30 January 2027 · Syro-Malabar Rite
Open in the Daily Word appAlso: Latin Rite · Syro-Malankara Rite · മലയാളം
“And we know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding so that we may know him who is true; and we are in him who is true, in his Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life.” 1 John 5:20
John ends his first letter by telling us why he wrote it: “so that you may know that you have eternal life.” Christians are not meant to live in anxious guessing. We have “boldness” before God: “if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us.” Then John gives a surprising example of such prayer: praying for a brother or sister who sins. He distinguishes sin that is mortal from sin that is not, the distinction the Church still teaches between mortal and venial sin, and urges us to intercede so that God “will give life” to the one who has fallen. “We know that those who are born of God do not sin”: not that they never stumble, but that they do not make sin their home, because the Son of God protects them. The letter closes with a revelation fit for Denha, “He is the true God and eternal life”, and a final warning: “Little children, keep yourselves from idols.”
In the Gospel Jesus' hearers claim a famous ancestry: “Abraham is our father.” Jesus answers that children resemble their father: “If you were Abraham's children, you would be doing what Abraham did.” Abraham believed and welcomed God's messengers; they are planning to kill the one who tells them the truth. Belonging to God is not a matter of birth certificate but of listening: “Whoever is from God hears the words of God.” The devil, Jesus says, “is a liar and the father of lies.” Every lie we tell, every half-truth we live by, is a small idol. Saturday, the eve of the Lord's Day, is a good day to ask whose children we resemble, to pray for one another's sins, and to prepare for Sunday through the sacrament of Reconciliation.
Theme: “Whoever is from God hears the words of God.”
Confident prayer, intercession for sinners, and the true children of Abraham.
“The LORD is near to all who call on him, to all who call on him in truth.” Psalm 145:18
“And this is the boldness we have in him, that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us.” 1 John 5:14
Apply: Pray today with confidence for one need, adding: your will be done.
“And he believed the LORD; and the LORD reckoned it to him as righteousness.” Genesis 15:6
“Jesus said to them, “If you were Abraham's children, you would be doing what Abraham did,” John 8:39
Apply: Tell the truth today where a small lie would be easier.
“Hear, O Israel: The LORD is our God, the LORD alone.” Deuteronomy 6:4
“Whoever is from God hears the words of God. The reason you do not hear them is that you are not from God.”” John 8:47
Apply: Examine your conscience tonight and prepare for confession.
We know the true God, and we can pray with confidence.
God's children listen to his words and pray for one another.
Take-home resolution: Pray each day this week for someone who has fallen into sin.
Dear friends, John writes so that you may know that you have eternal life (1 John 5:13). We can pray with boldness, because if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us.
John even tells us what to pray for: a brother or sister who sins. He distinguishes mortal sin from sin that is not mortal, as the Church still does, and promises that God will give life to the one for whom we pray. Instead of judging, we intercede.
In the Gospel Jesus tells those who boast of Abraham: if you were Abraham's children, you would be doing what Abraham did (John 8:39). And: whoever is from God hears the words of God (John 8:47).
Tomorrow is the Lord's Day. Today let us keep ourselves from idols and from lies, pray for one another, and prepare our hearts through confession. Amen.
Children, Jesus says God's children listen to God and tell the truth. Today, let us pray for someone who has done wrong, and say sorry for our own mistakes.
Lord Jesus Christ, true God and eternal life, you have come to give us understanding so that we may know the Father. Keep us from every idol and every lie, hear our prayer for our brothers and sisters who have sinned, and make us true children of Abraham who hear the words of God. Amen.
Both readings are about belonging to God and how it shows. John assures believers that they have eternal life, and draws the conclusion: they pray with confidence, intercede for a brother or sister who sins, and keep away from idols. In the Gospel Jesus tells people who claim descent from Abraham that true kinship with God is seen in hearing his word and in doing what Abraham did. On the eve of the Lord’s Day we ask whose family we resemble.
Setting.
