Friday in the Fifth Week of Lent, March 22, 2024

John 10, 31-42

The Jews picked up rocks to stone Jesus.  Jesus answered them, “I have shown you many good works from my Father. For which of these are you trying to stone me?” The Jews answered him, “We are not stoning you for a good work but for blasphemy. You, a man, are making yourself God.” Jesus answered them, “Is it not written in your law, ‘I said, You are gods”‘? If it calls them gods to whom the word of God came, and Scripture cannot be set aside, can you say that the one whom the Father has consecrated and sent into the world blasphemes because I said, ‘I am the Son of God’? If I do not perform my Father’s works, do not believe me; but if I perform them, even if you do not believe me, believe the works, so that you may realize and understand that the Father is in me and I am in the Father.” Then they tried again to arrest him; but he escaped from their power.  He went back across the Jordan to the place where John first baptized, and there he remained. Many came to him and said, “John performed no sign, but everything John said about this man was true.” And many there began to believe in him.

The Jews to whom Jesus had been talking knew very well who he claimed to be, but they do not link his statements with the evidence in support of them — the signs, the miracles.  Those which the Lord had performed in Judea and Galilee showed beyond doubt that he was no ordinary individual.  Yet, when that individual tried to explain who he was, they rebelled with rage.  “I have shown you many good works from my Father. For which of these are you trying to stone me?”  This is a plea, but not one designed to save his life; rather, the Lord is trying to save theirs, to get them to reflect and to make the connection between what he has done and what he has said.  “You, a man, are making yourself God.”  The people understand that  Jesus has claimed to be the Son of God, that he is divine, and that he is equal to the Father, but they will not consider the abundant evidence he presents: the miracles, the Scriptures, and the testimony of John the Baptist.  

“Is it not written in your law, ‘I said, You are gods’?”  The Lord counters now that if they will not accept him as divine, they ought to grant that he, with all his power, is at least on the same level as those others whom Scripture regards as “sons of God”, namely, kings, prophets, judges, and priests, who possessed no such power.   It might seem that he weakens his own argument for who he is by resorting to such a defense, but at this point he is trying to keep them from committing a most heinous sin.

“If I do not perform my Father’s works, do not believe me; but if I perform them, even if you do not believe me, believe the works.”  If he was not the Son of God, he would have no power; only God could do what he had done.  The rage of the crowd is instructive.  The people do not simply walk away as though he were a mad man or possessed.  They have seen what he has done in terms of his miracles.  They have heard his claims.  But they do not want to believe him, and for fear that they will, they want to stone him, to silence him.  It is much like a guilty person trying to silence the incessant cry of his conscience.

“Then they tried again to arrest him; but he escaped from their power.”  Others among the crowd sought to detain him, to bring him before the chief priests, but as the Lord had often done before, beginning at his own home town, he evaded them.  When the Lord did this, time and again, he simply walked through the midst of the people seeking to harm them.  The angels cleared the way for him.  He loved these people too much to disrespect their free will choices, and went away from them lest they commit sin by causing him injury.  “He went back across the Jordan to the place where John first baptized, and there he remained.”  It is interesting that he went back to where he had started his Public Life.  Some of John’s disciples surely remained there, carrying out the work of their master even after his death, but it was a remote location, one where only those who wanted to find him, would.  The ones whose hearts felt the love and power of his Heart, found him.  “Many came to him and said, “John performed no sign, but everything John said about this man was true.”  People began to reflect, too, on the miracles and what they meant.  The Lord in the pause of his ministry here, was giving grace a chance to work on those who heard him and heard about him.  The call of the Lord is like a sliver that gets under the skin: a person can try to ignore it, but it gradually becomes all the person can think about and so has to do something about.

“And many there began to believe in him.”  They “began”.  They learned to believe, cooperating, little by little, with the grace they had received, until full faith blossomed.

 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.

Throughout John 8, 12-59 the Lord Jesus strives to convince the Jews, even those who had followed him, that he was not the Messiah that the Pharisees had told them was going to restore Israel but that he was something very different instead: the Son of God.  Those Jews who had followed him cling to the idea that he was their political savior even after he denies this is the case.  For them, there could be no other Messiah.  They even reject his teaching that they need to be freed from their slavery to sin.  They are like  modern secular people who cannot conceive of themselves as sinners in need of the forgiveness of God.  As for the proof the Lord Jesus points to, the testimony of his Father as seen in his miracles, they simply ignore it.  

