31 Mar 2023 – Friday of Week 5 of Lent

31 Mar 2023 – Friday of Week 5 of Lent

(1) Jeremiah 20:10-13

Though many plot against God’s servant, he is safe in God’s hands

For I hear many whispering: “Terror is all around! Denounce him! Let us denounce him!” All my close friends are watching for me to stumble. “Perhaps he can be enticed, and we can prevail against him, and take our revenge on him.”

But the Lord is with me like a dread warrior; therefore my persecutors will stumble, and they will not prevail. They will be greatly shamed, for they will not succeed. Their eternal dishonour will never be forgotten.

O Lord of hosts, you test the righteous, you see the heart and the mind; let me see your retribution upon them, for to you I have committed my cause. Sing to the Lord; praise the Lord! For he has delivered the life of the needy from the hands of evildoers.

Responsorial: from Psalm 18

R./: In my distress I called upon the Lord, and he heard my voice

I love you, O Lord, my strength,
O Lord, my rock, my fortress, my deliverer. (R./)

My God, my rock of refuge,
my shield, the horn of my salvation, my stronghold!
Praised be the Lord, I exclaim,
and I am safe from my enemies. (R./)

The breakers of death surged round about me,
the destroying floods overwhelmed me;
The cords of the nether world enmeshed me,
the snares of death overtook me. (R./)

In my distress I called upon the Lord
and cried out to my God;
From his temple he heard my voice,
and my cry to him reached his ears. (R./)

Gospel: John 10:31-42

Amid growing danger to his life, Jesus goes off to a quiet place

When the Jews took up stones again to stone him, Jesus replied, “I have shown you many good works from the Father. For which of these are you going to stone me?” The Jews answered, “It is not for a good work that we are going to stone you, but for blasphemy, because you, though only a human being, are making yourself God.” Jesus answered, “Is it not written in your law, “I said, you are gods”? If those to whom the word of God came were called “gods,” and the scripture cannot be annulled, can you say that the one whom the Father has sanctified and sent into the world is blaspheming because I said, “I am God’s Son”? If I am not doing the works of my Father, then do not believe me. But if I do them, even though you do not believe me, believe the works, so that you may know and understand that the Father is in me and I am in the Father.” Then they tried to arrest him again, but he escaped from their hands.

He went away again across the Jordan to the place where John had been baptizing earlier, and he remained there. Many came to him, and they were saying, “John performed no sign, but everything that John said about this man was true.” And many believed in him there.

Valuing our prophets

Both Jeremiah and Jesus were hounded by friends and even close relatives who turned against them. Former companions can change their attitudes when they feel their own personal interests or security threatened. Jeremiah speaks of God who “has rescued the life of the poor” and Jesus cures the helpless, the blind and the crippled, the deaf and the mute, and returns them to full vigour on the Sabbath. Both were condemned because they each upset the accepted legal system by shifting concern from ritualism to caring for actual people. Their opponents were not bad people but were deeply misguided. They knew their Biblical laws by heart. But these had become ossified, no longer meaningful truths that must fit in with the mercy of God.

If taken rigidly, the commandments of religion can become like idols, worshipped in place of God. They can be quoted to dictate how God must view each act of behaviour. Religious people sometimes find a bogus security in unchangeable rules. Our present pope Francis has warned against this trap. “To be ruled by Christ” he said “means always reaching out what lies ahead.” And Jesus clearly condemned a hidebound view of the commandments when he compared the legalist Pharisees to “white-washed tombs” (Matt 23:27). Such rigidity is prompted by “their father the devil” (John 8:44).

We can offset any judgmental tendency we may have, first by a common-sense awareness of today’s culture and of the needs of others. Then we must root ourselves in God, trying to discern his will, in a spirit of compassion and truth. Jeremiah calls God the One who probes mind and heart. Jesus is rooted in his intimate awareness of that God: “the Father is in me and I in him.” We can echo Peter’s prophetic awareness, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.”

Contrasting views of Jesus

In today’s gospel, the Jews strongly oppose Jesus because of the claims he makes about himself. “You are only a man and you claim to be God,” they said. Jesus goes on to say of himself, “I am the Son of God. the Father is in me and I am in the Father.” Jesus claims to have a unique relationship with God, such that whoever sees him sees God, the Father. The author of the fourth gospel puts it very graphically: the Word who was God became flesh, became enfleshed Word. Jesus is truly God in human form. That conviction is at the core of our Christian faith.

Because Jesus is the revelation of God, the healing works that he does are the work of the Father. God’s work is being shown Jesus. God will always be a mystery to us, but Jesus has unveiled that mystery to draw us into the life of God. He has revealed that God is, ultimately, the fullness of Love. In the words of the first letter of Saint John, “God is Love.” In the words of the gospel, “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son.” That is the wonderful mystery that we will be celebrating this coming Holy Week.