Friday, 3/20/15
The readings today present us with Our Lord’s mounting
sorrows. The Gospel speaks from the beginning of a week in early winter three
months before his death. It was when the people of Jerusalem had their peculiar
way of recalling the forty years when their ancestors wandered about the desert
in tents. For a whole week at the beginning of winter they would abandon their
homes to live in palm branch huts set up in the streets.
That year, it had become common talk that the leaders were
planning to do away with Jesus; and the people, anxious to see him, were wondering
if he would show up for the week-long feast. He surprised and delighted them by
appearing, and Chapter Seven and
Eight of John’s Gospel give us great pictures of Jesus addressing those crowds.
However, today it is not the Gospel but that first reading
that calls for our attention. It recounts the hateful murmuring of the Jewish
leaders. Jesus was immeasurably saddened listening to their plotting, knowing
that in three months time they would succeed in stripping him and nailing him
to a cross between two thieves.
From the distance of these many years, we can still hear
Jesus calling to us. Like Job he pleads, “Have
pity on me at least you my friends, for the hand of the Lord is on me.”
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