“After this there was a feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.” From now on every detail in the narrative is of the utmost importance.

          The stage has been carefully set and the questions come pouring out:

          “Was this confrontation unavoidable?” “Could the Jews have known?” “Was it reasonable to expect that they ought to have accepted it, once an explanation was given?”

          Since the subsequent dispute was between God and his creatures, and God never asks the impossible, the answer to the first question is an emphatic “No!” The confrontation was unnecessary. But then, how were the Jews to know? One of the answers Christ gave to the disciples of St. John the Baptist when they came to ask Him “Are you the one who is to come, or is it someone else we have to wait for?” was: “Go and tell John what you hear and see ... the lame walk ...”. [Mt. 11:3-5, quoting Isaiah 35:6]. Now one quote of the most famous of all the prophets after Moses was enough to conjure up for any listeners the context in which the words of Isaiah were set. In this case, the context in which these words of Isaiah were enshrined was this:

“Look, your God is coming,
vengeance is coming,
the retribution of God,
He is coming to save you.
Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened,
the ears of the deaf unsealed,
then the lame shall leap like a deer,
and the tongues of the dumb sing for joy.
For water gushes in the desert,
streams in the wasteland,
the scorched earth becomes a lake
the parched land springs of water.”

          This answers the second question put above: “Could, and therefore should, the Jews have known?” Yes, they ought to have known, because God’s preparation for this all-important encounter between the Jews and their Messiah was faultless. The encounter was accurately foretold to be between ‘desert’, ‘wasteland’, ‘scorched earth’ and ‘parched land’ on the one hand, and ‘gushing water’, ‘streams’, ‘a lake’ and ‘springs of water’ on the other. Needless to say that this would call for humility on the part of the Jews and for compassion on the part of God. The compassion was in place, but was the humility?

          And what about the third question asked above: “Was it reasonable to expect that they should have accepted it, once an explanation was given?” To answer this we go to another witness who quoted Isaiah. Was it not true that all the Jews even from Jerusalem had heard John the Baptist declare the next lines of Isaiah’s prophecy:

“And through it will run a highway undefiled,
which shall be called the Sacred Way;
the unclean may not travel by it
nor fools stray along it.
but the redeemed will walk there,
for those Yahweh has ransomed will return.”

          No, there was no excuse for not knowing, and no excuse for exorcising the Spirit from the letters used by Isaiah. For John’s testimony was accepted by prostitutes, tax collectors and sinners. In those poor lives humility was in place ...

          But Jesus answered them, “My Father goes on working and so do I.”

          In order to appreciate what follows, it is of course of the greatest importance that this opening line to the dispute has no mystery for the reader.

          According to Chesterton, St. Thomas Aquinas fully understood, and therefore also put into practice, what was the rock-bottom foundation of any argument with these words:

“We have already noted why, in this one quarrel with Siger of Brabant, Thomas Aquinas let loose such thunders of purely moral passion. It was because the whole work of his life was being betrayed behind his back by those who had used his victories over the reactionaries ... And yet, even in this isolated apocalypse of anger, there is one phrase that may be commended for all time to men who are angry with much less cause. If there is one sentence that could be carved in marble as representing the calmest and most enduring rationality of this unique intelligence, it is a sentence which came pouring out with all the rest of this molten lava. If there is one phrase that stands before history as typical of Thomas Aquinas, it is that phrase about his own argument: ‘It is not based on documents of faith but on the reasons and statements of the philosophers themselves’. At the top of his fury, Thomas Aquinas understands what so many defenders of orthodoxy will not understand. It is no good to tell an atheist that he is an atheist, or to charge a denier of immortality with the infamy of denying it, or to imagine that one can force an opponent to admit he is wrong on somebody else’s principles, but not on his own ... We must either not argue with a man at all, or we must argue on his grounds and not ours.”
[St. Thomas Aquinas, ch. 3, p. 95: The Aristotelian Revolution].

