One week from Good Friday, with Holy Week looming on the
horizon, our Gospel today begins in a dramatic fashion, the opponents of Jesus
are ready to stone him to death—the violence, the plotting, the hostility
toward Jesus is all starting to mount and come to a climax.
It was the festival of the Dedication of the Temple—what today
is called Hanukah, and Jesus stood in a sacred place, one of the porticos of
the Temple, preaching the truth about how he has been sent by the Father as the
promised Messiah, the Son of God.
This enrages the people who weren’t ready to believe in Him,
and certainly weren’t ready to give him the authority as the Messiah. So they plotted against him, and were
prepared to carry out that plot by stoning him to death as the Gospel opened
today.
Jesus then speaks up and asks them, “why” are they
persecuting him? They claim Jesus has committed blasphemy, but Jesus claims, “I
have simply been restating to you what is in your own scriptures.” He says, “you are trying to kill me for
claiming to be the Son of God, while your own scriptures make that claim about
all God’s people” And he is right, of
course. Psalm 82 speaks about the
children of Israel can rightly be called “gods”—not because they have any claim
on Divinity—but because God speaks to them as his own children—and calls them
into a filial relationship through justice and sharing his divine life.
This is a wonderful Psalm to keep in mind as we enter into
Holy Week and as we remember all that Jesus suffers. He undergoes all of this tremendous
suffering, why? To enable us to be called children of God, to raise us up to
this relationship with God where we are able to share his divine life—“to share
in the divine nature” as we read in 2nd Peter. Thomas Aquinas,
quoted in our Catechism said: “"The only-begotten Son of God, wanting to
make us sharers in his divinity, assumed our nature, so that he, made man,
might make men gods."
Remember, one of the promises of the beatitudes: blessed are
the peacemakers, for the shall be called children of God. That is our destiny, to be God’s children:
obedient, sharing God’s joy, the treasures of his household. As a result of
what Jesus accomplishes a week from today, we are able to experience what the
catechism calls “divine filiation”—able to turn to God and cry out to him,
saying “Abba Father”.
Amidst the chaotic political events, so much darkness and
bafflement in the world, Christians, Pope Benedict said, “remain unshakably
certain that God is our Father and loves us, even when his silence remains
incomprehensible.” The same peace,
faith, obedience, trust, and fortitude that will flow through Jesus’ veins as
he undergoes his passion next week, dwells in the souls of the baptized.
Let us never forget that great dignity, and allow it to
motivate us in our efforts to serve Our Lord, for the glory of God and
salvation of souls.
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