Tuesday in the Fifth Week of Lent, March 24, 2026

John 8, 21-30

Jesus said to the Pharisees: “I am going away and you will look for me, but you will die in your sin. Where I am going you cannot come.” So the Jews said, “He is not going to kill himself, is he, because he said, ‘Where I am going you cannot come’?” He said to them, “You belong to what is below, I belong to what is above. You belong to this world, but I do not belong to this world. That is why I told you that you will die in your sins. For if you do not believe that I AM, you will die in your sins.” So they said to him, “Who are you?” Jesus said to them, “What I told you from the beginning. I have much to say about you in condemnation. But the one who sent me is true, and what I heard from him I tell the world.” They did not realize that he was speaking to them of the Father. So Jesus said to them, “When you lift up the Son of Man, then you will realize that I AM, and that I do nothing on my own, but I say only what the Father taught me. The one who sent me is with me. He has not left me alone, because I always do what is pleasing to him.” Because he spoke this way, many came to believe in him.

The Lord continues his discourse directed mainly to the Pharisees and other Jewish leaders.  He is explaining to them that while he is the Savior, he is not the Messiah they had imagined for themselves and taught to others — he is much greater too, for he was the Son of God.  But they ignore or explain away the evidence of the Father’s validation, his miracles, and judge him according to his flesh: that he seems in every way merely a man.  

“I am going away and you will look for me, but you will die in your sin.”  This is more literally translated, “I am departing and you will search for/desire me, but you will die in your sin.”  He is not only separating himself from them in terms of distance, but he is departing their lives.  They have seen his works and heard his words and they have rejected him.  There is no more he can do for them.  He will leave them as thoroughly as he left Nazareth, years before, when its inhabitants rejected him.  He will respect their choice.  “You will search for/desire me”, that is, they will not search for him out of curiosity or to do him harm, but with desire.  Their very being will yearn for him despite their sins.  This is perhaps like the greatest torment in hell, when the soul still desires to be in the presence of God but will never attain this.  “You will die in your sin.”  “Sin” is in the singular.  We can think of one’s sins in a general way, or this might indicate their sin of rejecting Jesus, or the Lord may have meant Original Sin, which must be forgiven in baptism so that the soul may enter heaven.  “Where I am going you cannot come.”  More literally, “Where I am departing to, you are not able to come.”  The Lord is departing this world for heaven; the Pharisees will not be able to go there.  They are unable to go there because they do not have faith and have scorned the One who rules there.  They could hardly face Christ in heaven if they have hated him on earth, and there would be no happiness in heaven when they are surrounded by myriads of angels and saints singing his praise forever.

“He is not going to kill himself, is he?”  They seek to mock his words here, but in fact if he did kill himself, he would go down to the Jewish underworld Sheol, but eventually they would follow too, so they should know that he is speaking of something else.

“You belong to what is below, I belong to what is above. You belong to this world, but I do not belong to this world. That is why I told you that you will die in your sins.”  More literally, “You are of those below.  I am of those above.”  This could mean “of those things” or “of those persons”.  The verb to-be is used so that the Lord identifies the Pharisees as “those below”, and himself as above.  The meaning is much stronger than using the verb “to belong”.  A person can belong to a group while desiring not to be, but one cannot escape one’s identity.  We might ask in what sense the Pharisees could be held as culpable for rejecting Jesus if they are already “those below” — the wicked, destined for hell.  The answer is that they chose this identity for themselves throughout their lives until they can hardly be separated from it.  Even so, they could repent at the end of their lives, though it would be very difficult for them to do so.  And so the Lord says to them: “That is why I told you that you will die in your sins.”

