Daily Gospel Reflection
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March 28, 2023
Jesus said to the Pharisees:
“I am going away and you will look for me,
but you will die in your sin.
Where I am going you cannot come.”
So the Jews said,
“He is not going to kill himself, is he,
because he said, ‘Where I am going you cannot come’?”
He said to them, “You belong to what is below,
I belong to what is above.
You belong to this world,
but I do not belong to this world.
That is why I told you that you will die in your sins.
For if you do not believe that I AM,
you will die in your sins.”
So they said to him, “Who are you?”
Jesus said to them, “What I told you from the beginning.
I have much to say about you in condemnation.
But the one who sent me is true,
and what I heard from him I tell the world.”
They did not realize that he was speaking to them of the Father.
So Jesus said to them,
“When you lift up the Son of Man,
then you will realize that I AM,
and that I do nothing on my own,
but I say only what the Father taught me.
The one who sent me is with me.
He has not left me alone,
because I always do what is pleasing to him.”
Because he spoke this way, many came to believe in him.
I have an easy time identifying with the Pharisees in today’s gospel and a hard time following what Jesus is saying. Even boiling the exchange down to the injunction, “If you do not believe that I AM, you will die in your sins,” still leaves me feeling like I am missing something.
In considering this passage, I find it helpful to recall the context that Jesus is not simply trying to persuade his audience to believe in God. His audience already believes in God and has a well-developed understanding of God. Indeed, Jesus is trying to walk his audience toward the revelation that he is the very God they believe in, standing before them and offering a path to everlasting life.
And that is the challenge: God’s real-life presence may be an even more difficult premise to accept than God’s existence; the divinity of Christ more mind-bending than the concept of divinity itself. To believe in God is one thing, but to believe, as St. Athanasius observed, that he “entered the world in a new way, stooping to our level in his love and self-revealing to us” takes things to another level entirely.
The presence of God in our lives may still be a challenge for us to realize today. How often do we think of God, who “belongs to what is above,” as distant and removed from us below? Yet for all of us, who live after Jesus ascended, God is always with us, in the person of the Holy Spirit, who remains with us and will be with us forever.
As we prepare for Holy Week, may we contemplate the continuing presence of God in our midst as we recall Christ’s passion, death, and resurrection. Just as the Father was always with Jesus, so is his Holy Spirit always with us.
We have not been left alone.
Prayer
Father, Jesus your Son proclaimed your reign and embodied it in his intimacy with you and his generous self-sacrificing life. Be with us in our Lenten pilgrimage of faith. May our prayer, fasting, and repentance draw us ever more deeply into Christ’s example of oneness with you and kind attentiveness to others. Amen.
Saint of the Day
St. Conon is a popular local saint in Sicily. He was born in the middle of the twelfth century and is credited with saving the town of Naso from famine.
St. Conon was a monk, most accounts say of the order of St. Basil of Caesarea. The most colorful tale of St. Conon tells the story of a miraculous vision he had while on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Conon traveled from Italy to Jerusalem. While in Jerusalem, Conon dreamed that a priest he knew back home in Sicily was being strangled by a snake. This disturbing nightmare apparently stuck with Conon.
Months later, upon his return home to Sicily, Conon told the priest about the dream. Feeling the pangs of a guilty conscience, the priest instantly confessed to Conon that he had been stealing funds from the Church and using the money for his own selfish desires.
Conon died on March 28, 1236, in Naso, Sicily, which has honored him as its patron since.
In 1571, the people of Naso were suffering from a terrible famine. A ship appeared in the nearby port, bringing a hold full of precious grain to the hungry villagers. The captain of the ship credited his rerouting to Naso to a miraculous vision of Conon, telling him to sail there. Thus, the people of Naso were saved.
St. Conon of Naso, pilgrim and miracle-worker—pray for us!
Image Credit: Our featured image of St. Conon of Naso is available for use under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license. Modified from the original. Last accessed February 6, 2025 on Wikimedia Commons.
