Thursday, Fifth Week of Lent

Jesus seems to make an extraordinary claim at the beginning of today’s gospel reading, ‘Whoever keeps my word will never see death’. We all know that we will see death at some time. It is the one reality we can all be sure of. We know too that our loved ones will see death. No matter how deep our love for someone, we cannot prevent them from seeing death. We can only hope and pray that their death will be as far off as possible. Jesus couldn’t have meant that whoever keeps his word will never see physical death. He can only mean that whoever keeps his word will never see spiritual or eternal death. Earlier in this gospel of John, Jesus had said, ‘The words I have spoken to you are spirit and life’. He is saying that the words he speaks are full of God’s Spirit and full of God’s life, a life which is eternal and over which death has no power. If we listen to the Lord’s word and try to live by it, we will open ourselves up to the Spirit of God’s life. We will begin to live here and now with the life of God, which is a life that continues beyond our physical death, and, so, even though we will die physically, we will never die spiritually. When we keep the Lord’s word, in the sense of listening to it and trying to live by it, we will come to share here and now in the Lord’s own life, which is a life that will never end. In that earlier passage of John’s gospel where Jesus says his words are ‘spirit and life’, he goes on to ask the twelve disciples, ‘Do you also wish to go away?’ Many of Jesus’ disciples had just then turned back and no longer went about with him. In response to Jesus’ question, Peter answers, ‘Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life’. We are each invited to make our own that wonderful response of Peter to Jesus’ question.