OLDER LECTIO DIVINA

I am the good shepherd, and I know mine and mine know me.  A tech guru came upon a field with sheep and a shepherd. He pulled up to the field in his car and said to the shepherd, “If I can tell you exactly how many sheep are in this field, will you give them to me?” The shepherd said, “Sure.” So the tech guru took out his smartphone and opened up an app that surveyed the field via satellite, and calculated the number of sheep in it. He then told the shepherd, “You have 267 sheep.” The shepherd then told him, “That is correct. Very good.” With a smirk the tech guru started to try and coral the sheep, but was struggling greatly to do so. Then the shepherd told him, “If you want them to come to you, you need to call them each by name.”

“You are witnesses of these things.” What a privilege it must have been to witness Christ risen from the dead, and to witness all the miracles, preaching, and ministry of Jesus. We also are Christ’s witnesses, though. How has he worked in my life and in yours to bring us closer to the truth? For those who don’t know Jesus, the concept of being his witnesses today may seem abstract. But for those who have encountered the Truth, Love, or the miracles and wonders of Life, know that the particular qualities of these things point to the fact that he is indeed a person who can be met through these things. We may not have witnessed Jesus Christ walking in the flesh on earth, but I’m sure many of us can say that we have witnessed things he has done in our lives nonetheless.

“My Lord and my God”

Is Thomas being redundant here? Don’t “Lord” and “God” mean the same thing to the disciples, at least in their understanding of the titles? Well, no. By “Lord,” Thomas was saying Jesus is his master, the one he follows and obeys. It is a title that a servant would give to his overlord. It is significant to call Christ “Lord,” sure. After all, to most people on the Roman Empire, Caesar was Lord. Calling anyone else “Lord” could get someone living in the empire into serious trouble. But Thomas is going a step further here. He is not just calling Jesus, “Lord”. He probably already considered Jesus to be his Lord, so if he just said, “My Lord” when he met Christ after the crucifixion, one could say that Thomas was just accepting the reality that it was indeed Jesus, his Lord, whom he was  encountering. But Thomas also says, “My God.” Did Thomas believe Jesus was God before this point? We know St. Peter did. Maybe the other disciples did as well. It’s even more likely that they did after witnessing his resurrection. But Thomas did not witness it until that point. Was this the very moment Thomas accepted Jesus as not just his Lord, but also his God? Was it in this moment that Thomas acknowledged Jesus as the creator of the universe, the giver of life, the God of his forefathers who performed all the miracles he had been learning about from his youth? If this is the revelation Thomas is receiving in this moment, it is especially significant. Thomas is the skeptic among the disciples, saying, “Unless I see the marks ... I will not believe.” So if even he, a skeptic, was coming to believe by seeing Christ that day, perhaps even the greatest skeptics in our lives would be convinced that Jesus is God after an encounter with the resurrected Christ as well. May we pray for the skeptics in our lives to experience just that, because the resurrected Christ is still among us after all. Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed. One could easily believe that Jesus is just talking about belief in his resurrection. Of course, he is talking about that. But let’s not forget that it’s not only true that Jesus rose from the dead. It’s just as true that he is risen from the dead. That’s why you will see it written on the signs on people’s lawns and church marquees as, “He is risen,” to emphasize the fact that Christ is alive and among us today.

he saw and believed

A doubter may have seen the burial cloths and the stone rolled away, and may have simply believed that the body of Jesus was stolen. Peter is starting to get it, though. He had witnessed Jesus’ divine power. Now it’s just a matter of putting the pieces together. Perhaps we all would believe if we witnessed everything Peter witnessed, but Christ says of us who haven’t witnessed Christ’s miracles, “Blessed are those who have not seen, and yet still believe” (John 20:29). We may not have the blessing of witnessing Christ’s miracles in the Holy Land when he walked the earth, but we do have the sacraments and the graces of the lives of the saints, who we can call upon to deepen our faith. We have all the miracles that have happened since the time of Christ, which the disciples did not have to bolster their faith, like those at Fatima and Guadalupe, and all the Eucharistic miracles. This is not to compare what the disciples received to what we have received through God’s grace, and try to notice who his favorite is, but only to show that God is constantly reaching out to us and inviting us to believe in countless ways, if we only care to look.

