Jesus said to his disciples,
“Pay attention to what I am telling you.
Literally, "Put my words in your ears". Jesus often advised that hearing itself was not enough, but that it mattered how one heard. He would often say "He that has ears, let him hear" (for example, see Matthew 11:15) because ears of themselves were insufficient. One would need to be an active recipient of the words of Jesus for those words to avail for them. If the words of Jesus were to have an effect they would need to find the good soil of a listening heart.
The Son of Man is to be handed over to men.
The need for active reception is especially necessary for the hard sayings of Jesus, when he says something that goes against the grain of our human preferences and prejudices. The disciples in the Gospel did not respond with the sort of attention that could receive words of this sort. Understanding this, Jesus would repeat what he said as though to gradually wear away a gap in the defenses of their egos, that he might be heard. Jesus here alluded to the suffering servant of Isaiah, who would be handed over on account of the sins of the people. But this was emphatically not what the disciples were expecting of their Messiah. They could not yet imagine that the triumphant Son of David would first be the one who was offered "for the guilt of us all" (see Isaiah 53:6), or that both threads of Old Testament prophecy could refer to a single fulfillment in Christ.
But they did not understand this saying;
its meaning was hidden from them
so that they should not understand it
The meaning of this saying was still hidden in the disciples' hearts, waiting to be unlocked, waiting for them to relax their guard that it might be revealed to them. It was something that was initially difficulty, yet that would satisfy hidden longings in ways that were beyond what they could ask or imagine. It was something so heartbreakingly beautiful that they were afraid to face it directly, lest they be shattered.
and they were afraid to ask him about this saying.
Instead of allowing Jesus to reveal himself at once, they allowed themselves to be distracted by vanities, as we see when they next argued about who was the greatest among them. Jesus was trying to help them to remember their Creator in these early days before the coming of the evil days. But as they themselves were not ready he remained patient and, importantly, persistent. He did not give up on them or abandon or reject them because of failures of this sort. Rather, he knew in advance how they would hear, and yet continued to speak, planting seeds which would bear fruit later, watered by the Holy Spirit poured forth from the cross, revealed in the resurrection, and finally given at Pentecost.
May the Lord give us ears that hear, and help us to listen with active attention to what he says. Yet we recognize our limits and our fallibility, so we are grateful that he foresees even our mistakes and our hardheartedness. He has a plan to overcome this hardness of our hearts. But it is better for us if we cooperate, and allow him to do so sooner rather than later, that we might more quickly and fully share in the beauty of his own heart that his words reveal.
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