The foregoing has made us aware of Our Lord’s approach to any confrontation with the Jews of His days. We admire His utter patience and charity. He never once veered away from the golden rule: either to argue from their own ground and not from someone else’s point of view, or else not to argue at all. The Scriptures were fully open to the Jews and were often brought up by His adversaries themselves. Although Our Lord knew that the Jewish leadership did not believe in Moses and had no faith in the Prophets, arguing from these precious Books was not “arguing from someone else’s point of view”, but from their own unbelief. And since all Scripture was about Him, He did what once His great Apostle of the Gentiles, St. Paul, would write down:

“All Scripture is inspired by God and can profitably be used for teaching, for refuting error, for guiding people’s lives and teaching them to be holy.” (2 Tim. 3:16)

          He taught His listeners about Himself. And we marvel at the way He was never cornered, how He was never on the defensive, but also how He never attacked in those fiery confrontations. He knew what those who were listening to Him should know and could have known. They ought to have known from their own history, so meticulously written down, how their forefathers had been in the habit of murdering the prophets sent to them by God, and that this long history of antagonism should have cautioned His hearers against indulging in any hasty judgement, even rejection, in case they were in the presence of The Prophet, their long-awaited Messiah. His whole approach to His generation was one of common sense in preparation for the reception of a free and inestimable gift: the gift of Faith, Faith in Him, Faith in His Father, faith in their own destiny. And we know of only one man in the inner circle of the Jewish leadership, Nicodemus, who was open to this common sense approach as a condition for acceptance.

          Common sense ... We saw how it failed to materialise in the previous dispute. Will it be any better in the next one? [Ch. 7].

After this Jesus stayed in Galilee; he could not go about in Judea, because the Jews were out to kill him. As the Jewish feast of Tabernacles drew near his brothers said to him, “Leave here and go to Judea, that your disciples may see the works you are doing. For no man works in secret if he seeks to be known openly. If you do these things, show yourself to the world.” For even his brothers did not believe in him. Jesus said to them, “My time has not yet come, but your time is always here. The world cannot hate you, but it hates me because I testify of it that its works are evil. Go to the feast yourselves; I am not going up to this feast, for my time has not yet fully come”. Having said that, he remained in Galilee. But after his brothers had gone up to the feast, then he also went up, not publicly but quite privately without drawing attention to himself.

          This short exchange between Our Lord and His kinsmen is of some importance as it forces us to find an explanation of why He told them that He was not going up to Jerusalem to the approaching festival while knowing fully well that He would be going. Under normal circumstances, most people would see this as a contradiction of the truth and so condemn it out of hand as a lie. But here we are not ‘under normal circumstances’ as the One who made the statement would one day declare of Himself: “I am the ... Truth” [John 14:6], and so, being the Truth, He could never utter a lie nor could He ever be accused of having told one. The explanation lies in the profound difference between what is normally referred to as a contradiction and a paradox. A paradox is not a contradiction but something that has only got the appearance of a contradiction, and so is merely an apparent contradiction hiding in the deep recesses of its cloak a profound truth.

          What Our Blessed Lord really was conveying to His brothers was the message: “I am not going to Jerusalem and to the festival the way you are going, nor the way you want Me to go”. “I am not going to Jerusalem as a sideshow, as a kind of super-magician, in order to draw the eyes of the world to Myself”. What He did say was only the part of the sentences underlined above. The remainder of the message was finished privately in His mind, the part that held the profound truth of the paradox. The part He said in His mind, that is, the not-underlined part of the complete sentences above, is aptly called a mental reservation. The truth is there, but reserved in His mind for very special reasons.

