THE WORD IN LENT - Wednesday, Fifth week in Lent
April 9, 2025 - Daniel 3: 14-20,24-25,28; John 8: 31-42
After the image of Susanna and the bronze serpent lifted up in the desert, today we have yet another great symbol - the symbol of the three young men in the furnace! They were there tried to the extreme levels imaginable. They were destined to die... they infact went into death and came out unscathed. That was Jesus' death and resurrection prefigured. As we say in the Creed: he went down to the dead and he rose again. That is what Jesus is introducing us to - when you have the Truth with you, you go down to death and you will rise to Eternal life.
The Truth will set you free, the Truth with liberate you, the Truth shall give you Eternal life - says Jesus today! So the secret to Eternal life is beholding the Truth! How do we do it: holding on to the Lord, as he himself declares - I am the Truth! The Lord challenges us to clarify our sense of belonging - to whom do we belong? Or to put it more directly: Do I belong to God or not? If I belong to God, my life should manifest that. There could be downfalls, breakages and discontinuities, but ultimately, do I belong to God, that is what matters.
Sometimes, as Jesus is warning, we may think or we may claim we belong to God, through intermediate ways... Jesus chides the people who were arguing with him, that they thought they were Abraham's children (and through that they wanted to be God's children), but they were actually children of the Satan, the evil one who wants to kill and destroy... just as Nebuchadnezzar and his squad who wanted to eliminate those young men! But those who belong to God, they love, they listen to the Truth and they behold Truth!
We long to live in joy and hope...that is possible only by beholding Truth... in our innermost beings, beholding Truth.