This is my blood of the covenant, which will be shed for many. Christ wants to build a loving relationship with us, and he is willing to die to do it. As he had this Last Supper with his disciples, he knew everything that was going to happen to him in the next day, and went through with it all anyway--because of love. In John 3:16, we read that God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son. Christ would not have said that if he wasn’t planning on backing it up with action. He continues to back up those words, not only at every Mass, but in all the ways he showers his grace and forgiveness upon the world. Our sins are all covered by this blood of the new covenant.

“I am the resurrection and the life; whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live.” Do we believe this? It’s hard to believe in an afterlife we cannot witness or experience for ourselves. Jesus knows this, and he knew how his followers could benefit from a literal manifestation of what he was talking about when he said “whoever believes in me might not perish but will have eternal life,” as we read in last week’s Gospel. It’s important to put the liturgical readings in context, and to at least try and remember what we read the week before, because it’s all part of a story. This week we are witnessing Jesus proving what he told us last week. He is a man of his word, because he is the word of God and whatever God says is true. Christ is not redefining the laws of nature as he sets about raising Lazarus from the dead. He is not defying the laws that govern the universe which his father has put in place. But his father is suspending those laws so that others may come to believe in the Son whom he sent. 

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.”

This verse is so well-known for the way it shows the saving power of God, that people often ignore the criteria Christ mentions in order to have eternal life. The word “believe” is not just a mere formality. It is the condition. St. James said “Faith without works is dead.” Christ is giving a formula for success in the same way a parent would tell his or her child how to achieve success in anything. Once a gift is given, it needs to be used. A father may say to his son. “I love you so much that I am giving you my guitar, so that if you practice every day you will become a great guitar player.” Or, “I love you so much that I’m giving you the football my dad gave me, so if you practice throwing it every day you will become a great quarterback.” Parents could buy the most expensive equipment or tutoring in an attempt to get their child to learn something, but practice and willingness on their part is still necessary. For salvation though, believing in Christ is not the same as simply believing that one day you’ll be a great guitar player. Believing is doing, and one can argue it’s the same with all other aspirations as well. I can believe I am a writer all I want, but if that belief does not lead to me actually writing then my belief is pointless. What does it mean to believe in Christ? He said we know a tree by the fruit it bears. We can claim to have faith in Christ, but if that faith does not bear fruit in our life that’s a good indication that we are not putting our faith into action. 

"Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up.”

For centuries the Jews worshipped at the temple, but clearly Jesus saw the temple differently than the Jews. They saw it as a building while Christ understood it as the presence of God. Christ is moving the worship of God from the temporal realm to the eternal by referring to himself as a temple. With his resurrection, he also moves the Sabbath from the last day of the week to the first, indicating the start of a new creation in him and the new life he offers. This may all seem like a renunciation of the laws established in the Old Testament, but that’s far from true. Should God have kept his people perpetually in the sixth day, worshipping him in one place in the realm of time and space? By offering God’s presence to all of us through the Eucharist, Christ is ushering in eternal and infinite worship of God in heaven.

“This is my beloved son. Listen to him.”

At Jesus’ baptism, God the Father said, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased” (Matthew 3:17). This time the Father says, “Listen to him,” while calling him by the same title, “My beloved son”. It’s important to keep these two verses connected. The Father tells us to listen to his son not only because he is his son, but also because the Father is pleased with him. We ought to follow Christ because he does the will of the Father. Without this connection, one can claim that the Father is just ordaining Jesus by some divine rite, or divine right. But the Father’s words are all the more relevant when we consider that the son obeys the Father, and this pleases the Father. Similarly, if one were to read Matthew 3:17, while not reading on to the Transfiguration, one could assume that the Father’s words at Christ’s baptism are just sentimental or typical of a relationship between a father and a son. Rather, God is saying that he sent his only son, not only to die for our sins but also to show the way to him. Listening to Christ is the way to God not only because he is God’s son, but also because God is pleased with his son. This is why Christ expects the same of us, saying “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you,” (John 15:9) and “If you love me, you will keep my commandments” (John 14:15).