Jn 10: 31-42
The Jews took up stones again to stone him. Jesus replied, “I have shown you many good works from the Father. For which of these are you going to stone me?” The Jews answered, “It is not for a good work that we are going to stone you, but for blasphemy, because you, though only a human being, are making yourself God.” Jesus answered, “Is it not written in your law, ‘I said, you are gods’?
If those to whom the word of God came were called ‘gods’ —and the scripture cannot be annulled— can you say that the one whom the Father has sanctified and sent into the world is blaspheming because I said, ‘I am God’s Son’? If I am not doing the works of my Father, then do not believe me. But if I do them, even though you do not believe me, believe the works, so that you may know and understand that the Father is in me and I am in the Father.”
Then they tried to arrest him again, but he escaped from their hands. He went away again across the Jordan to the place where John had been baptizing earlier, and he remained there. Many came to him, and they were saying, “John performed no sign, but everything that John said about this man was true.” And many believed in him there.
New Revised Standard Version, copyright 1989, by the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved. USCCB approved.
Where I End and God Begins
Think about a moment when you felt fully alive. Recall how free and natural it was. No pretending to be someone else. No fear of missing out. No regret pulling you back into the past or fear clouding your future. In that moment, you were doing something so fully you, yet somehow beyond you. Who could tell where you ended and God began?
When Jesus says, “The Father is in me and I am in the Father,” he is speaking about his life, a life fully alive, fully united to the Father. When he cites the psalms saying, “You are Gods” he tells us that this experience is available to everyone. Yet sometimes we pick up stones to kill off what threatens our control, our narrow way of seeing the world. If we wonder why moments of being fully alive feel so few, perhaps it is because we are carrying stones. The best way to drop those stones is to have our hands engaged in a life that is fully alive.
Today in prayer, ask God to fill your hands with gratitude for those experiences where it is hard to tell where you end and God begins.
—Fr. Cyril Pinchak, SJ, is a Jesuit priest of the Midwest Province studying Eastern Canon Law at the Pontifical Oriental Institute in Rome.
Prayer
The glory of God is man fully alive, but the life of man is the vision of God.
—St. Irenaeus