Even though there was a threat to His life, Jesus still secretly went to Judea to attend the Feast of the Tabernacle.

He has come to obey a vocation, like any prophet,

”I have not come of My own accord but He who sent Me is true, and you do not know Him.

But I know Him, because I have My being from Him and it was He who sent Me”.

 

＊＊＊ 1st Reading ＊＊＊

Wisdom of Solomon 2:1a, 12-22

Led by mistaken reasons they think,

"Life is short and sad and there is no cure for death."

Let us set a trap for the righteous, for he annoys us and opposes our way of life; he reproaches us for our breaches of the law and accuses us of being false to our upbringing. He claims knowledge of God and calls himself son of the Lord. He has become a reproach to our way of thinking; even to meet him is burdensome to us. He does not live like others and behaves strangely.

 

According to him we have low standards, so he keeps aloof from us as if we were unclean. He emphasizes the happy end of the righteous and boasts of having God as father. Let us see the truth of what he says and find out what his end will be. If the righteous is a son of God, God will defend him and deliver him from his adversaries.

 

Let us humble and torture him to prove his self-control and test his patience. When we have condemned him to a shameful death, we may test his words." This is the way they reason, but they are mistaken, blinded by their malice. They do not know the mysteries of God nor do they hope for the reward of a holy life; they do not believe that the blameless will be recompensed.

 

Ps 34:17-18, 19-20, 21, 23 The Lord is close to the brokenhearted.

 

＊＊＊ Gospel ＊＊＊      

John 7:1-2, 10, 25-30

After this, Jesus went around Galilee; he would not go about in Judea, because the Jews wanted to kill him. Now the Jewish feast of the Tents was at hand. 

But after his brothers had gone to the festival, he also went up, not publicly but in secret.

Some of the people of Jerusalem said, "Is this not the man they want to kill? And here he is speaking freely, and they don't say a word to him? Can it be that the rulers know that this is really the Christ? Yet we know where this man comes from; but when the Christ appears, no one will know where he comes from."

 

So Jesus announced in a loud voice in the temple court where he was teaching, "You say that you know me and know where I come from! I have not come of myself; I was sent by the One who is true, and you don't know him. I know him, for I come from him, and he sent me."

They would have arrested him, but no one laid hands on him because his time had not yet come.

 

Gospel Reflection ：

"To know is to believe."

In John's Gospel, the word to "know" is always juxtaposed with the idea of "believing." To know is to believe while to be ignorant is to be unbelieving. Today's Gospel tells of Jesus who knows the Father because he came from the Father and sent by the Father to save the world. Some of the people in Jerusalem could not believe Jesus because they remained ignorant of Jesus.

 

Jesus tried to reach out to them by making them aware of God's presence in the world, serving as light so that the Father might be revealed. But some people preferred darkness to light because they neither wanted their ignorance of God to be exposed nor did they want to reach out to Jesus, the light, who reveals the Father. The desire of every disciple of Jesus is to grow in the knowledge of him.

 

But how shall we grow in our knowledge of Jesus? We always begin by reading the Bible while being reminded of the words of St. Jerome: "Ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ."