5th Week of Lent (B) : Thursday 21st March 2024

Today’s readings focus upon Abraham, and Jesus. Matthew’s Genealogy proclaims Jesus as the descendent of Abraham and the fulfillment of the promise made by God to Abraham as recounted in the Genesis reading today. In today’s Gospel, the Pharisees challenge Jesus to identify Himself. Jesus provokes them first with a claim that “Abraham your father rejoiced to see My day: he saw it and was glad.”

Jesus makes the claim that Abraham foresaw His coming. When the Jewish leaders challenge this claim by interpreting Jesus’ words to mean He existed at the time of Abraham, Jesus goes on to make a claim with the most audacious implications: “I tell you most solemnly, before Abraham ever came to be, I AM.” The Pharisees recognise that Jesus is claiming identity with God, and therefore pick up stones to kill him for blasphemy.

The Gospel ends with Jesus “hid Himself and went out of the temple.” Next week begins Holy Week, the week in which we commemorate the passion and death of our Lord — a time when Jesus ‘hid’ His divinity and suffered a death like ours. We recall the words of St. Paul in his letter to the Philippians, although Jesus was in the form of God, He ‘emptied Himself’ of His divinity and became like one of us, humbling Himself even to accepting death, death on a cross.

Lord, may never grow weary to comprehend more deeply the love that Your Son has shown us in His passion and death.