          And here is the Creator of St. Thomas Aquinas, getting engaged in His first dispute with adversaries even more determined to betray and destroy the whole work of His Life. And His opening gambit is on their ground, not His own. It is on facts that could be ascertained by observation and reason, and not on the principles of Faith which He knew they did not possess.

          But Jesus answered them, “My Father goes on working and so do I.”

          The Jews knew Whom He was referring to. They knew that, whom they thought was His father, Joseph of Nazareth, was dead and no longer working. That Our Lord had accurately grasped that here He had based the beginning of the whole argument “on their principles” comes out immediately in the next line of the Gospel narrative:

This was why the Jews sought all the more to kill him, because He not only broke the sabbath but also called God his Father, making himself equal to God.

          So they knew! In the course of the argument Our Blessed Lord will accuse them of having no faith in Him, no faith in the Scriptures and no faith in Moses, so He could not depend in His disputes with the Jews on a Light they did not possess. Now watch how they do their level best to extinguish what little light they still possessed, the light that the Word of God was calling on for their own salvation. What a lesson for us, two thousand years later, in our dealings with the Modernists ...

          After having forced them to acknowledge against their will that here He was talking about their God and that He was making himself equal to God by calling their God his Father, He continues to build on that relationship with something they all could understand from their own everyday experience.

Jesus said to them, “I tell you most solemnly, the Son can do nothing by himself; He can only do what he sees the Father doing; and whatever the Father does, the Son does likewise. For the Father loves the Son, and shows him all that he himself is doing; and greater works than these will he show him, that will astonish you. For as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the Son gives life to whom he will. The Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son, that all may honour the Son, even as they honour the Father. He who does not honour the Son does not honour the Father who sent him”.

          If the Jews knew nothing about the Supernatural Life that the Father was about to give with and through the Son, the Jews knew enough Scripture to understand that in the Old Testament earthly life had been restored, but only by the power of God/Yahweh. So here Our Lord was still speaking on their level of understanding, but leading them to insights they could only grasp with a new Light that would unconditionally be theirs if they believed the Son when He still talked to them on their own level.

“I tell you most solemnly, whoever listens to My words and believes in the One who sent Me, has eternal life. Without being brought to judgement he has passed from death to Life.”

          “Whoever listens to My words ...” The thomistic principle spoken of above has been strictly adhered to. Our Lord had only spoken on the level of their understanding. Since most Jews followed the few good and the many bad points held by the Pharisees who believed in the resurrection of the dead, the transition from the restoration of earthly life to the resurrection of a much higher Life after death did not require a blind jump in the dark, and so was not altogether incomprehensible to his listeners. Also, the powerful testimony of eyewitnesses was known to them from everyday experience, and here the Son of God was testifying that He was an eyewitness of everything He had seen His Father do.

          St. John continues:

“I tell you most solemnly, the hour is coming, - in fact it is here already - when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live. ”

          This is a most powerful sentence, and so it is preceded by words which almost sound like an oath: “I tell you most solemnly.” The Son of God tells them in a most emphatic way four things: (a) He is the Son of God; (b) the hour is here already even when they are listening; (c) the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God. They are hearing the voice of the Son of God so they are the ones who are dead in sin; and (d) they can live when they are actually listening. When they really take in what is being said.

          What a most powerful message for the Modernists of our days. He is the Son of God. His Church is still giving out His message. They are dead in sin although they hear His voice in His Church. And why? Because they are not listening ... But those who do listen, live. “But”, they will say just like the unbelieving Jews in Our Lord’s days, “we are both alive on the same planet, the so-called ‘good’ ones and us”. But not alive in the same way! And to make sure that they have no excuse, Christ compares both modes of ‘living’: the way His Father has Life and the way they have it.

“For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself, and has given him authority to execute judgment, because he is the Son of Man. Do not marvel at this; for the hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and come forth, those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of judgment.”

