The third year: the opposition

After the defection of the Bread of Life, Jesus leaves Galilee and withdraws toward the pagan regions. The year that comes reveals little by little who he is: the Messiah who must suffer, die and rise. It opens on Peter’s confession and the Transfiguration, unfolds in the long ascent to Jerusalem that Luke reports, passes through the great feasts where John sets the controversies, and ends at Bethany, on the threshold of the Passion. As his glory is unveiled, the opposition of the leaders hardens until the decision to put him to death.

The tradition of the elders

Pharisees and scribes come from Jerusalem and reproach the disciples for eating without having washed their hands, neglecting the tradition of the elders, those rules of ritual purity added to the Law over the generations. Jesus applies to them the word of Isaiah (Isaiah 29:13): “This people honours me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the precepts of men.” They cling to their tradition to the point of annulling the commandment of God. He shows it by a practice they allow: a man may declare “corban,” a Hebrew word, qorbân (קָרְבָּן), meaning “an offering consecrated to God,” the goods his father and mother would have needed, and so consider himself excused from helping them. Their human rule thus undoes the commandment “Honour your father and your mother.” Exodus 20:12. Then Jesus calls the crowd and declares to them: “Nothing that enters a man from outside can defile him; but what comes out of a man, that is what defiles him.” Mark 7:15. Food passes through the stomach and is expelled, it does not touch the heart; from the heart, however, come evil thoughts, murders, thefts, covetings, and that is what defiles a man. Their tradition watched over a surface purity, while God looks at the heart.

The faith of the nations

Jesus withdraws toward Tyre and Sidon, into pagan land. A Canaanite woman begs him for her daughter tormented by a demon. He first sets against her an image taken from the table: the children of the house are fed before the little dogs that wait beneath it. The children are Israel, the people of the covenant, to whom salvation is promised and sent first; the nations, figured by the little dogs, come only afterward. The woman accepts this place and turns the image back with faith: “The little dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.” Matthew 15:27. For this humble and tenacious trust, Jesus grants her prayer. Returning toward the Decapolis, a largely pagan land, he opens the ears of a deaf-mute with a single word, “Ephphatha,” that is, “Be opened” Mark 7:34, then there feeds a crowd of four thousand men with seven loaves, and seven baskets are gathered. Beyond Israel, the gift begins to spread.

“You are the Christ”

At Bethsaida, Jesus gives sight to a blind man in two stages: he lays his hands once, and the man sees men confusedly, like trees that walk; a second time, and he sees clearly. It is the only healing the Gospel reports in two stages. Faith opens thus by degrees: this man needed the light restored to him gradually, in the measure of a faith still weak; and his healing figures that of the disciples, who first recognize the Messiah without yet grasping that he must suffer.

Right after, at Caesarea Philippi, Jesus asks his disciples what people say of him, then what they themselves think. Peter answers: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Matthew 16:16. Jesus declares him blessed, for it is not flesh that revealed it to him, but the Father. He then gives him a new name: “You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.” Matthew 16:18. The Aramaic word rendered “rock,” Kepha, is the same for the man’s name and for the foundation: Peter himself is the rock on which the Church is set. Jesus hands him the keys of the Kingdom and the power to bind and to loose, what he decides on earth holding even in heaven. To Peter is entrusted the governance of the people of God, an authority whose acts engage heaven itself.

“Let him take up his cross”

From then on Jesus teaches openly what awaits him: he must go up to Jerusalem, suffer much, be put to death and rise on the third day. Peter refuses this and tries to turn him from it; Jesus rebukes him forcefully: “Get behind me, Satan! Your thoughts are not those of God, but those of men.” Mark 8:33. In calling him “Satan,” a Hebrew word that means “adversary” (שָׂטָן), Jesus does not identify him with the fallen angel: he reproaches him for making himself, at that instant, the obstacle to God’s design. The Messiah awaited in glory comes first by the Cross. And he makes this way that of all his own: “If anyone wants to come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross and follow me.” Mark 8:34. To save one’s life is to lose it; to lose it for him is to find it.

