5th Week of Lent (F)
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
St Dominic, NOLA
A
mob – complete with stones – demands that Jesus defend his claim
to be the Son of God. His defense: if you can't take my word for it,
then look at my works – look at the good that I am doing. If my
words and works are not enough. . .well, there's little hope that you
will ever come to believe that I am who I say I am. For us, in 2019,
coming to know and love Jesus as the Christ can be a sudden
revelation – think: St Paul on the road to Damascus – or it can
be a long, slow process of growing in familiarity and trust. Being
2,000 years removed from Christ's words and deeds means that we will
struggle to know even a little something about
Jesus. The point – the point of all of this – is not to know more
about
Jesus but to come to know him, personally, up close, and in a way we
can never forget. The point is to love him so that we might love one
another. So that we might be living witnesses to the power of God's
mercy.
Jesus
gives the mob demanding an answer two options: believe my word or
believe my works. Taken together – his words and his works –
Jesus clearly and convincingly reveals that he is the Son of God come
to offer sinners his Father's boundless mercy. If we have come to
believe that he is who he says he is, and if we have accepted baptism
for the cleansing of our sins, then we too – by our words and works
– reveal the Christ to others. One this last Friday of Lent 2019,
how's your witness? We are rapidly moving toward Holy Week and Easter
and we need to take account of how and how well we have taken the
stand to testify to the Father's great work in our lives. If you
leave this evening and find yourself confronted by a stone-wielding
mob outside your home, demanding to know who this Christ-fellow is,
will you bear witness? Will you – in word and deed – tell them
how his sacrificial death on the cross made your salvation possible?
Will you tell them that you are a new man, a new woman, remade in the
perfect image and likeness of the Crucified Christ? That you have
been granted an eternal inheritance, and that you confidently hope in
the resurrection of the body at the end of the age? If you are not
willing to bear such a witness, you might need to re-do your Lenten
pilgrimage! If you are willing, then know this: “the Lord is with
[you], like a mighty champion: [your] persecutors will stumble, they
will not triumph. In their failure they will be put to utter shame. .
.” Your words and works – spoken and done to bear witness to
Christ – are spoken and done with Christ. He is with you – with
us – always!
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