          The most important reason for the use of a mental reservation is that the full truth would not be grasped, would be injured and impaired, and in its damaged way would be spread around to great injury of other recipients of such a mangled and devastated ‘truth’. It was obvious that the ‘brothers’ would not understand His mental reservation if it had been made known to them. The very fact that they had urged Him to go to Jerusalem as a kind of ‘super-magician’, as a kind of ‘side-show’, reveals that these thoughts were uppermost in their minds, blotting out all light, and blocking all reason, for the acceptance of a rejection of their approach. Basking in His glory they would tell anyone who cared to listen to them that the reason for His coming to Jerusalem was for something spectacular. As the Gospel narrative already soberly tells us, the people were already on the look-out for Him in plenty of expectation. The false rumours of His ‘brothers’ would drive this expectation to fever pitch.

          Our Lord gave us another example of a mental reservation, this time at the height of His sacred passion before Pilate. On the governor’s question “Are you the king of the Jews?”, Jesus replied: “It is you who say it”, [Mt. 27:11]; “These are your own words”, [Mk. 15:2]; “It is you who say it”, [Lk. 23:3]; “Do you ask this of your own accord, or have others spoken to you about me?”, [Jo. 18:34]. In other words, Jesus made it clear “I am not a king as those outside there are putting it to you”. After that He waited to give Pilate a chance to show to Him that he knew the difference. Pilate, “realising that it was out of jealousy that the chief priests had handed Jesus over” [Lk. 15:10], replied to Jesus’ question: “Am I a Jew?” In other words he asked Jesus: “Do you associate me with that rabble out there?”. “You must realise that I do not believe that you are a king as they are making you out. I would have heard of that!” That was enough for Jesus to know that the full truth of His Kingship would not be garbled by Pilate, and He said: “Yes, I am a King ...”

          To highlight the sense of His first mental reservation dealt with above, the story in chapter 8 of St. John’s Gospel then goes on:

The Jews were looking for him at the feast, and saying, “Where is he?” And there was much whispering about him among the people. While some said, “He is a good man”, others said, “No, he is leading the people astray”.

          They looked for Him as if He was the main attraction to provide a diversion on their ‘holiday’ around which the crowds would gather in anticipation of some spectacular entertainment. No wonder Our Blessed Lord refused to go up to Jerusalem to fuel this type of expectation, just as before Pilate He refused to fuel the false kingship of which He was being accused by the chief priests. Only in St. John’s Gospel was the true identity of His Kingship revealed after Pilate had dissociated himself from the caricature of that Kingship as held up by the Jewish priesthood inflamed by jealousy.

          “No, he is leading the people astray ...”

          It is obvious that this was a hasty and baseless accusation without any foundation in fact. It shows how even the ordinary Jews were frozen in the wasteland of their apostasy from Moses and the Prophets in their stagnation that all that was needed to belong to the chosen race was to be numbered among the children of Abraham. When Christ appealed to their true identity and destiny and to Abraham’s spiritual fatherhood: the privilege to give the Messiah to the world, they were caught in their erroneous conviction that he was leading the people astray, away from their familiar surroundings, their comforting make-believe.

Yet for fear of the Jews no one spoke openly of him. About the middle of the feast Jesus went up into the temple and taught. The Jews were astonished about this saying, “How is it that this man has learning, when he has never studied?” So Jesus answered them, “My teaching is not my own, but comes from the one who sent me. And if anyone is prepared to do his will, he shall know whether my teaching is from God or if I am speaking on my own authority. He who speaks on his own authority seeks his own glory; but he who seeks the glory of him who sent him is true, and in him there is no falsehood. Did not Moses give you the law? Yet none of you keeps the law. Why do you seek to kill me?”

          Here Our Lord makes clear the difference between going up to a Jewish feast to do the Father’s Will and to go up to do one’s own will as contained in the accusation levelled at them in these words: “Yet none of you keeps the law”. Moses gave you the law on God’s authority, not his own. And you would honour the messenger and so the One who sent him, if you had listened to him and had kept the law. So, by not listening to Moses and by not keeping the law, you are dishonouring God and have turned a festival in His honour into a holiday to please yourselves. “Why do you seek to kill Me?” Killing Me is not in the law, but is found in the widespread practice of your fathers who killed the Prophets sent to you by God.