The Transfiguration

Six days later, Jesus takes Peter, James and John and climbs a high mountain. There he is transfigured before them: his face shines like the sun, his garments become dazzling with light. Moses and Elijah appear to him: Moses, through whom the Law was given, and Elijah, the prophet taken up alive into heaven, together represent the Law and the prophets, the whole of the old covenant that announced the Messiah. Their presence attests that Jesus fulfills what they had prepared; they speak with him of his departure that is to be accomplished at Jerusalem Luke 9:31. A cloud covers them, and from the cloud a voice is heard: “This is my beloved Son, listen to him.” Mark 9:7. The Father shows the three disciples the hidden glory of the Son, so that, when they see him disfigured and crucified, the memory of this glory may keep their faith from sinking. Coming back down, they find a child whom a spirit throws to the ground and whom the disciples could not deliver. To the father who implores him, Jesus answers: “Everything is possible to the one who believes.” Mark 9:23. The man cries out: “I believe, help my unbelief.” Mark 9:24, and Jesus drives out the spirit.

The sending of the seventy-two

The long ascent to Jerusalem begins. Jesus appoints seventy-two disciples and sends them two by two ahead of him into every town where he is to pass. An ancient tradition counted seventy-two nations born from the sons of Noah (Genesis 10); by sending seventy-two, Jesus signifies that the good news is destined for all the peoples of the earth. They return full of joy that the demons submit to them; Jesus tells them he saw “Satan fall from heaven like lightning” Luke 10:18, but turns them from this joy toward a higher one: “Rejoice that your names are written in heaven.” Luke 10:20.

The Good Samaritan

A doctor of the Law asks Jesus who is his neighbor. Jesus tells: a man, fallen into the hands of robbers, lies half dead on the road; a priest passes and steps aside, a Levite likewise; a Samaritan, whom the Jews despised, stops, binds his wounds, carries him to the inn and pays for him. Then Jesus turns the question back: which of the three made himself the neighbor of the wounded man? The doctor answers: the one who showed mercy. The question is not who deserves my love, but to whom I make myself near. “Go, and you also do likewise.” Luke 10:37.

The better part

Received in the house of two sisters, Jesus sees Martha busy with serving while Mary sits at his feet to listen to him. Martha complains of being left to serve alone; Jesus answers her that one thing only is necessary: “Mary has chosen the good part, which will not be taken from her.” Luke 10:42. To listen to the Lord comes before busyness. He also teaches persevering prayer: one must pray without tiring and ask with confidence, for the Father gives his children more than any father on earth, even the Holy Spirit himself (Luke 11:13).

The bent woman

One Sabbath, Jesus is teaching in a synagogue. There stands a woman whom a spirit has kept infirm for eighteen years: she is bent over and cannot straighten up. Jesus calls her and lays his hands on her: “Woman, you are freed from your infirmity.” Luke 13:12. At once she straightens and gives glory to God. The ruler of the synagogue is indignant that a healing should take place on that day and tells the crowd to come and be healed on one of the six working days. Jesus answers him: “Hypocrites! Does not each of you, on the Sabbath, untie his ox or his donkey from the stall and lead it out to water? And this daughter of Abraham, whom Satan had bound for eighteen years, ought she not to be freed from this bond on the Sabbath day?” Luke 13:15-16. The ruler sets his animal above a daughter of Abraham.

The man with dropsy

On another Sabbath, Jesus is received at the table of a leading Pharisee, and they all watch him. Before him is a man afflicted with dropsy, a buildup of fluid that swells and weighs down the body. Jesus questions the doctors of the Law and the Pharisees: “Is it lawful, or not, to heal on the Sabbath?” Luke 14:3. They keep silent. He takes the man, heals him and sends him away, then turns back to them: “Which of you, if his son or his ox falls into a well, will not pull him out at once on the Sabbath day?” Luke 14:5. No one would leave his son at the bottom of a well until the next day; to help a man presses just as much. “And they could make no reply to this.” Luke 14:6.

