the mountain, and there he sat down with his disciples.”  He may have gone up the mountain soon after arriving “across the Sea of Galilee” in order to pray or to teach his disciples.  The crowd would have come not all at once but in small groups.  They saw him leave on the boat and knew what direction it was heading so they could estimate it’s destination.  Then some of the people who had gathered to hear him got into boats and followed him, and some went the long way around the coast.

“The Jewish feast of Passover was near.”  John has a reason for word he writes.  He gives the time of the feeding of the five thousand in order to connect it to the Passover on which the Lord would feed his Apostles the Bread of Life.  

“He said this to test him, because he himself knew what he was going to do.”  The Lord often tested the Apostles in their understanding of his teaching and in their faith.  He prepared them for the testing they would undergo after they went out to the world to preach the Gospel.  “Two hundred days’ wages worth of food would not be enough for each of them to have a little.”  Philip does some quick math here.  He is a practical, literal minded man and does not see what could be done for the crowd.  He also does not ask Jesus what he proposes to do, since it is his idea that something should be done.  He does not connect the people in the wilderness with Moses and the people in the wilderness with Jesus.  God fed the people with manna and there was enough for everyone to eat as much as they wanted.  He does not wonder what Jesus will do.  “There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish; but what good are these for so many?”  likewise, Andrew fails to make the connection that as God fed the people with manna, so Jesus would feed the people now.  

“Then Jesus took the loaves, gave thanks, and distributed them to those who were reclining, and also as much of the fish as they wanted.”  He distributed them through the Apostles, employing them as “ministers”, from the Latin word originally meaning “attendants” or “waiters”.  Jesus makes the abundance, the Apostles serve it.  “Gather the fragments left over, so that nothing will be wasted.”  The Greek word translated here as “wasted” means “lost” or “destroyed”.  The Lord did not want the leftover pieces of bread and fish to be lost.  He had given thanks to the Father for them and so they must be saved and put to good use.  Perhaps they were brought to the nearby town of Bethsaida for the poor there to eat.  Certainly Jesus did not cause them to be collected in baskets simply to be left there in the wilderness.  The amount of food leftover, which everyone in the crowd could see in the baskets, far exceeded what there had been to begin with.  It was an astounding miracle.  In fact, it impressed the Evangelists so much that all four of them include the story of this miraculous feeding in their Gospels.  It is the only one of the Lord’s miracles found in all the Gospels.

“This is truly the Prophet, the one who is to come into the world.”  The people here recognize Jesus as the successor of Moses, who had asked God to feed the people, and who promised them a Prophet: “The Lord your God will raise up to you a Prophet of your nation and of your brethren like unto me [Moses]: him you shall hear . . . And the Lord said to me: I will raise them up a Prophet out of the midst of their brethren like to you: and I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I shall command him” (Deuteronomy 18, 15; 17-18).  “Since Jesus knew that they were going to come and carry him off to make him king, he withdrew again to the mountain alone.”  The crowd equated the Prophet promised by God as the Messiah who would restore Israel, and so they were determined to make him their king, possibly swearing their loyalty to him and marching with him on to Jerusalem.  The Lord does not attempt to argue with the crowd but goes to the upper reaches of the mountain by himself.  It was enough for now that they understood him to be greater than Moses.  He would teach them again, soon, and reveal to him exactly who he was.

 Thursday in the Second Week of Easter, April 20, 2023

John 3, 31-36

The one who comes from above is above all. The one who is of the earth is earthly and speaks of earthly things. But the one who comes from heaven is above all. He testifies to what he has seen and heard, but no one accepts his testimony. Whoever does accept his testimony certifies that God is trustworthy. For the one whom God sent speaks the words of God. He does not ration his gift of the Spirit. The Father loves the Son and has given everything over to him. Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever disobeys the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God remains upon him.

Today’s Gospel Reading concludes chapter 3 of St. John’s Gospel.  For the sake of clarity and in order to show the context of this Reading, it may be helpful to have an outline of this chapter: verses 1-15, Jesus and Nicodemus speak together: Jesus declares that he is the Son of Man who came down from heaven and that he is here to save the world, not to restore Israel; verses 16-21, John the Apostle speaks of the love of God that brought Jesus from heaven and our need for faith in him; verses 22-30, John the Baptist testifies to Jesus as the Messiah; verses 31-36, John the Apostle elaborates on the Baptist’s words and tells how Jesus, the Messiah comes from God, was sent by God, and speaks the truth about God.

