01 April 2017
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)
The Pharisees set aside overwhelming evidence favorable to Jesus. Evidence is from the Latin words ‘ex’ (from) and ‘video’ (I see). Literally evidence means “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 priests and the Pharisees. These Temple officers apparently had more evidence to show. But the Pharisees cut them short. Prejudice isolates a person from the truth.
Nicodemus had already pointed out to his fellow Pharisees how they violated due process on 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 Pharisees were fixated on this Scripture passage that says, “But you, Bethlehem Ephratha…, from out of you will come someone who will be ruler over Israel…” (Micha 5:2). So they argued that Jesus couldn’t be the Messiah because he came from Galilee. A little research would have revealed to them that indeed Jesus was born in Bethlehem. They settled with poorly established information without making honest to goodness research. 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.
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