Reflection on Heb 13:8
“Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.”
Before Jesus raised Lazarus, who had been dead four days, Martha said to Jesus: “Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have died.” Jesus said to her: “Your brother will rise again.” She said to Him: “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day.” Jesus said to her: “I am the resurrection and the life.”
Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever. So He has the same power and can raise the dead even today, especially the spiritually dead. He can do the same things He did when He was here on earth. When we read the lives of the saints and martyrs, we see that through many the Lord worked great miracles before they died, that is, while they were being tortured. For example, miracles with wild beasts, when the hungry lions in the arena did not tear the martyrs apart, but instead licked them and sat at their feet like sheep. Other times, when they were thrown into prison after cruel torture, their bodies were completely recovered the next day. This was the case with countless martyrs. Some were even thrown into the furnace and came out without the slightest harm. On seeing this, many pagans cried out: “Great is the God of the Christians!” Thanks to these miracles, they were converted and confessed Jesus. They were even ready to face the same torture and death for His sake. In the lives of these martyrs and saints there is mention of some who raised the dead. Not by their own power, but it was the same Jesus who did this by His divine omnipotence.
Let us remember that Jesus is the same today. We, like Martha, believe that Jesus did mighty works as described in the Gospels, and we also believe that Jesus not only rose from the dead Himself but He will also raise us in the future. This is faith in the Jesus of the past and the future. But what is most important for us is this time, the “now and today”. We need strength to fight sin, strength to resist the influence of this world, and so we need to turn to Jesus in faith and believe that He is the same. For example, we lift up the mountain in prayer. Jesus says about this: “If you have faith as a mustard seed, you will say to this (spiritual) mountain, ‘Be lifted up and thrown into the sea,’ and it will happen.” How so? Because it is done by the almighty power of God. Slowly we call on the name of Jesus and take steps of faith in union with Jesus so that those invisible mountains of demons are lifted up and cast into the sea of hell. But do we have faith at that moment? Are we united to Jesus by faith? And do we remember that He is the same today, in this moment? That His almighty power works through our prayer of faith?
Faith is what overcomes the world. There is a false faith and there is a biblical faith that unites us to Jesus when we trust Him and His Word. He truly is the same yesterday, that is, in the past, and He will also come with power in the future, but He is the same today. Let us be aware of this above all during the Holy Mass, especially at the moment of silence before and after the Consecration, or during any of our prayers where we ask for God’s intervention in faith. At that moment, we are to stand on God’s Word and not doubt God’s omnipotence, that is, that Jesus is here, with me and in me, and that He does it through my faith.
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