Passion Sunday, March 17, 2013
Epistle Hebrews 9: 11-15 Gospel John 8: 46-59
Passiontide began
yesterday, Saturday, at 3:00 o’clock and runs until midnight on Holy Saturday. Lenten
fasting ends at 12:00 noon on Holy Saturday.
The first prayer in
the Divine Office today, called Matins, contains this invitation from Psalm 95: “If today you hear the voice of the Lord, harden not your
hearts.” Written by King David, under the urging of the Holy Ghost, these are
the words of our suffering Jesus directed at us. We become our own enemies by the
hardness of our hearts and by indifference to our faith as the one true faith.
Jesus is about to give us the last and greatest proof of His love for us that
brought Him down from heaven; His death is close at hand. Let us enter into
ourselves, accept the grace He gives us and leave sin and pride behind. The
graces of Good Friday and Easter will renew our faith. But these anniversaries
also increase insensibility in those who let them pass without allowing His
grace to work their conversion. Therefore, “If today you hear His voice, harden
not your hearts.”
The Synagogue in
Christ’s day was obstinate in her errors, refusing to hear the Messiah and
deliberately perverting her own judgment. She had extinguished within herself
the light of the Holy Ghost, sinking deeper and deeper into evil and falling
into the abyss. This is not unlike many Catholic Churchmen today who are doing
the same thing. What happened in Jerusalem 2,000 years ago happens again today
in many hearts. While we listen to the Gospels relating the history of Christ’s
Passion, let’s turn the anger we may feel
against those ancient Jews and Romans, turn it against our own sins and weep
over the sufferings of our Victim Lord, because He suffered also for our sins today.
St. Paul’s Epistle
today calls Christ a High Priest Who by His own Blood, entered once into the
Holies, having obtained eternal redemption. And, if the blood of goats and oxen
“sanctify . . . to the cleansing of the flesh; how much more shall the Blood of
Christ . . . cleanse our conscience from dead works to serve the living God?”
Dom Guéranger writes of this: “It is by blood alone that man is to be redeemed.”
And God tells us in Psalm 49: 7-14: “Hear, O My people . . . I am God thy God. I will not
reprove thee for thy sacrifices, and thy burnt offerings are always in my sight”
[but] I need them not. Here God both commands the blood of victims to be
offered to Him, at the same time declaring neither the blood nor the victims
are precious in His sight. Is this a contradiction? No, of course it is not. He
wants us to understand that it is only by blood that man can be redeemed, but
the blood of animals cannot do this. What was needed was the Blood of God and
such was the Blood of Jesus. He came to shed His Blood for our redemption. Let’s
not harden our hearts today. Let’s open our hearts that Christ’s precious Blood
may, as St. Paul says, “cleanse our conscience from dead works to serve the
living God.”
With regard to
today’s Gospel, this entire Chapter 8 of John takes place in the Temple in Jerusalem and consists of Jesus
demonstrating His patience, forgiving an adulteress, and His discourse to His
people, the Jews. I want to speak today about His patience. He asks those
present in the Temple, which of them can convict Him of sin, and then asks and
answers a question: “If I say the truth to you, why do you not believe me? He
that is of God heareth the words of God. Therefore you hear them not.” His
enemies took this to heart and in turn accuse Him of being a Samaritan and
having a devil. How does Jesus answer this insult? With patience. He does not
respond to their charge that He is a Samaritan because the word “Samaritan”
means Guardian or Watcher, and Jesus is the guardian spoken of in Psalm 126: “Unless the Lord keep [guards] the city, he watches in
vain who keepeth it.” Jesus accepts the charge of being a Samaritan. In that
sense it was true.
Jesus does respond,
saying, “I have not a devil: but I honor my Father, and you have dishonored
me.” Jesus first told them that they cannot hear the word of God because they
are not of God. This was a lesson, but they considered it an insult. So they
responded with a greater insult, accusing Him of having a devil. Their
accusation dishonored the Son of God.
Christ’s lesson in
the Temple is also meant for us today. What should we do when someone
wrongfully accuses us of something we didn’t do? A patient denial followed by
silence. Most people would say that if we remain silent it is an admission of
guilt. But in denying the charge we have not remained silent. Following our
denial, it is not necessary to respond to a false charge. If we argue about it,
what are we doing but defending our image, defending our ego. Remember, we are
called to focus on eternal life, not on our short lives on Earth. After telling
his enemies that they had dishonored Him, what were Christ’s next words? “I
seek not my own glory.” Neither should we seek glory by boosting our own ego,
our own image. If we are in a state of grace then we already are a perfect
image of an obedient child of God. Heaven follows a life of obedience to God.
Earlier in this long
conversation in the Temple, Christ tells the people that, “When you shall have
lifted up the Son of man, then shall you know that I am he [the Messiah], and
that I do nothing of myself; but as the Father hath taught me, these things I
speak. And he that sent me is with me, and he hath not left me alone; for I do
always the things that please him.” Upon hearing these words, many in the Temple
that day understood who Jesus was and were converted. But many were not
converted, and to them He asks, and answers His own question: “Why do you not
know my speech? Because you cannot hear my word.” He tells them that, “You are
of your father, the devil, and the desires of your father will you do.” He acknowledges their desire to kill Him
because, as He says, “my word hath no place in you.” Truth, meaning God, does
not reside in a soul that is full of pride. Jesus continues, “He that is of God
heareth the words of God. Therefore, you hear them not.” He then promises
eternal life to those who keep His word, but his detractors cannot accept this
either, and again accuse Him of having a devil because Abraham and the
prophets, who were just men, are all dead. The discourse ends with Jesus
telling them “before Abraham was made, I am.” Then the Jews picked up stones to
kill him with because He used the name of God to describe Himself. This name
goes back to Exodus Chapter 3, when God
told Moses His name, “I Am Who Am.” This struck Christ’s enemies as blasphemy,
which in theology means assuming the qualities of God to oneself. Christ’s time
had not yet come, so He “hid himself, and went out of the temple.”
Why did Jesus walk
away from the wrath of His enemies? Pope St. Gregory the Great writes: why did
Jesus hide Himself if not that our Redeemer tells us some things by His words,
and others by His example? What does He tell us by this example? That we should humbly turn away from “The
proud and the arrogant . . . who in
anger worketh pride.” (Original Douay
Rheims, Proverbs 21: 24). So follow our Lord’s example and turn away. If we worry what
people will think, this only means that our minds are firmly fixed on our short
life on Earth. It’s far better to think of our eternal future, to think of
pleasing Him Who gave us His courageous example of humility. +++
(Thanks to Dom Guéranger
for today’s sermon)
We Celebrate the Traditional Tridentine
Latin Mass
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