March 21st, 2024
As we get nearer to Calvary, approaching the Lenten climax, we see Jesus ruffle more feathers than usual. His time to fulfill His earthly mission has come. In today's Gospel, the Jews attempt to stone the Lord. The readings at today's Mass highlight the importance of names and their meaning. Jesus’s audience grows angry as Jesus claims a name that captures his full identity.
In the first reading from Genesis, God makes a covenant with Abram, our spiritual father in faith and, to the Jews, an ancestor by blood. God bestows on him a new name – Abraham, meaning “father of many.” God tells Abraham that he will have more descendants than the stars of the heavens or the sand granules on the seashore. All these blessings are his. But he and his people must keep God's covenant.
Jesus says the same thing in today’s Gospel: “Whoever keeps my word will never taste death.” Jesus, the Giver of every good gift, can offer eternal life because of who He is—God. He repeats to his Jewish audience what God once said to Abraham. The gist of it is: Keep my word. Keep my covenant, my law, because it is good for you. And you will be blessed. Jesus does not change the law or the prophets but fulfills them here.
Jesus's audience scoffs at him. They demand, “Who do you make yourself out to be?” Jesus then links his identity to that of God the Father, rather than Abraham, their father in faith. Jesus says Abraham rejoiced to see His day. At this, the crowd questions how Jesus could have seen Abraham. Jesus replies, “...before Abraham came to be, I AM.” His listeners then picked up stones, ready to kill him.
Only God could make such a claim – that He who exists now could have also existed thousands of years ago before Abraham was conceived. More blasphemous in the Jews' eyes, however, was Jesus’ use of the divine name Yahweh, or I AM, which was seldom spoken aloud. Not only did Jesus use the name of God, but he took it as his own. Beyond scandalous!
Just as Abraham's name showed his identity, so the Name of God, which Jesus uses, shows his identity. Yahweh is ultimate being. Through the past, present, and future, He always is, always exists. C.S. Lewis called God “the life-giving Life and that Beauty that makes beautiful.” Jesus, who is God revealed in the flesh, gives abundant life. He is the vine, and we are the branches. If we remain attached to Jesus we shall live and, like Abraham, be “exceedingly fertile.” Our lives will produce good fruit. And if we stay close to Jesus here and now, we will gain eternal life with Him in Heaven, there perfected in the beauty he has given each of us.
Prayer: Lord Jesus, help me be attentive to how You are working and speaking to me in my life today.
John Tuttle is a teacher and writer from the Rockford, IL area. He and his fiancée Ellen will be married in August 2024.