The Jews even misquote him to his face.  Jesus says, “Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever keeps my word will never see death.”  The Jews misquote him as saying, “Whoever keeps my word will never taste death.”  When Jesus says “see” death he means that the one who believes in him will never see death as the end of human existence or of his own personal existence.  For the believer, death loses its power and is no longer seen as a threat: it is the entrance into eternal life.  When the Jews say “taste” death, they mean “to experience” it.  That is not what Jesus says nor what he means.  To “taste death” can also be understood as to taste its bitterness, for it is bitter to those who live only for pleasure.  

“Who do you make yourself out to be?”  That is, If you are not the Messiah about whom the Pharisees have taught, then who are you?  It is as though they had never heard him preach of the need to repent or about how to live so as to please God.  He has to be what they want him to be, and if he is not, then he is nothing to them.  “I glorify myself, my glory is worth nothing; but it is my Father who glorifies me.”  Jesus says, You will not believe what I say, but look at the evidence.  Look at the miracles.  What do they tell you?

“Abraham your father rejoiced to see my day; he saw it and was glad.”  “Abraham”, whom you claim as your father, though he is not because he was a man of great faith and trust in God and your are not.  Abraham looked forward to the day when his descendants would fill the land the Lord  had promised him, and in this way looked forward to the fulfillment of all God’s will for them.  “Amen, amen, I say to you, before Abraham came to be, I AM.”  The last two words in this translation are capitalized to indicate that Jesus was using the name God had given himself when speaking to Moses out of the burning bush.  It was so sacred that it was not to be spoken or even fully written out.  Jesus explicitly declares himself to be God in this way.  

The violent reaction of the Jews show that they understand what he is doing, and that they will not have him to be their God.  A much more sensible reaction would have been to ask him directly, “If you are God, what do you wish?  Why are you here?”  But they did not want to know the answers to these questions.  

 Wednesday in the Fifth Week of Lent, March 20, 2024

John 8, 31-42

Jesus said to those Jews who believed in him, “If you remain in my word, you will truly be my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” They answered him, “We are descendants of Abraham and have never been enslaved to anyone. How can you say, ‘You will become free’?” Jesus answered them, “Amen, amen, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is a slave of sin. A slave does not remain in a household forever, but a son always remains. So if the Son frees you, then you will truly be free. I know that you are descendants of Abraham. But you are trying to kill me, because my word has no room among you. I tell you what I have seen in the Father’s presence; then do what you have heard from the Father.”  They answered and said to him, “Our father is Abraham.” Jesus said to them, “If you were Abraham’s children, you would be doing the works of Abraham. But now you are trying to kill me, a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God; Abraham did not do this. You are doing the works of your father!” So they said to him, “We were not born of fornication. We have one Father, God.” Jesus said to them, “If God were your Father, you would love me, for I came from God and am here; I did not come on my own, but he sent me.”

“Jesus said to those Jews who believed in him, ‘If you remain in my word, you will truly be my disciples.’ ”  In reflecting on this Gospel reading, it is necessary to keep in mind that the Lord Jesus is speaking to some of his own followers — not primarily to the Apostles, but to those who followed him regularly enough to be termed “disciples”, or, “students”.  

Here, the Lord says, “If you remain in my word, you will truly be my disciples.”  The present tense of the word translated as “remain” can also be translated as “are remaining”, “do remain”, and “keep remaining”.  The implication is if these followers persist in their learning from Christ, they will “truly” or “certainly” be his disciples.  The conversion of one’s life to the Lord is a lifelong process which must be actively carried out every day.  To call oneself a disciple of the Lord Jesus, then, is a very different matter from calling oneself a disciple of, say, the Pharisees, in which case a person would study their interpretation of the Law and come to know it well at some point.  As a consequence of the conversion of life which Christ demands of those who would become his true disciples, “you will know the truth”, that is, the truth about God and his plan of salvation, and the Truth, the Lord Jesus himself.  “And the truth will set you free”.  The truth about God and his plan of salvation will set his disciples free from ignorance, render them more resistant to sin, and enable them to give heartfelt praise to God.  The Truth, Jesus Christ, will set them free from their past sins and make them adopted children of the Father.

“We are descendants of Abraham and have never been enslaved to anyone.”  These descendants took the words of the Lord in a societal sense, revealing their belief in the Lord as a political and military Messiah.  If they had understood the Lord as a religious prophet or holy man, they would have continued listening or simply asked him what he meant by “freedom”.  We modern people must be careful reading here: there was only one kind of freedom in ancient times, that of freedom from slavery.  The idea that one could have human rights in our sense was more than a millennium and a half away.  To these Jews, the Lord was implying that since the truth would make them free, they must be slaves of the Romans.