The parables of mercy

To the Pharisees who reproach him for welcoming sinners, Jesus answers with three stories that all tell the same heart of God. A shepherd who has a hundred sheep loses one: he leaves the others and runs after the stray until he finds it, then rejoices. A woman who loses a coin sweeps the whole house until she finds it, and calls her neighbors to share her joy. God acts thus: he seeks out the lost sinner and rejoices to find him. The third story goes further. A son claims his share of the inheritance, goes off far away, squanders everything and falls into a misery so deep that he envies the food of the pigs. Brought to nothing, he acknowledges his fault and returns to his father, ready to be only a servant. But the father sees him from afar, runs to him, covers him with kisses, clothes him in the finest robe, puts the ring on his finger and has the fattened calf killed: he restores him not as a servant, but as his son. “This son of mine was dead, and has come back to life; he was lost, and is found.” Luke 15:24. The elder son, who had remained faithful, is indignant at this feast: he figures those who serve God but reproach him for his mercy toward sinners. The father calls him to rejoice with him, for such is the joy of heaven over a single sinner who returns.

The rich man and Lazarus

Jesus tells a parable. A rich man feasts every day, indifferent to poor Lazarus covered with sores at his door. Both die: Lazarus is carried into the bosom of Abraham, the rich man finds himself in torment. An impassable chasm now separates them. The rich man begs that his brothers be warned; Abraham answers that they have Moses and the prophets: “If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, they will not be persuaded even if someone rises from the dead.” Luke 16:31. The use of goods decides the eternal lot, and the closed heart will not believe even before a dead man raised.

The indissolubility of marriage

Questioned about divorce, Jesus sends back to the beginning: God made man and woman and said that the two would be one single flesh (Genesis 2:24). “Let no man separate what God has joined.” Mark 10:9. If Moses permitted the writ of divorce, it was because of hardness of heart, but it was not so at the origin. Christ restores to marriage its first and indissoluble unity: the union of the spouses holds from God himself, and no human will can break it.

The ten lepers

On the road to Jerusalem, ten lepers stand at a distance, as the Law required, and cry out: “Jesus, Master, have pity on us.” Luke 17:13. He sends them to show themselves to the priests, and it is on the way, in the act of obeying, that they find themselves cleansed. One alone, seeing that he is healed, turns back glorifying God and falls at Jesus’ feet to thank him; and he is a Samaritan, a foreigner. Jesus notes the absence of the others: “Were not the ten cleansed? The nine, where are they?” Luke 17:17. The nine received the gift without returning to the one who gives it. To the one who returns, Jesus grants more than the body’s healing: “Rise, your faith has saved you.” Luke 17:19.

The Pharisee and the tax collector

Jesus sets, in a parable, two men who went up to pray at the Temple. The Pharisee stands and prays about himself: he thanks God that he is not like other men, robbers, unjust, adulterers, nor like this tax collector; he fasts twice a week and tithes on everything. The tax collector, at a distance, dares not lift his eyes; he beats his breast: “O God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” Luke 18:13. The first counts his merits before God, the second brings only his sin and his plea. It is the tax collector who goes down justified: “Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.” Luke 18:14.

The feast of Tabernacles

Jesus goes up to Jerusalem for the feast of Tabernacles, which recalled the forty years spent under tents in the desert. Each day of the feast, the priests drew water from the pool of Siloam and poured it on the altar, in memory of the water that sprang from the rock in the desert, when Moses, at God’s command, struck the rock and water came out for the thirsty people (Exodus 17:6), and to ask for rain, for the feast fell at the threshold of the rainy season on which the year’s harvests depended. On the last day, the most solemn, as this rite of water reaches its height, Jesus stands and cries out: “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink.” John 7:37. From the one who believes in him, he adds, will flow rivers of living water, according to what Zechariah had foretold: “On that day, living waters will flow out from Jerusalem.” Zechariah 14:8. He gives himself as the source that the rock and the rite foreshadowed, and this living water, the evangelist makes clear, is the Spirit whom believers will receive: “This he said of the Spirit whom those who believed in him were to receive.” John 7:39. The crowd is divided about him. The guards sent to arrest him come back without him, and explain themselves to those who had sent them: “No man ever spoke like this man.” John 7:46.

