Saturday 4th week of Lent
"Jn 7:40-53"
The officers then went back to the chief priests and Pharisees, who said to them, "Why did you not bring him?" The officers answered, "No man ever spoke like this man!" The Pharisees answered them, "Are you led astray, you also? Have any of the authorities or of the Pharisees believed in him? But this crowd, who do not know the law, are accursed."
There is a joke about an optician testing a lady's eyesight. He asks, "Madam, which letter do you see on the screen?" "A", answers the lady. "Please, concentrate", insists the optician. "Which letter do you see there, madam?" "A", replies the lady again. 'Come on, Madam!' the exasperated optician asks once more, "Try again!" "A", she insists. The optician, totally frustrated, turns around to the screen to point at the letter with his finger and, looking at it, he exclaims, "Gosh! You were right! It's 'A'."
Pharisees, like the optician, didn't check before jumping to conclusions. They 'knew better'. Why didn't the Pharisees believe in Jesus? Because they didn't listen to Him. They never bothered to find out about His message. But those officers did listen to Him; and their lives would never be the same. What good was all their 'knowledge' if they couldn't recognise the Truth?
Good reading leads to the truth: the life of Jesus and the lives of the saints transform people. Edith Stein was a German philosopher. By her teenage years, she no longer practiced her Jewish faith and considered herself an atheist. She was reading all sorts of books by philosophers and psychologists. In the summer of 1921 she spent several weeks with some friends. One evening, a bit bored, Edith picked up an autobiography of St. Teresa of Avila and couldn't put it down, reading for the whole night. "When I had finished the book," she wrote years later, "I said to myself: This is the truth." St Edith Stein became a Catholic and a Carmelite nun. On 7 August 1942, she was deported to Auschwitz where she died in a gas chamber two days later. It all started with good reading!
Holy Mary, our Hope, Seat of Wisdom, pray for me to be always consistent in my spiritual reading.
