Thursday of the
Fifth Week in Lent
(Genesis 17:3-9; John 8:51-59)
Today’s gospel is part of a longer passage that used to
be read on “Passion Sunday.” This was the Sunday before Palm Sunday before the
Vatican II renewal. The gospel passage became the source of the custom of
covering sacred images during the last two weeks of Lent. The statement that Jesus hid from the Jews
was taken as a cue to veil all statutes.
Today covering images is optional.
In any case, it is external to the meaning of the passage which is very
significant in itself.
In the dialogue with the Jews, Jesus asserts that he
existed before Abraham. He also says
that he has intimate knowledge of the Father.
From these statements the Church has reasoned that He is God like the
Father in all things except their mutual relationship. This conclusion is given added testimony when
Jesus says later in the gospel, “’I and the Father are one.’” Christian theologians have argued that the
identity of Jesus as God is crucial for the atonement of sin. If he were not God, then his sacrifice could
not have made up for the sins of humanity. Only the sacrifice of a human of
infinite greatness – a God-man – could restore the justice that is taken away
through sin.
Atonement may sound remote even unimportant as we
consider Jesus’ cruel death. But we have
to ask why that death was more consequential than any other in history. Certainly other good people have sacrificed themselves
for the good of others. Certainly,
again, other innocent people have undergone similarly brutal deaths as
Jesus. But because Jesus’ death made up,
or atoned for, all the sins of the world, we take a week every to contemplate
its meaning.
