Homily: Saturday, 4th Week of Lent

Readings: Jer 11:18-20; Ps 7; Jn 7:40-53
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"Never before has anyone spoken like this man" [Jn 7:46].

Hearing those words brought to mind someone I first met over 60 years ago. I think it was my first week of high school, and to get there I had to take a train for a few miles, and then a 6-mile bus ride with lots of stops. It took a while.

Bus - Westchester County NY

That morning, when I got on the bus, this kid sat down next to me. Like me I guess he was a little nervous, and so for a while neither of us said much, but he seemed kinda nerdy...not that I wasn't. He was an Italian kid from the tough town and I was an Irish kid who lived in a slightly ritzier town. I sized him up and decided we had little in common, and I should probably seek friendship elsewhere.

Then he told a joke, and another, and another, and had me crying with laughter all the way to school. Yes, indeed, I'd never heard anyone speak like that before. And you guessed it: we became lifelong friends. Today he lives in Jersey and we had another long phone call just a few nights ago.

Reading today's Gospel passage brought him to mind, and made me realize how wrong I can be when it comes to first impressions. And usually the error is rooted in me, not in the other. I had sized up my friend in a few minutes, pretty much all based on my personal biases. I suppose I was a little snob, but my friend, John, and many others have cured me of that fault.

I was like the Pharisees who, knowing little about Jesus, dismissed Him as a nobody; but a dangerous nobody, a threat to their own authority. Without having heard Jesus speak, without having heard His words, they rejected the Word of God. This, of course is exactly what Nicodemus tried to tell them.

"Does our law condemn a man before it first hears him and finds out what he is doing?" [Jn 7:51]

Nicodemus, too, was a Pharisee, but he had taken the time to seek out Jesus, to question Him, to listen to Him, to see if He spoke the truth. And it was to Nicodemus that Jesus first spoke those words of redemption:

"For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life" [Jn 3:16].

Sadly, though, most of the Pharisees, like that younger me, were a bunch of snobs. You can almost hear them, can't you? This Jesus? He's from Galilee, a nobody from nowhere. How had the Apostle Nathaniel put it?

"Can anything good come from Nazareth?" [Jn 1:46] 

Even a soon to be Apostle can be a bit of a snob.

"Never before has anyone spoken like this man."

Isn't it interesting that so many of the people who encountered Jesus, even the Temple guards, who'd been sent to arrest Jesus, actually listened to Him, and realized they'd heard the truth?

"Never before has anyone spoken like this man."

What a remarkably courageous thing to say, knowing how much the chief priests and the Pharisees, despised Jesus.

What about us? Do we have the courage to speak out for our faith, to proclaim Jesus as Lord when He is under attack, as He is in our world today?

The world really hasn't changed all that much, has it? The Word of God causes division today just as it did in Jerusalem 2,000 years ago. 

The prophet Jeremiah encountered the same kind of division centuries earlier, when all the important folks plotted against him, just as their successors would plot against Jesus.

Remember how Simeon had revealed to Mary that Jesus would be "a sign that will be contradicted" [Lk 2:34]?

"a sign that will be contradicted"

And how many ignored Jesus, the sign God had sent, the sign of the Father's overwhelming love, and instead contradicted? 

Jesus' deeds both amazed and provoked, and His words affected all who heard that call to conversion: 

"Repent and believe in the Gospel" [Mk 1:15].

Some responded with hatred, some turned away unwilling to accept God's grace and the changes it demanded, but others underwent a fundamental, transformative change of heart. 

Brothers and sisters, Jesus never stops calling us to conversion: to repent and trust in His mercy; to love God with all our being; to love our neighbor as we love ourselves; to speak always as Jesus spoke, in the language of the Father's love.

As we move through these last days of Lent, you and I must listen and respond to that call. We have to choose because God never wants to force Himself on us. He simply looks on us with love and lets us make the choice [See Mk 10:21].

So today, let's all open our hearts to Jesus, and listen to the One who speaks as no one else has ever spoken. Let His Holy Spirit fill us with the humility and repentance God asks of us.