LENT 2024: DAY 11 - Monday February 26

 

“Not only to the Jews but also to the Gentiles Our Lord revealed the purpose of His coming, namely, to lay down His life for His sheep. To the former, he revealed Himself as fulfilling prophecies of His coming. But the Gentiles had no such revelation as was contained in the Old Testament; hence for them he drew an analogy from nature which they could readily understand.

 

The time was less than a week before His Crucifixion. He had already shown Himself as the Resurrection by raising Lazarus from the dead; he had fulfilled for His own people an ancient prophecy concerning His humble but triumphant entrance into Jerusalem. Now it was time for the Gentiles to be given a lesson concerning the reason for His coming. The Gentiles were here represented by the Greeks… Because the Gentiles had not submitted to circumcision, they were forbidden access to the Sanctuary, but were permitted to circulate in the spacious Court of the Gentiles.

 

While the enemies were plotting to kill Him, the Greeks wished to see Him. At His birth, the Wise Men of the East came to His cradle; now the Greeks, who were the Wise Men of the West, came to the Cross. Both the Magi of the East and Magi of the West were to see a humiliation; in the first instance, God in the form of a Babe in Bethlehem, and in the latter, God in the form of a criminal on the Cross. As a sign leading to an understanding of His Divinity, the Magi were given the star; the Greeks, a grain of wheat.

 

The Greeks said to Philip: “Sir, we desire to see Jesus.” (John 12:21) … When Andrew and Philip brought their request to Our Lord that the Greeks wanted to see Him, He answered: “The Hour is now come for the Son of Man to achieve His glory.” (John 12:23) At Cana, Our Lord had told His mother that His “hour” had not yet come; during His public ministry no man could lay hand on Him because His “Hour had not yet come”; but here He announced, within a few days of His death, that the time had come when He would be glorified. The glorification referred to the lowest depths of His humiliation on the Cross, but it also referred to his triumph. He did not say the Hour was near for Him to die, but for Him to be glorified. He grouped Calvary and His triumph together… To His followers the Cross presently seemed as the depth of humiliation; to Him it was the height of glory. But His worlds to the Greeks also meant that the Gentiles were to be a feature of his glorification. The wall dividing Jew and Gentile was to be broken down. From the first, He saw the full fruits of the Cross growing in heathen lands.”

 

 

(Chapter 34, pgs. 567-570)

 

+ FRASES PARA LEER