“The one who comes from above is above all.”  John premises his comment by summing up the Lord’s words: “And no man has ascended into heaven, but he that descended from heaven, the Son of Man who is in heaven” (John 3, 13).  “The one who is of the earth is earthly and speaks of earthly things.”  Here John contrasts the one “who comes from above” and so speaks “heavenly things” with the earthly man, again drawing on the Lord’s words: “If I have spoken to you earthly things, and you believe not: how will you believe, if I shall speak to you heavenly things?” (John 3, 12).  “But the one who comes from heaven is above all.”  John makes clear that one one who “comes from above” comes from heaven, from the realm of God and the spiritual realities.  Because he comes from “above”, he is “above all”.  It might be added here that the word translated as “from above” can also mean “from the beginning”, which connects these verses with John 1, 1: “In the beginning was the Word.”

“He testifies to what he has seen and heard, but no one accepts his testimony.”  John has posited the one from above and the ones who speak of earthly things and now he shows that they are in conflict.  The Son of God tells what he has seen and heard from the Father.  He speaks of heavenly things.  But his testimony is rejected by those who speak earthly things because it is all they understand and they do not want to know about heavenly things.  His testimony is rejected not because it is false or defective in some way but because those who reject it prefer to cling to earthly things, the transitory and ultimately unfulfilling pleasures of this world.  “Whoever does accept his testimony certifies that God is trustworthy. For the one whom God sent speaks the words of God.”  This sounds like a tautology, but we read it already believing that “the one whom God sent” is trustworthy.  He tells us what he has heard from God, and that God is trustworthy.  We believe what God has told the Son because the we believe in the Son.  Because of the Son, we have heard the words of the Father.  “He does not ration his gift of the Spirit.”  It is through the Spirit who inspired the Evangelists and who has been poured out on us that we know the words the Son heard from the Father.

“The Father loves the Son and has given everything over to him.”  The Lord himself said, “All things are delivered to me by my Father” (Matthew 11, 27).  From all eternity, the Father begot the Son and simultaneously gave him “all things”.  With the Father and the Holy Spirit, he possesses all power over everything in existence.  This giving by the Father is an act of love for the Son.  The Father holds nothing at all back from him but gives him everything.  We call what the Son gives the Father “obedience”, and is an act of love for him.  “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever disobeys the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God remains upon him.”  Belief and disobedience are set as contradicting each other.  If we do not obey the Son, we do not believe in him.  We must do more than know God: “You believe that there is one God. You do well: the devils also believe, and tremble” (James 2, 19).  

 Wednesday in the Second Week of Easter, April 19, 2023

John 3, 16-21

God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him will not be condemned, but whoever does not believe has already been condemned, because he has not believed in the name of the only-begotten Son of God. And this is the verdict, that the light came into the world, but people preferred darkness to light, because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come toward the light, so that his works might not be exposed. But whoever lives the truth comes to the light, so that his works may be clearly seen as done in God.

“God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.”  After John has recorded the discussion between Jesus and the Pharisee Nicodemus, he speaks on his own account (John 3, 16-21).  This seems like a continuation of his prologue (John 1, 1-18), in which he speaks of Jesus as the Word and as the Light who came into the world.  Now he speaks of the Lord as the Love that came into the world.  It is the immeasurable love of the Father in the Person of his only-begotten Son.  He comes into the world not as a spectator but as the Redeemer of the human race.  He offers salvation to all, and all who believe in him — those who know him, love him, believe in him, and obey his commandments — will be saved.  Faith means obedience: “If you love me, keep my commandments” (John 14, 15).  Faith means performing good works: “Faith without works is dead” (James 2, 20).  And faith is to be practiced openly.  It is not some private pious exercise: “For if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised him up from the dead, you shall be saved” (Romans 10, 9).  That is, we not only say the words and perform the deeds, but these come from our hearts where we nourish our faith in the Lord Jesus.

“For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.”  Truly, the Lord does not condemn anyone, but recognizes the condemnation that so many people bring upon themselves through their doing evil, harming both themselves and others.  The harm they cause others will eventually heal, but the harm they cause themselves, rendering their souls incapable of heaven, only heals through repentance and the confession of sin.  Chief among these evils the wicked commit is the rejection of the Lord Jesus: “Whoever does not believe has already been condemned, because he has not believed in the name of the only-begotten Son of God.”  This is the rejection of the love of God, without which there is no happiness.

“And this is the verdict, that the light came into the world, but people preferred darkness to light, because their works were evil.”  The Lord Jesus, the Son of God, is “the Light” that came into the world to show the love of God to the world.  But very many people preferred to live outside of his love because they did not want to give up their evil lives, to repent, and to live in charity with others and with God.  So many human beings prefer their self-absorption and pursuing their selfish pleasures to living honestly and eschewing sensual pleasure for spiritual joy.  “For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come toward the light, so that his works might not be exposed.”  That is, so that they may not have to take responsibility for their ugly snd destructive works and lives.  

