The Division Provoked By The Trusting Lamb Led to the Slaughter, Saturday of the Fourth Week in Lent, March 16, 2024

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
Leonine Forum Lenten Day of Recollection
Saturday of the Fourth Week of Lent
March 16, 2024
Jer 11:18-20, Ps 7, Jn 7:40-53

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:

The following text guided the homily: 

• As we conclude our Lenten Day of Recollection, the readings of today’s Mass help us to focus on the dramatic circumstance in the life of Jeremiah in which he placed his trust in God, and how his dependence was a prophecy of the type of self-entrustment Jesus himself would make in today’s Gospel and above all on Calvary. “Like a trusting lamb led to the slaughter,” Jeremiah writes in words that were applied by the evangelists to Jesus, “they were hatching plots against me,” trying to “destroy the tree in its vigor, cut[ting] him off from the land of the living so that his name may be spoken of no more.” We see those plots against Jesus getting fulfilled in today’s Gospel. The temple guards were sent out by the Jewish leaders to arrest Jesus because, as we’ve been seeing in recent days, the leaders considered Jesus an untrained blasphemer and worse. They were seeking to kill him because they were convinced that he was an agent of the devil, working miracles not by the power of God but by the power of Beelzebul to destroy the Jewish religion by violating the Sabbath with works of charity, driving money changers out of the temple, speaking about the Temple’s destruction and rebuilding, befriending notorious sinners, daring to try to forgive sins, and various other practices that conveyed that Jesus was attempting to show not only that he was acting with divine authority but that he believed himself to be the actual Son of God. Rather than being filled with joy when Jesus reconciled sinners, or made the lame walk, made the blind see, made the deaf hear, or freed the possessed of their demons, they responded with envy, anger and unholy homicidal thoughts.
• But not everyone obviously saw Jesus this way. St. John tells us today there was “division because of him.” Some thought he was “the Prophet,” the fulfillment of Moses’ words that after him someone would come to whom they should listen and obey just like the listened to and obeyed him (Deut 18:15). Others said, “This is the Messiah (Christ).” Others retorted that the Messiah could never come from Galilee, because he was prophesied to come from Bethlehem. None of those critics, however, ever bothered to ask Jesus where he was born. They heard he was a Nazarene and that’s all they needed in order to dismiss him as the Messiah because they didn’t want to accept the type of Messianic reign he was heralding, one far different than the Messianic kingdom for which they longed.
• It’s important for us to grasp, as Christians in 2024, that Jesus always provokes division. He himself said elsewhere in the Gospel, “Do not think that I have come to bring peace upon the earth. I have come to bring not peace but the sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and one’s enemies will be those of his household” (Mt 10:34-36). While he is the Prince of Peace who came to give and leave us his peace and establish the definitive peace treaty between us and God through the forgiveness of sins (Jn 14:27), he at the same time knew that he would be a “sign of contradiction” (Lk 2:34), as Simeon prophesied at his presentation, because no one would be able to remain neutral in response to him. We would either be “with him” or “against him,” we’d either “gather with him” or “scatter” (Mt 12:30). It’s not that he would personally cause division because he had come to bring peace; but division would ensue because of him, because there would be some who would accept him, come to the light and follow him and there would be others who would refuse and reject him, remain in the darkness and oppose him.
• As disciples of Jesus, we need to grasp that often, we, too, especially if we seek to follow him up close and for real, will be signs of contradiction, too. People will claim we’re divisive because we will align ourselves to his wisdom and way of life and not to theirs. But we can’t forget that it’s not Jesus who divides, but sin. None of us — Jesus foremost — wants division. He came so that we all might be one. But he leaves us free and through sin we and others choose division. It’s the devil, not Christ, who is the diabolos, the one who throws us off course. And therefore we need to be ready for how he will provoke others to oppose faithful Christians the same way he riled up mobs to oppose Jesus. We should never forget that when he was seeking to give others the greatest gift in the history of the world — his own body and blood in the Eucharist — the evil was able to get most of his disciples separate from him (Jn 6).
• Today in the Gospel we see three different ways of responding to Jesus that we ought to consider because they shine a mirror for us to examine our own response to Jesus during this prayer on retreat.
  • The first happens with the Temple guards. They had been sent to arrest Jesus but they couldn’t bring themselves to do it. When they were asked, “Why didn’t you bring him?,” they replied, “Never before has anyone spoken like this man!” They were astonished and amazed at Jesus’ incredible words. Their souls were touched. They knew that a man who spoke like that couldn’t possibly be a malefactor. It would be like police officers today being sent to arrest a beautiful four-year-old girl or sweet 106-year-old great-great-great-grandmother, bound her in cuffs and parade her before the media because some superior officer commanded them to do it in order to put on a show. Beyond that simple common sense that they were being sent to arrest someone good not a criminal, however, they were fascinated by Jesus and his words. These were not a bunch of naturally pious people. They were cops, basically soldiers, hearty men, cynical in the ways of the world, who probably spent much of their time engaged in the types of things men of force engage in whenever they’re together on duty but not engaged in work. They were not a group accustomed to singing praise and worship songs together! And yet these coarse men were profoundly touched by Jesus — which teaches us something about Jesus and the power of his words. For us it should leave us wondering that if those men could be so moved by Jesus’ words, recognizing that no man had ever spoken like him before, are we even more amazed and astonished by his words?