The adulterous woman

They bring him a woman caught in adultery, to trap him between the Law, which demands stoning, and mercy, which calls for pardon. Jesus bends down and writes on the ground, then straightens up: “Let the one among you who is without sin throw the first stone at her.” John 8:7. The accusers withdraw one by one. Left alone with her, he does not condemn her, yet does not pass over the fault in silence: “Go, and from now on sin no more.” John 8:11. Mercy raises up without abolishing the demand: it forgives the sin and calls to leave it.

“Before Abraham was, I Am”

In the Temple, Jesus declares that whoever keeps his word will never see death, and that Abraham exulted to see his day. They are astonished: he is not yet fifty years old, and he would have seen Abraham? He answers: “Before Abraham was, I Am.” John 8:58. He takes for himself the name God revealed to Moses, egō eimi (ἐγώ εἰμι), “I Am” (Exodus 3:14): he attributes to himself the eternal existence of God. They pick up stones to stone him as a blasphemer, but he slips away.

The man born blind

Jesus meets a man blind from birth. The disciples ask who sinned, he or his parents; Jesus sets both aside: “Neither he nor his parents sinned, but that the works of God might be manifested in him.” John 9:3. Then Jesus “spat on the ground, made mud with the saliva, and anointed the man’s eyes with it.” John 9:6. The same earth served at the beginning: “God formed man from the dust of the ground.” Genesis 2:7. This man had been born without sight, and the Creator takes up the dust again to complete in him what had been lacking from the origin. Jesus sends him to wash at the pool of Siloam, whose name, in Hebrew Shiloach (שִׁלֹחַ), means “sent.” This name designates Christ, the Sent One of the Father: the Sent One sends the blind man to the waters that bear his name. The man washes there and returns seeing; the water of Siloam figures baptism, where the water united to Christ opens the eyes to the light of faith. Brought before the Pharisees, he is questioned, for Jesus had made the mud on a Sabbath day. Opinions divide: for some, a man who does not keep the Sabbath does not come from God; for others, a sinner could not perform such signs. They ask the healed blind man what he thinks: “He is a prophet.” John 9:17. Doubting that he was born blind, they summon his parents, who, for fear of being expelled from the synagogue, only confirm that he is their son and was born blind. The man is called again, to make him acknowledge Jesus as a sinner; he holds to what he knows: “Whether he is a sinner I do not know; one thing I know: I was blind, and now I see.” John 9:25. As they press him, he reasons: God does not hear sinners, no one has ever opened the eyes of a man born blind, and if this man were not from God, he could do nothing. They retort: “You were born entirely in sins, and would you teach us?” John 9:34, and they cast him out. The blind man, who knew his need, has received the sight of the body and the light of faith; the Pharisees, sure that they see and know, refuse the one the miracle shows them and remain blind: “I came into this world for a judgment: that those who do not see may see, and that those who see may become blind.” John 9:39. Jesus finds the man who was cast out and reveals himself to him as the Son of Man, the one in whom to believe; the man bows down and worships: “I believe, Lord.” John 9:38.

The Good Shepherd

Jesus gives himself as the gate and the shepherd of the sheep: “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd gives his life for his sheep.” John 10:11. The hireling flees before the wolf, but he knows his own and his own know him. He has other sheep that are not of this fold, the nations, and he will lead them too: there will be one flock and one shepherd. His death is a free gift: “No one takes my life from me, I give it of myself.” John 10:18. At the feast of the Dedication, he affirms his unity with the Father: “I and the Father are one.” John 10:30. They take up stones again; he withdraws beyond the Jordan.

