Evildoers Seek to Take Your Life!
Gospel Reflection for Friday the Fourth Week of Lent April 4th, 2025
Today’s gospel begins with the Jewish Feast of Tabernacles, or Booths, a seven-day Fall harvest festival. The festival focused on building small structures to remember the Hebrews who had wandered in the wilderness for 40 years. “Tabernacles was an extremely joyous festival. As the Mishnah puts it, “He that never has seen the joy [during a Tabernacles celebration] has never in his life seen joy,” notes Francis Martin and William M. Wright.[1]
The festival is described in the book of Deuteronomy:
“You shall keep the Feast of Booths seven days, when you have gathered in the produce from your threshing floor and your winepress. You shall rejoice in your feast, you and your son and your daughter, your male servant and your female servant, the Levite, the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow who are within your towns. For seven days you shall keep the feast to the Lord your God at the place that the Lord will choose, because the Lord your God will bless you in all your produce and in all the work of your hands, so that you will be altogether joyful. [2]
It is key for our 21st century Christian understanding to note that in today’s gospel, this joyous feast serves as a preface for the rest of the narrative: a feast dedicated to the celebration of overcoming struggle. Our gospel for today also begins with another point of interest, the fact that Jesus is avoiding regions because Jewish leadership is trying to arrest and kill him. Jesus’ experience is the experience of many in the world today. There are those who will try to minimize it, but Christianity is the most persecuted religion in the world—do not let anyone tell you different.[3] In the global South, especially in parts of Africa, Christians are in danger of red martyrdom—physical death.
Why? It is simple.
Jesus Christ is victory! And being part of His Body gives us a share in that victory against the evildoers, in whom the Father will destroy any remembrance of them.[4] St. Paul writes about the effect of the gospel—the share in the victory, “But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God.”[5]
We are heirs of the Kingdom of God, the 2nd person of the Trinity, bringing to us the sovereignty of God to reign over Heaven and earth to put underfoot those who desire their own selfish designs—and not the will of God![6]
What is Jesus’ example in the Gospel? How are we called to imitate Him? The first thing He does is He goes to the feast because with the good news, especially all of us after Easter Sunday, there is a joy in our heart that cannot be undone by those opposed to the Father’s will. The next step from our Lord is that He boldly confronts the evildoers with His authority in the temple. Our baptism, by being baptized, sharing in Christ’s munus triplex (threefold office) of priest, prophet, and King, gives us the ability, as Paul echoes in Galatians, to cry out “our Father” by means of Jesus Himself. Jesus died for me—He died for you—and He rose again from the dead to restore our innocence and give us eternal life. The message of victory, the one that saves our brethren from death, cannot be tolerated by the evildoers.
In the West, our persecution is not typically red at the moment, but it is important to be reminded that so long as we have breath in our lungs and the gospel in our hearts, we are enemies of the secular culture who may indeed demand our lives someday. Francis Cardinal George said, “I expect to die in bed, my successor will die in prison and his successor will die a martyr in the public square…His successor will pick up the shards of a ruined society and slowly help rebuild civilization, as the church has done so often in human history.”[7]
Or, as Christians have prayed for two millennia:
Come, Lord Jesus! (Maranatha)
But, as we wait for His return, let us boldly proclaim the Gospel to all creatures, no matter the risk, because we’ve already won. Our victory, through Christ, has already been assured to us as adopted heirs—the sons and daughters of God. It is a dangerous message to the world, so let us begin the work.
[1] Francis Martin and William M. Wright IV, The Gospel of John, ed. Peter S. Williamson and Mary Healy, Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2015), 137.
[2] Dt 16:13–15, ESV-CE.
[3] Christian persecution at ‘near genocide levels’ BBC March 3rd, 2019, https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-48146305 accessed on April 2, 2025. Note: I picked this article at random, there are many different ones a simple internet search will find for a person. I suggest using a broswer like duckduckgo to look for them, a google search buries them.
[4] Psalm 34(33):17
[5] Ga 4:4–7, ESV-CE
[6] Jesus explains in Matthew 7:21 that those who enter the Kingdom of Heaven do the will of the Father.
[7] 1. Tim Drake, “Cardinal George: The Myth and Reality of ‘I’ll Die in My Bed,’” NCR, April 18, 2015, https://www.ncregister.com/blog/cardinal-george-the-myth-and-reality-of-ill-die-in-my-bed. accessed April 3, 2025.