The Preparation for the Passover of Jesus

“Many of the Jews who had come to Mary seeing what Jesus had done believed in him. But some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done. Then the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered the Sanhedrin and decided to put him to death.” What Jesus had done in favor of his friend Lazarus is a sign that can lead to faith. But it does not force us to believe. Faith, as a response of a person, is free. Seeing the sign performed by Jesus many of the Jews believed. But some refused to interpret that fact as a sign that Jesus is correct, that his claim to be God is reasonable, and they report the fact to the authorities. The Sanhedrin meets in solemn sitting and makes a decision. At the end of Chapter 11, the Evangelist John shows how having given life to his friend Lazarus costs Jesus his life. Caiaphas, the high priest, says intervening in front of the Sanhedrin: ‘you do not understand anything.’ It is an ironic sentence. ‘You do not realize that it is convenient for you that one alone dies for the people and the whole nation does not go to ruin.’

The Evangelist notes that he said this because he is inspired, enlightened by God as the High Priest. He understood that it was good that Jesus die. But at the same time, he also tells the Jewish authorities that they do not understand anything, and his thinking is distorted. He is projecting evil. He is deciding to physically eliminate Jesus as a dangerous character, yet in this way, he fulfills the good plan of God to give life to humanity. From that day, therefore, they decided to kill him.

Jesus no longer went in public among the Jews. But from there on, he withdrew to the region near the desert in a city called Ephraim, where he remained with the disciples. Jesus is still far away because he decides when to be caught. He wants his sentence to coincide with the Passover feast so that his sacrifice is accomplished in fullness as a paschal event of liberation, of passage from death to life. Verse fifty-five of chapter eleven marks a break – the Passover of the Jews was near, and many from the region went up to Jerusalem before the Passover feast.

This is the third time that the Evangelist refers to the Passover feast. We are, therefore, in the third year of Jesus’ ministry. This note inaugurates the last phase of the narration. We are at the climax. Before the feast of Passover, six days before, they prepare a meal for him in Bethany. It is a kind of countdown to reach the culminating moment of Jesus’ death and resurrection. The readers remember that John’s account begins with a week. A few days in a row, they prepare the passage from John the Baptist to Jesus. It is the sixth day. There was a banquet in Cana of Galilee. From there began everything. Now we have a dinner in Bethany six days before Passover. The last week, the eschatological, decisive, and final week begins with a banquet, which is particularly significant. Lazarus, the dead brought to life, is one of the diners. Martha serves, and Mary makes a gesture of great affection. In the iconographic tradition, Mary is usually dressed in red, the color of love and affection. Martha, the service image, is in greenish dress, linked instead to fatigue, sweat, and commitment.

The familiar scene we encountered in the story of resuscitation of Lazarus is now revived at the table. Mary, the one who is taken up by a particular affection, makes a prophetic gesture. She took three hundred grams of perfume of pure nard, very precious. She anointed the feet of Jesus; then she wiped them with her hair. The whole house was filled with the aroma of that perfume. Remove the image of the sinner, who often overlaps this scene.

Mary of Bethany is not presented as a sinner. She is connected by strong friendship with Jesus and makes a gesture of extreme generosity, even a waste. Three hundred grams’ genuine nard perfume is costly and can be lavished simply to anoint Jesus. But the Master interprets that anointing as a prophetic figure. The aroma that fills the house is the image of generous and gratuitous love. It is a prophetic image of what Jesus is about to do: to lose his life. We can speak of wasting a bottle of perfume. But the life of Jesus, humanly speaking, is wasted. One man, so young, so smart, dies in such a way. How many things could he have accomplished yet; it is a climax; it is an exaggerated waste of love. It is the image of a God who loves beyond all human measure. This wise woman who participates in the banquet is in some way a Eucharistic figure that she anticipates with her gesture of affection and wastefulness.

Judas represents an economic mentality and rebukes her because she could have made 300 denarii from that ointment and could have been used to help the poor. Jesus, who has always been on the side of the poor, does not have this mercantile mentality. Judas will receive only thirty denarii from the betrayal of Jesus, and that ointment would have cost 300 denarii. An authentic disciple is not the one who counts the cost. Still, the one who is genuinely bound by a deep affection to Jesus knows how to give himself or herself, not simply knows how to count the cost to organize services, but he is bound personally to Jesus. And from this, he derives a new capacity for love for others.

The following day Jesus enters Jerusalem. Bethany is not too far from the holy city. Jesus enters the capital triumphantly welcomed by the people. He entered the temple in Jerusalem and began to teach. The second part of chapter 12 of the Gospel according to John shows an anthology of words spoken by Jesus during that last moment of teaching in the temple.

Some foreigners from Greece want to see Jesus, and they talk about it to two apostles who have Greek names, Philip and Andrew. ‘We want to see Jesus.’ But Jesus does not satisfy them. He changes the subject. He speaks of himself as a grain of wheat that must fall to the ground to bear much fruit. Jesus will be seen by the Greeks later. It is not the curiosity to see the human Jesus that can realize the salvation of the Greeks. Let us not forget that the Church where the Gospel is born is the Greek Church. It is the environment of non-Jews, of the Greek language. Jesus reaches out to the recipients of the Gospel after his Passover. He does not reach physically but arrives through the mediation of the disciples, through their witness, through their words, through the liturgy, the sacraments of the Church, through the Gospel text, the written testimony of the beloved disciple. Jesus, like a grain of wheat, must die on the ground to bear much fruit.

