06/04/2025

Fifth Sunday of Lent

I have read somewhere that some of the "learned and the clever" do not accept the authenticity of this morning's Gospel.

I have always loved this story of how the "learned and the clever" of Temple religion reacted to Jesus' challenge. When I spot the "mote" in someone else's eye and begin to condemn that person the message of this story always reminds me that I am responsible for my own soul, as are each of us. Each of us is a unique child of the Father and known as such.

This story is only contained in John's Gospel. I always have felt relief in that the enemies of Jesus could acknowledge some of the Truth that he taught and so would be disappointed if there were not an element of historical accuracy in the passage.

I have to know the Gospels of the New Testament as factual accounts by eye-witnesses of the days when SON shared in our humanity to be able to become the perfect sinless Jesus, true man and true God. I cannot pick and choose the ideas, images that those texts create and I retain in my mind.

I do know nothing about textual criticism but reluctantly have to agree that my image of the critics of Our Lord slinking shamefacedly away, silenced by his words does not agree with the historical facts that Jesus was rejected by those who had become enmeshed in ritual, law and casuistry. The psychology of this story leads us into a mass conversion rather than the reality of an execution.

Silence is never a characteristic of the "learned and the clever." Our own "Pharisees" are never short of a riposte nor were those of Jesus' time on Earth. IAMFATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT is found only in the truth of each moment we experience in our present lives. Scripture is the record and guide that leads us through the Passion and Death onwards to the Resurrection that is the Truth that is and comes from God.