Moses Wrote About Jesus & The Life-Receiving Heart

The Gospel for tomorrow’s Mass comes from John 5:31-47, and I would like to examine a sentence or two in the middle and at the end of this passage. Here are the two passages from 5:39-40 & 45-47: “You search the Scriptures, because you think you have eternal life through them; even they testify on my behalf. But you do not want to come to me to have life….Do not think that I will accuse you before the Father: the one who will accuse you is Moses, in whom you have placed your hope. For if you had believed Moses, you would have believed me, because he wrote about me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe my words?”

Jesus’ point here is that He is the source of eternal life, and that to obtain eternal life it is necessary to believe in Him. People search the Bible for life, but what the Bible points to and reveals is Jesus. The Scriptures in general testify on behalf of Jesus, and Moses in particular wrote about Jesus. If one rejects Moses’ writings, he will be deaf to Jesus’ words.

One of my assumptions is that the Pentateuch, the Five Books of Moses or the Torah, go a long way in preparing the way and revealing who Jesus is and what He came to do. My theory revolves around the first three chapters of Genesis, in fact, and there are many more clues and much more evidence in support of my theory in the remainder of the Pentateuch. The better one understands the Pentateuch and its beginning in the first three chapters of Genesis, the better one is able to understand the person and mission of Jesus and His Church. It is also true that the better one understands the Old Testament as a whole, the more one is able to fully and truthfully understand the New Testament.

My theory makes much progress in understanding the Old Testament, and, as such, it helps to better and more fully understand what Jesus did, why He did it, and how we need to respond to His saving actions and death on the cross. I spend a good bit of my time writing, you may have noticed, commenting on the readings of the day for Mass since the basic outline of my theory can be applied to just about anywhere in the Bible to much good effect. That is part of the reason I have been skipping around and commenting on the readings of the day; one of the other reasons I do this is because I don’t think my theory could be proved in an absolute, syllogistically logical manner; if it is going to be proved, it will be largely through thousands of other passages which connect to the beginning of Genesis and which both illuminate Genesis and are illuminated by it.

Another point from today’s Gospel comes when Jesus says, “you do not have his word abiding in you, for you do not believe him whom he has sent” (John 5:38). God’s word abides in us when we believe in Jesus. Believing in Jesus results in God’s word abiding within us. Believing in Jesus is how we are saved and have eternal life. Believing in Jesus means coming to Him for our life. Believing in Moses opens us to believe in Jesus. Belief is a matter of the heart, and, as such, the heart is the conduit for being saved, having eternal life, being a home for God’s Word, and coming to Jesus for life. In other words, the believing heart is the life-receiving heart; the heart is the tree of life.

What I was just saying reminded me of part of today’s Gospel which comes from the passage right before tomorrow’s passage in John. The segment I want to highlight is:
“Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes in the one who sent me has eternal life and will not come to condemnation, but has passed from death to life. Amen, amen, I say to you, the hour is coming and is now here when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live. For just as the Father has life in himself, so also he gave to the Son the possession of life in himself. And he gave him power to exercise judgment, because he is the Son of Man. Do not be amazed at this, because the hour is coming in which all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and will come out, those who have done good deeds to the resurrection of life, but those who have done wicked deeds to the resurrection of condemnation” (John 5: 25-29).

Hearing and believing in the Father through Jesus is what gives eternal life; the Father and Jesus have life in themselves, and those who do good deeds, that is, obey, will be connected to their life and so have the resurrection of life. As I have said many times, our salvation and eternal life, that is the tree of life, is the loving, trusting, and obedient heart. The heart that loves, trusts and obeys God is the vehicle through which God imparts to us life here on earth and life everlasting in heaven.

Thanks for reading and your prayers.
Copyright 2007.
All rights reserved.

We Do What Pleases Him

There was a beautiful quote from today’s first reading from the first Letter of Saint John that I want to highlight tonight: “Beloved: We receive from him whatever we ask, because we keep his commandments and do what pleases him” (1 John 3:22).

“Please.” Please is a magical word. My mom always told me it was the magic word. We want to please God; therefore, we keep His commandments, and that is why He answers our prayers. On the relational path of pleasing another, we start off wanting to please Our Heavenly Father, and we end up wanting to please our divine Spouse and Bridegroom, Jesus.

My wife is leaning over my shoulder as we eat salsa, hommus, and chips, and she said that God doesn’t always answer our prayers. That is true, for God does not answer every one of our prayers as we want. Let me come back to explain this after I explain something else first.

Yesterday I was talking about Saint Augustine’s book on virginity, and he was quoting and discussing what Saint Paul was saying about marriage and virginity. Paul said: “The unmarried man is anxious about the affairs of the Lord, how to please the Lord; but the married man is anxious about worldly affairs, how to please his wife, and his interests are divided. And the unmarried woman or girl is anxious about the affairs of the Lord, how to be holy in body and spirit; but the married woman is anxious about worldly affairs, how to please her husband” (1 Corinthians 7:32-34). The married seek to please their spouse; the virgins seek to please their divine Spouse. This does not mean that married people do not try to please the Lord, but it means that virgins have the ability to have more of an “undivided attention” for God.

The word “please” is a word often used in reference to a spouse. We seek to please the one to whom we are married, and it is right and good to do so. Virgins dedicated to God live the life of heaven here on earth and take God as their sole and primary Spouse. They sacrifice the very great good of an earthly spouse to gain the even greater good of the divine Spouse.

All of us are called to please the Lord and to love Him with all of our heart, mind, soul, and strength. Insofar as we love Him and give ourselves to Him, we grow closer to Him and draw closer to becoming His spouse. After drawing close to Him, we do keep His commandments and we do seek to please Him; our wills more and more become as one. Our will and mind ever more closely conform to His will and mind. Our heart loves Him, and we seek to please Him. It is in this state of conformity of our mind and will to God that in our prayer we ask for what pleases God, and He always gives it because it is what He wanted to give all along.

Jesus, in His humanity, struggled with this conformity of His will to the divine will in the Garden of Gethsemane as He prayed, “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt” (Matthew 26:39). He did not want to undergo all the suffering that He knew was right around the corner, at least not in His humanity He didn’t. But above all else, Jesus was of one will with the Father, and so that conformity and obedience to the Father is what He wanted in His heart of hearts. He concludes His prayer to be spared the suffering with the prayer to be in union with the Father’s will. In the end, His prayer is only to do the Father’s will.

How do I pray with the very prayer of God? If we give ourselves trustingly into God’s hands, He will teach us and help us to pray: “Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words. And he who searches the hearts of men knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God” (Romans 8:26-27). Eventually, if we do not give up and rely increasingly more and more on Him, His heart will become our heart, and His will will become our will.

When you and I love God with a full heart and mind, when our tree of life is strong and bearing good fruit every month, then our prayer will be the very prayer of God Himself, and we will receive whatever we ask of our Father and of our Husband: “You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide; so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you. 17 This I command you, to love one another” (John 15:16-17).

Thanks for reading and your prayers.
Copyright 2007.
All rights reserved.