Friday of the Fifth Week of Lent:

Reading I: Jeremiah 20:10–13
Psalm: 18:2–3a, 3bc–4, 5–6, 7
Gospel: John 10:31–42

One week before Good Friday, the Church offers us a passage from John’s Gospel which underscores the motivation for and consequence of Christ’s redemptive work.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church puts it well by quoting a number of the Church fathers in a paragraph teeming with profundities: “The Word became flesh to make us ‘partakers of the divine nature’: ‘For this is why the Word became man, and the Son of God became the Son of man: so that man, by entering into communion with the Word and thus receiving divine sonship, might become a son of God.’ ‘For the Son of God became man so that we might become God.’ ‘The only-begotten Son of God, wanting to make us sharers in his divinity, assumed our nature, so that he, made man, might make men gods.’”
In today’s episode, the Jews once again seek to kill Jesus because He has called Himself the Son of God. In response, however, Jesus draws on an old Torah tradition established in Psalm 82 which referred to God’s holy ones as gods. If Scripture can describe these people as gods, Jesus argues, then how much more so can “the one whom the Father has consecrated and sent into the world” be described as the Son of God (see John 10:36)! The layers of meaning are profound. However, Jesus is aware that under the Old Covenant even the holiest of people could not become partakers of the divine nature, and in this sense they could still only be described as children of God. And yet it is precisely because Jesus Himself, the Son of God, took on human flesh that we, His younger brothers and sisters, now find our humanity elevated to the point where we can literally share in the divine nature through divine adoption (see John 1:12).
If this doesn’t startle or pierce you, you probably aren’t contemplating it seriously enough! In no other religion do we find the majesty and the beauty of the truth claims which are found in Catholic Christianity. This saving truth is rooted in Jesus Christ; He beckons us to follow Him and to become more like Him.

What have I learned about sacred theology and Sacred Scripture this Lent?

How can I continue to develop a knowledge of and, more importantly, a love for the doctrines of the Catholic faith?