Therefore, we think it necessary first to say what the generally accessible meaning of the saying is. “After this,” it says, “Jesus went away to the other side of the Sea of Tiberias.” We must not carelessly pass over what “this” refers to.
In Jerusalem Christ showed Himself to be a wondrous Physician. He healed a man who had been “in his infirmity thirty-eight years” (Jn 5:5). He did not give medicine or devise any remedy against the sickness. By a word alone, as God, with almighty authority and a will befitting God, He said: “Rise, take up your bed, and go to your house” (Jn 5:8; cf. Mt 9:6).
Since it was the Sabbath, the Jews, suffering from the coarseness of the letter, became indignant in their ignorance. They were more oppressed by the folly they had made their own than the paralytic had been. They were sick with a feeble inactivity toward all good things, paralyzed in mind and infirm in morals.
To them one could rightly say: “Be strengthened, you hands that hang down and you feeble knees” (Is 35:3). They were indignant, declaring that the honor due to the Sabbath had to be observed even by the Lawgiver Himself.
They condemn Christ as a transgressor, not considering the saying: “It is impious to say to a king: You transgress the law” (Job 34:18). For this they received strong rebukes from the Savior.
He gave a long and extensive discourse showing that the inactivity of the Sabbath had been ordained for the ancients in a typological manner. He also showed that “the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath” (Mt 12:8).
But being incapable of any good and ready for every kind of resistance, they rise up against the One who teaches what they ought to learn. They plot the murder of Him who wished to make them wise, rendering Him, as it is written, “evil for good” (Ps 34:12).
After these deeds and words, the Lord withdraws from Jerusalem as if by necessity. This is precisely because the Passover of the Jews was drawing near, as we shall say a little later. He even crossed the Sea of Tiberias itself, or the lake so called in the land of Judea.
As we have just said, the approach of the Jewish Passover especially urged and compelled Him to make this departure and go to other places so far from Jerusalem. Therefore I think it fitting to show that Jesus rightly refused to be in Jerusalem at that time.
The Law of Moses commanded the Jews to go to Jerusalem from all the surrounding regions to celebrate there the typological feast of Tabernacles. From this the spiritual man will understand the gathering of all the saints to Christ. From the whole world, after the quickening of the dead, they will be gathered into the city above, the heavenly Jerusalem. There they will offer thanksgiving for the true feast of Tabernacles, that is, for the raising and immortal abiding of bodies, after corruption has clearly been destroyed and death has fallen into death.
Concerning what usually happened historically and actually, one must say that the crowd coming to Jerusalem was beyond number. Especially at that time, then, the Pharisees could naturally have great power. They pretended to defend the Law and accused as a transgressor, or as one who seemed to them a transgressor, in the midst of such a multitude.
There is absolutely no difficulty in inflaming a measureless gathering of a herd-like crowd when someone says that it has been insulted. He may try to stir it even against those who have in no way insulted it. Like water or fire, without reasoning or inquiry, it rushes violently everywhere and attacks everything appointed to suffer from it.
Knowing this, the Lord removes Himself from Jerusalem together with the disciples and goes “to the other side of the Sea of Tiberias.” That the Lord turns away from the murderous Jews, acting very rightly, we may also learn from this event. The blessed Evangelist himself says: “After this Jesus walked in Galilee, for He would not walk in Judea, because the Jews sought to kill Him” (Jn 7:1).
Someone may say: I can agree that He refused to walk in Judea so as not to undergo premature death. But I still do not understand why He avoids the feast itself.
So also those who were considered Christ’s brethren approached Him in Galilee and said: “Depart from here and go into Judea, that Your disciples also may see the signs which You do” (Jn 7:3). But the Lord said to them: “You go up to the feast. I am not going up to this feast, because My time has not yet been fulfilled” (Jn 7:8).
Thus it is clear and evident that the Savior withdrew from Jerusalem and undertook this departure not willingly, but while avoiding the vileness of the unbelievers. He was evading the malice of His persecutors and skillfully turning aside the arrow of hatred.
He withdraws from His persecutors, although He had the power to suffer nothing even if He remained. He also does this in order to sketch for us a good example, not of cowardice, but of prudent foresight and love for neighbor.
Guided by this as by a pattern toward knowledge of what is useful, we must know what to do when enemies persecute us. Even if no harm at all seems presently to threaten us from them, we should withdraw in some way. By doing so, we repel the greatest violence of their attacks and avoid the sudden heat of their anger.
