Jesus' Hour Had Come

In today’s Gospel, John 13: 21-22, 36-38, Jesus is “reclining at table with his disciples.”  He is “deeply troubled” and says: “Amen, amen, I say to you, one of you will betray me.”   Imagine Jesus’ sorrow.  My mind goes to situations in which a criminal is fearful of being betrayed. Jesus is no criminal yet one of His own is about to hand him over to those who are plotting to crucify him. I think of King David being pursued by his son Absalom, who, also,  is seeking to put his father to death. Jesus, our King, is, in a sense, pursued by His Father to reveal the depth of their love for you and me. Each person of the Trinity is eager to reveal the willingness of the Son of God to die in our place. Out of their love for us, the Trinity gives one of their own to sacrifice his life for the exoneration of each human being from the claws of death, which we call sin.

When the apostles heard Jesus’ message that one of them was about to betray Him, they frantically begged to know which of them would do such a thing. “It is the one to whom I hand the morsel after I have dipped it.” He gives the consecrated bread to Judas. At that moment “Satan entered him.” Jesus says to him: “What you are going to do, do quickly.” Judas leaves. “It is night.” Darkness seems to have triumphed. So even more urgent is the act of redemption, Jesus, the second person of the Blessed Trinity, giving His life to save us from the kind of night that engulfed Judas.

Oh, the mercy and the love of our God. This is the hour for which Jesus became man. This is the hour when Jesus will be glorified and we with Him. The gates of heaven will be reopened to humankind, the gates that had been closed when Adam and Eve followed their own will instead of God's.  What will you and I do when tempted by Satan, as was Judas in his betrayal and as was Peter in his denials of Jesus. Judas leaves Jesus. Peter stays.  What will you and I do in moments like these?

Called from birth to be God's servants

Today’s first reading, Is. 49: 1-6, is all about God’s servants, you and me, and about Jesus.  Each of us is called from birth to serve the Lord, to carry out the Father’s will for us, to live intelligent, creative lives for the sake of the Kingdom and to be as “sharp” in doing good, perceiving and avoiding evil as any “two-edged sword”.  We are conceal in the “shadow” of God’s love and “polished” by grace, even, and especially, when we think we have “toiled in vain, and for nothing, uselessly [spending our] strength.” 

 Think of Jesus’ ministry coming to an end in the way it did. Truly, it looked as though He had “toiled in vain, and for nothing, uselessly, spent…[His] strength.”  At the Last supper He confides to His assembled disciples that one of them is going to betray Him and another will deny Him 3xs before the cock crows. In the darkest of hours, Jesus is abandoned by those He thought were faithful friends.

When things get rough in life, do I abandon others? Do I walk away from Jesus, from people who count on my support, even betraying them and walking out into “the night” to do that which I know is wrong of me to do?” When push comes to shove, do I deny knowing Jesus, knowing those who need me to stand by their side?  In the difficulties of life do I abandon the faith in which I was raised?