In today’s gospel, our Lord continues his teachings and dialogue with his fellow countrymen in the Temple, the chosen people of God. The dialogue, in a way, becomes a monologue since nothing Jesus was saying was penetrating their hearts. Many of them, as we had seen, had begun to believe in him and yet somehow, the seed of faith planted in their soul was snatched away by the evil one. It got into their mind, but because of pride, the heart became stone cold, unreceptive and irresponsive. The closer we get to Holy Week, the more intense is the hostility in Jesus’ persecutors becoming.
As we also saw in the last few days through the readings during Holy Mass, including the two in today’s liturgy, the great patriarch Abraham was a key figure animating the customs and sensibilities of Jewish culture. In the first reading from Genesis, we hear how God honours Abraham’s unwavering faith - a trusting obedience in God - even when asked to sacrifice his miracle child, Isaac (who is a sublime prototype of that other miracle child, Jesus, who was spared from the grave and reigns in Heaven with the Eternal Father) he held nothing back and so God declared “…you shall become the father of a multitude of nations. You shall no longer be called Abram; your name shall be Abraham, for I make you father of a multitude of nations. I will make you most fruitful. I will make you into nations, and your issue shall be kings.” Indeed, this is a reason to extol Abraham who is a hero of faith and obedience to God. Yet, some made of him more of a false idol than a model of faith and humble obedience, for his true spiritual influence would have impelled them to follow Jesus wholeheartedly.
This is clearly discerned in the exchange that played out in John's gospel. It all began when Jesus spoke to them about how in becoming his disciples, they would learn the truth, and the truth would set them free since one of the things Jesus indicated to them was how their sinful ways were keeping them enslaved. Their righteousness was very exterior, whereas our Lord was trying to teach them (and by extension, all of us) that what matters most is where it all begins—inside the human heart. For as Jesus declared elsewhere, nothing exterior to us can make us unclean, but rather that which comes out of the heart is what makes us unclean, where misdeeds are born and evil ways are embraced rather than challenged. Jesus tells us to focus on our heart.
“Blessed are the pure of heart…” Matthew 5:8
“Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks.” John 4:23
“If anyone loves me, he will keep my word. Then my Father will love him, and we will go to him and make our home within him.” John 14:23
“A good man out of the treasure of his heart brings forth good; and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart brings forth evil.” Matthew 12:34,35
The point here is that it is so beyond the mere externals when it comes to Jesus. It’s important… the body is the temple, but the heart is the soul of the temple. We can have a pristine church to go to, but if the Mass is poisoned with liturgical abuse, then the temple’s externals are not reaching their goal however beautiful the altar may be. It’s about the heart.
Of course we apply all of this to ourselves and ask whether Jesus’ truth has set us free yet? Have we embraced his words, his counsels, his urgent appeals, his warm and tender concern for our well-being in its entirety? Have we accepted the more difficult instructions like those which include purity and honesty in daily living, forgiving debtors, and loving enemies? If not, we’re still slaves. We will always be slaves in some way, if we reject even a portion of Jesus’ teachings. Is it a tall order? Left to ourselves, absolutely, but we have Christ by our side and although we're still in Lent, we need to remember that he is risen and glorious and alive and with us, but he invites us to die to ourselves. And this is why it was such a difficult message to accept. Beautiful, but brutal at the same time, as it involves an ascetical way of life, and a discipline of our senses -- a taming of the wildness and savagery of wicked hearts Jesus has the power to make pure if he be allowed to.
They reject the truth Jesus is offering them which he says will set them free. “We are descended from Abraham and we have never been the slaves of anyone; what do you mean, "You will be made free?"
What? By claiming to be “descendants of Abraham,” Jesus’ opponents reference Israel’s historical past, which was actually riddled with centuries of slavery! For example, the Festival of Tabernacles which we examined a few days ago, was a feast which recalls how God liberated Israel from slavery in Egypt and had them set up tents (tabernacles) to dwell in while they moved around through the desert. Fast-forward a few centuries and you see them exiled into Babylonian slavery. In fact, during the very exchange Jesus was having with these people, Israel was in political captivity to Rome and their fellow countrymen were being nailed to scaffolds by the walls of Jerusalem to quench the Romans' lust for blood. Jesus therefore must have been saddened by such a blatantly false and erroneous response which seems to indicate that they had grown accustomed to living lives of dishonesty and falsehood.
Jesus points this out to them in today’s gospel when countering the fake honour they heaped on Abraham and the disorder of habitual lying evidently at work in them:
“If I were to seek my own glory that would be no glory at all; my glory is conferred by the Father, by the one of whom you say, “He is our God” although you do not know him. But I know him, and if I were to say: I do not know him, I should be a liar, as you are liars yourselves.” John 8:55
Now, when Jesus says he “knows the Father” he is telling them something which at first they are not fully cluing in to, for in knowing the Father, Jesus would have had to have been with him at some point, and it is only after in their exchange that Jesus makes it clear, that the “some point” was actually his eternal preexistence with the Father from even before the Universe was created by Him. In other words, Jesus here begins to disclose his own divinity, and hence he is met with ridicule and disbelief.
He speaks to them about how Abraham was given a grace to see the days of the Messiah, and at this they asked how Jesus and Abraham could have ever met, since Abraham died long ago, and Jesus was their contemporary. At this, he goes on to shock them with a veritable bomb; “Before Abraham was, I Am.”
By saying this, Jesus was making clear to his Jewish audience that he was claiming to be God, who - when asked by Moses what his name was - told him “I Am.” At this they took up stones to stone him to death, for they understood very well that he was calling himself God.
As we approach our Lord’s Passion, let us remember that it is God who was about to suffer those things out of love for us, and that the only thing that can really get us to check our pride at the door, especially when we enter a Catholic church, is God’s humility whom we see before our eyes, nailed to the cross, extending his arms to receive all of humanity within that eternally beating Heart of Love. May he give us the grace to seek that Sacred Heart always.
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I had heard once that Isaac would’ve been a young man at the time and could have in a formidable obstacles in his father’s plans ( even though an old man, Abraham would have been fit and capable as well). But it showed the sons willingness, obedience... even unto death and the ultimate trust in his Father