Friday, Fifth Week of Lent

There is a rather sad line in today’s first reading. Jeremiah says, ‘All those who used to be my friends watched for my downfall’. There is nothing more painful than the sense of good friends turning against us. When someone we considered a good friend lets us down in some way it can be extremely hurtful. That was the experience of Jesus at the time of his passion and death. He was betrayed by one of his inner circle, Judas, someone whose feet he had washed at the last supper, according to John’s gospel. The suffering of Jesus at this time wasn’t just physical suffering. It was also the emotional suffering of being betrayed by someone close to him, of being deserted by most of his inner circle, and even betrayed by the leader of the twelve. It was also the spiritual suffering of the sense of being abandoned even by God. Jesus had many enemies and, yet, in the end, he couldn’t even rely on his friends. In today’s gospel reading the hostility of his enemies towards him is growing. They fetched stones to stone him. They declare that they want to stone him because ‘you are only a man and you claim to be God’. They consider this to be blasphemy. As believers, we recognize that Jesus is indeed both human and divine. He is God in human form, the Word made flesh. Jesus says to his opponents that if they cannot believe in him, ‘at least believe in the work I do’. Jesus’ unique relationship with God was revealed in all the works that he did, his work of bringing sight to a man born blind, healing the sick servant of a court official, giving a paralytic back the use of his legs, feeding a multitude in the wilderness, gathering a new kind of community about himself which included even Samaritans. The signs were there which proclaimed Jesus to be God’s Son. We too are to give expression to our relationship with the risen Lord through our own good works, works that reveal the Lord’s love for all, especially for the most vulnerable and weakest among us.