RBWords

     The Gospel According to John was put into writing sometime between 90-110 AD.  This means that it is the product of 60+ years of reflection by Christian preachers who were struggling to bring the story of Jesus to the world around them.  In the case of the Gospel According to John, the text reveals the frustration and tension between those Jews who accepted Jesus as the Messiah and those who did not,.  This tension and anxiety resulted in expulsion from the synagogue of those who preached Jesus and his teachings.  Resentment over this spilled into the composition of the gospel, which accounts for its often adversarial tone.  The gospel passage for today's Mass reflects this.

     This passage follows the healing of the crippled beggar at Bethesda.  This "sign" is one of Jesus' "works."  The incident involved Jesus "working" on the Sabbath by healing the beggar.  Every one of Jesus' signs has a simple goal: to reveal Jesus as the one whom God has sent.  Even at the marriage feast of Cana at the outset of Jesus public ministry,  we are told that he "revealed his glory, and his disciples began to believe in him" [John 2:11]  But not every one viewed these signs as worthy of belief in the person who performed them.

     Our own efforts to reveal Jesus' glory will meet with much the same resistance.  In our own time, however, it is not co-believers in God but the hostile indifference of secularism that seeks to expel faith from the social fabric of human life.  The accounts of Jesus' signs or encounters (e.g. the man born blind or the Samaritan woman at the well) are a warning that the process of coming to faith may take many steps.  Patience and perseverance in our own efforts to bear witness can be renewed in Lent as we suffer through the COVID  virus and move toward Jesus' ultimate sign - his being "lifted up" on the cross and triumphing over death.  AMEN