Now he adds: “My soul is troubled, what must I say. Father, save me from this hour? But precisely for this reason I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your name.” This is the Johannine version of what we call the moment of Gethsemane narrated by the Synoptics. John anticipates it and shows the anguished soul of Jesus, full of agony. Humanly he would have asked: deliver me from this moment. But his whole life is oriented toward this hour. Again, another essential term in Johannine theology. In Cana, as you remember, Jesus said, my hour has not yet come. But now the hour has come. Now is the hour, the definitive Passover.

He has come for this; therefore, he does not withdraw but faces a difficult situation. He asks the Father: “Glorify your name.” It is similar to the prayer ‘Our Father.’ May your name be sanctified, or your will be done. It is his way of speaking and willingness to carry out the Father’s plan. Then came a voice from heaven: “I have glorified him and will glorify him again.” This, we could understand as the Johannine version of the transfiguration. The Synoptics place on the mountain in Galilee an episode in which a voice from above says, “This is my son in whom I am well pleased, listen to him.” John narrates in a remarkably sober way how the voice of God the Father comes from heaven that speaks of the Glory of Jesus. The glory is the weight and the powerful working presence of God. He glorified him. That is, ‘I have shown that he truly is my representative and will glorify him again.’ In the resurrection, the glory of Jesus is fully revealed. The disciples can recognize that he is the only-begotten one of the Father, full of the gift of revelation.

One more important word John puts on the lips of Jesus at this moment is: “Now is the judgment of this world, now the prince of this world will be thrown out, and when I am lifted up from the earth I will draw everyone to me.” These are words that evoke a sense of what is going to happen. Now, at this moment, the judgment takes place.

The separation, the condemnation of the prince of this world, the sinister figure, the enemy thrown out, thrown down, is the moment in which he loses power. Jesus announces that now he is about to be raised. It is an ambiguous verb, a typically Johannine expression with double meaning. To lift up means to place on the throne, to make a career. But it also means to hang from the infamous wood of the cross, therefore, to kill. ‘When I am lifted up from the earth, when I rise to heaven, when I go to the cross, I will attract all to me.’ Which of these two senses does Jesus mean? We must not choose. In this case, John means both: the cross and the glory. When Jesus is lifted up on the cross, the glorious exaltation happens. He ascends to the throne, assumes divine power, and he has the power to attract everyone to himself. This gift of love leads Jesus to the cross. It is an energy that attracts to himself the whole of humanity by taking away the power from the prince of this world that divides and creates hatred. Only the generous love of Jesus offers his life to overcome the diabolical power that separates and pits people against each other and God.

At this point, the Evangelist closes the story. He makes a kind of balance, noting that they still did not believe in him despite all the signs. The prophet already foresaw this. This was inevitable. Faith is a free act. Jesus does not force people to accept him. He proposes and leaves to the freedom of each person to accept or to reject him.

Chapter 13 begins the last part of the Gospel, which is generally called the ‘book of glory’ or the ‘book of the hour.’ But it is not precisely at the beginning of chapter 13 that this section begins. We have already seen in verse 11:55 that a reference to the Passover marked a passage, and therefore, we could say that chapter 12 is a kind of cushion. It can remain as the conclusion of the first part or as an introduction to the second part. It is a moment of slow passage with repeated references to the Passover. The Passover of the Jews was near (11:55), six days before the Passover feast (12:1). “Before the Passover feast, Jesus knowing that His hour has come to pass from this world to the Father having loved His own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.” It is a kind of prologue.

In 13:1, we have the solemn beginning of the Passover supper, the last moment of the earthly encounter of Jesus with his disciples. The Evangelist emphasizes the full consciousness of Jesus. He knows that his hour has come, that long-awaited and desired hour has now come. It is the hour to pass from this world to the Father. It is a paschal language that reminds the passage and evokes the death of Jesus as a passage to the Father. Everything that happened before was characterized by love, and even what is going to take place now is marked by love. The Evangelist uses an expression important to say that he loved them ‘eis telos’ ‘usque ad consummationem.’ It is not simply until the end, until the last breath, as long as he lived, he loved them. It is precisely the goal, the objective. The ‘telos’ is the goal, the purpose, the end. (In Italian/Spanish, ‘ telos’ = ‘the goal’ is feminine, and ‘the end’ is masculine. It has a double meaning as the word can be masculine or feminine.)

Here John means to say that Jesus loved his own to the end. What does it mean? Until the end is reached, that is, by carrying out the project of human redemption. This expression serves as an inclusion of the whole section. If we go to the opposite side of this book of glory at the end of chapter 19, the last word that the Evangelist John places on the lips of Jesus on the Cross is ‘thethelesthai,’ it is completed. ‘Consumatum est.’ This has the same root of ‘telos.’ Everything is ended, not in the sense that it is finished but in the sense that it is accomplished. Everything is brought to completion. The project of God has therefore been realized.

The central section of the chapters (13–21) of the last part of the Gospel focuses on fulfillment. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them until he brought all humanity to the fulfillment of love. Jesus knows this and, therefore, knowing that everything had been given into his hands and that he came from God and to God would return, he gets up from the table and removes his clothes and with the washing of the feet begins the farewell dinner of the spiritual testament.