We were
in the early weeks of this evil pandemic the last time I wrote any meditation
on the Holy Gospel of St. John, oddly without particular awareness of how much
time has gone by! Many people have written or phoned and said the thing about
this ‘new normal’ is that time seems itself to have shifted. Perhaps that is
because without having to be at work or school, or to catch a bus or train, we
have been less attuned to the ‘what time is it?’, than we realize.
Time,
in this section of the Holy Gospel we are pilgrimaging through with Jesus, our
eyes and hearts focused on Him, His words and actions, moves inexorably to
Jesus’ Passion and Death. Now many of the Jews who had come to Mary and seen
what He had done began to believe in Him. [v.45]
From a
series of retreats given before he became Pope: Although Christ is present
in the Gospel as Word, He is also present as Event, Act and Reality. [1]
As St.
John notes, many came to believe in Jesus. Clearly they were open hearted,
while perhaps unable to articulate they were indeed in the Presence of the
Messiah, the Incarnate Word, or grasp He was both the one who did the ‘event’
of restoring life to Lazarus while being also the Event, both acted and was the
Act that before them was absolute Reality, namely that God is love and we are
beloved, they were touched by Him in the longing of their hearts for hope, for
love, for mercy. They responded to Jesus with ascent of the will and heart as
belief.
While
Christ brings us truth, reality, light, healing, mercy, and much, much more, He
does not take away our freedom to believe or reject the gift of faith, to
follow Him or go off in another direction, thus: But some of them went to the
Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done.[v.46]
This
should not surprise us, this negative reaction to being in the presence of
Divine Person-Word, Event, Act, Reality. Who among us does not struggle with
God when He gets too close for comfort? There is an aspect of Jacob and his
wrestling with God within all of us [Gen.32:24-32]. Perhaps no more than ever
this pandemic points to the way, as individuals and the human family, we so
often choose to be so busy about running our own lives, because we don’t want
God to get too close.
While
we hunger for the reality of selfless love we are suspicious of it, for fear
there is a hidden agenda. Christ has no hidden agenda, not in restoring life to
Lazarus nor forgiving the Good Thief, nor in redeeming us. The Event, Act,
Reality of the Presence of the Word Himself is here in the brightness of the
light flowing from Him, illuminating us, if we open our hearts to being
illuminated.
The
Second Vatican Council, in telling us that:…….the whole human family along
with the sum of those realities in the midst of which it lives; that world
which is the theater of man's history, and the heir of his energies, his
tragedies and his triumphs; that world which the Christian sees as created and
sustained by its Maker's love, fallen indeed into the bondage of sin, yet
emancipated now by Christ, Who was crucified and rose again to break the
strangle hold of personified evil, so that the world might be fashioned anew
according to God's design and reach its fulfillment. [2], reveals therein
the immense need of the human family for the radiating of Christ by every
Christian, so that every human being learns the truth, reality, Christ dwells
with us, walks with us on the journey through life, listening to our struggles,
revealing Himself to us as love, compassion, truth, life, light, hope, mercy.
So the
chief priests and the Pharisees convened the Sanhedrin and said, “What are we
going to do? This man is performing many signs. If we leave Him alone, all will
believe in Him, and the Romans will come and take away both our land and our
nation.”
[vs.47,48] This flows from the great satanic lie, first spoke to humanity in
the Garden: “You certainly will not die! God knows well that when you eat of
it your eyes will be opened and you will be like gods, who know good and
evil.” [Gn.3:4,5], which lie the vile creature continues to use to seduce
us, namely that if we let God get too
close we will lose all that we most cling to, whatever that may be.
Christ
the Incarnate Word, Event, Act, Reality, knocks at the door of our beings
seeking entry to reveal out true selves to ourselves, that is, the person we
have been created to be, beings in the image and likeness of God, the Beloved
of the Holy Trinity, children of the Father, disciples of Christ, temples of
the Holy Spirit. When we open the door to Christ, the Father and the Holy
Spirit enter with Jesus to abide in us, that we, each moment of our lives,
might dwell in communion of love with the Most Holy Trinity, now and for all
eternity.
The
Sanhedrin saw only danger of loss if they allowed Christ to be accepted as
Messiah. Collective loss, personal loss: But one of them, Caiaphas, who was
high priest that year, said to them, “You know nothing, nor do you consider
that it is better for you that one man should die instead of the people, so
that the whole nation may not perish.” He did not say this on his own, but
since he was high priest for that year, he prophesied that Jesus was going to
die for the nation, and not only for the nation, but also to gather into one
the dispersed children of God. [vs. 49-52] Here…, from the human side,
there was murder for political ends;
from the Divine side, Caiphas unconsciously affirmed that Christ was an
offering for the Jewish people, and for all people. His death would be
vicarious; His life would be a sacrifice for others…….Our Lord said that He
came to give His life as a ransom for sinful humanity; Caiphas said it, too,
without realizing what he said. [3]
In the
end, not all that long after the same Sanhedrin assuring Christ’s death,
problem solved, would indeed suffer loss when the Romans came and destroyed the
Temple and everything else the Sanhedrin had sought to protect. This is the way
of satan, the evil trickster. Whenever we listen to his lies, and do as he
suggests, the very thing we fear most comes crashing down upon and around us.
Only
Christ comes to us to rescue and redeem, to give life and mercy, to restore our
radiant dignity as human beings in the image and likeness of God.
So from
that day on they planned to kill Him. So Jesus no longer walked about in public
among the Jews, but He left for the region near the desert, to a town called
Ephraim, and there He remained with His disciples. [vs. 53,54]
[1] THE
WAY TO CHRIST, Spiritual Exercises, Karol Wojtyla (Pope John Paul II); p.71;
Harper & Row, 1984
[3]
LIFE OF CHRIST, Fulton Sheen, p. 256; Image Books, 1990
© 2020
Fr. Arthur Joseph
Nice bookshelves background. Fantastic writing.
ReplyDelete