Faith

Palm Sunday-  Mk 14:1—15:47

Palm Sunday signals the beginning of the Holy Week, a week that changed the world. The Gospel narrative of today spans two whole chapters of Mark’s Gospel and takes us through the drama of the Holy Week. It is a blow by blow account of betrayal, deceit and treachery.

In Chapter 11 of the same Gospel, we are told that Jesus entered Jerusalem; it was Palm Sunday. He then spends the next three days in and around the temple. Thrice in this period He sets foot in the temple under the glare of his opponents and amidst several traps set by the Jewish authority. They make their hate for Him very clear. Finally in chapter 13 he leaves for the Mount of Olives where He shares his last discourse with His disciples.

The Gospel of today begins with the plot to kill Jesus, a plot hatched by ‘Holy men’ in a Holy week. Jesus is at Bethany at the home of Simon the leper. It is here that a woman poured ointment on His head, an act that Jesus declared as the anointment for His burial. It is on this day that Judas sold Jesus.

Knowing that His betrayal was at hand, Jesus sits down to celebrate the Passover, leaving His disciples and us with an everlasting memorial in the institution of the Lord’s Supper. It is in Gethsemane that He prays to His Father; His disciples are overcome with sleep and thrice He has to wake them from their slumber. He is alone but not lonely for He clings to the presence of His Father in heaven to whom He prays

 It is in this garden that with a single kiss the Son of God is betrayed and then dragged before a mock council of treacherous plotters who could not get their false testimonies to align with each other. It is in a courtyard that Peter, the first Pope, denounces his friend and Saviour and so Jesus is hauled before the charade of Pilate’s trial, who hands Him over to be flogged and crucified.

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Faith

The plot thickens- 5th Week of Lent, Saturday- John 11: 45- 57

Interestingly, more than forty five percent of the Gospel of John will deal with Jesus’ passion, death and resurrection. Chapter thirteen through twenty one is dedicated only to this theme. In Chapter twelve, Jesus will enter triumphant into Jerusalem; Holy Week will begin.

The plot thickens in chapter eleven. Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead and “many believed in Him” (10:42). It is this growing belief in Him that causes the Jewish leaders to get rattled; rattled enough for religious leaders to plan a murder!

Jesus, by His words and deeds, has effectively got a whole Samaritan village to believe in Him (4:41). That belief spreads to the royal household when Jesus heals the royal official’s son (4:50). There is belief in Jesus after He foretells His death (8:30), after the healing of the man born blind (9:36-38), at the end of the good shepherd discourse (10:21), at the feast of the dedication of the temple (10:42), through Martha’s profession (11:27) and in the Jews who witnessed Lazarus’ raising from the dead (11:45). To top it all, many acknowledged Him as a prophet (7:40) some even as the Messiah (7:41).

All this was too much for Caiaphas and the Jewish establishment. The ‘rabble-rouser’ that they thought Jesus to be, with His band of peasant following, had now, in their eyes, become a political problem. If this got out of hand, Caiaphas was out of a job. The Romans had no qualms in putting down insurrections with an iron fist. Crucifixions along the Roman highways served as public notice: “don’t mess with us or you land up on a cross.”

History tells us that Caiaphas held the office of High Priest from AD 18 and continued to do so till AD 36. High Priests held office as long as they enjoyed Roman favour and that will explain the true anxiety over Caiaphas’ remarks. He was not concerned for the Jewish people; he was most certainly concerned to enforce the ‘Pax Romani’ or the peace of Rome, to ensure his own position as high priest.

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Faith

Text out of context –  5th Week of Lent – Friday- John 10: 31-42

A text taken out of its context, is a pretext. That’s what we are looking at in this pericope. The Jews, like some of us, love taking the text of Jesus outside its context, using it as a pretext for their own agenda (or whoever is the target). His question is quite clear, “I have shown you many good works from my Father. For which of these are you trying to stone me?”

Chapter 10 opens with a new clash between Jesus and the Jews and occurs at the feast of ‘the Dedication of the temple’, three months after the feast of the Tabernacles (chapter 7). Jesus’ appeal to His ‘good works’ is rejected on the grounds that He has blasphemed, and most of this stems from the fact that in chapter nine, He healed a man born blind on the Sabbath. This is the issue for them; the rest is the excuse or pretext.