“For if you do not believe that I AM, you will die in your sins.” Jesus is speaking either Greek or Aramaic and so does not say the name of God, which is in Hebrew, but gives its equivalent in one of these languages.  The Lord says that unless we believe in his divinity, we will die in our sins.  Because his hearers do not immediately stone him for what they would consider blasphemy, they must have understood him to mean something else, possibly that unless they believe that he is the Messiah they will die in their sins.  To their repeated question, “Who are you?” the Lord replies, “What I told you from the beginning. I have much to say about you in condemnation. But the one who sent me is true, and what I heard from him I tell the world.”  He has already told them that he was the Son of God, and they had refused to believe, despite the evidence of his miracles.  Rather than dignify their question by repeating himself, he speaks of the veracity of his Father in heaven.  “When you lift up the Son of Man, then you will realize that I AM, and that I do nothing on my own, but I say only what the Father taught me. ”  The Lord here speaks of his crucifixion and Sacrifice.  He says, “When you lift up the Son of Man”.  The Greek word translated here as “Lift up” can also mean “exalt”, so that another meaning to his words was possible.  Jesus means that there are those standing there who will convert when they see him offering himself on the Cross, either at that time or after the Resurrection when they consider what he had done.

“Because he spoke this way, many came to believe in him.”  The verb tense is aorist, so the text should read, “Many believed in him”.  That is, at that time.  No one had ever spoken like this or had performed such works as he had.  They believed in him at least as the Messiah, and perhaps a little more than that.  The people would not yet understand that he came to save them not from the Romans but from the devil, but the beginnings of faith in “many” in the crowd were there.

Personal Note: I’m sorry for posting yesterday’s reflection late. It was already written up and I thought I had posted it, but evidently I did not. In terms of my health, I am feeling stronger than last week. It takes a few days after the injection in the eye to start seeing and feeling better. I have one more injection at the end of April. Thank you for your prayers!

Monday in the Fifth Week of Lent, March 23, 2026

John 8, 1-11

Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. But early in the morning he arrived again in the temple area, and all the people started coming to him, and he sat down and taught them. Then the scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery and made her stand in the middle. They said to him, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the very act of committing adultery. Now in the law, Moses commanded us to stone such women. So what do you say?” They said this to test him, so that they could have some charge to bring against him. Jesus bent down and began to write on the ground with his finger. But when they continued asking him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let the one among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” Again he bent down and wrote on the ground. And in response, they went away one by one, beginning with the elders. So he was left alone with the woman before him. Then Jesus straightened up and said to her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” She replied, “No one, sir.” Then Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you. Go, and from now on do not sin any more.” 

“Then the scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery and made her stand in the middle.”  The Lord is teaching in the Temple area.  The Greek text simply says he was teaching “in the Temple”, but this probably means outside in one of the courtyards.  The Greek text also gives us a better idea of the numbers people who came to him: “a whole crowd”, or “a crowd of every kind of people”.  The whole Temple complex including the courtyards came to about a thousand feet long by a thousand feet wide, and the Temple itself only takes up a portion of that so even a large crowd would not fill the grounds.  Now, a group of scribes and Pharisees have apparently been summoned to advise on the case of a woman caught in adultery.  Knowing that the Lord is teaching on the Temple grounds and desiring to put him in difficulties, they dragged her through town and then through the grounds until they come before him.  They interrupt his teaching, showing disrespect at the outset, and then put the case before him.  To us, the question seems clear: “Moses commanded us to stone such women. So what do you say?”  However, the Romans had abolished the power of the Jewish rulers to put anyone to death.  The Sanhedrin itself had mostly given up the death penalty by the time of the Lord’s ministry, as is clear from the Mishnah.  This does not mean the woman’s life was not in jeopardy, for she could have been stoned in a mob action.  But we can see what the scribes and Pharisees were trying to do.  If the Lord meant what he said when he declared that he had not come to do away with the Law but to fulfill (that is, “perfect”) it, then he must rule for the woman to be stoned, which would put him against Roman rule and the interpretation of the Law by the Jews at the time.  It seemed the perfect trap.  

“Let the one among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.”  The Lord’s answer and the manner in which he answers shows his lack of concern with the public stature of these scribes and Pharisees.  He also evades the narrow answer they expect, whatever it might be, by turning the focus from a question about the Law to a question involving human life: the lives of the people who would stone the woman and repent too late as well as the woman herself.  

