Thursday in the Fifth Week of Lent, March 21, 2024

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 is speaking to a crowd in the Temple courtyard in the Fall before his final visit to Jerusalem during the Spring of the next year.

“Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever keeps my word will never see death.”  That is, Whoever keeps my commandments will never experience death.  The phrase “never see or experience death” might bring to mind Matthew 16, 28: “Truly, I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom.”  Meaning, the “bitterness” of death: “O Death, how bitter is the remembrance of thee to a man that hath peace in his possessions” (Sirach 41, 1).  For the one who lives for the pleasures of this life or defines himself by his wealth or career, death “tastes” bitter.  But for the one who yearns for the presence of Jesus Christ, death means the beginning of enjoying the Lord’s intimacy.  The Jews who first heard Jesus teaching this to them must have stood with their mouth open, marveling at what this Galilean was telling them: “Now we are sure that you are possessed.”  

“Who do you make yourself out to be?”  This would be a fair question if those who asked it were not aware of the lame man whom Jesus had healed, a deed which could only have been accomplished with divine power.  And that is just one of the Lord’s miracles, which came as a flood.  And in all the history of the Jews, cures of this kind were few and had taken place centuries before.  Rather than accosting the Lord as a peer making an improbable claim, the members of this crowd should have assumed a posture of deference, humbly submitting their questions to him.

“It is my Father who glorifies me.”  The Father glorifies the Son by confirming his miracles so that the people might listen to the Son who teaches them about the Father.  This should lead them to glorify God for his power and mercy and cause them to live the lives of believers.  But the crowd refuses to see the Father’s approbation in this as though they believed that Jesus performed his works by his own power apart from the Father.  For people drawn to the Temple, they maintained a very materialistic mindset, as the Lord pointed out to them: “You do not know him.”  

“Abraham your father rejoiced to see my day; he saw it and was glad.”  Not that God revealed the details of the redemption of the human race to Abraham but that Abraham looked forward to the time when his descendants would fill the land God promised to him, and that they would dwell in harmony with the God who made a covenant with him.  “You are not yet fifty years old and you have seen Abraham?”  The extent of their rage is revealed in how badly they understood the Lord’s plain words: for he was saying that Abraham had seen his day, not that he had seen Abraham.  And they would hardly have understood what the Lord actually meant here.  The Lord reveals his meaning to them: “Amen, amen, I say to you, before Abraham came to be, I AM.”  The Lord invoked the sacred Name which God called himself at the time of the burning bush: “God said to Moses: I AM WHO AM. He said: Thus shalt thou say to the children of Israel: HE WHO IS, hath sent me to you” (Exodus 3, 14).  This Name, so sacred, so transcendent, could not be spoken aloud except by the high Priest at the Feast of the Atonement in the Holy of Holies within the Temple.  “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain: for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that shall take the name of the Lord his God in vain” (Exodus 20, 7).  By applying the Name to himself, Jesus openly declared his own divinity and the Jews reflexively saw this as blasphemy.

“So they picked up stones to throw at him; but Jesus hid and went out of the temple area.”  The Lord Jesus did not reveal himself in order to provoke the crowd but in order to convert it.  He conceals himself not in order to avoid death but so that the people would not commit this sin.  And, in his mercy, he leaves so that they have time to consider all together what they had seen and heard.  It is an act of his mercy for him to leave them then.

Surrounded as we are at this time by people thoroughly materialist in their approach to life, we must strive to see the world as it truly is and to always reflect on God’s presence in it.  We can do this through regular times of prayer, through daily Mass, and through reading the Scriptures and the lives of the saints.