“I say to you, everyone who commits sin is a slave of sin.”  The Lord clarifies his statement to them, but they fail to see that he is speaking of the spirit.  All they can think of is the political situation.  “But you are trying to kill me, because my word has no room among you.”  We ought to consider that his audience was not speaking with a single voice.  While there were some disciples among them who knew him as a “rabbi”, it seems that very many, or at least the loudest of them, were only interested in him as a leader who would lead the revolt against the Romans.  It is to these that he speaks now: his refusal to be their general makes him useless in their sight, and even suspect as a collaborator, this man who speaks of forgiving enemies.

“If you were Abraham’s children, you would be doing the works of Abraham.”  Their claim to be the “children of Abraham” is based on their biological heritage and not on their imitation of Abraham’s faith and virtues.  The question of who are the true descendants of Abraham becomes a key question for the early Gentile Christians, as we see in the Letters of St. Paul.  The biology, however, is coincidental, while the imitation is essential.  The more raucous members of the crowd claim to be “children of Abraham” as though Abraham’s bloodline contained some quality that made them incapable of becoming slaves.  In fact, the “children of Abraham” had been enslaved more than once in their history, and had been incapable of maintaining an independent political existence for most of their existence.  The kingdom they had once enjoyed fractured irrevocably within two generations of its founding, and neither of these could overcome the successive waves of the major powers of the time.  In short, their pride was seriously misplaced.

“We were not born of fornication. We have one Father, God.”  This is an intriguing retort on the part of members of the crowd,  some scholars think that this refers to doubts about the Lord’s human origins as the legitimate son of Joseph and Mary, and that Jesus was born of an adulterous union, as the pagan author Celsus (died ca. 175 A.D.) would claim in his book against Christianity.  Their assertion that God is their Father seems to collide with their previous assertion that Abraham was their Father.  But here, too, the Lord points out that their behavior is not in accord with God’s will.  But they are doing the works of their father.  Jesus will shortly identify their father as the devil.

“If God were your Father, you would love me, for I came from God and am here; I did not come on my own, but he sent me.”  If they loved God as their father, they would love Jesus, the Father’s only-begotten Son, whom the Father sent into the world to them.  The Lord confronts them with the reality that God is not their Father, although he may be their Creator, and they do not love him, the Son.

We who rejoice in our baptism are rightly called the adopted sons and daughters of God, but we must persevere in the word of the Son so that we may behave as God’s children, and so “truly” be his children.

 The Solemnity of St. Joseph, Tuesday, March 19, 2024

Matthew 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. 

“When his mother Mary was betrothed to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found with child through the Holy Spirit.”  St. Jerome asks, “And who was this found by?  By Joseph alone.”  None but Joseph needed to know, although Mary’s cousin Elizabeth and her husband Zachariah also knew.  Mary would have told of her miraculous pregnancy to Joseph, and he had so high an opinion of her that he believed her the moment she told him of it, although much remained to be pondered and wondered at.  It seems to me that she would have told him very soon after the event of the Annunciation, even within a few hours, after she had thought and prayed.  Then, a few days afterwards, she went down to the Judean hill country to see Elizabeth, pregnant with John the Baptist.  Joseph would have had six months, then, to turn over in his mind how he should act in the face of this tremendous news.

“Joseph her husband, since he was a righteous man, yet unwilling to expose her to shame, decided to divorce her quietly.”  A careful look at the Greek text and consideration of the comments of Fathers such as St. Jerome lead to a different translation for this verse: “Joseph, her husband, because he was a righteous man, indeed, unwilling to make public this secret, decided to separate from her quietly.”  Far from intending to divorce Mary, St. Joseph acted in a way that brings to mind Peter, who after the miraculous catch of fish, said to Jesus, “Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man” (Luke 5, 8).  Such was his humility that he thought himself to be in the way of this staggering mystery of a woman who had conceived by the Holy Spirit.  His humility, in fact, makes him the perfect partner for “the Handmaid of the Lord” since they both thought of themselves as lowly servants of God.  It is this humility which makes him “righteous”, and not simply a person who obeyed all the rules.  Whatever the opinion of men, he was righteous before the Lord.  

“Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary your wife into your home.”  The Angel reveals to us that fear has played an important role in his decision to step away from Mary and her Child.  Not the sort of fear that arises as the result of a threat, but the proper fear — respect — of God and of that which is holy.  This conclusively proves false the idea that Joseph meant to divorce Mary, because a man does not undertake this action out of fear, particularly if he believes his wife has acted unfaithfully.

“When Joseph awoke, he did as the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took his wife into his home.”  The righteous man obeyed the Angel who was sent from God.  

We marvel at Joseph’s holiness: his humility and his innocent and wholehearted trust in the Blessed Virgin Mary, and who alone, of all the men who ever lived, was worthy of this Woman and her Child.  A simple, faithful, working man who was, with his wife, God’s choicest servants.

 Monday in the Fifth Week of Lent, March 18, 2024

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.” 

The meeting of Jesus and the woman caught in adultery took place during the seven day festival of booths, a feast commemorating the Fall harvest.  That would place this five or six months before the triumphal entrance of the Lord  that begins Holy Week.  The “booths” in the festival title were the tents in which the harvesters lived while engaged in their hard work.  The account of this meeting is set between scenes of the revelations Jesus makes about himself as the Son of God and the heated objections of the Jewish rulers and the Pharisees.  At the end of chapter seven, the guards sent by the chief priests fail to arrest Jesus, so dazzled were they with his teaching, and, defeated, “each man went to his own house.”  In the verses following the story of the woman caught in adultery, Jesus resumes his teaching, and begins by revealing that he is “the Light of the world” (John 8, 12).  We can read this story, then, as a demonstration of what his divine Sonship means for us.

At its start, St. John tells us, “Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. But early in the morning he arrived again in the temple area.”  Jesus, who “has nowhere to lay his head” (Matthew 8, 20), goes up to the top of the Mount of Olives outside Jerusalem after leaving the Temple area and spent the night in prayer there, with his Apostles roughing it as they had grown accustomed to doing.  Now he comes down to the Temple courtyards to teach again.  We should compare his persistence in this with his behavior in another place where he was rejected and persecuted, at  Nazareth.  When the townspeople rose up against him he left and never returned.  And in instructing the disciples how to preach in the Israelite towns, he told them, “And whosoever shall not receive you, nor hear your words: going forth out of that house or city shake off the dust from your feet” (Matthew 10, 14).  But he so loved Jerusalem, the heart of his Chosen People, that he would go again and again to it, even at the risk of his own life, until he left it to be crucified.  

Evidently he had not yet begun to teach when “the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery and made her stand in the middle.”  They made a public spectacle of her.  They brought her to Jesus for him to judge her.  They seem to yield to him and his claims that the Father had handed over all judgment to him.  It is only a crude trap, however.  The Pharisees think that Jesus will have to choose between ordering the woman’s death or speaking contrary to the Law.  If he orders her death, he will lose his popular support (which they think he courts).  If he speaks against the Law, he discredits himself as the Messiah.  We should understand that at this point in Jewish history, stoning for adultery almost never happened.  Instead, the offended parties settled for the payment of a steep fine.  The Lord’s scribbling on the ground shows the Pharisees, as though in a mirror, their own contempt for the Law by interpreting it wrongly and insisting that all Jews accept their interpretations.  How are they in a position to question him about the Law?  

“Let the one among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.”  Almost effortlessly, the Lord springs a trap of his own.  If the Pharisees stone her right then and there, as the Lord proposes they do, then they shed blood in a holy place, which they are bound not to do.  But if they do not stone the woman, they seem to let her off the hook by acting contrary to the Law.  And so they began to leave, the older men, more aware of their past sins through the reflection that comes with age, first.  Jesus waits for them all to go.  Then he turns to the woman, who has nowhere to go now.  “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?”  That is, condemned her to death.  She answers no, and waits to see what Jesus will do.  It is a terrible moment.  Surely she knew who Jesus was or at least claimed to be, and the Pharisees acted as though they deferred to him.  What does she feel as she, a sinner, faces the Son of Man?  What will we feel?  

As for the woman, “Neither do I condemn you. Go, and from now on do not sin any more.”  He does not restore her to her former state.  He does not forgive her, for she has not asked for forgiveness.  He does not condone what she did.  But he saves her life in this world so that she might have the opportunity to repent.  He does with her as he has done with Jerusalem and as he does with each of us: his love for us is so immense that he offers us chance after chance to repent until we doe and our eternity is fixed.  This is the love he knows from the Father.  This is what his divine Sonship means for us.

