A Lenten Word - His Hour (Had Not Yet Come)

Homily for Friday of the Fourth Week in Lent

A Lenten Word - His Hour

Today’s Gospel text ends with the familiar line: “His hour had not yet come.” Although it is not evident in the English translation of this line, the word that St. John uses in this text is different from the word that is used in previous texts that contained the same line.

The previous texts in the second and eighth chapters use the word hora, which means the destined hour of God. Such a time or hour was not movable nor avoidable. It had to be accepted without argument and without alteration because it was the hour at which the plan of God had decided that something must happen. However, in today’s passage, St. John uses the word Kairos, which characteristically means an opportunity; that is, the best time to do something, the moment when circumstances are most suitable, the psychological moment. In other words, Jesus was looking for the opportune moment to fulfill God’s will.

In this context, it is easier for us to see that those who were seeking to put him to death were forced to work in God’s time. God decided when Jesus would die. As the text reads: “So they tried to arrest him, but no one laid a hand upon him, because his hour had not yet come.”

In a passage that we read every Ash Wednesday from the Second Letter to the Corinthians, St. Paul writes: “Behold, now is a very acceptable time; behold, now is the day of salvation.” St. Paul wishes the Corinthians and us to know that we have come to an opportune moment to turn toward God. God’s invitation to join with Jesus in this forty-day journey presents us with the best time to seek God’s face and experience God’s mercy.