The raising of Lazarus

Lazarus, the brother of Martha and Mary, falls ill and dies. Jesus arrives at Bethany when he has been four days in the tomb. To Martha he reveals what he is: “I am the resurrection and the life; whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live.” John 11:25. He weeps before the tomb, then orders the stone removed and cries: “Lazarus, come out!” John 11:43. The dead man comes out, bound with strips of cloth. This sign, the greatest, decides the leaders to put him to death. Caiaphas declares that it is better that one man die for the people, without knowing that he prophesies: Jesus was to die for the nation, and to gather into unity the scattered children of God (John 11:51-52). From that day, they resolve on his death, and Jesus withdraws to Ephraim.

The children and the rich young man

Children are presented to Jesus, whom the disciples push aside; he is indignant: “Let the children come to me, for the Kingdom of God belongs to those who are like them.” Mark 10:14. One receives the Kingdom not as a due, but as a gift, in the manner of a little child. A rich man, who has kept the commandments since his youth, asks what he lacks; Jesus looked at him and loved him, then told him to sell his goods, give them to the poor and follow him. The man goes away sad, for he had great possessions. Jesus then measures the difficulty for the rich to enter the Kingdom, harder than for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle; to the frightened disciples he assures: “What is impossible for men is possible for God.” Luke 18:27.

The sons of Zebedee

James and John, the sons of Zebedee, approach and ask to sit one at his right, the other at his left, in his glory. Jesus answers that they do not know what they are asking: “Can you drink the cup that I am to drink?” Mark 10:38. The cup is his Passion. He tells them that they will indeed drink it: James will perish by the sword (Acts 12:2), John will know persecution and exile (Revelation 1:9). They thus have a share in his Passion: “If we suffer with him, it is so that we may also be glorified with him.” Romans 8:17. As for sitting at his right or his left, it is not his to grant, but the Father’s, for those he has prepared for it. The other ten are indignant at the two brothers. Jesus calls them all. Among the nations, he says, the rulers dominate and make their power felt; among them it will be the reverse: “Whoever wants to be great among you must be your servant; and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all.” Mark 10:43-44. He himself gives the measure of it: “The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for the multitude.” Mark 10:45. Greatness in the Kingdom is measured by service, and Jesus carried it as far as giving his life.

Bartimaeus and Zacchaeus

On leaving Jericho, the blind Bartimaeus begs by the roadside. Learning that Jesus is passing, he cries out: “Son of David, have pity on me!” Mark 10:47. Jesus calls him and gives him sight: “Go, your faith has saved you.” Mark 10:52. The man follows him on the way. In the town lives Zacchaeus, a chief of the tax collectors and very rich. In the service of Rome, he levies the tax on his own people and grows rich on what he takes: he is held to be a traitor. This man seeks to see who Jesus is; too small to see over the crowd, he runs ahead and climbs a sycamore. Jesus stops beneath the tree, calls him by name and invites himself to his house: “Zacchaeus, come down quickly, for today I must stay at your house.” Luke 19:5. Zacchaeus receives him with joy, while the crowd murmurs to see him enter the house of a sinner. Zacchaeus converts and makes a pledge: “Behold, Lord, I give half of my goods to the poor, and if I have wronged anyone of anything, I restore it fourfold.” Luke 19:8. In the house of the one all held to be lost, Jesus accomplishes his mission: “Today salvation has entered this house, because he too is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost.” Luke 19:9-10.

The anointing at Bethany

Six days before the Passover, at Bethany, Mary pours over Jesus a perfume of great price and wipes his feet with her hair; the house fills with the fragrance. Judas protests that the perfume could have been sold for the poor; but he did not speak out of care for the poor: holding the common purse, he was a thief and helped himself from it (John 12:6). Jesus defends the woman: “Leave her: she has kept this perfume for the day of my burial.” John 12:7. The anointing that honors the King already prepares the burial of the crucified. The table of Bethany opens onto the week in which all is to be accomplished.