JOHN 13:17 — KING JAMES VERSION 0
“If ye know these things, happy are ye if ye do them.”
If you know these things, you are blessed if you do them — the beatitude is contingent on action, on knowledge made flesh in practice. Knowing without doing remains sterile; blessedness (makarios) comes through the integration of understanding and embodiment. The disciples have witnessed and received the footwashing; now they must become agents of the same grace. This verse articulates John's entire ethical vision: true discipleship is not intellectual assent but transformation of life, a radical reorientation of one's being toward others in the pattern of Christ.
Church Fathers on John 13:17
Our Lord, mindful of His promise to Peter that he should know the meaning of His act, you shall know here after, now begins to teach him: So after He had washed their feet, and had taken His garments, and was sat down again, He said to them, Know you what I have done to you?
Know you, is either interrogative, to show the greatness of the act, or imperative, to rouse their minds.
Mystically, when at our redemption we were changed by the shedding of His blood, He took again His garments, rising from the grave the third day, and clothed in the same body now immortal, ascended into heaven, and sits on the right hand of the Father, from whence He shall come to judge the world.
Read all 26 entries in the readerCatena Aurea · St. Thomas Aquinas, tr. J. H. Newman · public domain
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