Message of Abbot Paul - Friday - 15th March 2024

 

​Our Gospel today is a shortened version of the first half of chapter 7 of John, (Jn 7: 1-2; 10; 25-30), in which Jesus leaves Galilee and goes alone to Jerusalem for the feast of Tabernacles, so as not to draw attention to himself. Meanwhile, the people debate as to whether he will be coming or not and as to his identity. Is he or is he not the Messiah?

 

​Even so, Jesus begins teaching in the Temple and this leads to further animosity on the part of the religious authorities. We read, “As Jesus taught in the Temple, he cried out: ‘Yes, you know me and you know where I came from. Yet I have not come of myself: no, there is one who sent me and I really come from him, and you do not know him, but I know him because I have come from him and it was he who sent me.’ They would have arrested him then, but because his time had not yet come no one laid a hand on him.” Once more we meet this phrase: “his time had not yet come.” In John, it is a phrase that occurs frequently, referring to his death and resurrection as his time. We first meet it at the wedding feast of Cana, when Mary his mother asks him to perform a miracle on behalf of the bride and groom, who have run out of wine. In John the miracles are prophetic signs of the coming ‘time’ of Christ, the coming of God’s kingdom, the dawning of salvation. That is why we pray, “Thy kingdom come on earth, as it is in heaven.”