5 January – Gospel
Commentary on John 1:43-51
Today in the Gospel, we have the calling of two more disciples, with the revelation of Jesus to Philip and Nathanael (in that order). Notice that the passage again begins with “The next day…”. We are now in day four of this week that begins John’s Gospel. We are told that Jesus goes to Galilee, the province in the north where he will do much of his work. Up to this, he had been further south on the banks of the Jordan River, where John the Baptist had been baptising.
Jesus came across Philip and invited him to be a disciple, “Follow me”, says Jesus. Philip came from Bethsaida, which was also the hometown of Peter and Andrew. Later in the Gospel, Philip will be pictured as a rather simple and naïve person. During the feeding of the crowds, Jesus asks Philip:
Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?
(John 6: 5)
This draws from Philip a not very helpful response. Later, at the Last Supper, as Jesus speaks about his Father, Philip says:
Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.
(John 14:8)
This gives Jesus the opportunity to explain how and where the Father can be ‘seen’. (Note: the apostle Philip is not the same Philip who is one of the deacons appearing in the Acts of the Apostles.)
We do not know what else happened between Jesus and Philip, but like Andrew, the new disciple was immediately fired up to go and find Nathanael. He tells Nathanael two things about Jesus: first, that he is the One written about by Moses in the Law and also by the prophets, and second, that he is the son of Joseph from Nazareth. Nathanael is not very impressed and cynically responds:
Can anything good come out of Nazareth?
Later, the leaders of the Jews will also discount Jesus because of his origins—what they believe to be his origins. It is something we can sometimes be tempted to do with people we meet.
Philip’s response to Nathanael is perfect:
Come and see.
It was the same answer that Jesus gave to the two disciples who asked where he stayed. The only way to know Jesus is not by hearsay or reading books, but by personal experience of him. This same answer will come again in the story of the Samaritan woman.
When he sees Nathanael, Jesus says:
Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit!
The first person to be called “Israel” in the Hebrew Testament was Jacob (see Gen 32:28), and he was guilty of serious duplicity. He cheated his older brother Esau of his birthright (even though the Scripture implies that Esau did not deserve it anyway; see Gen 27:35-36). There can hardly be higher praise given a person than to say they are free of duplicity. Integrity is a very high virtue—Christian and human. It is a quality of wholeness, of total harmony between what goes on inside the person, and what is seen on the outside. Such a person can be trusted; such a person will never cheat or dissemble or wear any kind of mask. It is a quality in which most of us fail to some extent.
Obviously surprised:
Nathanael asked him, “Where did you get to know me?” Jesus answered, “I saw you under the fig tree before Philip called you.”
The full meaning of this is not clear, but it deeply impressed Nathanael. In the Hebrew Testament, the fig tree was seen as a symbol of messianic peace. In the book of the prophet Micah we read:
…they shall all sit under their own vines and under their own fig trees, and no one shall make them afraid. (Micah 4:4)
In speaking words of assurance to Joshua the High Priest, an angel of the Lord concludes with the words:
On that day, says the Lord of hosts, you shall invite each other to come under your vine and fig tree. (Zech 3:10)
These words of Jesus are enough for Nathanael to make an extraordinary profession of faith:
Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!
The title “Son of God” was used in the Hebrew Testament as an adopted name for the Davidic King (2 Sam 7:14; Ps 2:7; Ps 89:27), and “King of Israel” is used here with a messianic sense. For John, of course, “Son of God” also implies the divinity of Jesus.
Jesus responds to Nathanael’s declaration:
Do you believe because I told you that I saw you under the fig tree? You will see greater things than these.
And Jesus continues:
Very truly, I tell you [‘you’ is plural in the original Greek], you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.
The reference, of course, is to the famous dream that Jacob had where he saw angels ascending and descending on a stairway which joined the heavens and the earth (Gen 28:12—see the note about this passage in the New American Bible). Longer experience with Jesus will reveal to Nathanael and the other disciples the mutual relationship between Jesus and his Father. God comes to them through Jesus; they will go to God through Jesus. Jesus is the Stairway between us and God the Father.