The Lord thoroughly disarms the scribes and Pharisees and they slink away before the assembled crowd, their perfect trap shown to be a thing of vapor.  St. John tells us, “He was left alone with the woman before him.”  From this it is not clear if the crowd he had been teaching also left or if they remained, but the area immediately around the Lord was clear except for the woman.  We can try to imagine her devastation and shame.  Perhaps the man with whom she had cavorted had been beaten up by a betrayed husband.  It is hard to see how she could go back to either man now, or whether any of her family would take her in.  She has her life, but very little else.  She stands before the Lord, still awaiting judgment.  He tells her he does not condemn her, that is, to death.  She is free to go, but he warns her before she does, “Go, and from now on do not sin any more.”  After her harrowing experience we might think that she would never sin again, but we know from our own lives how soon we resume sinning when we have made a solemn promise not to.  

We do not know what happened to this woman.  Did she beg forgiveness from her husband? Did he take her back?  Or did she wind up homeless and begging?  Or, did she ask the Lord for help of some kind?  A couple of early writers thought this might be Mary Magdalene and that she was converted afterwards, but there is no evidence for this, as attractive as it idea might be.

We see here how the Lord gives us many chances throughout our lives to convert.  We only bring ourselves greater misery when we put it off.  It is essential to grasp our chance now and repent while we have time.

The Fifth Sunday of Lent, March 23, 2026

John 11, 1–45

Now a man was ill, Lazarus from Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. Mary was the one who had anointed the Lord with perfumed oil and dried his feet with her hair; it was her brother Lazarus who was ill. So the sisters sent word to Jesus saying, “Master, the one you love is ill.” When Jesus heard this he said, “This illness is not to end in death, but is for the glory of God, that the Son of God may be glorified through it.” Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. So when he heard that he was ill, he remained for two days in the place where he was. Then after this he said to his disciples, “Let us go back to Judea.” The disciples said to him, “Rabbi, the Jews were just trying to stone you, and you want to go back there?” Jesus answered, “Are there not twelve hours in a day? If one walks during the day, he does not stumble, because he sees the light of this world. But if one walks at night, he stumbles, because the light is not in him.” He said this, and then told them, “Our friend Lazarus is asleep, but I am going to awaken him.” So the disciples said to him, “Master, if he is asleep, he will be saved.” But Jesus was talking about his death, while they thought that he meant ordinary sleep. So then Jesus said to them clearly, “Lazarus has died. And I am glad for you that I was not there, that you may believe. Let us go to him.” So Thomas, called Didymus, said to his fellow disciples, “Let us also go to die with him.” When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days. Now Bethany was near Jerusalem, only about two miles away. And many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to comfort them about their brother. When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went to meet him; but Mary sat at home. Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now I know that whatever you ask of God, God will give you.” Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise.” Martha said to him, “I know he will rise, in the resurrection on the last day.” Jesus told her, “I am the resurrection and the life; whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” She said to him, “Yes, Lord. I have come to believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, the one who is coming into the world.” When she had said this, she went and called her sister Mary secretly, saying, “The teacher is here and is asking for you.” As soon as she heard this, she rose quickly and went to him. For Jesus had not yet come into the village, but was still where Martha had met him. So when the Jews who were with her in the house comforting her saw Mary get up quickly and go out, they followed her, presuming that she was going to the tomb to weep there. When Mary came to where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet and said to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” When Jesus saw her weeping and the Jews who had come with her weeping, he became perturbed and deeply troubled, and said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Sir, come and see.” And Jesus wept. So the Jews said, “See how he loved him.” But some of them said, “Could not the one who opened the eyes of the blind man have done something so that this man would not have died?” So Jesus, perturbed again, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone lay across it. Jesus said, “Take away the stone.” Martha, the dead man’s sister, said to him, “Lord, by now there will be a stench; he has been dead for four days.” Jesus said to her, “Did I not tell you that if you believe you will see the glory of God?” So they took away the stone. And Jesus raised his eyes and said, “Father, I thank you for hearing me. I know that you always hear me; but because of the crowd here I have said this, that they may believe that you sent me.” And when he had said this, he cried out in a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” The dead man came out, tied hand and foot with burial bands, and his face was wrapped in a cloth. So Jesus said to them, “Untie him and let him go.”  Now many of the Jews who had come to Mary and seen what he had done began to believe in him.