“But whoever lives the truth comes to the light, so that his works may be clearly seen as done in God.”  To “live the truth” means to live the Faith, obeying the Lord’s commandments and awaiting his return.  Those who live the Faith “come to the light” — are unafraid of the scrutiny of their deeds by others — so that their deeds may attest to their faith and draw others to God.

“God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.”  These are words to fill our hearts with joy.  We see in them God’s will for our salvation.  And we can read these words in a very personal way too, for they are meant for each of us: “God so loved me that he gave his only-begotten Som, so that if I believe in him I might not perish but might have eternal life.”

Tuesday in the Second Week of Easter, April 18, 2023

John 3, 7-15

Jesus said to Nicodemus: “You must be born from above.  The wind blows where it wills, and you can hear the sound it makes, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes; so it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” Nicodemus answered and said to him, “How can this happen?” Jesus answered and said to him, “You are the teacher of Israel and you do not understand this? Amen, amen, I say to you, we speak of what we know and we testify to what we have seen, but you people do not accept our testimony. If I tell you about earthly things and you do not believe, how will you believe if I tell you about heavenly things? No one has gone up to heaven except the one who has come down from heaven, the Son of Man. And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.”

“You must be born from above.”  The Lord Jesus, the Son of God who was made man into to save the world from sin, is speaking to Nicodemus, a leading Pharisee, who wonders if Jesus is the Messiah.  That is, he wonders if Jesus is the one who will lead Israel against the Romans and reestablish the Kingdom of Israel.  The Lord is leading him past his very worldly understanding of the Messiah to the true, spiritual understanding.  Thus, he speaks of being reborn of water and Spirit, and the need for this in order to see the Kingdom of God.  This kingdom will not be the earthly kingdom Nicodemus and the Pharisees expect to see with their eyes but a kingdom of the spirit: the Lord’s Mystical Body.

Nicodemus listens intently but it is hard for him to shift his thinking: “How can this happen?”  The Greek text has, “How can this be?”  The distinction is that the Kingdom of God does not “happen” so much as it simply “is”.  Or, perhaps, Nicodemus as he strains to understand, is asking, “How can I accept this?”  “You are the teacher of Israel and you do not understand this?”  The Lord is not mocking or rebuking the Pharisee, but telling him that he in fact does possess the tools he need in order to understand the Lord’s teaching.  “Amen, amen, I say to you, we speak of what we know and we testify to what we have seen, but you people do not accept our testimony.”  The Lord here is speaking of the other Pharisees, those who will not believe and do not seek understanding.  He is also chiding Nicodemus to rethink all that he knows of the Scriptures.  Jesus will do much the same thing with the Apostles after his Resurrection: “Then he opened their understanding, that they might understand the scriptures” (Luke 24, 45).  

“If I tell you about earthly things and you do not believe, how will you believe if I tell you about heavenly things?”  “You” here is in the plural, according to the Greek text, so the Lord is not asking this of Nicodemus but  the Pharisees in general and all of us.  He asks if he teaches about spiritual realities using earthly figures, such as birth, water, and the wind, and we do not believe, how will we believe if he speaks to us of spiritual realities without using earthly figures?  Jesus speaks in this way to make it clear, again, that he is speaking of the spiritual realm when he speaks of the Kingdom of God.  After three years of teaching this, one would think that at least his disciples would get it, but some of them do not, even up to the time of the Ascension: “Lord, will you at this time restore again the kingdom of Israel?” (Acts 1, 6).  

“No one has gone up to heaven except the one who has come down from heaven, the Son of Man.”  The Lord is confirms to Nicodemus that he is indeed the Messiah, the Savior, for the Son of Man, he says, has come down from heaven.  This also indicates that the Son of Man is not merely a man chosen by God, but one whose proper home is in heaven.  He is divine.  “And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.”  The Greek word translated here as “lifted” can also mean “exalted” and so we look at its context to understand which is meant: Moses put the bronze serpent on a pole that was raised so those afflicted by the bite of the seraph serpent might look upon it and recover.  Therefore, Jesus is saying that he will be raised up onto a pole or something similar so that people may look upon him and be cured of some condition.  Since the result of the cure will be “so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life”, we can understand looking upon him lifted up will cure them of their sins which prevent them from entering eternal life.  Jesus means that he will be “lifted up”, then, and in a specific way.

We should often look upon a crucifix throughout the say in order to draw our minds back to our Lord so that we might do all things to please him who suffered for us.