As we read this famous passage from John’s gospel, we can see that the crowd wrestling with how to respond to these striking words of Jesus. For context, we must remember that the people have sought out Jesus with great eagerness. They were there, if we recall the first part of this chapter, when Jesus had multiplied the loaves and the bread, and they had followed after him when he had gone back across the sea. But, tragically, the more they hear from Jesus, the plainer he is about who is and what is his mission, the more the crowd hesitates, and begins to push back; you can almost feel them becoming more anxious.
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In our first reading, Moses goes up a mountain to meet God. And when he gets there, God reveals himself, showing to Moses his ineffable glory, revealing his name and declaring himself to be merciful and gracious, rich in kindness and fidelity. This encounter of Moses, the man, the creature, with God, the infinite, the absolute, the inexpressible, is glorious, wild, and awesome. Moses has gone up the mountain, and, in an event almost too wonderful to be believed, has seen the glory of God.
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On this great feast of Pentecost, which we anticipate joyfully every year as the crown and completion of the Easter season, we remember and celebrate what is, without any doubt, among the greatest of gifts ever given to the Church, namely the gift of the Holy Spirit, who was, after Christ’s ascension, as Christ himself had promised, poured out upon the disciples while they were at prayer, and who has, ever since that moment, remained always with the Church.
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Last week, we heard about how Christ, the Son, is in the Father, and how the Father is likewise in the Son, and I preached about how this reveals the Trinitarian nature of God, and also the Trinitarian nature of Christ’s mission as well as the Trinitarian nature of the life to which, in Christ, we are called to participate.
And today this Trinitarian mystery continues to unfold as we keep reading from St. John’s gospel, as Jesus promises his disciples that he will send them the Advocate, the Holy Spirit. And so, what can we glean from our Lord’s words concerning this Advocate?
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No one comes to the Father except through me. If you know me, then you will also know my Father.
These words, and indeed this entire passage, are very Trinitarian in character. As Christians we of course believe in the Trinity, and indeed the truth of the Triune nature of God is so indispensable that one cannot be a Christian without it; it is one of the requirements for the validity of baptism that it be done according to the Trinitarian formula and with a Trinitarian understanding, such that groups who baptize without this belief, such as the Unitarians, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and Mormons, do not actually baptize at all and so are not really Christians.
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I have come that they may have life, and have it abundantly.
This, of course, is what a shepherd does for his sheep. His task is to pasture them, to provide for them, to protect them. And you can see just how important the shepherd is to the survival and prospering of his sheep if you consider what happens in his absence. Without the shepherd, the sheep become scattered and lost. They fall as prey to wolves and other wild beasts. They are powerless against those who would harm them, against thieves and robbers. And so it isn’t merely true that the shepherd is there to bring life to the sheep, but, for the sheep, there is no other way by which life might be found!
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According to legend, there was a city named Silene in Libya, next to which was a stagnant and deadly pond in which lived a dragon, who would rise up out of the pond and by his breath poison the entire country. To appease the dragon, the people of the city gave him every day two sheep. And when this failed, they gave to the dragon each day a man and a sheep. And when this failed, they even offered up to the dragon by lot their children and young people, until one day the lot fell upon the king’s daughter, and she was led out amid much weeping, dressed in bridal clothes in mourning for a wedding she would never see, to the edge of this stinking pond.
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Comenzando por Moisés y siguiendo con todos los profetas, les explicó todos los pasajes de la Escritura que se referían a él.
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The name of St. Thomas, on account of this famous episode, is always for us connected with doubt. It is as though we have been so conditioned to make the mental jump from the name of Thomas to Doubting Thomas almost without thinking, and surely there is something unfair about that. Yet at the same time, there is certainly an element of hard-heartedness in Thomas’ initial unbelief, when the other disciples, whom Thomas knows and trusts, have seen the risen Lord and have testified to Thomas regarding the truth of the Resurrection. And so when we hear Jesus’ words to Thomas, Be not unbelieving, but believe, we may rightly hear in them a gentle sort of rebuke, as Thomas’ doubt, however psychologically understandable it might have been, was in the end unreasonable.
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Today, we stand in the aftermath of something remarkable. Of course, the events to which we have already been witness this week are even in their own right remarkable – on a merely human level we have seen the drama of betrayal and suffering and death, the anguish of a grieving mother, the disappointment of all those who had hoped that Jesus might be the one to redeem Israel. All of this makes for a moving tragedy.
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PaddlingPadre 