From the responsorial psalm: “I love you, O LORD, my strength, O LORD, my rock, my fortress, my deliverer. In my distress I called upon the Lord, and he heard my voice.”
A reading from the holy Gospel according to John (Jn 10:31-42, today’s readings)
“If I do not perform my Father’s works, do not believe me; but if I perform them, even if you do not believe me, believe the works, so that you may realize and understand that the Father is in me and I am in the Father.” Then they tried again to arrest him; but he escaped from their power.
Some of the Jews who accuse Jesus of blasphemy are trying to stone him. They say Jesus is making himself God. Drawing on scripture, Jesus tells them, “If it calls them gods to whom the word of God came, and Scripture cannot be set aside, can you say that the one whom the Father has consecrated and sent into the world blasphemes because I said, ‘I am the Son of God’?” We hear that they try to arrest Jesus but that he escapes from their power. The power Jesus escapes from he is able to accomplish because of his perfect obedience to the Father’s will; it wasn’t yet his time. Because of his miracles, because of the truth about Jesus revealed through John the Baptist, and because he is the Word of God, many people come to believe in Jesus.
God, let me rest today in the truth of Jesus, that no matter how distortions of truth are made to seem real, no matter the machinations of the evil one, Jesus remains the way and the truth and the life. The verse before the Gospel says, “Your words, Lord, are Spirit and life; you have the words of everlasting life.” Thank you, Lord, for sending your Son to bring light and life to earthly existence and eternal life to those who put their hope in him. Jesus has shown, as he says, “many good works from my Father.” Give me the grace to rest in him, my rock of refuge and deliverer, for all he has done. Jesus, I trust in you!
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.