28/04/2026

In today's reading from St John's Gospel, Jesus is teaching/disputing with "the Jews". 

In the Gospel of St John "the Jews" does not mean the same as "multitude", ordinary people of Palestine, but is used by St John to denote the learned and the clever, priests, lawyers and pharisees.

He is writing about an event that took place at least 20 years before the dispersal/growth of the Apostolic Church recorded in the first of today's mass readings.

I am reading about them more than 2000 years after both events. I am not reading a newspaper, novel or history book because with the Scriptures "there something more that  is here" and I am trying to respond to the "more" that is  WORD as did St Peter, "Where should I go, you Lord have the words of eternal life?"

There is nothing more important that any human being can do today and any day than raise his mind and heart to God.

Jesus is not capable of telling us anything but TRUTH. Today he is not an ethicist teaching in the Athenian Stoa or Rabbi in a synagogue but the Son of God  answering direct question posed by Hebrew Professors. He is the pure unrefractable "Light of the World" infusing with grace all who seek him with their whole mind, heart and soul.

‘I told you, and you do not believe. The works that I do in my Father’s name bear witness about me, but you do not believe because you are not among my sheep. My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand. I and the Father are one.’

God knows who I am and forgives all of his children but we have to do more than just "listen" to his words. Our true being is witnessed only by our deeds and I know that I often fail "to know, love and serve in this world". I can never lose hope for "eternal life", however, for the Mercy of Our Father is boundless and I know even in my sinfulness that I am the receiver of unfathomable grace in the Church of Love, the Mystical Body of Christ, the New Holy Family,  a final promise of Our Lord sealed in the horror of his death on Calvary.

                                            "Woman behold your son. Son behold your mother."