Fr. Austin's Holy Thought

 

Fifth Sunday of Lent

The style of the son of Zabedee

When John the Beloved Disciple came to write his gospel, a good half century after Good Friday, this one-time Galilean fisherman used a style that could reach out to the new Greek converts who were then making their way into the church. This is why his beautiful gospel has a totally different style from the other three.

But for us in the 21st century he does leave some puzzles. So in his version of The Last Supper there is  no mention of Jesus consecrating bread & wine. Instead he gives us the miracles of the Wedding Feast of Cana and the Feeding of the 5,000 where both bread & wine are created in abundance, and the stories told in a style that reminded people of the eucharist.

And when he speaks of Holy Thursday & Gethsemane he makes no mention of ‘the agony in the garden’ when Jesus sweated blood and tears, but instead gives us throwaway lines like today's words of Jesus:

“I am troubled now. Yet what should I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? But it was for this purpose that I came to this hour”

He also tells us how some Greeks approached Philip (the only apostle with a Greek name) because they wanted to see Jesus. In our own world  there are people who cautiously want to come close to Jesus but do not know how to do it. Are there ways in which we can imitate St. John and use language that millennials can understand, and bend over backwards to make the mystery of Jesus accessible to all kinds of people?

Fr.Austin scj   

 

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