It is not clear whether Nathanael was one of the Twelve, because he is not mentioned in any of the lists of the Twelve in the Synoptics. He only appears here in John, and in the epilogue (John 21:2). However, he is worthy of being remembered for his insight into the identity of Jesus, and the great virtue of integrity. They are qualities which each Christian should treasure and pray for.
Read more
5 January – First Reading
Commentary on 1 John 3:11-21
Today we have a very rich passage on the centrality of love in our Christian life. All our Christian living can be summarised in the opening sentence:
…that we should love one another.
It is all we need, all the rest is icing on the cake. And so, we are not, for instance, to follow the example of Cain who killed his brother simply out of jealousy and spite:
And why did [Cain] murder him? Because his own deeds were evil and his brother’s righteous.
And so, we should not be in the least surprised if the world, that is, the world of sin and self-centredness, hates us and wants to do us harm. It is, of course, happening all the time. As loving Christians, we would like to be loved in return. We might think that, as a loving people, it should be people’s natural reaction to return our love. But the example of Cain is still to be found everywhere—even inside the Church at times. People are hated so often, not because they are bad, but because they are good. Goodness for some people can be very threatening. Countless Christian martyrs have lost their lives simply because of this.
At the same time, the only valid sign that we are truly alive is the love that we show for our brothers and sisters, irrespective of the response we may get. Anyone—and not just any Christian—who hates a brother or sister is already a murderer and is himself dead. The life of God is not in that person. As the letter will say later on:
God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them. (1 John 4:16)
Without love, I am as good as dead.
Like Jesus himself, we have to love others to the point of being ready even to lose our lives for them. And on a very practical level, we block God’s love from working in us if we refuse to share what we have with those who are in need (see James 2:14-17). God’s love can only work in us when we allow it to pass through us to others. In fact, it is that sharing of love which is the outward sign that we are united to the love of God.
Genuine love is found in actions and in truth and not in mere pious-sounding words. We might, however, observe that there can be times when expressing love through words is both more difficult and more effective than by doing what we regard as a loving act. For example, it may be easier to send a gift to someone anonymously than to say, face to face, “I love you” or “I forgive you from the bottom of my heart”. It is in this transparent love for others—including those we do not know or who are against us—that we know we are living Truth and will experience peace.
We are not necessarily living in truth simply because we adhere to orthodox teaching. No one was more orthodox than the classical Pharisee, and no one further away from the love and compassion of God. ‘Truth’ in the New Testament, and especially in John, means much more than being in possession of right ideas. It includes our whole way of living as being in total harmony with the Way of life presented to us in the gospel and the New Testament. It embraces not only the way we understand God and life, but also how we live our lives in relation to God and every other person.
Finally, the reading says:
God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything.
God is greater than our conscience. That is to say, he sees far more deeply into the truth and goodness of things than we ever can and, at the same time, his love and compassion will go far beyond anything we could expect for ourselves. The extent of God’s Truth and Love will always be totally beyond our grasp.
But the passage ends with a statement that should be writ large in our lives as an unquestioned and unquestionable principle:
Beloved, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have boldness before God…
There is no higher court of appeal than an honest following of our conscience (“our hearts”). That is not to say that our conscience is always right. But if we are honest, we are always ready to learn more, to have a second look and to see things in a different way. If we look at our lives, we will see that our grasp of truths and values constantly changes. The Church itself constantly changes according to the phrase, Ecclesia semper reformanda—a Church that always needs to see and do things in a new way. Truth is not a given; it is discerned at the end of a long search, a search that will never end until we come face to face with Truth.
At any given time, then, we have no other choice but to follow, as honestly as possible, what our conscience tells us is true and good. Even the gospel and the solemn teaching of the Church (magisterium) cannot transcend the final court of conscience. If I do decide always to follow the gospel or the magisterium, that is ultimately my decision, and one that no one else can make for me. But I must maintain that openness and readiness to see that, what I once thought was true and good, may need to be revised.
Read more