St. John had a unique way of telling his stories.

Sunday, 4/3/16

I had a friend named Joe, a deacon in a Christian Church, and he was more of a Christian than most of us Catholics are. On this First Sunday after Easter I got to thinking of something Joe said about admiring the way the Catholic Church followed its patterns. 

(Like, on this first Sunday after Easter we always have the stories of Jesus appearing once when Thomas wasn’t there, then once when he was there.) Joe said his pastor made up his own services week after week.

As we let or imaginations carry us to the scene of Our Lord’s second appearance, We wonder if Thomas or if anyone else actually did put a finger in Our Lord’s hand or put his hand in the side of Jesus. Do you wonder too about how really human his body could have been if it could pass through locked doors.

As another matter, you should carefully consider the last sentence in today’s Gospel. (In it John said he chose to tell only stories that showed Jesus to be the Messiah, and about how we have life by believing in him,) John left out many of the parables and miracles that we read in Mathew, Mark and Luke. He selected his stories very carefully, with each of them showing us how Jesus was the Messiah and how we we have life through believing in him.

That was true of the story of Nicodemus who believed that Jesus came from God, but no more. To tell us the story of Nicodemus John cleverly told us that Nicodemus came by night. With the Samaritan woman who did perceive Jesus to be the Messiah, John said she came at noon.

In our efforts to fully understand any individual Bible passage, it helps to know something about its author. We are definitely told that in the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation.”

To learn something about John, it helps us to see that Our Second Reading today was written by St. John. It describes the glorious impressive that the Risen Christ made on John. In it he said, he saw the Christ wearing an ankle-length robe with a gold sash, and he told John, “I am the first and the last, I am the one who lives. I hold the keys to death and to the netherworld.”