11 March 2027 · Latin Rite
Open in the Daily Word appAlso: Syro-Malankara Rite · Syro-Malabar Rite · മലയാളം
“You search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that testify on my behalf. Yet you refuse to come to me to have life.” John 5:39–40
At the foot of Sinai, only weeks after the covenant, the people grow tired of waiting for Moses and make a calf of gold. God says to Moses: “Go down at once! Your people… have acted perversely.” They have “cast for themselves an image of a calf” and said, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!” The Psalm puts it sharply: “They exchanged the glory of God for the image of an ox that eats grass.” Then God tests Moses: “Now let me alone, so that my wrath may burn hot against them… and of you I will make a great nation.” Moses refuses the offer. He stands, as the Psalm says, “in the breach,” between God and the people, and pleads: they are your people, whom you brought out of Egypt; what will the nations say? “Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, your servants.” And “the LORD changed his mind about the disaster that he planned to bring on his people.” God does not change like a moody human being; Scripture speaks in human terms to show that he has willed to let the prayer of his friends shape history. Moses is the great intercessor, and a figure of Christ, who “always lives to make intercession” for us.
In the Gospel Jesus calls witnesses, as in a court. John the Baptist testified: he was “a burning and shining lamp.” The works the Father gave Jesus to do testify. The Father himself testifies. And the Scriptures testify: “You search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that testify on my behalf. Yet you refuse to come to me to have life.” It is possible to know the Bible well and still miss the Person to whom it points. Then a surprise: “Your accuser is Moses, on whom you have set your hope… he wrote about me.” The same Moses who once pleaded for a sinful people now bears witness to Jesus. Jesus is speaking to the religious leaders who opposed him, not condemning the Jewish people; the Church received from Israel the Scriptures, the covenants and the promises, and reads Moses with deep reverence. The question is for us too: do we read the Scriptures in order to come to Christ? Lent invites us to put away our own golden calves, the things we worship instead of God, and to come to the One of whom the whole of Scripture speaks.
Theme: “It is they that testify on my behalf.”
The golden calf, Moses in the breach, and the Scriptures that lead us to Christ.
“They exchanged the glory of God for the image of an ox that eats grass.” Psalm 106:20
“Little children, keep yourselves from idols.” 1 John 5:21
Apply: Fast this week from the thing that most often takes God's place in your day.
“But Moses implored the LORD his God, and said, “O LORD, why does your wrath burn hot against your people, whom you brought out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand?” Exodus 32:11
“Consequently he is able for all time to save those who approach God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them.” Hebrews 7:25
Apply: Write the names of three people far from God and pray for them every day until Easter.
“The LORD your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your own people; you shall heed such a prophet.” Deuteronomy 18:15
“You search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that testify on my behalf. Yet you refuse to come to me to have life.” John 5:39–40
Apply: Read the Gospel of the day each morning this week, and end with a short prayer to Jesus.
God's people fell into idolatry, and Moses' prayer saved them.
Christ is the eternal intercessor, and all the Scriptures lead to him.
Take-home resolution: Pray daily for three people far from God until Easter.
Dear friends, at the foot of Mount Sinai the people grew impatient and made a golden calf. They exchanged the glory of God for the image of an ox that eats grass, as the Psalm says. We laugh at them, but we do the same: we put money, success, our phones or our pride in the place of God.
God says to Moses: let me alone… and of you I will make a great nation. But Moses will not leave his people. He pleads: O LORD, why does your wrath burn hot against your people, whom you brought out of the land of Egypt? (Exodus 32:11). Remember Abraham, Isaac and Israel. And God spares them. That is the power of intercession.
Moses points to Jesus, who stands between God and us, and always lives to make intercession for us. In the Gospel Jesus says: you search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that testify on my behalf. Yet you refuse to come to me to have life (John 5:39–40). The Bible is not just a book to study. It is a road to a Person.
This Lent, let us break our golden calves. Let us pray for someone who has wandered, as Moses prayed, as many mothers pray. And let us open the Scriptures every day to meet Jesus there. Amen.
Children, God's people made a golden statue of a calf and prayed to it instead of to God. Moses prayed for them and God forgave them. Let us pray today for someone we love, like Moses did.
Lord God, you listened to the prayer of Moses and spared your people. Free us from every golden calf, and give us hearts that intercede for others. Open our minds to understand the Scriptures, that we may come to your Son and have life. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.
Moses stands at the centre of both readings today, in two different roles. In Exodus he pleads for his people after the golden calf, and he wins. In John, Jesus calls him as a witness: the Scriptures themselves testify on my behalf, and Moses “wrote about me”. Psalm 106 remembers the same scene and says that Moses “stood in the breach”. The great intercessor of the Old Testament prepares us for the one who, in these last weeks of Lent, goes up to the Cross to intercede for all.
Setting.