Jesus gives a scriptural argument based on the principle of “lesser to a greater.” Jesus says, “If scripture can speak of humans as gods” (Psalm 82:6- Septuagint), then how much more is the case with the consecrated agent of the Father, namely Jesus? (All references from the Jerome Biblical commentary).

In yesterday’s pericope, He said it most plainly, “Before Abraham was, I am.” Let me labour a point here for the sake of those who deny that Jesus is God, and merely from texts such as this pericope say, “Jesus only said, ‘I am the Son of God’.” In responding to the Jews, Jesus says “I am” and they pick up stones to stone Him because they recognize that He is making a claim to be God. The punishment for blasphemy was stoning.

Again in today’s text, the Jews say to Jesus, “We are not stoning you for a good work but for blasphemy. You, a man, are making yourself God.” They know who He is claiming to be. The Son of God is God!   

Let me quote from the ‘You cat’ (the catechism of the Catholic Church written in a youth friendly way). Number 39 is a question that asks, “Is Jesus God? Does he belong to the Trinity?” The answer which is an abridged version of the longer form of the catechism taken from numbers 243- 260 of the CCC is as follows:

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Art/ Heritage

PICTURING THE PASSION: ‘Christ Carrying the Cross’ by Hieronymus Bosch (1515 – 1516)

 ‘The scariest monsters are the ones that lurk within our souls’ – Edgar Allan Poe

Hieronymus Bosch, a Dutch painter, was born in the mid 1400’s in Southern Netherlands. As a man of his times he attributed all human behaviour to either good or evil, to God or the Devil. In his paintings he often captured the monsters within man and presented them with flashing fantasy. A fantasy so real, that it provoked the viewer’s heart to an intimate awareness of one’s scandalized self. Bosch painted man as he appeared from the inside and not merely by face – value.

One of his most celebrated paintings is that of ‘Christ carrying the Cross’. Bosch executed it a year before his death. A deeply contemplative image, through this painting Bosch invites us to journey inwards, to shake our rigid hearts and to identify ourselves with Christ and His passion.

At once we confront a landscape of faces. According to the science of Physiognomy, the face is said to be the window to the soul. A beautiful face meant a pure soul while an ugly visage was equated with sin and deviance. A hooked nose meant deceit and lust; an acute jaw indicated brutality while thick lips spelled mental abnormality. Profuse accessories and exaggerated gestures was an immediate indication to a bad character.

As we glance through the painting, we notice at the center lies the peaceful face of Jesus. He is lost in a tangle of scowling, grinning, leering, grotesque caricatured heads. Each possesses a bizarre personality and emotion. As we analyse the painting, lets journey through this creation of cruelty and cynicism.

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Faith

I am- Thursday, 5th Week of Lent – John 8:51-59

Quite clearly, the Jews seem to have lost it. Now they have nothing concrete to accuse Jesus of, so they call Him a Samaritan (8:48) and claim that He is possessed.  Previously in the same chapter they insinuated that He was of illegitimate birth. But nothing stops Jesus from declaring who He is, the great “I am”.  To the twenty first century mind, “I am” sounds like conjugation in grammar. Not to a Jew.

Notice that Jesus does not say, ‘before Abraham was, I was’ He says, “Before Abraham was, I AM.” The first Jew to hear these words was Moses. In Exodus 3: 14, God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM”; Thus you shall say to the sons of Israel, I AM has sent me to you.'”  The Jews, listening to Jesus proclaim these words, knew right away that Jesus was claiming to be God.

Any one claiming to bear the divine name of God would incur only one punishment; death by stoning. This was the punishment for blasphemy and it is no wonder that they pick up stones to throw at Him.

John’s gospel is the only one to have the ‘I am ‘statements of Jesus; seven of them. This is John’s presentation of Jesus. The “I am” statements in the Fourth Gospel make known Jesus as the source of life and abundant grace; they signal the very presence of God.

Contrast these statements to the ‘I am NOT’ statements of John the Baptist in the beginning of the same gospel (1:20, 21, 27 and 3:28) John confesses, “I am not the Messiah, I am not Elijah, I am not worthy to untie the thongs of His sandals etc. John was clear who he was not. Jesus is clear who He is.

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