“Striving to Know, Believe and Keep the Word” by Beth DeCristofaro
God also said to Abraham: "On your part, you and your descendants after you must keep my covenant throughout the ages." (Genesis 17:9)
“…Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever keeps my word will never see death.” …Jesus answered, “If I glorify myself, my glory is nothing. It is my Father who glorifies me, he of whom you say, ‘He is our God.’ though you do not know him. But I know him; if I were to say that I do not know him, I would be a liar like you. But I do know him and I keep his word.” (John 8:51, 54-55)
Piety
Jesus, have mercy on me. Help me to know you, help me to believe in you, help me to donate myself in belief, always giving you glory as you glorify our Father.
Study
That there are still people who deny climate change is reality baffles me. Perhaps there are many seemingly reasonable reasons – freak snowstorms, no weather pattern differences in my neighborhood, distrust of the science which illustrates the phenomenon for example. But the overall picture is so clear and evident that it is a human choice not to accept proof. Those who deny the Holocaust also make a determined decision to disbelieve. Millions of pairs of shoes, id cards, bones do not lie. We humans can be a stubborn, willful group when our minds – especially collective minds – are made up.
I wonder if this is part of the phenomenon going on with the leaders Jesus addresses in today’s Gospel. They do not believe Jesus. Further, they do not hear, they do not see. They choose not to know. Theologian Sandra Schneiders writes,” For the Fourth Evangelist Jesus is the personal manifestation of God in this world. In Jesus, according to this Gospel, the Word of God, holy Sophia or Wisdom in the Old Testament, through whom and in whom God created all things, became incarnate. The gospel is the story of Jesus’ living out of this divine-human identity. The invitation, as well as the challenge to discipleship, is to believe that Jesus is who he says he is, the Son of the one God who sent him, the one in whom that divine Sender is seen and known.[i] Coming to know Jesus and accepting, believing opens one up to a living relationship with the Divine. This acceptance is the basis for discipleship in which one will never see death. One may be invited but not all accept.
Action
Schneiders furthers articulates: “’Knowing’ in John is not merely intellectual assent to some propositional truth. It is personal affective commitment and self-donation to the Truth Incarnate.”[ii]
Lent offers us a season to reestablish our self-donation to the Truth Incarnate. In what way am I actively committed and believing? Pray for the sincere desire for God and rejoice in God’s glory.
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