I am from him, and he sent me

15 MARCH (Jn 7,1-2.10.25-30)

Every prophet was sent by God. In ancient Israel kings and priests became such by birth. Only the prophet is the fruit of the Lord’s everlasting will. That is how this truth is so strongly expressed by the prophet Amos before the priest Amaziah.

This is what the Lord God showed me: He was forming a locust swarm when the late growth began to come up (the late growth after the king’s mowing). While they were eating all the grass in the land, I said: Forgive, O Lord God! How can Jacob stand? He is so small! And the Lord repented of this. “It shall not be,” said the Lord God. Then the Lord God showed me this: he called for a judgment by fire. It had devoured the great abyss, and was consuming the land, when I said: Cease, O Lord God! How can Jacob stand? He is so small! The Lord repented of this. “This also shall not be,” said the Lord God. Then the Lord God showed me this: he was standing by a wall, plummet in hand. The Lord asked me, “What do you see, Amos?” And when I answered, “A plummet,” the Lord said: See, I will lay the plummet in the midst of my people Israel; I will forgive them no longer. The high places of Isaac shall be laid waste, and the sanctuaries of Israel made desolate; I will attack the house of Jeroboam with the sword.

Amaziah, the priest of Bethel, sent word to Jeroboam, king of Israel: “Amos has conspired against you here within Israel; the country cannot endure all his words. For this is what Amos says: Jeroboam shall die by the sword, and Israel shall surely be exiled from its land.” To Amos, Amaziah said: “Off with you, visionary, flee to the land of Judah! There earn your bread by prophesying, but never again prophesy in Bethel; for it is the king’s sanctuary and a royal temple.” Amos answered Amaziah, “I was no prophet, nor have I belonged to a company of prophets; I was a shepherd and a dresser of sycamores. The Lord took me from following the flock, and said to me, Go, prophesy to my people Israel. Now hear the word of the Lord!” You say: prophesy not against Israel, preach not against the house of Isaac. Now thus says the Lord: Your wife shall be made a harlot in the city, and your sons and daughters shall fall by the sword; Your land shall be divided by measuring line, and you yourself shall die in an unclean land; Israel shall be exiled far from its land.(Am 7,1-17).

There is a substantial difference between the being sent of Amos and the one of Jesus Christ. Amos is a creature. The Lord gave him the prophetic investiture. He was a messenger of the divine Word. Not only is Jesus the creature. He is together the Creator and the creature. He is God and man. He does not come from the earth. He was sent from eternity. He comes from the womb of the Father. This is the hidden mystery in his life. Deity is his essence, his nature. He is the Son of the Father generated in eternity, in the beginning, always.

After this, Jesus moved about within Galilee; but he did not wish to travel in Judea, because the Jews were trying to kill him. But the Jewish feast of Tabernacles was near. But when his brothers had gone up to the feast, he himself also went up, not openly but (as it were) in secret. So some of the inhabitants of Jerusalem said, “Is he not the one they are trying to kill? And look, he is speaking openly and they say nothing to him. Could the authorities have realized that he is the Messiah? But we know where he is from. When the Messiah comes, no one will know where he is from.” So Jesus cried out in the temple area as he was teaching and said, “You know me and also know where I am from. Yet I did not come on my own, but the one who sent me, whom you do not know, is true. I know him, because I am from him, and he sent me.” So they tried to arrest him, but no one laid a hand upon him, because his hour had not yet come. But many of the crowd began to believe in him, and said, “When the Messiah comes, will he perform more signs than this man has done?”

Who knows God, who loves him, who seeks his will knows that Jesus is from God. He knows that he is from God, if not as true God, at least as a true prophet. Who loves God in the honesty of his mind and heart, in his freedom from vices and sin; he will always open to the revelation that He sends for the salvation of his children. While never might who is intellectually dishonest, spoiled in his heart and spirit, receive the revelation of the Lord. It contrasts with his way of being. He is invited to a serious, strong and true life change by the Word of God. It is sin that darkness is preferred to light.

Virgin Mary, Mother of the Redemption, Angels and Saints make us honest and pure.