There is something almost unsettling at the beginning of this Gospel: “Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. So . . . he remained for two days.” We would expect the opposite. Because he loves, he should hurry. Because he loves, he should prevent suffering. But instead, because he loves, he delays. This is one of the hardest lessons in the spiritual life. 

The sisters believe in the Lord’s power: “Lord, if you had been here.” They are not wrong. Their faith is real — but it is still measured by time and circumstance. It assumes that the presence of Christ means the avoidance of loss. But the Lord intends something deeper. He does not come merely to prevent death, but to enter into it and transform it.

When He finally arrives, everything seems lost: Lazarus is not merely dead, but four days in the tomb. Martha speaks of decay. Hope has passed into resignation. And it is precisely here —cbeyond all natural hope — that Christ reveals Himself: “I am the resurrection and the life.”

We should notice: He does not say, I will give resurrection. He says, “I am.”

The miracle is not first the raising of Lazarus. The miracle is the unveiling of who Christ is. And yet, before the great sign, there is a quieter moment — perhaps the most revealing in the whole passage: “And Jesus wept.” This is not weakness. It is not hesitation. It is divine compassion entering fully into human sorrow.

Christ does not stand outside death as a distant conqueror. He stands before the tomb and shares the grief of those who mourn. And this is important for us: He delays, yes. He permits suffering, yes. But he does not remain untouched by it He enters into it, even when he knows he will overcome it.

Then comes the command: “Take away the stone.” Even here, Martha hesitates. The realism of death resists hope: “Lord, by now there will be a stench.” This is the voice of experience, of reason confronted with corruption. And Christ answers with a call to trust:

“Did I not tell you that if you believe, you will see the glory of God?” Faith,  then, is not the denial of reality —

but the willingness to let God act within it,  even when it seems too late.

Finally, the word is spoken: “Lazarus, come out!” And the dead man comes forth. But even here, Christ involves others: “Untie him and let him go.” The work of resurrection is divine — but the unbinding belongs, in part, to us.

Perhaps this is the deepest thread running through the passage: Christ delays—not to abandon, but to deepen faith. He permits darkness—not to destroy, but to prepare for light. He enters sorrow — not to affirm death, but to transform it from within

And when he finally speaks, his word does not merely console — it calls forth life where there was none.

Saturday in the Fourth Week of Lent, March 21, 2026

John 7:40-53

Some in the crowd who heard these words of Jesus said, “This is truly the Prophet.” Others said, “This is the Christ.” But others said, “The Christ will not come from Galilee, will he? Does not Scripture say that the Christ will be of David’s family and come from Bethlehem, the village where David lived?” So a division occurred in the crowd because of him. Some of them even wanted to arrest him, but no one laid hands on him. So the guards went to the chief priests and Pharisees, who asked them, “Why did you not bring him?” The guards answered, “Never before has anyone spoken like this man.” So the Pharisees answered them, “Have you also been deceived? Have any of the authorities or the Pharisees believed in him? But this crowd, which does not know the law, is accursed.” Nicodemus, one of their members who had come to him earlier, said to them, “Does our law condemn a man before it first hears him and finds out what he is doing?” They answered and said to him, “You are not from Galilee also, are you? Look and see that no prophet arises from Galilee.”   Then each went to his own house.

The first part of this Gospel reading describes the confusion and mass of opinions regarding the identity of the Lord Jesus.  We see this reflected in the other Gospels as well, as in Matthew 16, 14, where the Apostles answered him that some people regarded him as John the Baptist, Elijah, Jeremiah, or one of the other Prophets.  St. John saw the battle over identifying Jesus as central to salvation.  John is handing on what he himself has seen and heard so that others may have life, but this can only be so if the one he has seen and heard is the Son of God incarnate.  Thus, John begins his Gospel by identifying the Lord: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”  Throughout the rest of his Gospel, he shows this Word in action among the Jews and Gentiles.

