So from that day on they planned to kill him

Ez 37,21-28; Ps 31; Jn 11,45-56
13 APRIL

Every decision of man, if it is not in the Holy Spirit, is almost always founded on arguments that are only invention, imagination, desires, projects, wills, presuppositions, fruit of the mind and never of reality. It is usually first decided, then motivations are artfully created. Today there is an army of people at the service of the decisions taken or to be taken by the men of the economy, finance, politics, religion and any other sector of public and private life. These people are mercenaries at the service of those who pay them better in order to elaborate even the most false arguments so that everyone believes in the goodness, truth and necessity of the decision already taken or to be taken. No one thinks that they are motivations produced to justify every betrayal of historical truth or to validate every renunciation for personal interests to the common good, the real one, not the false one suggested by the lying and deceiving motivations given. Pharisees and scribes, chief priests and elders of the people have already made the decision to kill Jesus. After the resurrection of Lazarus, since many Jews had begun to believe in Jesus, Caiaphas thinks well to stop the bleeding that was about to bleed the religion of which he was at the head as the high priest. Naturally, Jesus could not be condemned to death without any motivation. They had to find a plausibly true one. It is an invented motivation, because elaborated from his heart: “It is convenient for you that one man dies for the people, and the whole nation does not go to ruin”. This motivation is false because the whole history of salvation is denied with it. The Lord had always prophesied to his people that its true salvation was from obedience to the Word and from listening to his voice. It would have been enough to listen to Jesus, to be converted to his Word and no one would have ever uprooted the children of Israel from their land. Caiaphas succeeded in making the Sanhedrin believe the opposite and so the “right” motivation was found to condemn Jesus.

Now many of the Jews who had come to Mary and seen what he had done began to believe in him. But some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done. So the chief priests and the Pharisees convened the Sanhedrin and said, “What are we going to do? This man is performing many signs. If we leave him alone, all will believe in him, and the Romans will come and take away both our land and our nation.” But one of them, Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, said to them, “You know nothing, nor do you consider that it is better for you that one man should die instead of the people, so that the whole nation may not perish.” He did not say this on his own, but since he was high priest for that year, he prophesied that Jesus was going to die for the nation, and not only for the nation, but also to gather into one the dispersed children of God. So from that day on they planned to kill him. So Jesus no longer walked about in public among the Jews, but he left for the region near the desert, to a town called Ephraim, and there he remained with his disciples. Now the Passover of the Jews was near, and many went up from the country to Jerusalem before Passover to purify themselves. They looked for Jesus and said to one another as they were in the temple area, “What do you think? That he will not come to the feast?” For the chief priests and the Pharisees had given orders that if anyone knew where he was, he should inform them, so that they might arrest him.

History is made by these inventors of false, lying and deceiving motivations. There is not one single act that is not founded on falsehood made to be passed as the purest truth. Whoever wants to protect himself from falling into such a deception must live in the Holy Spirit, dwelling in the Word. But the whole life of Jesus was a perennial temptation made by these men of falsehood, who put him to the test using hypocrisy, deception, adulation, truth and falsity, justice and injustice, the Word of God and of the tradition of men. Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, knew what was in every heart and with great intelligence, wisdom and knowledge always answered so as not to fall into their trap of evil. Salvation comes only from the light of the Holy Spirit. When one falls into the trap of the deceptive argumentation, it is a sign that deceivers and deceived are not in the Spirit of God. Man according to the flesh invents and the man according to the flesh believes.

Mother of God, Angels and Saints, help us to make the Holy Spirit our only home.