March 21, 2026
IV Saturday of Lent
Fr. Sergio Da Costa
Dear brothers and sisters, The Lord give you His Peace.
I am Fr. Sérgio, a student of the Studium Biblicum Franciscanum, and I speak to you from the Convent of Saint Saviour, in Jerusalem.
As in yesterday’s Gospel, today we also find ourselves in the Temple, on the occasion of the feast of Tabernacles. After presenting Himself as the One sent by the Father, cfr. Jn 7,28,29, and in a particular way as the source of living water, cfr. Jn 7,37,38, today’s passage shows us the reactions that the words of Jesus aroused among the people present.
Some among the crowd see in Jesus the prophet who was to come, comparing Him to Moses who in the desert made water flow from the rock, cfr. Ex 17,1,7. Others believe that He is the awaited Messiah, but others question His Davidic descent. The tension grows, the division among the people becomes sharper, until it reaches persecution, but the hour of Jesus had not yet come, cfr. Jn 7,8. The guards sent by the priests and the Pharisees are struck by the words of Jesus and cannot arrest Him, the religious leaders instead curse the crowd and mock His origins, reducing the identity of Jesus to His Galilean provenance and arguing by means of the Law. Only Nicodemus, who had met Jesus at night, cfr. Jn 3, finds the courage, this time in the light of day, to call everyone back to justice and respect for the Law.
The reaction of the crowd, the stubbornness of the Pharisees and the position of Nicodemus place us before the dilemma of the identity of Jesus and the challenge of welcoming Him as our Lord and Savior. We can question our condition of life, perhaps we are used to professing faith with words, or to limiting our knowledge to doctrinal categories, or perhaps instead we live our religious practice. But what does it really mean to have Jesus as the Lord of our life and as the Messiah who saves us? Do we settle for showing Him only outwardly or do we allow Him to transform our existence deeply? Let us be attentive, those Pharisees could not recognize Jesus as the Messiah because of their way of using the Law and their religious preconceptions. Therefore we can say that a faith that does not transform life is vain and false. Moreover, we too are often immersed in the challenges of daily life, with its internal and external conflicts, confronted by the fragility of the world, of society and of ourselves, we fall into the temptation of seeking a Messiah according to our own criteria, our own measures and our own needs. But when we do not find Him, when Jesus does not correspond to our expectations, we struggle to follow Him fully, even to Calvary.
Let us think of Saint Francis, whose centenary of death we celebrate this year. At the decisive moment of his passage from this life to the house of the Father, Francis chose to die praising God and all His creatures. He was immersed in the Passion of Jesus, he blessed his brothers. But it was not only a farewell, it was the natural fulfillment of how he had lived the last twenty years of his life. Francis walked his path following Jesus, he allowed himself to be shaped by Him, and he placed Christ at the center, making Him the beating heart of his story, of his vocation and of his mission.
In Lent, we are called to die to many things that distance us from God, to die to sin, so that we may experience the new life of the Risen One. To do this, a merely external religious expression is not enough, but an authentic faith is required, a faith that grows and is manifested in a personal and personalizing relationship with Jesus. It is not enough to remain in an anonymous and insignificant crowd. It is not enough to take refuge in the rigidity of the law and doctrine. Something more is needed, that "more" that opens our eyes to see life as a gift and death as a sister. Brother and sister, who is Jesus for you?
Peace and good from the Holy Land.
