Daily Gospel Reflection
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April 4, 2020
Many of the Jews therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what Jesus did, believed in him. But some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what he had done.
So the chief priests and the Pharisees called a meeting of the council, and said, “What are we to do? This man is performing many signs. If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and destroy both our holy place and our nation.”
But one of them, Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, said to them, “You know nothing at all! You do not understand that it is better for you to have one man die for the people than to have the whole nation destroyed.” He did not say this on his own, but being high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus was about to die for the nation, and not for the nation only, but to gather into one the dispersed children of God. So from that day on they planned to put him to death.
Jesus therefore no longer walked about openly among the Jews, but went from there to a town called Ephraim in the region near the wilderness; and he remained there with the disciples.
Now the Passover of the Jews was near, and many went up from the country to Jerusalem before the Passover to purify themselves. They were looking for Jesus and were asking one another as they stood in the temple, “What do you think? Surely he will not come to the festival, will he?”
John returns here to a familiar theme: we are called to “see” Jesus.
In the uncertainty of a pandemic, distance can mean safety, and we may become acutely aware of our proximity to others. As we may choose to isolate ourselves physically, we need not isolate ourselves spiritually.
Those who “saw” Jesus, believed, and opened their hearts. The Pharisees, spiritually isolated, saw nothing, heard something alarming, and closed their minds. They could not see the humanity of God, or the divinity of the Jesus walking among them. They perceived only a threat to their carefully constructed worlds.
When we fail to see God in others, we may come to look at them as obstacles. For Jean-Paul Sartre, such a “look” provokes fear and shame in the one caught by it. For John Paul II, shame is a protective emotion against being used, but love has the power to render fear and shame obsolete. John writes, in his First Letter, “perfect love casts out fear.”
Fear sees only the other, an obstacle. Love sees also the thou, the other as essential to me, a member of my world, an invitation to form a We. Sartre famously wrote, “others are hell,” the farther away, the better; Jesus called the other “neighbor,” and made loving every neighbor a condition of heaven.
From heaven, we will look at this moment of social isolation very differently. We must learn to see now with our future eyes. Now, we have no choice but to choose: love God in every neighbor, or succumb to fear and a deeper isolation. Evidently, we have to be prudent. Still, there is a moral beauty in sharing the hardship of a social distance lived for love. It’s a very Catholic thing to do.
We can do this, with Jesus, seeing Jesus in each other.
Prayer
Father, your beloved Son Jesus was anointed in the Spirit and brought your healing love to our world. We pray that Christ, the light of the world, will sustain us always in faith, hope, and love. Amen.
Saint of the Day
St. Isidore of Seville was Spain’s greatest teacher, and is named a doctor of the Church.
He was born to a noble Spanish family in 560 AD and had two brothers and a sister who also became saints and took important leadership roles in the Church. Educated by his brother, Isidore discovered a love of learning that he transmitted everywhere he went. He helped his brother, who was a bishop, and later succeeded him as archbishop of Seville, where he served for 37 years.
As archbishop, he called for a seminary in every diocese and established a comprehensive educational system. In time, as Europe fell into the Middle Ages, Spain remained a center of learning and culture thanks to his vision to unite religion and learning. Under his leadership, schools in Spain taught liberal arts, medicine, law, Hebrew, and Greek. He even mandated teaching the works of Aristotle, which would not emerge in other areas of Europe for hundreds of years.
Isidore helped to govern the Church in Spain by calling councils. He rejected dictatorial decisions, and the representative councils he used for major decisions were a forerunner to the European parliamentary system.
His own learning was immense—he is known as the “schoolmaster of the Middle Ages.” He wrote an encyclopedia that was referenced for 1,000 years and produced works on astronomy, geography, world history, biographies, law, theology, and histories of various peoples.
Isidore lived to nearly 80 years old, and his piety and devotions increased the older he became. In his last months, his house was swarmed with poor people who knew they could receive help from him. One of the last things he did was to give everything he had to the poor.
St. Isidore was declared a doctor of the Church, a title given to 37 saints who are known for elucidating the faith by their words or example. Because of the universality of his knowledge, he is a patron saint of computers and the Internet, and his relics rest in the reliquary chapel in the Basilica of the Sacred Heart on Notre Dame's campus.
St. Isidore of Seville, your learning made Spain a beacon of light during the Middle Ages—pray for us!
Image Credit: Our featured image of St. Isidore of Seville is in the public domain. Last accessed February 17, 2025 on Wikimedia Commons.