The people answered, “You are possessed! Who is seeking to kill you?” Jesus answered them, “I did one deed, and you all marvel at it. Moses gave you circumcision (not that it is from Moses, but from the fathers), and you circumcise a man upon the sabbath. If on the sabbath a man receives circumcision, so that the law of Moses may not be broken, why are you angry with me because on the sabbath I made a man’s whole body well? Do not judge by appearances, but judge with right judgment”.

          The cure Jesus refers to here is the one described in chapter 5 of St. John’s Gospel, the cure of the paralytic man on His previous visit to Jerusalem, a cure therefore still fresh in His hearers’ memory and not beyond their comprehension. How quickly they forget ...

          This little episode sheds an unexpected light on how entrenched the ordinary Jews were in their hollowed-out conviction that, in their apostasy from Moses and the Prophets, they were pleasing to God as His people. And in this entrenched position they were much rather prepared to follow ‘the authorities’ who would reinforce their pitiful existence than to accept a Messiah who was sent by God to redeem them from such leaders. The next few lines in St. John’s Gospel make this abundantly clear:

Meanwhile some of the people in Jerusalem were saying, “Is not this the man whom they seek to kill? And here he is, speaking openly, and they say nothing to him! Can it be that the authorities really know that this is the Christ? Yet we know where this man comes from; and when the Christ appears, no one will know where he comes from”.

          And with a sigh of relief we can hear them sink back on the cushions of their make- believe; their hope that ‘the authorities’ would be proven right and that this upsetting Man would turn out to be an impostor.

          Here we have come across the most accurate description of the identical state in which so many of our present-day ‘catholics’ find themselves ensnared. They cherish the same fervent hope that their Modernist leaders are correct in leaving them comfortably in their make-believe that the caricature of the ‘catholic church’ they hold up is the new, post-conciliar ‘church’ and that the true Catholic Church has died and was buried with the Second Vatican Council. This latest caricature is identical with the world and all its unbelief and vices, with all its pursuit of everything from which Our Lord and Saviour came to redeem us. What follows is Our Blessed Lord’s answer to these modernist ‘catholics’ as it was to the unbelieving Jews 2000 years ago ...

          This comparison between our Modernist ‘catholics’ and the unbelieving Jews of Our Lord’s time will grow in intensity during the remainder of St. John’s narrative of the Jewish disputes with the Son of God, the Messiah, until it culminates in His sacred Passion and Death of which the destruction of the Catholic Church will be the exact replay.

So Jesus proclaimed, as he taught in the temple, “You know me, and you know where I come from? But I have not come of my own accord; he who sent me is true, and him you do not know. I know him, for I come from him, and he sent me”. So they sought to arrest him; but no one laid hands on him, because his hour had not yet come. Yet many of the people believed in him; they said, “When the Christ appears, will he do more signs than this man has done?”

          “So they sought to arrest him ...”

          Nothing He says penetrates. Arrest Him. Get rid of Him. Make Him disappear. How different is all this from our own situation? “Get rid of the Pope. Let him abdicate! Give us a pope of our own image and likeness, one who will give us a ‘church’ of our own making, teaching the doctrines of our own making. A ‘church’ who will leave us at peace with the world ...”

Hearing that rumours like this about him were spreading among the people, the chief priests and Pharisees sent officers to arrest him. Jesus then said, “I shall be with you a little while longer and then I go to him who sent me. You will seek me and you will not find me; where I am you cannot come”. The Jews then said to one another, “Where is he going that we shall not find him? Does he intend to go to the Dispersion among the Greeks and teach the Greeks? What does he mean when he says ‘You will look for me and you will not find me’, and ‘Where I am you cannot come’?”

          What a pooling of ignorance! Asking one another what He means ...! Just as the Modernists of our own days exclusively ask one another what the Catholic Church means with Her teaching instead of consulting Tradition. And if they do find a ‘suitable’ answer amongst themselves, one that fits in with their New Age ‘church’, they accept that teaching in preference to that of the Catholic Church.

