THE WORD IN LENT - Thursday, Fifth week
March 21, 2024: Genesis 17: 3-9; John 8: 51-59
Through the desert God leads us to freedom, and we are reflecting these days, that this freedom does not come as long as we dare to die - unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it shall not bear the fruit that it needs to! What does it mean to dare to die: to be people of the Covenant. How does it amount to dying? We are led to understand that, through two figures that dominate the Word today: Abraham and Jesus.
Abraham is given to us here as a bridge that connects the Old Testament and the New Testament, in fact the Old Covenant and the New Covenant. Noah, Abraham and Moses have been identified at the origins of the Old Covenant - making the people, people of God, people of the covenant! But that covenant repeatedly failed, solely because of the infidelity of the people. To perfect that old covenant sealed by the blood of the sacrificial animals, the New Covenant was sealed with the blood of the Lamb of God, making that covenant - New, Eternal and Never failing.
This is what Jesus seems to explain to the Jews who were not prepared yet to understand - Abraham wanted to see this - the perfection of that covenant making it eternal and never failing, and making us, the people of God forever, by the merits of the mercy of God. Jesus' identity was totally the identity of the Father - I tell you solemnly, before Abraham ever was, I AM. That was too much for the elders and the priests who were listening to him. It would have been the same even if it were you and me in their place. But today, we understand what Jesus meant, precisely because this was not a glory that Jesus was ascribing to himself, but a negation, a total self giving, a losing oneself - that is what we shall be remembering shortly in the coming week!
Jesus is the most perfect model we can have in becoming the people of the covenant - by losing ourselves fully in the identity that God gives us, in the mission that is entrusted to us, in the life of the covenant that we are called to live on a daily basis. I shall be your God, and you shall be my people: being God's people has to fill our minds, our hearts and our lives so much that in losing ourselves, we become truly people of the covenant!