Jesus saw that he answered with understanding

 

“Jesus saw that he answered with understanding”

 

I’d like to recommend this set of books on the 4 Gospels called “Catena Aurea” and is published by Baronius Press.  If you are going to buy it, don’t buy it from Amazon, go to baroniuspress.com

The Pope at the time asked St. Thomas Aquinas to take each VERSE of the Gospels, and include the most relevant writings of the early Church Fathers on that verse, and so we see St. Thomas Aquinas pulling together quotes from St. Augustine, St. John Chrysostom, Venerable Beed and many others.

 

In preparation for the homily a couple of weeks ago, a lined jumped out at me that I did not end up preaching on.  The line was Jesus asking a man “why do you call me good?  No one is good but God alone.” Which is a line from Jesus that has always puzzled me.

Why does Jesus seem to suggest He is not God?

And so I was reading in the Catena Aurea and St. Augustine had a marvelous answer.  He said Jesus did not identify himself as God to this particular person because that particular person would not have been able to process it.

So in today’s Gospel, we have a different person asking questions, and our Gospel says that Jesus SAW that the man answered with understanding. 

2 different persons, one is known to be early on the path, the other person further along the path, but again the important thing is that Jesus is able to perfectly read souls because He is God.  Nothing is hidden from God.

Sometimes we think there is a part of us that we try to hide from God…maybe we also try to hide it from ourselves.  But although we may be able to fool ourselves, there is no fooling Jesus.  When Jesus first encountered the Apostle Nathanael, Jesus “here is a man with no duplicity.”

May Jesus say the same thing to us when, at the final judgment, we come face to face with the Lord.  Like the man in today’s Gospel may it be said of us that we are not far from the Kingdom of God