Like the adulterous woman whose life is spared, after we have sinned and we realize the consequences of our sin, we must decide what to do.  Jesus tells her not to sin again, and he says it to us.  But the woman cannot go home for she has no home to which to return.  Does she adopt an evil way of life so to prolong her existence, or does she follow her Savior and join with his disciples?  Do we think, I have sinned.  Why should I not continue to sin?  Or do we follow the Lord Jesus from the darkness of sin and death into the world of Light?  

 The Fifth Sunday of Lent, March 20, 2021

John 12, 20–33

Some Greeks who had come to worship at the Passover Feast came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, and asked him, “Sir, we would like to see Jesus.” Philip went and told Andrew; then Andrew and Philip went and told Jesus. Jesus answered them, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Amen, amen, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat; but if it dies, it produces much fruit. Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will preserve it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there also will my servant be. The Father will honor whoever serves me. I am troubled now. Yet what should I say, ‘Father, save me from this hour’? But it was for this purpose that I came to this hour. Father, glorify your name.” Then a voice came from heaven, “I have glorified it and will glorify it again.” The crowd there heard it and said it was thunder; but others said, “An angel has spoken to him.” Jesus answered and said, “This voice did not come for my sake but for yours. Now is the time of judgment on this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out. And when I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw everyone to myself.” He said this indicating the kind of death he would die. 

“Some Greeks who had come to worship.”  These would have been Jews whose first language was Greek.  They may have come from Antioch, a Greek city with a large Jewish population, or they may have come from further afield.  Their eagerness to see Jesus tells us that they had heard of the Lord in their faraway home town and had long nourished a desire to see him for themselves.  This fact helps to explain the rest of this reading.  These Greek Jews found Philip, an Apostle from Bethsaida, a town on the coast of the Sea of Galilee in what is now the region of the Golan Heights.  Due to its location, bordering Greek-speaking Gentile territory, the Greek language would have been in common use among the inhabitants.  The Greek Jews who came to Jerusalem may have heard Philip speaking Greek and so, learning that he was a close follower of Jesus, they came to him and asked if he would point the Lord out to them.  We note that St. John writes that they wanted “to see” Jesus, not that they wanted to meet with him.  It was enough for them merely to see him.  After pointing him out to them, Philip went and told Andrew about this interesting and potentially important development: that these people from a far off land had heard of the Lord, a sign that his fame was spreading abroad and was not any longer confined to Israel and the country immediately around it.  If the Messiah was thus gaining international attention, he might be able to make alliances and procure arms for the coming war to throw out the Romans and establish the new kingdom  of Israel.  And probably very excited, Andrew went to tell his Master the news.

At first, the Lord seems to respond in the way his Apostles would have expected, with his own excitement: “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.”  For the Apostles, this “glory” was of the earthly kind.  Their hearts rose up in hearing these words.  But the Lord was speaking of a different kind of glory: “Amen, amen, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat; but if it dies, it produces much fruit.”  He is speaking of his Death and Resurrection, which will initiate the conversion of the world.  He is saying that the interest of these Greek Jews is a sign, a premonition, even, of the efforts of the Apostles after he rises from the dead.  His glory is his Passion, Death, and Resurrection, which would be for the salvation of the world.

After speaking of the apostolic life, the Lord speaks of himself: “I am troubled now. Yet what should I say, ‘Father, save me from this hour’?”  He is troubled because of his full awareness of the suffering he will endure.  We see this graphically portrayed in the scene at the Garden of Gethsemane as recorded in Luke 22, 41-44.  Then, to answer his own question, he calls out his assent to his Father in heaven: “Father, glorify your name!”  That is, Let your will be done.  And the Father responds very physically, accepting his Son’s assent to his will: “I have glorified it and will glorify it again.”  The Lord Jesus clarifies that this exchange between him and his Father was meant to be a public one: “This voice did not come for my sake but for yours.”  It is his announcement to the world that he is prepared to die for the salvation of all, and of the Father’s acceptance of this Sacrifice.  This is not some secret deed, some hidden action, something only the initiated could learn about and understand.  The intention is stated and accepted, the arrest is made and an interrogation takes places in the presence of the Jewish leaders, the Victim is brought in broad daylight to Pilate, who condemns him, and finally the Sacrifice is consummated on Calvary.  This is history, not fable. 

The first result of the Lord’s Death: “Now is the time of judgment on this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out.”  And then, “When I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw everyone to myself.”  That is, Greeks and Jews alike.  Let us also be drawn ever nearer to him who was lifted up for us.

 Saturday in the Fourth Week of Lent, March 16, 2024

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”.