In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee.
Blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
Our Lady's Seat of Wisdom, St. Joseph.
Our patron saints and guardian angels.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
In the first reading, we hear about the promise that God made with his covenant with Abram,
changing his name to Abraham, and promising him, you know,
all the blessings that would come from this covenant that God would make with Abraham and his descendants
because of this great act of faith.
The faith that Abraham made in being willing to sacrifice his own son at the command of God,
knowing that somehow God would restore his son to life,
and having belief in the resurrection of the dead,
and in the coming and promised Messiah.
All that was, I'd say, inherent or contained in that covenant that God made with Abraham.
It wasn't just that Abraham...
did this act of obedience.
It was that he also had in mind the promise and the belief in the coming Redeemer
and God's promise of salvation that he was going to send through this Redeemer, this Messiah.
So in the Gospel today, our Lord continues his arguing with the Pharisees
who continue to ask him who he is.
Who are you?
And finally he says quite explicitly to them, even using the name of God,
the sacred tetragrammaton, you know, I am Yahweh.
And at that they went to pick up stones and throw them at him.
But it is interesting in this comments that the Jews said to him when he says about Abraham,
your father rejoiced to see my day.
He saw it and was glad.
So the Jews said to him, you are not yet 50 years old and you have seen Abraham.
You might say, what is this about 50 years old?
Because Abraham lived centuries before our Lord.
Why were they picking out a year of 50?
Well, because even in the ancient Greeks and others,
the Greeks didn't think you had any wisdom until you had reached the age of 50.
That you weren't really...
I guess, proficient in the science of wisdom
and able to teach it to others until you had reached a certain age of experience
as well as, you might say, putting the theory into practice.
And by the age of 50 they thought you were, I guess, had reached that noble age of being a wise man.
And so I suppose they thought, well, you haven't had any mystical experiences probably.
Maybe that's what they were implying.
How have you seen Abraham?
And then our Lord finally just says explicitly to them,
which they probably already knew he was,
and they've said it other times, that he was comparing himself to being equal to the father,
that he was God's son.
When they asked him, why are we stoning you?
Because you claim to be God.
So they finally, he says quite clearly for them,
that he gives his identity.
And they are not happy to hear it,
even though they keep pressing him.
They want some answer, but they don't want that one
because they are, as we said, hard of heart.
If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts.
How many times you might say, it says,
if we love the Lord, we will listen to him.
We will obey him.
And yet, you know, we don't really know the Lord
or can say we know the Lord
if we don't keep his commandments.
How can we say we really know him
if we don't put it into practice and follow his way?
Because part of knowing someone, in a certain sense,
is being so attentive to what they want and desire
that you want to fulfill it.
And obviously God has made known to us his commandments.
And what he wants us to do in order to live a good life,
we can say, yes, I know them.
In one sense, I see them.
I can recite them to you.
But to really say that we know what God wants
or to know him is to put those things into practice.
Because there's a certain knowledge that comes
from fulfilling God's will
and doing what he wants to be done.
There's that knowledge that comes from
a certain familiarity and a friendship.
And of course, how can we be a friend of God
if we're not obeying his commandments?
Our Lord is saying,
you do not know him, but I know him.
And if I should say that I do not know him,
I would be like you, a liar.
But I do know him and keep his word.
So the point that we need to always keep in mind is that
if we really want to come to know the Lord,
we have to follow his way
and keep his word
and keep his commandments.
In a certain sense, if we,
we will know the Lord
if we put into practice our Catholic faith.
There's a certain knowledge that comes from,
from that
assenting to all that he has revealed.
And if we know that God has revealed to us
through his church
all that we need to know
in order to please him,
but also in order to know him,
there's a certain knowledge that we obtain
through the revelation that God has revealed
and he's given it to the church
for the sake of helping us to
come to know the Lord so that we can therefore love him.
If someone says, I don't know God,
well, the first place we have to take them
is to the catechism.
And that will be the first, you might say,
first level of knowledge,
knowing something intellectually.
But then there will become a deeper knowledge
of abiding by it
and putting it into practice
and praying.
That's the other level that comes from
knowing someone because you love them.
It's one thing to know someone
to know somebody's details,
their information, their background,
but to really know them you must,
in one sense, comes that kind of knowledge
that comes from loving God.
And so we need to realize that
during this season of Lent
it has been an opportunity given to us by the church
to deepen our love
and our knowledge of God and his ways.
Because if we do that,
we hopefully will put it into practice.
And then, of course, we know that
the fullest knowledge that we will have of God
is when we get to heaven,
where we will not have this medium of faith,
but we'll see him face to face.
Let us pray and ask that we will not be,
in one sense, on the day that we die,
that God will not say those frightening words
that he said to the Pharisees,
you do not, I know God,
but you do not know him,
that we truly know him
because we have been living out our faith
and we have been entering into this relationship
with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit
in a deep commitment of our will
to follow him and to love and serve him.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son,
and of the Holy Spirit, amen.
Amen.