“I Am the Light of the World”

Reflection for Lent

Week 5 2016

“I Am the Light of the World”

Br. John Paul, BSD

We meet Jesus today in the second year of His ministry at the temple, specifically, in the treasury of the temple, a place that held the money collected for the poor; around 9 am during the last day of the festival of lights.  The last night was to remember when God manifested himself and led them in the pillar of fire through the wilderness.

There is a distinction between class in regard to education that was based in the study of Sacred Scripture and oral tradition passed on from Moses and Aaron.  The Torah also held the law. This disparity between class and attitudes of elitism was much like it is today. 

The law stated that there needed to be several witnesses to a capital crime in order to convict a person.  (In the first reading we see the law in action, until Daniel applies Wisdom, to exonerate Susanna.) So, Jesus, giving witness to himself becomes a supernatural event verified by the Father and a crime in the eyes of the Scribes and the Pharisees, and they test Him, “Where is your Father?”

The Scribes and Pharisees are concerned with the judgment of Jesus by THEIR standards, the law, and Jesus IS the judgment of salvation.

Let there be no mistake that Jesus will judge our lives as they pertain to salvation and not according to the law of our courts. (Matthew 25: 31-46).

In regard to, Jesus, being the Light He gives claim to be, we need to understand that He stands in the Temple area where the Light celebration was a remembrance of the Pillar of Fire leading the people out of the wilderness or the darkness, which was the law, and Jesus gives claim that HE is now the Light, the Light to dispel the darkness of sin and lead us home.

“You are who you are in the eyes of God, nothing more, nothing less.”

~ St. Francis