5th Thursday - “Whoever keeps my words will never see death."

 

 There was a man who stepped onto the platform at an American Legion Convention. As he looked over the large crowd, he asked: “Can anybody tell me who I am?” He had lost his memory, with no record of his past or his identity. His desperate appeal was: “Does anybody know who I am?”

Jesus’ identity is one of the themes today’s gospel reading talks about. It is because in this chapter eighth alone of St. John’s gospel, Jesus claims four major things about Himself. First, He claims to be the light of the world. Second, He claims that those who accept His teaching are set free. Third, He promises that anyone who keeps His word will never die. Fourth, He takes on the divine name I AM and states that He is older than Abraham. In this last claim He says: “Before Abraham came to be, I Am.” By saying ‘I Am,’ Jesus refers to the proper name of God as “Yahweh” which in Hebrew it means the same, “I Am who Am” and a pious Jew in His life would not mention this name.  This is the name God identifies Himself to Moses at the burning bush. Jesus is applying the name ‘Yahweh’ to Himself and this shows He clearly saying that He is God. Of course this claim is the supreme and highest claim for by this claim Jesus says that He is of divine origin and that He is equal with God. His listeners understand what He tries to say perfectly well but they do not accept this claim because to them, it is a blasphemy. Its penalty is death by stoning.

But for us it is true that Jesus is God and therefore He has the right to promise to us that whoever keeps His word will never see death. Only God can make such a bold promise and then fulfill it. And so I invite you to reflect on this promise of Jesus and apply this into our lives:

First, He says: “Whoever keeps my words will never see death.”  This is a paradoxical statement but ‘never seeing death’ seems to be very attractive to us because we are doing so much: exercise, eating right, annual checkups and all that is good in order to avoid hastening our physical death. But the Lord is referring death in the spiritual realm. And St. Paul gives a good explanation of what this statement meant to be. St. Paul says that we are ‘always carrying about in the body the dying of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our body…. Therefore, we are not discouraged; rather, although our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day.

Lastly, let us keep the words of Jesus and be faithful to Him because Jesus is a God and He cannot tell a lie. Some do not accept that Jesus is God and is the Son of God but consider Him only as a great man or the greatest man who ever lived. If they say such things, we say He is Lord and God because He cannot tell a lie of what He claims. That is why, with all due respect for their opinion, the Muslims as well as Mormons who say Jesus was only a very special man, ----cannot be considered, ‘Christians.’

Every step along the path of spiritual growth is a step towards preserving and enriching the divine life He has given us. Let us ask the Virgin Mary to help us to grow in our faith, so that may help others to come to know who Jesus really is.