Israel has heard the commandments and accepted the covenant at Sinai (Exodus 19–24). Moses has been on the mountain for forty days (24:18), and the people, tired of waiting, press Aaron to make them something they can see. The golden calf is not simply a turn to a foreign god: many scholars think that the people took it as an image or a throne of the God who brought them out, since Aaron proclaims “a festival to the Lord” (32:5). But the commandment against images has just been given, so the covenant is broken almost as soon as it is made.
Nearly the same words, “Here are your gods, O Israel”, are said in 1 Kings 12:28 about the calves King Jeroboam set up at Bethel and Dan, and many scholars think that the two stories have been told with an eye on each other.
Structure.
Key words.
Verse by verse.
“The Lord said to Moses, “Go down at once! Your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt, have acted perversely;” (32:7)
God says “your people”, and Moses will reply “your people” (v. 11). Each hands them to the other. Moses' answer is the sharper: they are yours, Lord, because you brought them out.
“Now let me alone, so that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them; and of you I will make a great nation.” (32:10)
This is the promise to Abraham (Genesis 12:2) offered to Moses alone. It is a real temptation: his own name in place of theirs. He refuses it without even mentioning it, and argues only for them.
“Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, your servants,” (32:13)
Moses has no argument from the people's goodness. He appeals to what God has done (v. 11), to God's name among the nations (v. 12) and to God's own oath (v. 13). This is the pattern of all intercession: we plead on the ground of who God is.
“And the Lord changed his mind about the disaster that he planned to bring on his people.” (32:14)
Moses' prayer is heard. The sin still has its consequences, as the rest of the chapter shows, but the people live.
How the Church reads it.
The Catechism presents this moment as the great example of Moses' prayer: he does not pray for himself, but after the people's apostasy he “stands in the breach” before God to save them (Psalm 106:23; CCC 2577). His arguments, it says, will inspire the boldness of the great intercessors of the Jewish people and of the Church. St Paul tells Christians that these things “occurred as examples for us” (1 Corinthians 10:6). So we do not read this page as a story about other people's sin. Every Christian can recognize the calf, the god we make because the true God seems too slow, and every Christian has an advocate greater than Moses (1 John 2:1).
Setting.
The discourse of John 5 now reaches its last part. Jewish law requires two or three witnesses (Deuteronomy 19:15), so Jesus calls his: John the Baptist, the works he does, the Father himself, and the Scriptures. Here “testimony” is the key word, used as in a courtroom. Before the reader's eyes the accused becomes the one who is calling evidence.
When Jesus speaks in harsh terms here, he is speaking to those who oppose him in that dispute. Elsewhere John says that some in authority believed in him (12:42). Christians must not turn these words into a charge against the Jewish people (Nostra Aetate 4; CCC 597–598).
Structure.
Key words.
Verse by verse.
“The works that the Father has given me to complete, the very works that I am doing, testify on my behalf that the Father has sent me.” (5:36)
The healing at the pool is one of those works. In John, the signs are a kind of speech: God is saying who Jesus is (CCC 548).
“You search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that testify on my behalf.” (5:39)
A warning for every reader of the Bible, including those who love it most. One can study the words and miss the person. The Scriptures are good and they are God's word; their purpose is to lead us to meet him.
“How can you believe when you accept glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the one who alone is God?” (5:44)
“The one who alone is God” recalls the great prayer of Israel, “The Lord is our God, the Lord alone” (Deuteronomy 6:4). Faith is hard when we are busy keeping up our standing with other people.
“If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me.” (5:46)
Christians have thought especially of Deuteronomy 18:15, the prophet like Moses, and of the whole Law as preparing for Christ. On the road to Emmaus the risen Lord will begin “with Moses and all the prophets” (Luke 24:27).
How the Church reads it.
The Second Vatican Council says that God wisely arranged that the New Testament be hidden in the Old and the Old be made manifest in the New, using St Augustine's phrase (Dei Verbum 16; CCC 129). St Jerome's saying is close to this Gospel: “Ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ” (Dei Verbum 25; CCC 133). The Church also teaches that God's covenant with the Jews has not been revoked (CCC 121), and the Pontifical Biblical Commission (2001) says that the Jewish reading of the Bible is a possible one, while Christians read the same pages in the light of Christ. So “your accuser is Moses” is no verdict on a people. It warns Christians too: the same Scriptures will accuse us if we hear them and do not follow.
Can God change his mind?
God does not change as we do: “God is not a human being … that he should change his mind” (Numbers 23:19). Exodus speaks in human terms, as Scripture often does, to tell us something true: God's mercy is real and prayer truly matters. St Augustine prays to God: you change your works, but you do not change your plan (Confessions 1,4). From all eternity God has willed to save through the prayer of those who plead with him. Moses' prayer is not an obstacle to God's will; it is part of how his mercy comes.