“This is truly the Prophet.”  That is, Elijah, whom Malachi promised would come before the end of time.  Elijah performed miracles as well as preached repentance.  “This is the Christ.”  Those who recognized John the Baptist as Elijah would have concluded that Jesus was the Christ, as indeed John himself pointed out.  “The Christ will not come from Galilee, will he?”  Some among the crowd knew and understood Micah 5, 2 as indicating where the Messiah would be born, and the verse says nothing about Galilee, a land depopulated of Jews by the Assyrians hundreds of years before and resettled by them only relatively recently.  “Does not Scripture say that the Christ will be of David’s family and come from Bethlehem, the village where David lived?”  From this we can tell that the Lord did not publicize his ancestry.  We might wonder why not, since it would seem that if he had, more people would have recognized him as the Messiah.  But during his Public Life, the Lord strove to play down that he was “the Messiah” because of the false expectations people had for that figure.  Returning to Matthew 16, after Peter had declared him to be the Son of God, the Lord forbade the Apostles to speak of this to anyone.  He knew that his followers were always on the verge of making him king: “Jesus therefore, when he knew that they would come to take him by force and make him king, fled again into the mountains, himself alone” (John 6, 15).  He had not been sent into the world to restore the kingdom to Israel (cf. Acts 1, 6), but to redeem the world from sin.  “So a division occurred in the crowd because of him.”  The Greek word translated here as “division” does not mean a clean cut, but a ragged one with jagged edges, a “rent”.  It is the basis for our word “schism”.  The people were sharply, even violently, divided about him.  This brings to mind Matthew 10, 34-36: “Do not think that I came to send peace upon earth: I came not to send peace, but the sword. For I came to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law. And a man’s enemies shall be they of his own household.”

“Some of them even wanted to arrest him, but no one laid hands on him.”  The Jewish leadership sought to kill him because he challenged their teaching on the Sabbath and also because he spoke of himself as equal to the Father.  Neither the people nor the guards the leadership had sent would touch him, though.  They found themselves more amazed at him than enraged by him.  The leadership, however, had closed their ears to him as later they would close them to St. Stephen: “And they, crying out with a loud voice, stopped their ears” (Acts 7, 56).  With such an attitude they demanded of the guards why they had returned to them empty-handed.  The guards, in their amazement at him, replied: “Never before has anyone spoken like this man.”  The guards so not even seem dazzled by any miracles they may have seen.  His words alone made them hold their peace.  One wonders if any of these guards were later involved in the Lord’s arrest at Gethsemane.  “Have you also been deceived? Have any of the authorities or the Pharisees believed in him?”  The words of the chief priests accord a certain respect to the guards, for the chief priests imply that they were capable of not being deceived.  At the same time, they rebuke them for being “deceived” by the Lord.  We might wonder in what way the chief priests thought the guards were deceived by Jesus.  Deceived into thinking or believing what, exactly?  The Greek word can also mean “led astray”, so perhaps the guards were being accused of being led from the teachings of the Pharisees to the teachings of Jesus.  “But this crowd, which does not know the law, is accursed.”  The guards may be a step above the crowd in their ability to understand, but the crowd, not knowing the Law, was accursed.  But if the crowd did not know the Law, it was the fault of the chief priests, scribes, and Pharisees, and if tue crowd is indeed accursed, so much more so the people who failed in their responsibility to teach them.

“Does our Law condemn a man before it first hears him and finds out what he is doing?”  Nicodemus counters his brother Pharisees by pointing out to them their own lapse in knowing the Law and its procedures for judging a case.  “You are not from Galilee also, are you? Look and see that no prophet arises from Galilee.”  In fact, both Elijah and Elisha came from places that would later be called Galilee, as well as the later Prophet Hosea.  Again, they prove their own ignorance, undermining their claim that others are ignorant.

