GOSPEL REFLECTION, WEDNESDAY, 4TH WEEK OF EASTER, 24 APRIL 2024

John 12:44-50.  This gospel reading comes at the end of John’s account of Jesus’ public ministry.  It summarises in a brief capsule many of the important teachings of the previous twelve chapters in John’s gospel.  Jesus “cried out,” not just to be heard by those nearby, but as an emphatic declaration, first of all that he and the Father are one, so that anyone who believes in Jesus, believes in the Father, and vice versa.  It repeats an important teaching prominent in John’s gospel of the indwelling of the Father and the Son in each other, and their intimate bond is the Holy Spirit who is the flow of love and knowledge between them.  The Holy Trinity is an important teaching of all the gospels, but it has a distinctive expression in John’s gospel.  We are emphatically reminded that those who have faith in Jesus dwell in him and he in them.  That too is a most intimate bond in the Holy Spirit.   Jesus goes on to declare that he is the light of the world, as he had already said “I AM the light of the world” (8:12), and that light is our life in him.  In the prologue of John’s gospel (1:9), we hear that Jesus is “the true light that enlightens everyone.”   Anyone who rejects the light who is Jesus comes under judgement (v. 48).  Finally (vv. 49-50) Jesus declares that he does not speak on his own, but at the commandment of the Father who sent him; he is the Prophet of all Prophets, so what he says on the command of the Father “is eternal life,” for he is our salvation (v.47).  If we truly pray our way through this gospel reading and return to it again and again, we will bind it to our hearts, where it truly belongs.