          “... and has given Him authority to execute judgment ...” Judgment over who has Life that will endure after death and resurrection, and who has not got that Life in himself as the Father and the Son have it. The Pharisees believe in the resurrection at the end of time, and here the Son of God puts before them the two modes of that resurrection depending if they had that Life before they died, or not.

“I can do nothing on my own authority; as I hear, I judge; and my judgment is just, because I seek not my own will but the will of him who sent me.”

          “... I judge as I hear ...” Our Lord most certainly judges as He hears the Father. For, what He accuses the Jews of, that they do not listen to God, i.e. do not take in what God says, of that He cannot be accused Himself. But no doubt He is referring here also to what He taught His disciples in Mt. 7:15-20:

“Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thorns, or figs from thistles? So, every sound tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears evil fruit. A sound tree cannot bear evil fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus you will know them by their fruits.”

          Here we are told to judge. The Son of God does not allow us to judge the person, but we are most certainly taught here to judge the tree that is inside the person by its fruits. So the ‘tree’ is not the person, but is the sum-total of all the doctrines and opinions a person has amassed over the years. And the fruits of this ‘tree’ are each person’s words and actions. And we must judge the soundness of the ‘tree’ by its fruits: the words and actions. So not only does the Son of God know what is inside every person, i.e. their worth before God, but as Man, He also listens very carefully to what each person has to say, and He studies their actions, because, as the fruits of the ‘tree’ that is inside them, their words and actions reveal the soundness or otherwise of the doctrines and opinions that live inside them. Our Modernists hate this distinction between “the tree inside the person”, the sum-total of all their doctrines and opinions, and the person himself!

“If I bear witness to myself, my testimony is not valid; there is another who bears witness to me, and I know that the testimony which he bears to me is true. You sent to John, and he has borne witness to the truth. Not that the testimony which I receive is from man; but I say this that you may be saved. He was a burning and shining lamp and you were willing to rejoice for a while in his light.”

          With this reference to John the Baptist, Christ is still addressing the Jews on their own level: the question of evidence, witness and testimony. There is the testimony of St. John, human, although all were forced to acknowledge that his testimony came from God:

“The baptism of John, where did it come from? From heaven or from man?” And they argued with one another, “If we say, ‘From heaven,’ he will say to us, ‘Why then did you not believe him?’ But if we say, ‘From man,’ we are afraid of the people; because all hold that John was a prophet”. So they answered Jesus, ‘We do not know’ ”[Mt. 21:25-27].

“But my testimony is greater than John’s. The works my Father has given me to do, these same works of mine testify that the Father has sent me. ”

          Here Our Blessed Lord puts into practice about Himself what He had taught all of us to do: to judge the ‘Tree’ that is inside Him by the works He does. The fruits are sound, so the ‘Tree’ is sound. Thus the works testify to the truth of His words that He came from God.

“Besides, the Father who sent me has himself borne witness to me. His voice you have never heard, his form you have never seen; and you do not have his word abiding in you, for you do not believe him whom he has sent.”

          So how did the Father who sent His Son into the world bear witness to Him? Witness is borne out by words. So how did the Father speak to them? Through the Scriptures. If the listening Jews had only stopped to think, to listen properly and to take in what was being said, they would have marvelled at the foolproof way in which the Son of God conducted His argument at their own level of understanding! For the Jews believed that Holy Writ was truly God’s Word, even if they did not adhere to it.

“So shall it be with My Word that goes forth from My mouth; it shall not return to Me empty without carrying out My will and succeeding in what it was sent to do.” [Isaiah].

          The words of Scripture had always been taken as being the Word of God and not only by the Prophets ... Yet, Our Lord judged the Jews by their actions and by their words, and thus had this to say:

“You search the Scriptures, because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness to me; yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life. As for human approval, this means nothing to me. Besides I know you too well; you have no love of God in you. I have come in my Father’s name, and you do not accept me. If another comes in his own name, you will accept him. How can you believe, since you look to one another for approval and are not concerned with the approval that comes from God? Do not think that I shall accuse you to the Father; it is Moses who accuses you, on whom you have set your hope. If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe my words?”

