Friday of the Fifth week in Lent
John 10:31-42
“Believe the works, so that you may know and believe that the Father is in me, and I am in the Father.”
Therefore, the Jews took up stones, in order to stone him. Jesus answered them: “I have shown you many good works from my Father. For which of those works do you stone me?”
The Jews answered him: “We do not stone you for a good work, but for blasphemy and because, though you are a man, you make yourself God.” Jesus responded to them: “Is it not written in your law, ‘I said: you are gods?’ If he called those to whom the word of God was given gods, and Scripture cannot be broken, why do you say, about him whom the Father has sanctified and sent into the world, ‘You have blasphemed,’ because I said, ‘I am the Son of God?’
If I do not do the works of my Father, do not believe in me.
But if I do them, even if you are not willing to believe in me, believe the works, so that you may know and believe that the Father is in me, and I am in the Father.”
Therefore, they sought to apprehend him, but he escaped from their hands. And he went again across the Jordan, to that place where John first was baptizing. And he lodged there. And many went out to him. And they were saying: “Indeed, John accomplished no signs. But all things whatsoever that John said about this man were true.” And many believed in him.
What do the Fathers say?
St AUGUSTINE. If men to whom the word of God came were called gods, much more the Word of God Himself is God. If men by partaking of the word of God were made gods, much more is the Word of which they partake, God.
– The Son does not say, The Father is in Me, and I in Him, in the sense in which men who think and act aright may say : meaning that they partake of God’s grace, and are enlightened by His Spirit. The Only-begotten Son of God is in the Father, and the Father in Him, as an equal in an equal.
St THEOPHYLACT. Or, the Word of God is sanctified, i. e. set apart to be sacrificed for the world: proof that He was God in a higher sense than the rest. To save the world is a divine work, not that of a man made divine by grace.
St John CHRYSOSTOM. Christ, after discoursing on some high truth, commonly retires immediately, to give time for the fury of people to abate, during His absence. Thus He did now: He went away again beyond Jordan, into the place where John at first baptized. He went there that He might recall to people’s minds, what had gone on there; John’s preaching and testimony to Himself.
The people who went there reasoned thus; John did no miracle, but this Man did; therefore He is the superior. But lest the absence of miracles should lessen the weight of John’s testimony, they add, But all things that John spoke of this Man were true.
Though he did no miracle, yet every thing he said of Christ was true, whence they conclude, if John was to be believed, much more this Man, who has the evidence of miracles. Thus it follows, And many believed in Him.
St THEOPHYLACT. We may observe that our Lord often brings out the people into solitary places, thus ridding them of the society of the unbelieving, for their furtherance in the faith:just as He led the people into the wilderness, when He gave them the old Law.
Mystically, Christ departs from Jerusalem, i. e. from the Jewish people; and goes to a place where there are springs of water, i. e. to the Gentile Church, that has the waters of baptism. And many came to Him, crossing over the Jordan, i. e. through baptism.