We shall then encounter the weakened anger of those who wrong us and cut off the boldness of their violence. We do good to those who might not have been good to us. We are not receiving good, as is evident, nor seeking our own advantage, but that of others.
Thus it belongs to love to offer complete non-resistance to those who wish us evil. We do not abuse our ability to suffer nothing if we are present among enemies. By remaining, we would excite in them a stronger fury which lacks the power to prevail over the one hated. Such love, which existed in Christ in its purest form, “does not seek its own,” as Paul says (1 Cor 13:5).
Direct the sharp vision of your mind again to what is written. You will find with wonder the highest providential wisdom in the withdrawals of our Savior, I mean from Jerusalem.
Often He is driven out by the madness of the Jews and stays among foreigners. He even seems, perhaps, to be saved among them and to receive due honor. Through this He gives precedence to the Church from the Gentiles. By the reverence of others He exposes Israel’s hatred of God. By the meekness of the former He shows the savagery of the latter, so that in the end they may be shown in every way to be deservedly and justly deprived of the promise given to the fathers.
Having withdrawn from Jerusalem, the Lord does not stay in one of the neighboring cities, nor settle in one of the border villages. He goes “to the other side of the Sea of Tiberias.” By this He most clearly threatens those who have resolved to persecute Him. He will depart from them and withdraw from the whole people so far that, in a certain sense, He will make even the way of turning to Him inaccessible for them.
For the sea is wholly impassable to human feet. He will appear to say something similar to them in later places in the Gospel: “You will seek Me and will not find Me” (Jn 7:34), and, “Where I am going, you cannot come” (Jn 8:21).
Indeed, the path of righteousness is very level, easy to traverse, and free of every difficulty for those who come to Him through faith. But it is very difficult and steep, and rather completely impassable, for those who provoke Him to wrath. This accords with what one of the holy prophets said: “The ways of the Lord are straight, and the righteous shall walk in them, but the ungodly shall stumble in them” (Hos 14:10).
Thus the intervening space of the sea signifies the difficulty, or rather the inaccessibility, for the Jews of the spiritual path to Him. So also God promises in the prophets to block the ways of the impious soul, saying: “Therefore, behold, I will hedge up her way with thorns, and she shall not find her paths” (Hos 2:6).
What thorns signified there, the sea signifies here. It separates those who senselessly resolved to insult from the One insulted. It lies between the Righteous One and the ungodly.
But this type also seems to contain for us, as in seed, another hidden mystery. When Israel was released from the land of Egypt, Pharaoh was greatly provoked. Raging against the people’s unexpected prosperity, he began to pursue them and dared to satisfy his envy and grief by war.
He pursued them, thinking to force those who had only just come out from service to him back into slavery. But God leads the people through the midst of the sea.
The persecutor, very savage and wholly unrestrained in anger, had madly resolved by his ungovernable fury to fight against God. He is drowned with his whole army in the midst of the sea, while Israel alone is saved.
Let Moses now come before us, the one who once lamented the madness of the Jews. Let him speak to them, indignant at their impiety against Christ: “A crooked and adulterous generation, is this how you repay the Lord?” (Deut 32:5-6).
Do you pursue beyond the sea the One who led you through the midst of the sea and mighty waves? Are you not ashamed to persecute Him? This, then, is your lot, O Jew. The sea will finally drown you. For as it was then with those men, so now with Christ and the godless Jews. Death belongs to the persecutors, not to the Persecuted.
Blessed David also sings to us in one place: “Let not the tempest of waters drown me, nor let the deep swallow me up” (Ps 68:16). He indicates the most terrible shipwreck of the Jewish synagogue and refuses to be submerged with it in the depth of ignorance.
But the calamity that then befell the Egyptians and their ruler concerned the earthly body. The Jews endure a far greater punishment in relation to a higher matter. They suffer injury of soul, receiving repayment according to their wicked deeds.
Pharaoh is justly punished for attempting by force to turn the free man into a slave. In turn, Israel is also lawfully subject to retribution. It does not come into bondage to the Master of all. Rather, through its great pride, Israel itself becomes toward God what Pharaoh had been toward Israel in violence.
It should be observed that the Evangelist calls the Lake of Tiberias a “sea,” following the words of divine Scripture. For the Creator called “the gatherings of the waters seas” (Gen 1:10). Among outside writers too, the word is often used indifferently, so that they sometimes do not refuse to call the sea a lake.
THEOSIS