Reflections on the Gospel of John

Reflections on the Gospel of John

 
These are six reflections on the Gospel of John from the many I have written down and reflected upon over many years. 

 
1.

“Do not let your hearts be troubled. You have faith in God; have faith also in me.” - Gospel of John 14:1 

     Jesus in this reading from John’s Gospel is offering us the remedy for a troubled heart and that remedy is faith in Him. 

     Jesus Christ is the face of God. If we believe and have faith in God the Father, then we should have faith in the Eternal Son of the Father; the Word made Flesh, Jesus.  

     Scripture tells us, He became like us in all things but sin. Jesus knows our troubled heart, our fears; for he wept at the death of his friend Lazarus and at in the garden of Gethsemane, he asked the Father to take the cup of suffering from Him.  However, he came to do the will of the Father, Jesus is the Lord of the living; He calls Lazarus out of the tomb and He goes from Gethsemane to his scourging and Cross, where he defeats the wages of sin, which is death, by His Resurrection. 

     As humans our hearts become troubled over the things we encounter that we cannot control, or make sense of, like death. Yet our faith is  in the one sent from the Father, who has defeated all the powers that seek to destroy us, especially death. 

     Christian faith is grounded in the Love of God poured out to us in Jesus Christ. God’s Love never fails, never shrinks, never dies, never ends. Do not let your hearts be troubled. 

Through the prayers of the Holy Mother of God and All the Saints. May you have Peace.

 
2.

"Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life." John 6:68

 
     As Americans we seldom stop to “smell the roses,” for ingrained in our collective psyche is the “puritan ethic” that work is the sign of a grace filled life.  

     However, the Christian life as handed down to us by the holy Fathers of the Church always involves an ascetical space in all our lives.  Most of us are not called to be monks, hermits, or nuns; but all of us are called to set aside quiet time for the Lord, to hear his voice, to discover his path for us, for he alone has the words of eternal life.  It is good to set aside our own “desert place” where we can daily offer our heart felt prayers, our formal prayers, our silence, and to read the Holy Scriptures.  How can we know our path if we do not listen to the words in Scripture of the Word of God, Jesus.  How can we know Him if we do not read about how Moses spoke of Him, how the prophets spoke of Him, how the Gospel writers witness to his Cross and Resurrection, how Paul instructs his early Church and ours, and how John’s Revelation reveals the glorious triumph of the Church in God’s Kingdom. 

     In the midst of any crisis there are many voices; voices of despair, fear, uncertainty, and anxiety.  Then there is the voice of the Lord, who says, "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28). Like the Apostles, who gave up all to follow Him, we too must say with them “Lord, to whom shall we go?  You have the words of eternal life” (John 6:68). 

 
3.

As the Father loves me, so I also love you. Remain in my love.  If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and remain in his love. “I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and your joy may be complete. This is my commandment: love one another as I love you. - John 15:9-12

 
If we slowly read these words from John’s Gospel, we shall come to realize that they are some of the most comforting words in Sacred Scripture.  The words of Jesus direct our hearts and minds to a greater reality; not the reality of this fragile, passing world, but the truth for which we were created.  The truth that is found only in abiding in God, remaining in “His Love.”

Jesus tells us that he loves us as the Father loves him.  How does the Father love him?  The answer we find in the Creed, that he is “the Only Begotten Son of God,

born of the Father before all ages. God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father.”  He is eternally loved by the Father and in the same way he loves us and invites us to remain in his love.  How do we remain in his love, by keeping his commandments, as he has kept the Father’s commandments; in this we will find joy, complete joy.  The joy Jesus gives us is not fleeting joy, not temporary joy, but an eternal joy.  But to live in his joy we must keep his commandment, and his commandment is “love one another as I love you.”  

The words of Jesus to us mirror the words of Deuteronomy: “I call heaven and earth today to witness against you: I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. Choose life, then, that you and your descendants may live, by loving the Lord, your God, obeying his voice, and holding fast to him. For that will mean life for you, (Deuteronomy 30:19-20).  But unlike the many commandments and laws given to the Israelites to follow.  That were given to them to show their love and obedience to God, Jesus gives us one commandment; to love one another. 

I recently spoke with someone who is terminally ill with pancreatic cancer.  We talked about his wife and three children who are still at home.  He told me how while he was in remission he was able to take his oldest son to Calabria in Italy where his own parents had come from before moving to the United States.  We spoke about prayer, and his devotion to the Virgin Mary, and lastly he told me how he had supported the missions in Haiti. That he had been blessed in this life with financial success and wanted to end his life by building a home for a family in Haiti.  After our conversation I thought to myself, he understands, all will be well, for love conquers death.

May we all remain in the love of Christ, and love one another.

 
4. 
Six days before Passover Jesus came to Bethany, where Lazarus was, whom Jesus had raised from the dead.  They gave a dinner for him there, and Martha served, while Lazarus was one of those reclining at table with him.  Mary took a liter of costly perfumed oil made from genuine aromatic nard and anointed the feet of Jesus and dried them with her hair; the house was filled with the fragrance of the oil. - John 12:1-3

 
“For God and before God, the human being is always unique and unrepeatable, somebody thought of and chosen from eternity, someone called and identified by his own name.” - Pope Saint John Paul II

 
God calls each of us by name, just as he called Lazarus by name from his tomb.  He knows us better than we know ourselves.  God created us in love, sustains our life in love, and broke the chains of death so that we might live in the love of his eternal Kingdom.  

