Thursday, December 16, 2011

Is 56, 1-3.6-8 / Jn 5, 33-36

What is in your heart?

Fr. Edwin Fernandez, SVD

Divine Word College of Vigan
Vigan City, Ilocos Sur

When the human heart is so hardened to receive God’s message, what can be done to convince
and lead it to the truth? Our Gospel reading today shows the great difficulty of Jesus to convince
the authorities of his time that he had been sent by the Father to bring fulfillment to the great
promise made by God to His people. Jesus knew very well that we human beings often do not
accept the truth easily. We set conditions and make demands before we believe. We need
credible witnesses before we accept something to be true and genuine. We feel entitled to have a
reasonable doubt especially with regard to those things that are totally new and disconcerting to
us. For this reason, Jesus mentions to the Jewish authorities that John the Baptist, who was
considered a great prophet, had already given his favorable testimony on him. Nevertheless,
they would not believe the words of John. Jesus then has recourse to a higher argument to
convince them, and this time he refers to his deeds, his works, his actions. In a word, his very
own life. The identity of a person is greatly revealed through what he or she does and through
his or her way of life. “By their fruits, you shall know them,” Jesus says. When our actions do
the talking for us, we have a very strong argument to back up what we say that we are.
However, in the case of Jesus, the authorities did not believe him even on account of his works.
Though they had seen his compassion for the poor and the marginalized, his miracles, his
unparalleled love for God, his simple life and undying spirit of service to all people, they would
not believe.

Perhaps, all this reveals to us how power corrupts the human being. When we are not yet
powerful, we seem to be more open to others. We listen, we dialogue, we grow, we are willing
to be corrected. We learn. But the moment we acquire power and greater importance, and we
are called authorities, we are greatly tempted to believe that we are always right, that there is
nothing worth learning from others, and that we can do whatever we want. Power blinds us to
the truth and to the spirit of dialogue. Our love for power ruins the gifts of faith and humility we
once had. Power turns us into instruments of deceit, corruption, manipulation, and oppression.
Power becomes our god, and God’s intervention in our history is not welcome in our hearts of
stone. God’s coming even becomes a threat to the kingdom we have established for ourselves.

Do you have a heart of flesh or a heart of stone to celebrate Christmas? Are you open and
willing to accept God’s coming into your personal life and into our shared history? We ask the
Lord to open our eyes so that we truly come to believe what we see in the person of Jesus. We
ask for the grace of faith and humility to recognize in the very humanity of Christ the coming of
God into our lives.