Thursday of the Fifth week in Lent
John 8:51-59
“If anyone will have kept my word, he will not see death for eternity.”
Amen, amen, I say to you, if anyone will have kept my word, he will not see death for eternity.”
Therefore, the Jews said: “Now we know that you have a demon. Abraham is dead, and the Prophets; and yet you say, ‘If anyone will have kept my word, he shall not taste death for eternity.’
Are you greater than our father Abraham, who is dead? And the prophets are dead. So who do you make yourself to be?”
Jesus responded: “If I glorify myself, my glory is nothing. It is my Father who glorifies me. And you say about him that he is your God. And yet you have not known him. But I know him. And if I were to say that I do not know him, then I would be like you, a liar. But I know him, and I keep his word. Abraham, your father, rejoiced that he might see my day; he saw it and was glad.”
And so the Jews said to him, “You have not yet reached fifty years, and you have seen Abraham?”
Jesus said to them, “Amen, amen, I say to you, before Abraham was made, I am.”
Therefore, they took up stones to cast at him. But Jesus hid himself, and he departed from the temple.
What do the Fathers say?
Pope St GREGORY the Great. As it is necessary that the good should grow better by scorn and abuse, so are the scoundrels made worse by kindness. On hearing our Lord’s words, the Jews again blaspheme: and say “Now we know that you have a demon.
They, being destined for an eternal death, which death they did not see, and thinking only, as they did, of the death of the body, their minds were darkened, even while the Truth Himself was speaking.
ORIGEN. They spoke as people spiritually blind. For Jesus did not make Himself what He was, but received it from the Father: Jesus answered and said, If I honour Myself, My honour is nothing.
St ALCUIN. The Father glorified the Son, at His baptism, on the mount, at the time of His passion, when a voice came to Him, in the midst of the crowd, when He raised Him up again after His passion, and placed Him at the right hand of His Majesty.
St John CHRYSOSTOM. In answer then to their question, Are You greater than our father Abraham, He shows them that He is greater than Abraham; Your father Abraham rejoiced to see My day: he saw it, and was glad; he must have rejoiced, because My day would benefit him, which is to acknowledge Me to be greater than himself.
Pope St GREGORY the Great. Our Saviour mildly draws them away from their carnal view, to the contemplation of His Divinity; Jesus said to them, “Amen, amen, I say to you, before Abraham was made, I am.”
Before refers to the past , am, to the present. Divinity has no past or future, but is always in the present; and therefore He does not say, Before Abraham was, I was: but, Before Abraham was, I am.
St AUGUSTINE. Abraham being a creature, He did not say before Abraham was, but, before Abraham was made. Nor does He say, I am made; because , in the beginning WAS the Word.
Pope St GREGORY the Great. Their unbelieving minds, however, were unable to support these indications of eternity; and not understanding Him, they sought to destroy Him:
St AUGUSTINE. Such hardness of heart, where would it end, but at its truest likeness, the stones?
But now that He had done all that He could do as a teacher, and they in return wished to stone Him, since they could not bear correction, He leaves them:
Jesus hid Himself, and went out of the temple. He did not hide Himself in a corner of the temple, as if He was afraid, or take refuge in a house, or run behind a wall, or a pillar; but by His heavenly power, making Himself invisible to His enemies, went through the midst of them.
So then, as a man, He flies from the stones; but woe to them, from whose stony hearts God flies.
Pope St GREGORY the Great. if He had chosen to exert the power of His Divinity, He could, without a word, by His mere nod, have seized them, with the very stones in their hands, and delivered them to immediate death. But He who came to suffer, was slow to execute judgment.
And what does our Lord mean by hiding Himself, but that the truth is hidden to them, who despise His words. The truth escapes the company of an unhumbled soul. His example shows us, that we should in all humility rather retreat from the wrath of the proud, when it arises, than resist it, even though we might be able.
The Venerable BEDE. Mystically, a man throws a stone at Jesus, as often as he harbours an evil thought; and if he follows it up, so far as lies in him, he kills Jesus.