Homily for Friday, 20 March 2015‒ Friday of the Fourth Week of Lent

Readings of the day: Wisdom 2:1a, 12-22; Psalm 34:17-18, 19-20, 21, 23; John 7:1-2, 10, 25-30

Who really knows who Jesus is? In our Gospel reading today from John we hear of many people in the crowd in Jerusalem for the Feast of the Tabernacles who thought they knew Jesus. “Is he not the one they are trying to kill? …Could the authorities have realized that he is the Christ? But we know where he is from.”

In John’s Gospel we see a mob mentality develop. It begins innocently as idle speculation: Who is Jesus? Why is he able to move about and to speak freely if the religious authorities are trying to kill him? This speculation becomes gossip. The people divide into factions, some for Jesus and his message, others against, and many not courageous enough to commit to Jesus; to identify him as the Christ; to live as his disciples and not to hide among the crowds. We know the result of this division: Jesus is put to death.

But does this deadly mob mentality not develop subtly? It is not usually as blatant as in our first reading, from the Book of Wisdom. Here the people are openly “wicked,” calling for the “shameful death” of the just one; the death of Wisdom.

Are not most people at least well-meaning? To be truly and openly wicked is, I believe, rare. But do we not still experience divisions within nations; divisions within the Church; divisions within families? These divisions begin innocently enough: Speculation as to another’s motives; gossip; words and actions meant to hurt; factionalism just as within the crowds of Jerusalem in Jesus’ time.

When we give into this mob mentality, we participate in putting Jesus Christ to death. I do not wish to discourage us or to make us feel guilty, though, by saying this. John says at the end of today’s Gospel reading that Jesus’ “hour had not yet come.”

When is Jesus’ “hour”? John refers directly to Jesus’ Passion and death. But, indirectly, we are living Jesus’ “hour” now. Our “hour has... come.” Our time is now to seek the forgiveness of somebody we have sinned against, even under the cover of crowd influence. Now is our “hour” to repent if we have participated in gossip; if we have more openly and intentionally hurt another person by word or deed. In these ways we have a chance now to participate in Christ’s resurrection.

This Lent especially is our “hour”; our time to come to know and live more truly and authentically who Jesus is: Christ, the Son of God. We come to know Jesus better by listening and speaking to him in prayer and by purposeful acts of kindness toward one another. We come to know Jesus better as the Christ not by following the idle speculation of the crowds that begins innocently but leads to no good, but by following and purposefully acting as Jesus acts.