  • The second reaction is by the chief priests and Pharisees. Hearing the guards testify to the power of Jesus’ exhortations, they said, “Have you also been deceived? Have any of the authorities or the Pharisees believed in him? But this crowd, which does not know the law,” by which they meant the guard and other, “is accursed.” They called the guard and everyone who didn’t see things their way “damned.” They had no openness whatsoever to Jesus. They already concluded that he was evil and nothing was going to change their opinion. They condescendingly spoke to the guards as if they who were accustomed to giving interrogations were gullible of being lied to; after all, they stated, none of their leaders had accepted Jesus and therefore no one else should have either. We can look back with a cultural distance and say, “Foolish Pharisees,” but the type of division they caused from their ivory perches still happens today. The chief priests and Pharisees represent the elites who in every age foster division against Jesus, because they don’t want to accept him, his teaching, or his deeds. There are many, inside and outside the Church, who think Jesus’ teaching that that we’re supposed to love enemies and pray for persecutors is foolish, that his teaching that divorce-and-remarriage is sinful adultery is foolish, that his teaching that the way we treat illegal immigrants is the way we treat him is foolish. The list goes on today with regard to the Church’s teaching with regard to various teachings that contradict fallen worldly ways, that the Church’s teachings, based on Christ’s, with regard to forgiveness, peace, sex as a noun and a verb, abortion, IVF, euthanasia, and others are all foolish. The end of today’s Gospel summarizes effectively the division that comes when everyone is not united in the courageously following and worshipping the one true God: “They each went to his own house,” because they were each worshipping his own safe, domesticated deity.
  • The third response we see in the Gospel is that of Nicodemus. Nicodemus, we remember, is the member of the Sanhedrin who came to Jesus “at night,” because he was too afraid to be seen with him during the daylight. He was himself drawn to Jesus but he really didn’t want to pay the cost of discipleship. While the series The Chosen in its first season tries to depict him as a wise seeker of the truth, various scholars throughout history have called him the “tentative” or “reluctant” disciple. Cardinal Bergoglio back in a 2006 retreat to Spanish bishops said he was an example of a conditional disciple, someone who would follow Jesus only if Jesus accepted his terms: “He wants a dialogue in security, coming under the cover of night to ask him questions,” the future Pope told the Spanish hierarchy. “And Jesus, because he senses that the Pharisee is not well disposed, lets him remain wrapped up in his trivial objections. For Nicodemus, such objections serve as an egoistic refuge for not being honest.” Today we see that assessment on full display. He knows that the objections of the chief priests and the Pharisees against Jesus are flowing out of envy because they’re not only afraid to change but afraid that they might lose their status. But instead of defending Jesus fully, he, because of cowardice, just raises a procedural or legal objection. “Does our law condemn a man before it first hears him and finds out what he is doing?,” he asks. And when they accuse him of being a Galilean and an idiot who fails to grasp that “no prophet arises from Galilee,” that no one consequential will ever come from those backwaters, he remains silent. Later, as a member of the Sanhedrin, he could have defended Jesus when the Lord was being condemned in a mock trial in which he was one of the judges, he didn’t. After Jesus was crucified, he did come, however, to anoint his dead body. He recognized who Jesus was and wanted to follow him, but his timidity regularly got the worst of him. His example of following Jesus “a little” rather than all the way, of wanting to be his disciple but caving into human respect, ought to provoke in us the question of how courageous we are in being publicly identified with Jesus, of defending him, and his teachings, and the Church he founded when it comes under attack, or whether we prefer to come to Jesus in the shadows, when it won’t cost us too much, when our commitment won’t be total.
• On this Saturday, in this beautiful Church of Notre Dame, we should consider one more example, that of our Blessed Mother. She was one who was never in contradiction with the Lord. She was one who was never divided from him, from the first moment of her conception. Like the guards, she was able to recognize with astonishment the power of God’s word and, at the Annunciation and beyond, in a total act of faith, she allowed her life to develop according to that word — even though she knew it would inevitably lead to suffering and perhaps even her being stoned to death. She allowed her own heart to be pierced for her union with his Son, the Sign of Contradiction. She was still with him, standing, as he was hammered to that sign of contradiction on Calvary. And it was there, under the foot of the Cross, as she with the help of the women and Joseph of Arimathea were preparing Jesus’ body for burial, that with maternal love she welcomed Nicodemus. To the extent that we in our own lives have followed Jesus only at a distance, without a full commitment, without a willingness to pay the price, today she wants to welcome us, to help us not to be afraid to approach her Son to receive his mercy, and not to be afraid to follow him all the way.
• She’s with us here at the Mass where she wants to help us respond to Jesus’ word and his very person in his body, blood, soul and divinity with all we’ve got. In the first reading, Jeremiah wanted to see the vengeance God would take on those who were persecuting him. Mary witnessed the vengeance God took on those who killed her Son as he was fulfilling the prophecy of Jeremiah’s life, being led like a trusting lamb to slaughter. The vengeance God took was mercy, with Jesus praying for persecutors and loving those who had made themselves his enemy, laying down his life so that they might live forever. Jesus’ vengeance is to overcome evil with good, hatred with love, persecution with pity. As we come forward to receive in Holy Communion that incarnate “vengeance” God the Father took, we ask the Lord we’re about to receive to help us to become inflamed with a longing for that same holy, merciful revenge and to become part of it,  through being willing to suffer courageously with him, like our Lady, as signs of contradiction!

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

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