          As for the Jewish ignorance of ‘not knowing where He was going’, this clearly shows up that their professed ‘knowledge of where He came from’ was an untruth. Not knowing Who it was to whom He was returning utterly precludes knowing where He came from ...

On the last and greatest day of the festival, Jesus stood there and proclaimed, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. As Scripture says, he who believes in me, ‘out of his heart shall flow fountains of living water’.” This he said about the Spirit, which those who believed in him were to receive; for as yet the Spirit had not been given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.

          From the effect this teaching had on some of His hearers: When they heard these words, some of the people said, “This is really the prophet.” Others said, “This is the Christ”, we must confidently conclude that Our Lord spoke these words as an antidote for their ignorance. For they knew enough to know that “the Christ” and “the Prophet” was sent by God and so would return to God. The fact that they did not know where He was actually born did not excuse them from knowing where He was not born: He was not born in Nazareth, a Galilean town. He returned there (from Egypt) at about seven years of age. Yet some wilfully persisted in this erroneous assumption of His place of birth:

But some said, “Is the Christ to come from Galilee? Has not the Scripture said that the Christ is descended from David, and comes from Bethlehem, the village where David was?” So there was a division among the people over him.

          That Christ was actually born in Bethlehem, the city of David, was heralded by the shepherds, and some Jewish chronicler could have made a note of that occurrence for future reference. Also, when the Magi arrived in Jerusalem from the East and enquired where the newborn King of the Jews was to be found, the sacred Evangelist clearly stated that “the whole of Jerusalem” was perturbed with king Herod. The chief priests and scribes were consulted and their verdict was that the Christ was to be born in Bethlehem in Judea.

          Thus “the whole of Jerusalem” knew that Herod not only sent the Wise Men to Bethlehem to enquire about the newborn King, but also his soldiers for the random massacre of all the male children two years and under. This means that it was premeditated ill-will that these momentous happenings were suppressed from being recorded in the official annals of the Jewish history, although the event was predicted in the Old Testament: The Lord says this: “A voice is heard in Ramah, lamentation and bitter weeping. Rachel is weeping for her children; she refuses to be comforted for her children, because they are not” (Jer. 31: 15). (See Mt. 2: 1-18).

Some of them wanted to arrest him, but no one laid hands on him. The officers then went back to the chief priests and Pharisees, who said to them, “Why did you not bring him?” The officers answered, “No man ever spoke like this man!” The Pharisees answered them, “Are you led astray also? Have any of the authorities or of the Pharisees believed in him? But this crowd, who do not know the law, are accursed”. Nicodemus, who had gone to him before, and who was one of them, said to them, “Does our law judge a man without first giving him a hearing and learning what he does?” They replied, “Are you from Galilee too? Search and you will see that no prophet is to rise from Galilee.”

          We’ll leave that as it is, saying with Our Lord: “These are your own words”. But the wilful suppression of what was common knowledge in “the whole of Jerusalem” some thirty years before is no foundation for what is being officially asserted here: that this Christ could not be the Christ because He appeared to come from Galilee.

          They went each to his own house.

Summary of St John’s Chapter 7

He came amongst His own, but His own did not accept Him ... (Jo. 1: 11).

          Here, in chapter seven, we see the truth of these words painted before us in all their ugly starkness. We see how at every twist and turn of these darkened minds another objection is being grasped to prevent acceptance of what had perturbed “the whole of Jerusalem” not all that long ago: the birth of the newborn King of the Jews. He had done things of which the more simple and straightforward people had said: “When the Christ comes, will he give more signs than this man?”. He had said things of which even the members of the temple guard had been forced to confess: “No man ever spoke like him”. He had appeared so innocent and correct that a believer amongst the Jewish hierarchy, Nicodemus, had spontaneously thrown at them: “Surely, the law does not allow us to pass judgement on a man without giving him a hearing and discovering what he is about?”. It was all to no avail. The whole matter could only be resolved in those dark minds by one thing: He had to be done away with as quickly as possible.