“O love, O charity beyond all telling” – Jn 11:45-56
Today, on the way to Jerusalem, the Lord Jesus is persecuted, followed and condemned. The stronger and more innovative was his preaching - the proclamation of the Kingdom of God - the more common and clear was the division among the listeners and the opposition that he faced (cf. Jn 11: 45-46).
Caiaphas' negative statement: " that it is better for you that one man should die instead of the people, so that the whole nation may not perish" (cf. Jn 11.50), Jesus accepts positively as the work of our salvation. Jesus, the only begotten Son of God, dies for all on the cross for love! He dies to fulfill the Father's will, i.e., " to gather into one the dispersed children of God " (Jn 11:52).
This is the wonder and creativity of our God! Caiaphas, with his sentence, driven by hatred ("it is better for you that one man should die instead of the people..."), only gets rid of an idealist. On the other hand, God the Father, by sending His Son out of love for us, does something wonderful. He transforms this hostile sentence into a work of saving love, because for Him every man is worth all the blood shed by Jesus Christ!
In a week's time, during the solemn Easter Vigil, we will sing the Paschal Message. In this wonderful prayer the Church "praises" original sin, but not because she is not aware of its serious consequences. She does this because God, in His infinite goodness, has worked great miracles in response to mankind's sin. He responded to the "first sorrow" with the Incarnation, self-sacrifice and the institution of the Eucharist. Therefore, in the liturgy of Holy Saturday, we will sing: “O wonder of your humble care for us! Oh, how incomprehensible is Your love ... O love, O charity beyond all telling, O happy fault that earned so great, so glorious a Redeemer!”
May our judgments, words and deeds not be an obstacle to evangelization. Because we too have received from Christ the task to gather the scattered children of God: "Go and make disciples of all nations" (cf. Mt 28:19).
Here is an example of dogmatic thinking in the worst sense of the word: the Lord Jesus raised Lazarus, whose body was already decaying in the tomb, and He also performed many other miracles, and His enemies know in advance that He is a devastator and a deceiver and that He must be rejected. The high priest Caiaphas even rationalizes this hatred of Jesus and justifies the necessity to kill Him with the good of the nation: because if we do not kill Him, the Romans will come and destroy our Temple and the whole nation.
Caiaphas is a shocking example of how hatred can blind a person. It is necessary to be perverse in the worst degree to consider the Son of God and the Savior as a deceiver and a threat. And only hatred can disturb the moral sense in a person to such an extent that someone begins to calculate that by murdering someone innocent, some real good can be achieved.
"It is better for you that one man should die instead of the people, so that the whole nation may not perish” Caiaphas spoke these words in his perversity and evil will. The Evangelist points out that these words, in a completely different sense, are a great and holy truth: because the Lord Jesus really died for others, not only for the nation, but for the whole of humanity.
Saint Augustine made an excellent comment on the last sentence of today's Gospel. It is about the sentence that the enemies of Jesus " For the chief priests and the Pharisees had given orders that if anyone knew where he was, he should inform them, so that they might arrest him." St. Augustine says: Jesus is in the Church to this day. There you can meet him and capture him. But there is only one method to find Him: You must seek Him with your heart, and you can only grasp Him with love. If other methods are used, Jesus will remain imperceptible.
So let us seek Him with our heart, let us embrace Him with our love.
Until Tomorrow
fr. george