Homily: 5th Week of Lent - Thursday - The Great I AM

One of the scenes from the Old Testament with which we are most familiar is when upon Mount Horeb, God spoke to Moses through a burning bush.  While Moses was tending his father-in-law’s flock, he was led to a bush that burned but was not consumed, and from the bush spoke the voice of God.  God explained that he had seen how miserable his chosen people, the Hebrews, were in Egypt, where they were being held as slaves, and that God was now sending Moses to free His people.

Moses, terrified, asked God his name.  And God said, "I AM WHO AM, you will say I AM, has sent me to you."

We can thank Cecil B De Mille for his rendition of the story of the 10 commandments for our familiarity with this story.  You can bet that Jesus’ Jewish audience in the Gospel were intimately familiar with this story—knowing it word for word.  And here Jesus was identifying himself with the very God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the creator of the world, the God who led the people out of slavery in Egypt.  And he did so by uttering the very name of God.

Anyone familiar with the New Testament would be able to guess the response of his audience—they did not fall down in worship, rather, they picked up rocks to stone Jesus to death, for they believed this to be an unforgivable blasphemy. 

All throughout the readings of Lent we’ve seen how difficult this truth is for some to accept.  And now, the drama is coming to a climax.  It is not long now. The dark powers of faithlessness conspire to bring Jesus to death.  Particularly as we read the Passion this weekend and on Good Friday, there’s that part of us that wants to cry out , “Stop! Don’t you know who he is?  How can you not know?!”

Yet, we undergo this drama every year, not so much for the purpose of condemning the faithless, pointing our fingers and shaming those who do not believe, but to remember that all that he suffers, he does out of love—that we can take up our cross and follow him. 

Every year at Easter, faith in Jesus brings people to baptism.  Through the evangelizing efforts of the Catholic Church—that is the lived faith of Catholics like you and me—men and women and young people accept Jesus’ claim, “Whoever keeps my word will never taste death.”

And on Easter Sunday, each one of us will renew our baptismal faith.  We will be asked if we reject sin and to renew our faith that Jesus is the God who saves us from the slavery of sin and death.

Let us continue to prepare for this renewal through our Lenten penances, denying worldliness, practicing self-sacrificial charity, and entering into deeper and more intimate prayer, to deny the “I”—the ego—in order to make room for the great “I AM” for the glory of God and salvation of souls.