Friday of the Fourth Week of Lent
THE SUFFERING SERVANT
Men and women who claim to know God a bit and to live consistently as his sons or daughters, are queer and bothersome to unbelievers as well as to those who take their religion as a set of duties or religious rites. There is no place for such eccentrics who go against the current, for their way of life disturbs the established ways of society. It irritates unbelievers and they want to test the faith of those who trust in God. One has to conform or else… The person who voices his complaints in the Book of Wisdom was one of those annoying people. Jesus was another. What about us?
Reading 1: Wis 2:1a, 12-22
thinking not aright:
“Let us beset the just one, because he is obnoxious to us;
he sets himself against our doings,
Reproaches us for transgressions of the law
and charges us with violations of our training.
He professes to have knowledge of God
and styles himself a child of the LORD.
To us he is the censure of our thoughts;
merely to see him is a hardship for us,
Because his life is not like that of others,
and different are his ways.
He judges us debased;
he holds aloof from our paths as from things impure.
He calls blest the destiny of the just
and boasts that God is his Father.
Let us see whether his words be true;
let us find out what will happen to him.
For if the just one be the son of God, he will defend him
and deliver him from the hand of his foes.
With revilement and torture let us put him to the test
that we may have proof of his gentleness
and try his patience.
Let us condemn him to a shameful death;
for according to his own words, God will take care of him.”
These were their thoughts, but they erred;
for their wickedness blinded them,
and they knew not the hidden counsels of God;
neither did they count on a recompense of holiness
nor discern the innocent souls’ reward.
Gospel: Jn 7:1-2, 10, 25-30
He said this and stayed on in Galilee. But later, after his family had gone up to the Feast, he also went. But he kept out of the way, careful not to draw attention to himself. The Jews were already out looking for him, asking around, “Where is that man?”
That’s when some of the people of Jerusalem said, “Isn’t this the one they were out to kill? And here he is out in the open, saying whatever he pleases, and no one is stopping him. Could it be that the rulers know that he is, in fact, the Messiah? And yet we know where this man came from. The Messiah is going to come out of nowhere. Nobody is going to know where he comes from.”
That provoked Jesus, who was teaching in the Temple, to cry out, “Yes, you think you know me and where I’m from, but that’s not where I’m from. I didn’t set myself up in business. My true origin is in the One who sent me, and you don’t know him at all. I come from him—that’s how I know him. He sent me here.”
They were looking for a way to arrest him, but not a hand was laid on him because it wasn’t yet God’s time. Many from the crowd committed themselves in faith to him, saying, “Will the Messiah, when he comes, provide better or more convincing evidence than this?”
Prayer
Our God and Father,
we claim to be your sons and daughters,
who know that you love us,
and that you call us to live
the life of Jesus, your Son.
Give us the courage
to live this life consistently
not to show off, not to reprove others,
but simply because we know
that you are our Father
and we are your sons and daughters,
brothers and sisters of Jesus Christ, our Lord.
Reflection:
24 March 2023
John 7:1-2;10,25-30
The Word of God cannot remain silent
All of us experience times when we struggle to explain something, and no matter how hard we try, others fail to get the point we are trying to make. I often struggle with my accent and wrong pronunciations to make my point clear to my parishioners or the Community! And, of course, I thought that the problem was theirs! How do they not understand what is so clear to me!
As we approach the closing weeks of Lent, we hear today from St. John the evangelist who makes a great reflection on the journeys that Jesus made to Judea and reveals incidents that the other evangelists do not.
John notices that Jesus is confining his activities to Galilee. He did not want to go to Judea and the vicinity of Jerusalem because people there wanted to kill him. Jesus does not expose himself unnecessarily to danger and waits for “his time.”
It is the time of the Feast of Tabernacles, but today’s reading does not mention about the feast. We reflected on this passage in detail last Sunday. The feast of Tabernacles was one of the three major feasts of the Jews. Many Jews came from all over the land of Israel and from other countries on pilgrimage to Jerusalem for the feast.
The family members of Jesus are urging him to go up to Jerusalem and show himself to the world instead of confining himself to the village. Jesus declined, but after they had left, he, probably accompanied by the apostles, secretly went up to the feast. The secrecy is easy to understand in light of the threats against Jesus. But what happens next is not so easy to understand. How do we explain first the secrecy and then the lack of it?
Jesus is a source of confusion in the minds of many people. On the one hand, the people are aware that Jesus has become a target of their religious leaders, yet he goes about openly speaking freely and without fear. The Word of God cannot remain silent.
Jesus then tells them: “Yes, you know me, and you know where I come from.” That is only partially true; rather, they think they know.
Do we really know who Jesus is? There are many conflicting opinions out there. But to know the real Jesus, we must go back to the Scriptures, read them, pray with them and strive to live by the Word of God. Lent invites us to spend time with the Word of God, and to make it a practice that goes far beyond Lent.