Thursday of Week 5 of Lent – Gospel

Commentary on John 8:51-59

Jesus continues to challenge the Jews about his identity, and they continue to misunderstand the real meaning of what he says.

Very truly, I tell you, whoever keeps my word will never see death.

This they can only understand in a literal sense.

But they do see the implication of the words that Jesus is claiming to be more than Abraham or any of the prophets. And they ask:

Who do you claim to be?

This was the same question they asked of John the Baptist (John 1:22), who gave a very different answer.

Jesus makes it perfectly clear to them by talking of his “Father” and then saying that the Father is the one they call “our God”. But he continues by saying that they do not know the Father, although they may think they do. And they do not know the Father because they do not know Jesus. Jesus, however, knows him and keeps his word. Then comes the supreme provocation:

Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day; he saw it and was glad.

This could be a reference to the joy following the unexpected birth of Isaac, when the promise was made to Abraham that his seed would be:

…as numerous as the stars of heaven and as the sand that is on the seashore… (Gen 22:17)

But this angered the Pharisees and they retorted:

You are not yet fifty years old, and have you seen Abraham?

Jesus then makes the ultimate claim:

Very truly, I tell you, before Abraham was, I am.

Again we have Jesus using the term “I AM” of himself. He unequivocally identifies himself with Yahweh. The Pharisees are horrified by what they regard as terrible blasphemy. The verb “was” in the passage is, in some translations, expressed as ‘came to be’, and is used for all that is created, while ‘I AM’ is used only of the Word, co-eternal with the Father-God.

The Pharisees then:

…picked up stones to throw at him…

But they were not able actually to carry out their plan to kill him because his “time” had not yet come. Then come words of prophetic significance:

Jesus hid himself and went out of the temple…

It is a striking summary of Jesus’ role.

Jesus “hid himself” in his humanity. The Godhead in Jesus, which he has just spoken about, was largely concealed (except to those with the eyes of faith). St Ignatius Loyola in his Spiritual Exercises speaks of the divinity being hidden during the terrible hours of the Passion. St Paul in his Letter to the Philippians speaks of Jesus “emptying” himself and taking the form of a slave.

And “he went out of the Temple”—when Jesus died on the cross, the veil guarding the Holy of Holies in the Temple split open, revealing the sacred inner sanctuary to the world. God was no longer there; he had left the Temple. And he now dwells in a new Temple, no longer a building, but a people, the Church, the Body of the Risen Christ.

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Thursday of Week 5 of Lent – First Reading

Commentary on Genesis 17:3-9

At the beginning of chapter 17 of Genesis, we are told that Yahweh appeared to Abram, now 99 years old, and identified himself as: “I am El Shaddai” (Gen 17:1). In Hebrew, El Shaddai was an ancient divine name of the patriarchal period, preserved mainly in the ‘Priestly’ tradition, and rarely used outside the Pentateuch (except in Job). The usual translation of El Shaddai as ‘Almighty God’ is inaccurate, as ‘Mountain God’ is the more probable meaning. Yahweh (El Shaddai) now promises to make a covenant with Abram, and to pledge him a long line of descendants. Abram bows down in deep adoration.

Abram is to become the father of many nations, and because of that, his name is to be changed from Abram to Abraham. We need to remember that, for the ancients, a name did not merely indicate a person or thing; rather, it made a thing what it was, and a change of name meant a change of destiny. Abram and Abraham are in fact just two dialectical forms of the same name whose meaning is ‘he is great by reason of his father, he is of noble descent’. Another variant is Abiram (Num 16:1; 1 Kings 16:34). The additional ‘ha’ in the form Abraham is explained by folk etymology as coming from ab-hamon goyim, i.e. “father of a host of nations”.

On his side, God makes a solemn commitment to Abraham, and to all his descendants in perpetuity, to be their God.

I will make nations of you, and kings shall come from you.

There will indeed be a long line of kings—and a very mixed bunch they are. But no matter how corrupt the kings could be, the promises made to Abraham continued to be fulfilled. Paul, writing to the Romans, will speak of Abraham’s faith in God’s promise which, by that time, had been so clearly fulfilled.

It is a pledge made forever:

I will establish my covenant between me and you and your offspring after you throughout their generations, for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your offspring after you.

Yahweh further promises to give them the whole land of Canaan to own in perpetuity. This is a pledge which Christians, unlike some Jews, would now read in a less than literal way.

Finally, Abraham and his descendants are to ratify this covenant, and on their part, are to keep the covenant by their total allegiance to their one and only God.

Abraham, as the Gospel indicates, is regarded as the father of all God’s people. As Matthew’s genealogy indicates, he is the ancestor of Jesus, and in Jesus we find the complete fulfilment of the promises made long ago. We read in today’s Gospel:

Your ancestor Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day; he saw it and was glad. (John 8:56)

The covenant made between Abraham and God is both sealed and renewed in Jesus Christ. And through Jesus, people everywhere become, in a special way, children of God. Let us rejoice in having God as our Father and Jesus as our Brother. We do so by the way we live our lives.

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