John 8: 21-30
Jesus said to the Pharisees: “I am going away, and you will search for me, but you will die in your sin. Where I am going, you cannot come.” Then the Jews said, “Is he going to kill himself? Is that what he means by saying, ‘Where I am going, you cannot come’?”
He said to them, “You are from below, I am from above; you are of this world, I am not of this world. I told you that you would die in your sins, for you will die in your sins unless you believe that I am he.” They said to him, “Who are you?” Jesus said to them, “Why do I speak to you at all? I have much to say about you and much to condemn; but the one who sent me is true, and I declare to the world what I have heard from him.” They did not understand that he was speaking to them about the Father.
So Jesus said, “When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will realize that I am he, and that I do nothing on my own, but I speak these things as the Father instructed me. And the one who sent me is with me; he has not left me alone, for I always do what is pleasing to him.” As he was saying these things, many believed in him.
New Revised Standard Version, copyright 1989, by the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved. USCCB approved.
Broader Vision
It is one of the more challenging aspects of our faith that experiencing the Resurrection follows only after the pain of Jesus’s suffering and death.
Today’s readings remind us that although we might stumble or misunderstand as we walk the path of discipleship, God always reaches out to provide healing. At the same time, accepting that healing requires trusting in Jesus’s broader vision as the one who is “from above.”
St. Oscar Romero, who the church celebrates today, embodied this trust in God’s broader vision. Accompanying his people in their sufferings, Romero showed them that God was at work beyond their immediate pain. Death could not damper his witness. His own experience of being “lifted up” – his 1980 assassination – only strengthened his people. God used the pain of his loss to inspire hope and help heal El Salvador.
Where is God inviting you to take a broader vision?
—Brennan Dour, SJ, is a Jesuit scholastic and social studies teacher at Loyola High School of Detroit.
Prayer
It helps, now and then, to step back and take a long view.
The Kingdom is not only beyond our efforts,
it is even beyond our vision.
We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction
of the magnificent enterprise that is God’s work.
Nothing we do is complete,
which is a way of saying that the Kingdom always lies beyond us.
No statement says all that could be said.
No prayer fully expresses our faith.
No confession brings perfection.
No pastoral visit brings wholeness.
No program accomplishes the Church’s mission.
No set of goals and objectives includes everything.
This is what we are about.
We plant the seeds that one day will grow.
We water seeds already planted,
knowing that they hold future promise.
We lay foundations that will need further development.
We provide yeast that produces effects far beyond our capabilities.
We cannot do everything,
and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that.
This enables us to do something,
and to do it very well.
It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way,
an opportunity for the Lord’s grace to enter and do the rest.
We may never see the end results,
but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker.
We are workers, not master builders;
ministers, not messiahs.
We are prophets of a future that is not our own.
Amen.
—Bishop Ken Untener, often referred to as the Romero Prayer