"Do You Beleive This?

Sunday Mass Readings

Jesus asked Martha “I am the resurrection and the life; whoever believes in me even if he dies, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” (Jn 11: 25-26)She said to him, “Yes, Lord. I have come to believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one who is coming into the world” (Jn 11:27). This is not the first time you heard this statement during this lent. Let us go two Sundays back. The Samaritan woman at the well after her conversation with Jesus said the same thing. She had come to believe that Jesus was the Messiah. (Jn 4: 1-42). In last Sunday’s Gospel, the blind man who was cured, after his confrontation with the Pharisees is asked by Jesus, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” (Jn 9: 35). The blind man said, “Yes Lord I believe,” and he worshipped him (Jn 9:36). What does the implication of the question, "Do you believe this? To believe in Jesus first of all means ‘to make a confession of Jesus as the Messiah.’ Jesus almost drew this confession out of the Samaritan woman, the blind man and Martha. St. Paul in his letter to the Romans says the same thing; ‘If you confess with your lips and believe in our heart that Jesus is Lord, you will be saved.”

Yes, confession! In the history of the Church, people have been beheaded, people were burnt at the stakes, they were fed to the beasts, simply because of a mere confession. All they needed to do was confess with their lips that they did not believe in Jesus. And they would not. They held their confession. They would rather die than stop confessing their belief in Jesus.

Our confession and our perspective, attitudes and self-concept takes us to another dimension of our belief: living the Jesus event in our lives. We need to live in our bodies, in our minds and in our hearts the life of Jesus. It means that in our bodies we act like Jesus, in our minds think like Jesus and in our hearts love like Jesus. The Jesus event then is incarnated in the way we live.

Remember what Jesus said to Martha in today’s gospel. He said, “I am the resurrection and the life; whoever believes in me even if he dies, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” In the light of God’s word today we are being invited today to say, “Yes Lord I believe.”

- Fr. Satish Joseph