          “I know you only too well: you have no love of God in you.” That was a personal judgment He was entitled to make as God. “... you do not accept me ...” is a clear judgment of the ‘tree’ inside them which He was entitled to make as Man from the fruits it bore: their words and actions.

          This is the end of the first discourse, the first controversy.

          From an analysis of the Gospel account we are able to learn several things. Right from the start we notice the total absence in the divine and human mind of our Saviour of any fruitless point-scoring. Salvation is a very serious business for which the Messiah sent to us by the Father lays down strict rules which He Himself of course will never break.

          Pope Leo XIII has taught us authoritatively in his first encyclical of 1879, Aeterni Patris, that upholding the Truth and contending forever with error is imitating the charity of Christ. Every Pope after him has underscored this golden rule in at least one of their encyclicals.

“The source and root of all the evils which affect individuals, peoples and nations with a kind of poison is this: ignorance of the Truth, and not only ignorance, but at times a contempt for and a deliberate turning away from it. ” [Ad Petri Cathedram, 1959].

          Pope John XXIII never veered away from these convictions, nor from the way he kept referring to the Catholic Church as: “the pillar and ground of Truth” [1 Tim. 3:15].

          These same sentiments are not only preserved, but also openly proclaimed by the Second Vatican Council. In the 1st chapter of its very first document, the one on the Sacred Liturgy, we can read in the opening lines the following reference to 1 Tim. 2: 4: “God who wills that all men be saved and come to the knowledge of the Truth ...”

          Once again, the intimate link is being established between Salvation and coming to the knowledge of the Truth. This is the unbroken Catholic Tradition that, as we can see here, comes to us from the Apostles.

          After that, the unbroken line in the minds of the Holy Fathers of the paramount importance of coming to the knowledge of the Truth in the work of Salvation is maintained by the post-Conciliar Pontiff, Pope Paul VI in his Credo of the People of God, and by Pope John Paul II in his first encyclical, Redemptor Hominis, 1979, in which a key truth of Faith is based on the fundamental Truth of the Incarnation of the Son of God.

          But this Pontiff has given this so important charity: ‘imitating the charity of Christ’, a whole new dimension. As we all know so well, he is pre-eminently “the Pope of Divine Mercy”, of reconciliation, of forgiveness and cohesion.

          So, where then in this 100-year stretch between 1879 and 1979 is the fundamental link in the mind of the present Holy Father, Pope John Paul II between “imitating the charity of Christ in proclaiming the Truth and contending forever with error” (1879 and beyond), and the God of Mercy proclaimed in Redemptor Hominis of 1979?

          The fundamental link between these two lies in this that Christ did not only show His great charity to the Jews in proclaiming to them the Truth (Himself) and contending forever with their errors, but also showed them an even greater Love by dying for them in their unbelief: Dives in Misericordia, or Rich in Mercy, (1980). And there is no doubt in this Holy Father’s mind that this is the sentiment of the post-Conciliar Church today, and should be the sentiment of everyone of Her Catholic children born from Her Mystical Life. For in at least four places in the Sacred Documents of Vatican II, this great Council of the present time reminds all Catholics to be prepared to shed their blood for the salvation of the world. This cannot be done without a great share in the Mystical Life of Our Holy Mother the Catholic Church. Thus “imitating the charity of Christ by proclaiming the Truth and by battling forever with error” can only be done successfully by those who are equally convinced that, before God, we must “stand in” for our brothers and sisters in our daily prayers and sacrifices until called upon to lay down our lives for them. This will mingle the fearless proclamation of the Truth with the Divine Mercy so eagerly sought after, imposed and practiced by our present Holy Father.

          It is obvious that this double aspect of Our Divine Lord’s great charity must from now on never be lost sight of when we hear Him “uphold the Truth” before the Jews and “contend forever with their errors”. He can be firm with them in making them accept the Truth which He is Himself, because He is prepared to lay down His life for His people.