“Then each went to his own house.”  That is, they each went their way.  They had gathered in order to kill, and now they scatter in their defeat.  We also see that all that held these faithless men together was their hatred of Jesus.  Otherwise, each was devoted to his own interests, which might be in conflict with those of the others.  In addition, we can see them going, each “to his own house” as their destruction, in the way a piece of pottery shatters when dropped on a hard floor.  The pieces go everywhere.  By contrast, those who believe in Jesus Christ are united as members of his Body and belong to his Church, his ecclesia, his “assembly”.

Personal Note: Still some pain this morning but my vision had largely cleared and as the day went on the most of the pain diminished. I can see more clearly than two days ago, so this treatment is working. My vision has come a long way in the last month when I could hardly read at all. Thanks for all your prayers!

Friday in the Fourth Week of Lent, March 20, 2026

John 7, 1-2; 10; 25-30

Jesus moved about within Galilee; he did not wish to travel in Judea, because the Jews were trying to kill him. But the Jewish feast of Tabernacles was near.  But when his brothers had gone up to the feast, he himself also went up, not openly but as it were in secret.

Some of the inhabitants of Jerusalem said, “Is he not the one they are trying to kill? And look, he is speaking openly and they say nothing to him. Could the authorities have realized that he is the Christ? But we know where he is from. When the Christ comes, no one will know where he is from.” So Jesus cried out in the temple area as he was teaching and said, “You know me and also know where I am from. Yet I did not come on my own, but the one who sent me, whom you do not know, is true. I know him, because I am from him, and he sent me.” So they tried to arrest him, but no one laid a hand upon him, because his hour had not yet come.

This second pilgrimage of the Lord to Jerusalem during his Public Life, which begins here, is momentous for his freeing the woman caught in adultery, his claiming that “Before Abraham came to be, I am”, and his healing of the man born blind.  In his preaching, the Lord continues and elaborates on themes he spoke on in chapter 5.  If we step back from our awe of his words and actions here, we note that he does not act like the Messiah many of his followers expect him to be.  He does not try to build alliances with the leaders on Jerusalem, nor he does not seek the admiration of the crowds.  He does nothing to further a political or military movement.  In fact, he goes out of his way to denounce the leaders there and to antagonize not only the people of Jerusalem but his own disciples.

The inhabitants of Jerusalem have seen few of his miracles since the Lord only came there a few times a year for Passover and did not stay long, but they have heard of his reputation.  When they saw him preaching in the Temple during the feast, they questioned among themselves: “Could the authorities have realized that he is the Christ?”  The authorities have not acted openly against him, so this led to them wondering if they acquiesced to his preaching.  As we know, to this point the Jewish leadership wanted to arrest and even kill him, but were afraid to do anything which might cause a riot or uprising.  They knew their own restive people well.  Forty years later, even with the Romans pouring into Jerusalem during the siege, Jewish groups were fighting each other.  

“But we know where he is from. When the Christ comes, no one will know where he is from.”  These Jews are murmuring to each other while listening to the Lord preach.  What they say here interests us because the Pharisees interfered Micah 5, 2: “And you Bethlehem Ephrata, are a little one among the thousands of Judah, out of you shall he come forth unto me that is to be the ruler in Israel: and his going forth is from the beginning, from the days of eternity”, as explaining the origin of the Messiah.  These Jews seem ignorant of this.  We see that there was variance in the expectations for the Messiah.  “You know me and also know where I am from. Yet I did not come on my own, but the one who sent me, whom you do not know, is true.”  The Lord explains how it is possible both ideas might be true, that they might know where he is from and that they might not.  He speaks of having been sent.  In fact, they did not know who sent him: “whom you do not know”.  But Jesus knew who sent him: “I know him, because I am from him, and he sent me.”  It is a remarkable way of speaking.  Who among us could seriously talk of having been “sent” into the world?  In this way the Lord teaches concerning his pre-existence with the Father and also that he was given a mission by him.  One is not “sent” somewhere without purpose.  

The Son was sent into the world in order to save us from sin, and he did not spare himself in accomplishing this.  He then sent the Apostles into the far regions of the world to teach this to the human race and to assist their salvation through the sacraments.  You and I are likewise sent to live out the Gospel and to assist in our own way in the salvation of the world.

