4 May 2023

4 May 2023

Thursday of the Fourth Week of Easter

After washing the disciples’ feet, Jesus says in today’s Gospel, “If you understand this,” – that is his message to be a servant to others – “blessed are you if you do it” (John 13:17). We imitate Christ and share in his divine life when we hear and act on his words. Yet this is not as easy as it sounds. We certainly know that this is difficult from experience, but Paul shares this human reality with us in scripture, saying, “What I do, I do not understand. For I do not do what I want, but I do what I hate” (Romans 7:15). Why does it seem that to be an honest Christian involves fighting our very nature? Why does it seem that to be a good Christian requires us to be non-human?

St. Thomas Aquinas generally talks about sin, or failing to act on Jesus’s commands, as a result of ignorance. When we move away from God and just hear Jesus’s words and fail to act on them, we are merely ignorant of what they really mean. Many times in Scripture, we encounter people who hear Jesus’s parables but fail to understand. It is similar with us, where we can hear the Gospel but fail to act on it because we lack a proper understanding. If true knowledge is what can help us be better Christians, how do we really come to know? How can we come to hear and understand Jesus’s words more deeply to act on them?

St. Ignatius of Loyola stresses heavily in the Second Week of The Exercises to have “interior knowledge” of Jesus. The point of this second week is to imaginatively accompany Jesus in his public ministry as the apostles did so that we can come to know him in a much deeper sense. We come to know him instead of just about him. When we know Jesus and grow in that knowledge, we can act on His words more faithfully and freely. Perhaps today, in our own prayer, we can ask for this grace to have “interior knowledge” of Christ so that we can understand more profoundly and allow God to change our lives from the inside out.