Fools and Faith

Seeing our whole life from the view of faith

04/01/2019

John 4:43-54 Now there was a royal official whose son was ill in Capernaum. When he heard that Jesus had arrived in Galilee from Judea, he went to him and asked him to come down and heal his son, who was near death. Jesus said to him, "Unless you people see signs and wonders, you will not believe." The royal official said to him, "Sir, come down before my child dies." Jesus said to him, "You may go; your son will live." The man believed what Jesus said to him and left. While the man was on his way back, his slaves met him and told him that his boy would live. He asked them when he began to recover. They told him, "The fever left him yesterday, about one in the afternoon." The father realized that just at that time Jesus had said to him, "Your son will live," and he and his whole household came to believe. Now this was the second sign Jesus did when he came to Galilee from Judea.

As you all know we celebrated the sacrament of Confirmation for 106 young people this past Friday and Saturday. We were happy to have Bishop Taylor here and he spent the night at the rectory Friday night. We had a good conversation over supper in which he gave me and Fr. Stephen some bad news and some good news regarding priest changes. The bad news is that I will be leaving I.C. to work full time in the marriage tribunal with annulments, but the good news is that Fr. Stephen will be assigned as the new pastor of I.C. How do you feel about that? Oh, and the other bit of news is that today is April 1st and that was a little April Fool’s joke. Some of you might still be wondering, “So, what’s the bad news?”

An April Fool’s joke is a great example of the Latin phrase “prima facie” which means “at first sight,” or “on the surface.” That is, on the surface, things may seem one way, but as you dig deeper or broaden your perspective, you see the whole picture, and things turn out to be quite different. Today is April 1, so be careful not to believe everything someone says prima facie, don’t take it at face value, but think deeply.

I love the gospel of John because the whole gospel invites us to think deeply, and not to stay on the surface, to go far beyond the prima facie. Indeed, when we plunge below the surface, we go from being fools to being people of faith. Today’s passage from John 4 recounts the miracle of the healing of a royal official’s son. But before you get too excited about that miracle, step back a little and get a panoramic perspective of the whole gospel. The gospel can be divided into four parts: (1) the Prologue in chapter 1, (2) the Book of Signs in chapters 1-12, (3) the Book of Glory in chapters 13-20, and (4) lastly the Epilogue in chapter 21. In other words, this miracle is only one of seven signs or miracles leading up to the Book of Glory, where we find the eighth sign, the greatest sign, Jesus’ death and resurrection.

Scripture scholars often interpret the seven signs as symbolic of the seven days of the old creation in the Old Testament, and they see Jesus’ resurrection as the eighth sign as Sunday, the eighth day of the new creation in the New Testament. In other words, the miracle of the healing of the royal official’s son is only a small part of the much bigger picture of Jesus’ overall Messianic mission. If you stopped reading the gospel at John 4 and think that’s all I need to read, you’d be a fool. But if you kept going, and dove deeper, you’d be a person of faith. Do not settle for a prima facie reading of the gospel of John. The real glory does not come until the end.

My friends, may I suggest to you to please be careful not to see your own life only on the surface level, merely prima facie, but try to dive below the surface of things. In a sense, our earthly existence can be compared to John’s Book of Signs, where we walk amid marvels and miracles that point to something ever greater and more glorious. It is not until our own death and resurrection that we arrive at the Book of Glory, and see the whole picture of our lives. For John, Jesus’ moment of greatest glory and his total triumph was when he died on the Cross, followed by his resurrection. In other words, do not stop reading at the Book of Signs in your life. Do not stop at the miracle of your marriage day; do not stall out at the miracle of the birth of your children; do not give up reading at the miracle of your retirement; the last miracle is not the birth of your grandchildren; the final miracle is not the appointment of Fr. Stephen as pastor of Immaculate Conception.

The last and greatest sign will be the miracle of your own death and resurrection. On that day you pass from the Book of Signs to the Book of Glory, from the old creation of earth life, to the new creation of heaven life. But you can only see all that if you go beyond the prima facie surface level of things; only if you cease to be a fool and become a person of faith, not only on April Fool’s Day, but every day.

Praised be Jesus Christ!