Personal Note: The doctor sounded optimistic today after further testing. She injected my left eye with medicine to furtherr shrivel the problematic blood vessel and said that I needed one more, which is now scheduled for the end of April. My eye has not yet completely cleared from the dilation and it stings a bit, but I think I’ll be much better tomorrow. Thank you for your prayers!

The Solemnity of St. Joseph, Thursday, March 19, 2026

Matthew 1, 1, 16; 18–21; 24

Jacob was the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary. Of her was born Jesus who is called the Christ.

Now this is how the birth of Jesus Christ came about. When his mother Mary was betrothed to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found with child through the Holy Spirit. Joseph her husband, since he was a righteous man, yet unwilling to expose her to shame, decided to divorce her quietly. Such was his intention when, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary your wife into your home. For it is through the Holy Spirit that this child has been conceived in her. She will bear a son and you are to name him Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.” When Joseph awoke, he did as the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took his wife into his home. 

Above all else, St. Joseph was a man of obedience.  He was also a man who sought the will of God so that he could be obedient to it.  If he had not been, he would have acted quickly when he learned, from her lips, that she had conceived by the Holy Spirit.  Whether he took her into his home as his wife or left her as knowing his unworthiness of the mystery of the Incarnation, he would have acted quickly, assuming that his will was God’s also.  But he pondered and he prayed.  The counsel of the angel in his dream decided him, and he obeyed.  The obedience could not have come easily because his feeling of unworthiness persisted, but he obeyed anyway.  The obedience was not a single act performed once, either, but one which he continued to perform throughout his life.  

St. Joseph, then, is a wondrous model of seeking out the Lord’s will and adhering to it.  In this, he imitates the Prophet Jeremiah, who was called as a youth to prophesy to the Israelites.  At the time of his call, he presented to the Lord good, solid reasons why he should not prophesy, among them that he was too young.  But the Lord insisted and off Jeremiah went to do the Lord’s work.  He did so throughout the rest of his days despite his own doubts, imprisonment, threats, and beatings.  Towards the end of his life, after the fall of Jerusalem, he remained behind to console the Israelites not taken into Israel.  A band of them approached him, led by a man named Azariah, and asked him what was God’s will for them.  Azariah, speaking for the group, promised to obey whatever God told Jeremiah (cf. Jeremiah 42, 2-3).  Instead of giving his own opinion, which must have been tempting, the Prophet prayed for ten days, and the end of which God spoke to him.  Jeremiah then told Azariah and the others that God did not want them to go as refugees into Egypt but to stay in the land of Judah, where he would prosper them.  However, Azariah had made up his own mind that he was going to Egypt.  “You lie!” he accused the Prophet (Jeremiah 43, 2).  He then made up a silly accusation that Jeremiah’s secretary Baruch had turned him against them.  We are told that he took his band to Egypt despite what the Prophet had told them, and there they disappear from history.

We are all tempted from time to time to sidestep God’s will after we have ascertained it when it does not accord with what our “gut” tells us, or when it goes against what other people say or what we fear they will say.  But as important it is to seek God’s will, it is for us to obey it and to obey his laws as well as his inspirations.  We ought to shun the self-serving behavior of Azariah and gladly follow the example of St. Joseph.

Personal Note: My next injection in my eye happens Wednesday morning. Please pray that it goes well!

Wednesday in the Fourth Week of Lent, March 18, 2026

John 5, 17-30

Jesus answered the Jews: “My Father is at work until now, so I am at work.” For this reason they tried all the more to kill him, because he not only broke the sabbath but he also called God his own father, making himself equal to God.  Jesus answered and said to them, “Amen, amen, I say to you, the Son cannot do anything on his own, but only what he sees the Father doing; for what he does, the Son will do also. For the Father loves the Son and shows him everything that he himself does, and he will show him greater works than these, so that you may be amazed. For just as the Father raises the dead and gives life, so also does the Son give life to whomever he wishes. Nor does the Father judge anyone, but he has given all judgment to the Son, so that all may honor the Son just as they honor the Father. Whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him. Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes in the one who sent me has eternal life and will not come to condemnation, but has passed from death to life. Amen, amen, I say to you, the hour is coming and is now here when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live. For just as the Father has life in himself, so also he gave to the Son the possession of life in himself.   And he gave him power to exercise judgment, because he is the Son of Man. Do not be amazed at this, because the hour is coming in which all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and will come out, those who have done good deeds to the resurrection of life, but those who have done wicked deeds to the resurrection of condemnation. I cannot do anything on my own; I judge as I hear, and my judgment is just, because I do not seek my own will but the will of the one who sent me.”