This is the close of the First Letter of John, written probably toward the end of the first century. The Church’s tradition links it with St John the Apostle; many scholars think of a writer from the circle formed by his teaching. A painful split lies behind it: some had left the community (2:19), and those who remained were shaken and needed assurance.
The letter has already said both that “if we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves” (1:8) and that “those who have been born of God do not sin” (3:9). Today’s ending holds the same tension. A believer may fall, but sin is no longer his home, and the community prays him back to life.
Structure.
Key words.
Verse by verse.
“If you see your brother or sister committing what is not a mortal sin, you will ask, and God will give life to such a one” (5:16)
The first response to a brother’s sin is prayer, before criticism. God gives life through the prayer of the community. John does not forbid prayer for the other case; he only declines to command it.
“We know that those who are born of God do not sin, but the one who was born of God protects them, and the evil one does not touch them.” (5:18)
A textual note: the manuscripts differ here. Some say that the one born of God “protects him”, the reading the NRSV takes as Christ protecting the believer, and the POC makes this plain (ദൈവപുത്രൻ അവനെ സംരക്ഷിക്കുന്നു). Others say that the believer “keeps himself”. The point stands in both: the safety of the believer is not his own achievement.
“He is the true God and eternal life.” (5:20)
The Greek could point back to the Father or to “his Son Jesus Christ”, the nearest name. Many Christian readers from early times have read it of Christ, and it is one of the few places in the New Testament that may call him God outright.
How the Church reads it.
The Catechism cites this passage for the distinction between mortal and venial sin, “already evident in Scripture” (CCC 1854; see 1857–1861). It presents intercession as a sharing in the prayer of Jesus (CCC 2634–2635), and it teaches that idolatry reaches far beyond pagan worship: a person commits idolatry whenever he honours and reveres a creature in place of God, whether power, pleasure, money or anything else (CCC 2113).
Setting.
The scene is the Temple in Jerusalem around the feast of Tents (chapters 7–8). The hardest debate in this Gospel is under way. It began with “the Jews who had believed in him” (8:31), and it grows steadily more tense, until they take up stones (8:59). All the speakers are Jews, Jesus included. The Vatican’s 1974 Guidelines on Nostra Aetate note that “the Jews” in John sometimes means, according to the context, the leaders or the adversaries of Jesus. Many scholars think that this Gospel’s language also carries the hurt of a later separation between John’s community and the synagogue.
Structure.
Key words.
Verse by verse.
“They answered him, “Abraham is our father.” Jesus said to them, “If you were Abraham’s children, you would be doing what Abraham did,” (8:39)
Jesus does not deny their descent. In v. 37 he says, “I know that you are descendants of Abraham.” He speaks of living up to it.
“You are from your father the devil, and you choose to do your father’s desires.” (8:44)
This is the hardest verse, and it has been cruelly misused in history. Jesus is speaking to people in that hour who are planning to kill him (v. 40), and his charge concerns that plan and the lie behind it. He is not describing a people. The Church utterly rejects any such use of it (Nostra Aetate 4).
“Whoever is from God hears the words of God.” (8:47)
This is the positive rule, and it is addressed to every reader, today’s Christians first.
How the Church reads it.
The Catechism uses this verse in its teaching on truthfulness: the Lord denounces lying as the work of the devil (CCC 2482). St Augustine, preaching on this chapter, explains that these hearers were Abraham’s children by birth but not by imitation, and likewise that no one is a child of the devil by nature. God is the creator of all, and one becomes the devil’s child only by imitating him (in substance). The Church teaches that Jesus’ conflict with some authorities of his time cannot be turned into a charge against the Jewish people (CCC 597–598).
Did Jesus call the Jewish people children of the devil?
No. Jesus was addressing particular opponents who were seeking his death, in a debate among Jews, and he says the same sort of thing to Peter when Peter resists the Cross: “Get behind me, Satan!” (Matthew 16:23). The Church rejects any teaching that the Jews are accursed (Nostra Aetate 4), and she honours them as the people to whom God first spoke, whose calling he has not revoked (CCC 839). The verse searches every believer: whenever I live by a lie, whose child am I acting like?