Saturday, March 17, 2018 4th Week of Lent 1st Reading: Jer 11:18–20 Gospel: Jn 7:40–53
Many who had been listening to these words began to say, “This is the Prophet.” Others said, “This is the Christ.” But some wondered, “Would the Christ come from Galilee? Doesn’t Scripture say that the Christ is a descendant of David and from Bethlehem, the city of David?” The crowd was divided over him. Some wanted to arrest him, but no one laid hands on him.
The officers of the Temple went back to the chief priests who asked them, “Why didn’t you bring him?” The officers answered, “No one ever spoke like this man.” The Pharisees then said, “So you, too, have been led astray! Have any of the rulers or any of the Pharisees believed in him? Only these cursed people, who have no knowledge of the Law!”
Yet one of them, Nicodemus, who had gone to Jesus earlier, spoke out, “Does our law condemn people without first hearing them and knowing the facts?” They replied, “Do you, too, come from Galilee? Look it up and see for yourself that no prophet is to come from Galilee.”
D@iGITAL-EXPERIENCE
(Daily Gospel in the
Assimilated Life
Experience)
The Pharisees set aside overwhelming evidence favorable to the confirmation of Jesus’ claim about his heavenly origins. Evidence is from two Latin words ‘ex’ (from) and ‘video’ (I see). The combination gives us the English meaning “from what I see”. From what the officers of the Temple saw, Jesus was no ordinary mortal. “No one ever spoke like this man,” they told the Pharisees. The officers had more evidence favoring Jesus, and they were ready to present these to the Pharisees. But they wouldn’t want to hear any of them. Prejudice isolates a person from the truth and locks himself up in a prefabricated world governed by his moods.
Nicodemus, himself a Pharisee, had already pointed out to his comrades how they violated due process in evaluating the case of Jesus. But not even this well respected comrade succeeded in persuading them. They even insulted him, saying, “Do you, too, come from Galilee?” This was an insult designed to taunt him, a highly educated leader, for believing in a man who only had fishermen and uneducated people as followers – people they described as “cursed people who have no knowledge of the law” (see John 7:49).
The priests and the Pharisees knew from Scriptures that no prophet was to come from Galilee (Micha 5:2). They could have made a more comprehensive study on the origins of Jesus. The records would have revealed that he was born in Bethlehem. To hold on to poorly established evidence without ascertaining the truth is to lock oneself up in prejudice. – (Atty.) Rev. Fr. Dan Domingo P. delos Angeles, Jr., D.M.
vvv
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