The Lord Jesus is speaking here to the Jewish leaders who hunted for him after he healed the lame man by the pool, as recounted in the Gospel reading for yesterday’s Mass.  It is not immediately clear whether they desire to kill Jesus because he cured on the Sabbath or because he told the cured man to pick up his mat and go, thus encouraging him to break the Sabbath according to their reckoning.  The other Evangelists make it clear that the Jewish leaders hated him for curing on the Sabbath.  But by both curing and causing someone to carry something on the Sabbath, the Lord was challenging the Pharisees about their interpretation of the Law.  On the one hand, there is a miracle that could only be performed through the divine will and power.  On the other, an apparent breaking of the Law.  But rather than reconsider their interpretation of the Law, they ignored the miracle and clung to their own ideas.  This ought to remind us of the behavior of the lame man after the Lord healed him: he seems to forget the marvelous sign of God’s mercy and rather than examine his life so as to live in accord with God’s will, he prefers to cling to his sinfulness so that Jesus warns him of the consequences for doing this.

The Jewish leaders charged the Lord with “breaking” the Sabbath.  “Breaking” is perhaps not the best word to elucidate their meaning.  The Greek word actually means “loosing” or “destroying”.  When we today speak of someone “breaking” the law, we mean on one occasion, as in, The man broke the law when he stole the necklace.  However, the meaning in the Gospel text is that the whole Sabbath law was destroyed.  The Jewish leaders saw the Lord’s actions as invalidating the law on the Sabbath that had its origins in God’s creation of the world.  For them, this amounted to a challenge against the rule of God and the Law that made them the Jews his people.  The Lord answers this charge when he says, “My Father is at work until now, so I am at work.”  The Greek text does not make the first clause causative of the second, but joins them together with the conjunction “and”.  This allows the Jews to understand that he is claiming equality with God.  The wording also implies that the Son, equal to the Father, is not ruled over by the Father.  The Father does not cause the Son to work by his own work, but the Son works of his own will.  Equal in nature, and distinct as Persons.  Jesus appears to contradict Exodus 7, 11: “In six days the Lord made heaven and earth, and the sea, and all things that are in them, and rested on the seventh day: therefore the Lord blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it”, explaining the basis for the Third Commandment.  For the Pharisees, the “rest” ordered by the commandment meant almost no activity at all, though, as the Lord pointed out to them on another occasion, “On the sabbath days the priests in the temple break the sabbath, and are without blame.”  He then added, “But I tell you that there is here a greater than the Temple” (Matthew 12, 5-6).  The point Jesus is making is that the commandment applies to human beings, not to God, and he is God.  Furthermore, God was said to have “rested” once, but he is not said to have rested ever again.  The Sabbath was made for human beings, not for God.  The Jewish leaders knew exactly what he was saying: “They tried all the more to kill him, because he not only broke the sabbath but he also called God his own Father, making himself equal to God.”  

“Amen, amen, I say to you, the Son cannot do anything on his own, but only what he sees the Father doing; for what he does, the Son will do also.”  The Lord Jesus explains what he meant in referring to himself as the Son of God in these next several verses.  He wants to make clear that he does not claim to be the Father though he is equal to the Father.  And he reassures the Jews that the Son does not depart from the will of the Father, but does what he does.  For us, as the Son does only what he sees the Father doing, so should we do only what we see the Son doing.

Personal Note: I feel much stronger today than in the last few weeks since the eye surgery. I am very grateful for your prayers.