Word to the Wise
Monday, March 11, 2024 - 4th Week of Lent - Mon
[Isa 65:17-21 and John 4:43-54][Jesus] returned to Cana in Galilee, where he had made the water wine. Now there was a royal official whose son was ill in Capernaum. When he heard that Jesus had arrived in Galilee from Judea, he went to him and asked him to come down and heal his son, who was near death. Jesus said to him, "Unless you people see signs and wonders, you will not believe." The royal official said to him, "Sir, come down before my child dies." Jesus said to him, "You may go; your son will live." The man believed what Jesus said to him and left. While the man was on his way back, his slaves met him and told him that his boy would live. He asked them when he began to recover. They told him, "The fever left him yesterday about one in the afternoon. The Father realized that just at that time Jesus had said to him, "Your son will live," and he and his whole household came to believe." [John]
For the next two weeks (with the exception of the feast of St. Joseph - March 19), the gospel scripture will be taken from the Gospel According to John. This gospel is the most dramatic of the four gospels. Each encounter with Jesus could be acted out as an individual play. There is also a kind of "dramatic tension" that builds toward Holy Week. On Good Friday, the passion account is always the one from the Gospel According to John!
The incident recounted in today's gospel occurs shortly after Jesus' encounter with the Samaritan woman at the well. It may appear to be a kind of reworking of the encounter with the centurion in Matthew and Luke but there is an important difference. In the Gospel According to John there often seems to be a process of "coming to believe." In the encounter with the Royal Official there is no praise of the man's faith. We are simply told that he "believed what Jesus said to him and left." It is when his servants told him his son would recover that "he and his whole household came to believe." This "coming to believe" can easily be discerned, for example, in the encounters with the Samaritan Woman, the Man Born Blind, the Raising of Lazarus and Thomas the apostle after the resurrection.
At the end of the Gospel According to John, the evangelist says, "Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples that are not written in this book. But these are written that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through this belief you may have life in his name." Where are we in our "coming to believe?" Can we enter into the dramatic story of Jesus' life, death and resurrection and find life? AMEN