In the Gospel, Nicodemus is one of the chief priests and a Pharisee—yet he does something revolutionary: he requests that Jesus be given a legal hearing. What makes this revolutionary is that in the Old Testament or rabbinic law there is no legal precedent for the accused to be accorded a legal hearing.
It is the Jewish feast of Tabernacles, and Jesus decides to go, “not openly, but as it were in secret.” Some of the people who heard him speaking were puzzled. “Is he the Messiah? He can’t be; we know where he is from.” According to popular belief, the Messiah was supposed to burst upon the scene mysteriously.
In today’s Gospel, Jesus accuses the people of not believing in him. He said to them, “You do not believe in Moses. If you had believed in Moses, you would have believed in me because Moses wrote about me.” Jesus spoke very frankly to the people.
Our Lenten journey should draw us all to a deeper inward reflection regarding our relationship with God, with one another, and with our very self. That journey inward leads us to greater intimacy with Christ, which always leads us outward to authentic, loving discipleship.
I was in the hospital for six days. And in just six days I was going out of my mind without anything to do. I can’t even imagine being laid up for 38 long years like the cripple in today’s Gospel. My reaction to Jesus’ question—“Do you want to be well?”—would be “Well, of course!” The waters of the pool at Bethesda apparently were therapeutic.
“O Lord, you brought me up from the nether world; you preserved me from among those going down into the pit.” These words of today’s psalm draw together the beautiful vision of Isaiah and the healing “sign” Jesus performs in the Gospel of John, when he saves the royal official’s son from death.
Jesus proclaimed the kingdom of God through words and deeds. Many of those deeds involved miraculous healings, which frequently had a double layer of meaning. The physical healing certainly reflects the compassion and mercy of Jesus.
Today we celebrate the Feast of the Annunciation, that marvelous, mysterious event when the Angel Gabriel appeared to Mary, asking her to agree to become the Mother of God. Wow! Here is a young girl, perhaps 15 years old.
I think all of us want to live a decent life that is guided by a moral compass. Each of us wants to be a whole person who has relationships with God and others. In today’s Gospel the scribe’s question to Jesus is about how to be a whole person who has integrity.
“Evil,” St. Augustine tells us, “is a privation of good.” It does not exist in its own right but is a corruption of creation. There are many kinds of evil—spiritual, mental, physical, and social (to name but a few)—and they all affect us in varying degrees.
“Jesus said to his disciples: Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have come not to abolish but to fulfill them” (Matthew 5:17). When I was growing up, one of the strictest laws of the Catholic Church seemed to be the one about not eating meat on Fridays.
I suspect that for many people, the ability to forgive depends on whether they feel life has treated them fairly. Much depends on the kind of relationships we’ve had with our parents and others in our early formation.
From Thursday, March 30, through Sunday, April 2, 2017, the Redemptorists will host a Come and See weekend at their St. Alphonsus Formation Residence in the Bronx, New York. The weekend is a great opportunity to learn more about the community, to pray with the brothers, see where they study, and share in some service at a local Redemptorist parish.
Joseph is a quiet presence in the Scriptures, and not a single word is attributed to him in Matthew’s Gospel. Yet in a few words Matthew tells us everything we need to know about him. First, Matthew tells us Joseph was “an upright man”: a good man, a person who struggled to live justly and do the right thing.
Today’s Gospel is about Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well. I have always loved this woman’s reaction to her encounter with Christ! Jesus not only breaks societal customs and speaks to her but also talks with her about her divorces—yet she is not afraid or ashamed.
On the surface, the parable of the prodigal son seems to be just a matter between a father and his two sons, but it is a lot more than that. It is also a story about a community. When the younger son asked for his inheritance, the whole village would have known about it.
The moving story of Joseph in the first reading today sets the stage for the person of Jesus in the Gospel. Joseph is perhaps the first one to prefigure the passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus.
“Thus says the Lord: Cursed is the man who trusts in human beings, who seeks his strength in flesh, whose heart turns away from the Lord” (Jeremiah 17:5). Jeremiah the prophet invites us to reflect on human law as opposed to divine law in today’s first reading.
“Follow me.” This is Jesus’ call to us in the Gospel. Jesus always invites us to follow him with joy and confidence. During this Lenten season we are called to deepen our commitment to follow Jesus every day and in the process to discover our life.
Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, the archbishop of Manila, tells a story about titles. The cardinal was invited to an international conference as a presenter, and before his talk he was introduced to the assembly by one of the priests who was helping host the conference.