THE HISTORICAL HOUR

The "hour" of Christ is first and foremost the appointed time of his Passion, which in John, as in all the Gospels, is the climactic phase of his mission. Before this time the attempts of Jesus' enemies to arrest him are in vain because his "hour" has not yet come (Jn 7:30; 8:20). The clock begins ticking, however, at the start of Passion Week, when Jesus declares that the "hour" of his glorification has at last arrived (Jn 12:23). Although troubled by the painful ordeal that will seize him in this "hour" (Jn 12:27), Jesus embraces the prospect of suffering as the "hour" when he will pass out of this world to his heavenly Father (Jn 13:1). His disciples, too, will share in this trial as the "hour" strikes them with the fear and distress of a woman in labor (Jn 16:21-22). At the historical level, then, the "hour" is the time when Christ passes through the agonies of betrayal and bodily torment, finally mounting the Cross out of love for the Father and as a sacrifice for our salvation. This "hour" of Christ's humiliation and death is in John's Gospel the "hour" of his exaltation that becomes the source of everlasting life for the world.

THE LITURGICAL HOUR

If Christ's "hour" is linked with the historical events of his Passion, it also reaches beyond them into the liturgical commemoration of these events in the life of the Church. Several statements regarding the "hour" of Jesus are thus connected with Christian worship.

1. In Jn 2:4, Jesus responds to his Mother's request for wine with the puzzling statement "My hour has not yet come." The hidden premise, it seems, is that when this still-distant "hour" finally arrives, he expects to provide an abundance of the finest wine (Jn 2:10). This may be read as an allusion to the liturgy, where believers all over the world gather to worship Christ as he pours himself into the eucharistic cup under the visible sign of wine.

2. In Jn 4:21-23, Jesus insists that his coming "hour" has everything to do with worship—and not just with any worship, but with a spiritual adoration of the Father superior to any previously known in Samaria or even in Israel! The worship characteristic of this "hour" will not be confined to any particular mountain sanctuary, but will lift true worshipers up to a new and heavenly height in the Spirit (Rev 1:10, chaps. 4 and 5).

3. In Jn 5:25-29, Jesus looks to his "hour" as a time when those who are dead will hear his voice and live again. This, too, has connections with the liturgy, where Christ continues to speak through the Scriptures and awaken souls deadened by sin.

4. Finally, Christ's "hour" will bring in a harvest of believers from every nation, because Jesus, like a grain of wheat that dies and is buried in the earth, enables Israel and every nation to sprout into new life (Jn 12:20-24). This blessing comes not only through Christ's death, but also through his risen and glorified humanity, which is the wheat that becomes for us the "bread of life" in the Eucharist (Jn 6:48).

These two dimensions of the "hour" are part of the one Paschal Mystery of Christ. We cannot, therefore, drive a wedge between the historical and the liturgical, between the sacrificial gift of Christ to the Father on the Cross and the sacramental gift of Christ to us in the liturgy. This was recognized in the early Church, where the "hour" of Jesus referred not only to his suffering and death, but, as in the ancient liturgies of St. James and St. Mark, the expression "this hour" referred to re-presentation of the Passion in the eucharistic celebration.

Combined with references to Baptism (Jn 3:5), the Eucharist (Jn 6:35-58), and Reconciliation (Jn 20:23), we see in John's Gospel that the "hour" of Jesus that unfolds during Holy Week also extends throughout the centuries and throughout the world as Christians commemorate the sacred mysteries of this "hour" in the sacramental liturgy of the New Covenant. «Back to John 2:1.

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