It has been said of our present age that we have “everything and nothing.”  Meaning of course that we have material goods and comfort that the generations before us never could have imagined having.  Yet, unlike the generations before us have lost our sense of peace.  In our reading from John’s Gospel of the dinner at the home of Lazarus, it is Mary who realizes that true peace has come to their house, and she anoints his feet, a symbol of her faith and appreciation for his coming victory over death.  Mary therefore is a symbol of the Church, the people of God who in faith realize his Victorious Cross and offer to him in thanksgiving (Eucharist) their lives in gratitude for his oil, his anointing of salvation. 

Jesus says to us, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give it to you. Do not let your hearts be troubled or afraid” (John 14:27).  I remember many years ago when I was teaching in Ohio, a student in my philosophy course was expecting her first child.  She was Catholic and a good student.    One night after midnight I received a call from a hospital that she had delivered her son prematurely and the baby had not survived, and she wanted me to come to the hospital.  When I arrived her joy and peace had turned to hurt and confusion.  The hospital staff had dressed the baby and placed it in her arms and told her they would take it from her when she was ready.  In the midst of our conversation I asked her what she wanted to do for a funeral.  She said, the hospital said they would take the baby.  I said, this is your son, you are Catholic, your parish even has its own cemetery, we will have a funeral, she agreed.  The day of the funeral her peace had retuned to her, why, because Our Christ, is the Lord of the Living.  Through the Liturgy of the Church, and the support of the people of God, my student realized her son was in the arms of our loving God.  

Christians are always at war; at war against the darkness and confusion that wants us to be lost, to give up, to despair.  But we celebrate the victory over darkness and despair, over death its very self by Our Christ, who is our hope, our light, our life.

 
5.

When Jesus had said this, he raised his eyes to heaven and said,“Father, the hour has come. Give glory to your son, so that your son may glorify you, just as you gave him authority over all people, so that he may give eternal life to all you gave him. Now this is eternal life, that they should know you, the only true God, and the one whom you sent, Jesus Christ.  I glorified you on earth by accomplishing the work that you gave me to do.  Now glorify me, Father, with you, with the glory that I had with you before the world began.  I revealed your name to those whom you gave me out of the world. They belonged to you, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. Now they know that everything you gave me is from you, because the words you gave to me I have given to them, and they accepted them and truly understood that I came from you, and they have believed that you sent me.” - John 17:1-8

Since the sixteenth century, this passage has been called the high priestly prayer of Jesus.  Jesus is praying directly to the Father, not with his disciples and apostles, although they seemingly were present.  His prayer is one of intercessor for his apostles and for all disciples, present and in the ages to come. 

We hear in this prayer what eternal life is, to know the only true God, and the one whom the Father has sent, Jesus Christ.  This we should acknowledge as the sign that the Holy Spirit’s presence is operative within us.  Such knowledge we could never know and keep on our own.  The Father who is the giver of all good gifts, has given us the Son and the Spirit so that we might know and live united to the only true God.     

United to our Lord and Savior, we have been glorified in him.  In all the challenges of life, the ups and downs; never look to the darkness, look to the light.  The Great High Priest, Jesus Christ, has given all back to the Father, including your you.

 
6. 

When Judas had left them, Jesus said,

“Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in him.

If God is glorified in him,

God will also glorify him in himself,

and God will glorify him at once.

My children, I will be with you only a little while longer.

I give you a new commandment: love one another.

As I have loved you, so you also should love one another.

This is how all will know that you are my disciples,

if you have love for one another.

- John 13:31-33a, 34-35

 
Jesus gave his disciples and all Christians forever, a new commandment, “...love one another.  As I have loved you, so you also should love one another.” 

 
Love is often a word used so much in our daily language that we might fail to see the powerfulness of Our Lord’s commandment, given to us.  Let’s begin by examination of the meaning of love in Sacred Scripture.  We must remember that the New Testament was written in Greek, primarily Koine Greek, meaning Common Greek, the Greek that was a second language for many in the Greco-Roman culturally ruled world; although the Letter to the Hebrews approaches a more refined Greek.  

 
In the Greek language of the time there were various words for love, possibly as many as nine different words. We usually see the three that were used the most: Eros, the love of attraction or romantic love; Philia, the love within  a family and between friends; and Agape, unconditional love, the highest form of love in the Greco-Roman world.

 
Jesus in many ways merges Philia and Agape; we see this when he asks Peter three times “do you love me,” using both Philia and Agape.  This gives us a hint as to the meaning of the new commandment; it is a love that merges familial love and unconditional love; it is a love that creates bonds, creates a Body, that being the Church and it is the love, the unconditional love of a martyr, willing to die for the truth of God’s love given to us in imitation of Our Lord Jesus.

 
"Greater love (?γ?πην - agap?n) has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends." - John 15:13