Jesus is The Truth

Homily for Thursday of the Fourth Week in Lent

The difference between human and divine wisdom is that we generate the one, God gives us the other. Faith, then, is a word spoken to me by Another, the Eternal Word, whose impact strikes me square between the eyes as something I could never myself speak. It lays an obligation upon me.

Thus, Jesus tells the Jews that while the emissaries they sent to John came away convinced that he testified to the truth, he is armed with a testimony greater than John’s. Jesus himself is this truth, standing incarnate before them. Yes, John was a burning and shining lamp, but the incandescence of Jesus shines infinitely brighter. Still, they will not believe, averting their gaze from the glory that overflows the universe.

St. Ignatius of Antioch once wrote, “When I hear some people saying that ‘if I don’t find it in the original documents, I don’t believe it in the Gospel.’ I answer them, ‘it is Jesus Christ who is the original document.’” The inviolable archives are his cross and death and resurrection and the faith that came by him.

One could hardly find a better footnote to impress upon the mind the centrality of the One who came to perform his Father’s works.

The Jews whom Jesus is addressing consistently reject the testimony of Jesus in favor of the writings of Moses. They fail to see that Jesus is the one about whom Moses wrote. He is the one who was sent by the Father, and his work while he is among them is testimony in itself of the fact that he is who he says he is. Let that be our testimony as well.