March 12, 2016 Saturday, 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.” And they all went home.
D@iGITAL-EXPERIENCE
(Daily Gospel in the
Assimilated Life
Experience)
“Prejudices”, wrote Charlotte Bronte in Jane Eyre, “are most difficult to eradicate from the heart whose soil has never been loosened or fertilized by education; they grow there, firm as weeds among stones.” Nothing less could be said about the prejudice of the Pharisees against Jesus. The officers of the Temple sent to spy on Jesus already spoke favorably of him. They said: “No one ever spoke like this man.” Nicodemus, a Pharisee like them, who had gone to Jesus earlier, also spoke favorably of him. Still the Pharisees rejected Jesus.
The Pharisees did not only brush aside the favorable testimonies of the officers of the Temple and the scholarly remark of Nicodemus, but also cursed all who believed in Jesus. They said, “Have any of the rulers or any of the Pharisees believed in (Jesus)? Only these cursed people who have no knowledge of the Law!” The Pharisees were highly educated, yet education failed to eradicate prejudice from their hearts. Their brand of prejudice was so corrupt that it robbed education of the power to loosen their hearts.
If we too are victims of prejudice, we should not give up. Let’s take the opposition of prejudiced people as hazard of the mission. Let’s concentrate instead on what God has tasked us to do. In the process we educate these prejudiced people by our perseverance in faith. The more intense our perseverance in faith is, the more our lives can educate and loosen hardened hearts.—Rev. Fr. Dan Domingo P. delos Angeles, Jr., DM. Email: dan.delosangeles@gmail.com.
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