There is a moment in today's Gospel that cuts right to the heart of who Jesus is. The religious authorities are already watching him, already suspicious, already looking for a reason to condemn him. And then he speaks — not in a parable, not in a riddle, but with quiet, unshakeable directness: "My Father is at work until now, so I am at work." It is a statement that sounds simple on the surface, but for those standing there that day, it was nothing short of explosive. He was not merely claiming a special relationship with God. He was claiming equality with God. And so, John tells us, "they tried all the more to kill him."
We are now deep in the Lenten journey, in the fourth week, past the midpoint and moving steadily toward Holy Week. The Church places this passage before us at a precise and meaningful moment — a time when we are called to examine our own understanding of Jesus. Not just what we know about him intellectually, but what we actually believe about who he is. This gospel is an invitation to go deeper than sentiment, deeper than habit, deeper than comfortable religious routine. It is a call to reckon with the radical claim Jesus makes about himself.
The key to understanding John 5:17-30 lies in grasping what Jesus means when he speaks of the relationship between the Father and the Son. He is not describing a distant hierarchy, a chain of command from a supreme being down to a lesser one. He is describing something far more intimate. "The Father loves the Son," Jesus says, "and shows him everything that he himself does." This is a relationship of total transparency, total trust, total communion. The Son sees what the Father does, and does the same. There is no gap between the will of the Father and the action of the Son. They are, in the deepest theological sense, one.
This is the doctrine of the Trinity taking shape before our eyes, not as an abstract formula but as a lived reality unfolding in the ministry of Jesus. Every healing he performs, every word he speaks, every act of mercy he extends — these are not independent choices. They are the Father's own work, flowing through the Son into the world. When Jesus raises the sick, restores sight to the blind, calls the dead back to life, he is not acting as a miracle worker exercising his own power. He is being transparent to the One who sent him. He is, in a sense, a perfect window into the heart of God.
For us on this Lenten Wednesday, that image carries profound spiritual weight. How often do we imagine God as withholding, distant, perhaps even punishing? How easily does Lent slip into a kind of anxious self-improvement project, as if we are trying to earn back God's favor through fasting and sacrifice? The Gospel gently dismantles that misunderstanding. The God Jesus reveals is not a judge waiting to condemn but a Father actively at work — working until now, as Jesus says — laboring ceaselessly for the life and wholeness of his creation. The Father raises the dead. The Father gives life. And the Son, because he shares in that same divine love, does the same.
There is another dimension of this passage that deserves careful attention. Jesus speaks about judgment — and this can be unsettling. He says that the Father has entrusted all judgment to the Son, "so that all may honor the Son just as they honor the Father." For many people, the word "judgment" conjures images of condemnation, of an angry God separating the righteous from the wicked with cold efficiency. But look at how Jesus describes the purpose of this judgment. It is ordered toward life. "Whoever hears my word and believes in the one who sent me has eternal life and will not come to condemnation, but has passed from death to life." The purpose of judgment is not destruction — it is the restoration of right order, the vindication of goodness, the final and complete triumph of life over death.
Jesus closes this remarkable discourse with a sentence that is worth sitting with throughout the day: "I cannot do anything on my own; I judge as I hear, and my judgment is just, because I do not seek my own will but the will of the one who sent me." Here is the spiritual heart of the passage. The entire ministry of Jesus is characterized by this total self-emptying, this radical surrender of personal agenda to the will of the Father. He does not act out of pride, out of desire for recognition, out of self-advancement. He acts because he loves the Father, and because the Father's will is the salvation of the world.
This, the Church suggests during Lent, is the pattern we are called to imitate. Not in the sense that we are divine, but in the sense that our lives are meant to be oriented entirely toward God and toward the good of others. The spiritual life is not fundamentally about self-improvement; it is about self-surrender. It is about learning to say, as Jesus said, "I do not seek my own will but the will of the one who sent me." Fasting, prayer, and almsgiving — the three pillars of Lent — are all forms of practicing this surrender. We fast to remind ourselves that we do not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from God. We pray to deepen our listening to that word. We give alms to act on what we hear, to allow the Father's work of mercy to flow through our hands into the lives of those around us.
The First Reading from Isaiah (49:8-15) provides a beautiful backdrop for this gospel. God speaks to a people who feel forgotten: "But Zion said, 'The LORD has forsaken me; my Lord has forgotten me.'" And the response God gives is one of the most tender in all of Scripture. "Can a mother forget her infant, be without tenderness for the child of her womb? Even should she forget, I will never forget you." The God revealed in today's liturgy is a God of relentless, maternal tenderness — a God who does not forget, who does not abandon, who is always at work even when we cannot see it. In John's Gospel, this same God sends his Son into the world as the ultimate proof of that love.
There is something healing about letting this image of God settle into our hearts during Lent. If we have been carrying guilt, shame, or a sense of spiritual inadequacy into this season, today's readings are an invitation to release that burden. The Father who raised Jesus from the dead is the same Father who is working in your life until now. The Son who gives life to whomever he wishes is not rationing that gift based on how well your Lent has gone so far. The grace of this season is not a reward for effort — it is a free outpouring of the love that was there from the beginning.
As we move through the rest of this fourth week of Lent, we might carry one simple question with us into prayer: Am I seeking my own will, or the will of the One who sent me? This is the question Jesus himself lived, and it is the question that can transform every ordinary moment — every decision, every relationship, every act of service — into participation in the Father's work. The hour is coming, Jesus says, when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice. That hour is also now, in every moment we open ourselves to his word and allow it to pass us from death to life.
Scripture: John 5:17-30 | Wednesday of the Fourth Week of Lent