Readings of the day: Wisdom 2:1a, 12-22; Psalm 34:17-18, 19-20, 21, 23; John 7:1-2, 10, 25-30
“His hour had not yet come,” we hear in
today’s Gospel reading from John.
One of the central themes of the Gospel
of John is “the hour” or “the time,” whether Jesus’ or ours. John refers
eighteen times in his Gospel either to Jesus’ or our “hour” or “time”! What,
then, is the “hour” or “time” central to John’s Gospel, both for Jesus and for
us?
The easy answer is that Jesus’ and our “hour”
or “time” in John refers to death. For John in particular among the four
Gospels, Jesus’ death on a cross (even more so than his resurrection) is the
purpose for which Jesus came among us as a human being. In Jesus’ death is his
glory and our salvation. We are two weeks from Good Friday, the day on which
Jesus’ and our “hour” first came. In our daily Mass readings, we are beginning
to hear, more and more, words that are included in the Gospel accounts of Jesus’
passion and death, for example: “For, according to his own words, God will take
care of him,” from our first reading, from Wisdom; and from our Psalm today, “He
watches over all his bones. Not one of them shall be broken.”
Jesus’ hour has come. Our hour both has
come and is coming. What do I mean by this? Again, what is Jesus’ and,
especially, our “hour”? The more difficult answer to this question is that,
yes, we are saved by the death of Jesus Christ. And yet our salvation by Christ’s
death is also our calling to co-operate with God in our salvation; in
continuing to build God’s saving kingdom on earth. This is the goal of our
season of Lent and all the Lenten disciplines and penances we have undertaken: “Thy
kingdom come” as we pray in the words Jesus gave us or, in the words of St.
Francis of Assisi, “Make me an instrument of your peace.” Make me an instrument
of your kingdom on earth; your salvation…
Today’s Gospel reading skips over
several verses of John 7. Between John’s mention that we hear of the Jewish
Feast of the Tabernacles taking place in Jerusalem and the decision of Jesus’ “brothers”
and then Jesus himself to go to the feast, a debate takes place between Jesus
and his disciples. Jesus’ disciples want Jesus to use the Feast of the
Tabernacles to reveal himself openly and clearly as the Christ. Jesus’ reply is
this: “My time is not yet here, but the time is always right for you.”
And so “the time is always right for” us
to reveal openly, clearly, and sometimes courageously who we know and believe
to be the Christ; to co-operate with God in our own salvation, the hour of
which began at Christ’s death; our hour
to be made, by God’s grace, into instruments of God’s kingdom of peace,
justice, and love come to its fullness on earth.
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