Jesus, therefore, knowing all things that were to come upon Him, went forward and saith to them; "Whom seek ye?" They answered Him: "Jesus of Nazareth." Jesus saith to them: "I am He." And Judas also who betrayed Him stood with them. As soon, then, as He had said to them: 'I am He', they went backward and fell to the ground. Again, therefore, He asked them: "Whom seek ye?" And they said: "Jesus of Nazareth." Jesus answered: "I have told you that I am He. If therefore you seek Me, let these go their way; that the word might be fulfilled which He said: Of them whom Thou hast given Me I have not lost any one." - John 18:4-9
1. This scene is given to us only by Saint John. Saint John on more than one occasion has been careful to emphasize the fact that Our Lord knew what was about to happen. He keeps us in mind that Our Lord was always God, even at the moments when He permitted His weak human nature to be uppermost. Other Saints have found deep matter for meditation in this thought Saint Augustine, Rudolph of Saxony, Saint Ignatius Loyola, Fra Thomas of Jesus, and others. It is as though, while the panorama of the Passion moves before them, they keep saying to themselves: "And this is God all the time!" We may well repeat the same, at any hour, but especially now when we look at Our Lord, broken and blood-bespattered, yet erect and commanding, for the first time confronting His enemies.
2. "Erect and commanding." Now begins that characteristic dignity which never leaves Our Lord throughout the Passion. He confronts them; they are cowed and silent, as a coward crowd is silent when true strength confronts it. He is the first to speak; and His words now, at the beginning of the end how strange! are the same as when He first appeared. "Whom seek ye?" He asked the first disciples when they followed Him down the river-side. "Master, where do You live?" was their answer. "Come and see," He said; and that was His first gathering. Now, how different! Yet He will have His name pro claimed even if it be by His enemies. They shall say definitely at the outset who is their object of hatred: "Jesus of Nazareth." That name will be heard again in the next few days. It will be seen on Calvary. It will be heard and seen, the abiding object of hatred, but also "the power of God and the glory of God," as long as the world shall last.
3. "Wherefore God hath exalted Him above the highest, and hath bestowed on Him the name which is above every name; that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend in Heaven, on earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father." Had Saint Paul this scene in mind when he wrote this triumphant sentence? "I am He"; and at the word "they went backward and fell to the ground." "I am He," he had said to the Samaritan woman, and had converted her. "Fear not, it is I," He had said to the disciples on the water; and they had been calmed. "Before Abraham was, I am," was His thundering refutation of His enemies. And later, when all the trouble is over, He will come again and say to His own: "Fear not, it is I"; and with the same word, "It is I, Jesus," He will turn the persecutor Saul into Saint Paul. There is indeed great courage for us all in this word: Ego sum, I am He.
Summary
1. Saint John emphasizes the Divine nature in the midst of the human weakness.
2. "Whom seek ye?" - "Jesus of Nazareth." The commanding, the stamp set on the Passion.
3. The effect of Our Lord's answer: "I am He," then and at all times.
- from The Crown of Sorrow, by Archbishop Alban Goodier