A Reflection for the Memorial of St. Justin, Martyr
You can find today’s readings here.
“So [the chief priests, the scribes, and the elders] said to Jesus in reply, ‘We do not know.’” (Mk 11:33)
Ordinarily, answering “I don’t know” to a question you don’t know the answer to is a wise choice. I remember being impressed by a professor in college who said he did not know the answer to a student’s question but returned to the very next class session with the answer. That an educated person could admit to ignorance and still demonstrate how to be a lifelong learner was a lesson that stayed with me.
In Mark’s telling of this event, the chief priests, scribes and elders in today’s Gospel, however, are not honestly engaging in any kind of learning process. Mark portrays them as weighing their possible answers to the question Jesus has asked them but not in any sincerity. Instead, they are angling for the best way to trip Jesus up, which Jesus knows. Earlier in this chapter, Mark explains that these priests and elders are plotting to undermine Jesus’ credibility and popularity—the trouble-making Jesus has recently driven the money changers and merchants from the temple—but they fear that his followers, who have already welcomed Jesus into Jerusalem with palm branches and cries of “Hosanna in the highest,” will rise up against them. In this telling, the chief priests, scribes and elders do not have serious theological questions for Jesus, only the desire to be rid of him. Permanently. By the end of his Gospel, Mark shows them thinking they have gotten their way.
When our souls are thirsting for God, we want relief. We crave the spiritual satiety that only God can provide. Unlike the opportunistic leaders at the time of Jesus, we don’t weigh the political ramifications of our answers and actions. Rather, we take the advice from Jude’s letter (today’s first reading), which encourages us to build up our faith, to keep ourselves in the love of God, to await the mercy of Jesus and to treat others with the same mercy we seek. When we thirst for God, we try our best to follow the path God reveals to us without worrying about how we will look or what people will say. Along the way, we will encounter things we don’t know, lessons we struggle with and questions we can’t answer readily. We are setting out on the road to be lifelong learners of love.
When we thirst for God, when our souls thirst “like the earth, parched, lifeless and without water,” our holy thirst can only be quenched by God. And that may be the most essential thing we need to know.
