
By Father Richard Gennaro Cipolla
Because I tell the truth, you do not believe me. Which of you convicts me of sin? If I tell the truth, why do you not believe me? (John 8: 45-47)
So the scene is set for the final confrontation on this first Sunday of the Passion. It is from here that we enter Jerusalem with our Lord and watch in the garden and walk the Via Dolorosa with him and climb that hill to see and to know the greatest act of love that has ever been made and will ever be made. For it is the act of the love of God.
And today’s Gospel focuses on the roots of the conflict. The conflict here is the historical one between Jesus and the Jews of his time. Among these Jews in conflict were the religious leaders, the Chief Priests and the Pharisees. We forget, because of the negative casting of these men in the Gospels, that these were those men who knew deeply of the roots and teaching and practice of Judaism. These were those who offered the sacrifices in the temple; these were those who were experts in the Law; these were those who knew of the covenant between God and the Jewish people. These were those entrusted to lead the people in the teaching and practice of their faith. But in this crowd there were also those who had believed in Jesus but now found him too much to take. It was bad enough when he said: “Unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you have no life in you”. But now: “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.” Those words” I am”, the name of God heard by Moses from the burning bush, the name never pronounced by a Jew because of its terrible holiness. “Before Abraham was, I am.”
But the conflict here goes far beyond the historical conflict with the Jews. If it were merely history, then we would dismiss it as something in the past and move on. But the conflict here is the very center of the opposition to the person of Jesus and his claims in all ages, in every generation. Jesus says: “But because I tell you the truth you do not believe me.” And again: “ If I tell the truth, why do you not believe me?” The latter question is asked of us today, is posed to the whole world, whether the world is listening or not. Why is it that when people confront the truth they do not believe? And this is true of people who do not scorn the notion of truth. Why even the secular post-modern New York Times would defend the truth in some sense. The most secular person would not deny the quest for truth wherever it is found. The motto of Harvard University is Veritas, truth. The motto of Yale University is one better, Lux et Veritas, light and truth, both of which are seen as ends to the whole education process. The motto of Villanova University, a professed Catholic college, is Veritas, Unitas, Caritas: Truth, Unity, Charity. And yet, without being prejudicial, can any one of these institutions of higher learning answer the question Jesus poses? No, they cannot, for when truth is abstracted into the realm of ideas, when truth becomes some nebulous goal to which education strives, when truth becomes disembodied and not something one can touch, feel, hear, know, have a relationship to, then Jesus’ question becomes meaningless. It has no context. When truth becomes a concept divorced from God, then not only is its deepest meaning lost in the miasma of individualism and relativism, but also truth loses its pungency, its sharpness, its ability to judge.
This confrontation: why does it necessarily involve the religious leaders of Jesus’ time? Because these are those in the know, those who are supposed to teach the people the truth. And these religious leaders do know the truth in an objective way; they know the facts of the truth, so to speak. But yet, they do not know the truth in the deepest sense, because they have failed to or are unwilling to make that truth part of their lives, of their very existence. They are fond of delivering powerful sermons about the truth, about the Commandments, about the special relationship of the Jewish people to God, but they have refused to make this ultimately real for this truth is not a part of who they are. They live their lives as if truth does not exist, as if God does not exist. And so when they are confronted with that very person who is the Truth, not some abstract notion of truth that can be manipulated at will, but the very embodiment of the Truth, standing there speaking: they do not believe. And they do not believe in the Truth standing there, because they have never made truth of part of themselves. These men are terrified by the one who says: “before Abraham, I am”. For if this is true, then their lives have been only religious posturing, playing at religion, leading people astray with a facile and false religion.
But once again we cannot take the sting out of Jesus’ words, which are the heart of the conflict, by retreating into history, into the past. This is true both of our religious leaders and of ourselves. We leave aside those charlatans who fill the airwaves on Sunday morning masquerading as Christian preachers of the truth and who fill the people with false hopes of self-fulfillment and cheap grace. We look instead at our own religious leaders, those who are entrusted with the passing on of the sacred Tradition, of the teaching of the Catholic faith, those burdened with the truth of God in Jesus Christ, a burden real but easy to bear in faith. How easy it is for these men to appeal to the truth of Scripture, the Creeds, of the Catechism, of the moral teaching of the Church and yet to treat it as if it were something out there, something purely objective, which has no relationship to their own lives pr the lives of their people?
I am always amused and perplexed when a conservative Catholic says to me about a certain bishop: “You know, he is orthodox”. I never know what to respond. Does this mean that he accepts all of the teachings of the Church, and if so am I supposed to offer some encomium of praise for this man for he happens to hold these opinions? What does this have to do with that confrontation with truth that demands that making that truth the center of one’s life and therefore taking on suffering, for the conflict we see in today’s gospel always demands and ends up with suffering, for if the truth of God in Jesus Christ is taken seriously and is made a part of one’s life at the very center, and now we are talking about ourselves, each other, you and I: if the truth of God in Jesus Christ is taken on as the center of one’s life, then conflict becomes the mode of one’s life, and suffering an inevitable part of that life. That is true. And it is Jesus who tells us that today. But this is not bad news, not something to get depressed about and wring one’s hands and dismiss Christianity as a dour, oppressive religion. The good news is that if one makes Christ the center of one’s life and conforms one’s own will to his and therefore to the will of God and therefore to the truth about the world and about oneself, one is freed in the deepest sense to be fully who each of us is called to be: the truth makes us free. And it is the Cross of Jesus Christ that is the only possibility of human freedom. For the cross is the judgment of truth on the world that refuses to see the truth. But the Cross is also the only hope, spes unica, that we who are blind because of sin may see the wonderful and amazing and hopeful and joyful love of God that breaks the bonds of the lie that is death and opens us up to the truth of eternal life.
And yet the delicious and wonderful liturgical irony embedded in the Tradition is that on this Passion Sunday, the Cross is hidden from our eyes. It is said that in the papal liturgy, in times now made hazy by historical mist, at the moment the words in the Gospel, “Jesus abscondit se”—Jesus hid himself and left the temple—all the crosses in the papal chapel were covered until after the liturgy of Good Friday. And so do we. “Jesus hid himself”. The Son of God hides himself from those who are trying to kill him, and he does so not because of cowardice but out of humility, knowing that he had not come to die the death of a religious martyr at the hands of a few wicked men, but that he had come to be handed over to death by the final encounter with the forces of sin and death. He had come for the awful humiliation of the Cross, the Cross as the triumph over sin and death from the deepest parts of the cosmos itself. You and I hide from God like Adam and Eve because of our sin. Jesus hides himself on this Passion Sunday to empty himself even more deeply and so submit himself to death for love of us.
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