Love in truth and action

The psalm from the Roman Catholic Lectionary today praises God and proclaims His will to be Lord of all nations. The Text from the Gospel of John is about the calling of Nathaniel who is addressed by Jesus as a true child of Israel. The exegesis offered by Friar Jude Winkler ties the calling of Nathaniel to the conversion of the Jewish Patriarch Jacob from a grasping deceiving personality to one of truth and openness who is renamed Israel by God. Nathaniel like many searching for a deeper relationship with God is recognized by Jesus as one who is sincerely seeking. Being under the fig tree is a reference to the study of the Law which Nathaniel pursued prior to be invited by Philip to “Come and See”. Scholarship and tradition would not lead anyone to believe that significant revelation of God would ever be associated with the dirt poor, Gentile corrupted village of Nazareth. This episode and the value of understanding the background of the very dualistic First Letter of John demonstrate the value in going deeper into the sacred texts through study, archaeology and meditation. The cognitive dissonance which we may initially experience by reading a text which talks of two types of people in the world, those who love to the extent of giving up their lives and those who hate as Cain who murdered Able, needs to be wrestled with, as Jacob did with God, to uncover the battle in that community with powerful heretical preachers. Friar Jude opens the meaning of the faith being hated by the world with the clarification that the texts of John refer to the “world” as those people who have rejected Christ. In our experience, rejection of Christ is present but most of the people are indifferent to Christ and therefore are not moved to hate the followers of the Way. Bringing Christ to all the nations requires our openness like that of Nathaniel to come and see all people as children of God for whom Love enables us to become Jesus to them.