Saturday of the Fifth Week of Easter
What is Jesus’s tone when he speaks these tough words of today’s Gospel? What is the timbre of his voice? Is it admonition, a firm correction of our desires for praise? Is it a warning, a slow-spoken attempt to prepare us? Is it encouragement, even, to embrace these coming trials?
Today I hear it as a lament. No loving father wants more than that his son be accepted, and the rejection of his son hurts him. Jesus does not rejoice in the fact that his friends suffer. Perhaps he even carries a sort of guilt that we suffer because we love him. So, he laments that the world is as it is, that it will put his friends through the whole gauntlet of persecutions, spiritual and physical.
I think Jesus wishes that it were otherwise. Probably we wish it were otherwise too. What we cannot do is run from such hatred. Unavoidable for us is the obligation to affirm, like the Lord, that all of his creation is good, forgiven, and invited into relationship. It’s a pity that such a truth makes enemies, but it does, as the Lord well knows and, indeed, laments.