John 8,51-59 – Thursday of the V Week of Lent
“Truly, truly, I say to you, if anyone keeps my word, he will never see death.” The Jews then said to him, “Now we know that you have a demon.” Many things can be accepted about Jesus: his words, his teachings, even his human figure can arouse sympathy. But there is a point that becomes unbearable: the question of eternal life, of the victory over death of the “fact” of resurrection. This is where the scandal arises.
Many appreciate Jesus as a moral teacher, as a wise man, as an example. But Christianity is not founded primarily on ethical teaching. It is based on an event: the resurrection. Without this, everything else collapses. Saint Paul says it clearly: “If Christ has not been raised, your faith is in vain.” In today’s Gospel Jesus speaks precisely of this: of a life that goes beyond death. And he is immediately accused of being out of his mind, even possessed. Because the resurrection is not an easy idea to accept. It calls into question our way of thinking about life, time, destiny. We should ask ourselves seriously what place does the resurrection of Christ have in our faith?. Do we really believe that He was resurrected? And do we believe that our destiny is also linked to this same new life?
Often, however, we have a confused idea of resurrection. We imagine it as a simple resuscitation of the body, or, even more distant from the Gospel, as a sort of reincarnation. But the resurrection is something else. It’s not a return to the old life, it’s a transition to a completely new life. If we wanted to use an image, we could think of the seed that dies and becomes an ear. The ear is different from the seed, yet it is entirely contained in it. This is how the resurrected life is: we don’t know exactly what it will be like, but we know that it is real, that it is promised, that it is fulfillment. Christ has opened us to this life. Our faith is not only directed at what we see, but at what we are called to become. If we had a true inner certainty of the resurrection, we would live this existence differently.
Thursday 26 March 2026 – Thursday of the V Week of Lent)
