In today's gospel some gentiles ask Phillip for an audience with Jesus. What evolves is Christ's introspective look at the next week, the Passover where He will die. It is the old Catholic "Passiontide," the two week period of Christ's passion and death which the church has since diminished to give the emphasis to the entire Lenten period.
This is the beginning of the great unsettling: Christ is distressed. What could possibly be worse:
“I am troubled now. Yet what should I say?
‘Father, save me from this hour’?
But it was for this purpose that I came to this hour.
Father, glorify your name.”
He abstractly speaks what He will agonize over in Gethsemane, the brutality of the crucifixion.
Then He gets to the heart of it all:
"Now is the time of judgment on this world;
now the ruler of this world will be driven out.
And when I am lifted up from the earth,
I will draw everyone to myself.”
"The ruler of this world?" Satan? Materialism?
"..when I am lifted up from the earth?" On the cross? From the tomb? The Ascension?
The searching gentiles never enter the scene again.
This is the beginning of the great unsettling: Christ is distressed. What could possibly be worse:
“I am troubled now. Yet what should I say?
‘Father, save me from this hour’?
But it was for this purpose that I came to this hour.
Father, glorify your name.”
He abstractly speaks what He will agonize over in Gethsemane, the brutality of the crucifixion.
Then He gets to the heart of it all:
"Now is the time of judgment on this world;
now the ruler of this world will be driven out.
And when I am lifted up from the earth,
I will draw everyone to myself.”
"The ruler of this world?" Satan? Materialism?
"..when I am lifted up from the earth?" On the cross? From the tomb? The Ascension?
The searching gentiles never enter the scene again.
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