Fr Paul reads from the Gospel of John (8: 51-59) in which Jesus says to the Jews ‘If I were to seek my own glory that would be no glory at all. My glory is conferred by the Father, by the one of whom you say He is our God’. Fr Paul this Gospel passage brings to a climax the account of the confrontation of Jesus with ‘the Jews’ in the Temple at the Festival of Tabernacles.  It tells us of the glory, which the Father confers on Jesus. This glory is awesome and inspiring. It is something that rightly belongs only to the Divine. When Moses, despairing at the failure of the Israelites immediately after the conclusion of the Covenant on Sinai, asks to see God’s glory (Exodus 33:8); he is permitted to see God’s glory only from behind, for no one can see God and live. Again Isaiah, in his vision in the Temple, is bowled over by the sight of God’s glory (Isaiah 6), and again Ezekiel is bowled over by seeing something that ‘looked like the glory of the Lord’ (Ezekiel 1:28). So, glory properly belongs to God alone, and is an inspiring and awesome experience. In the beginning of John’s Gospel, the phrase ‘we saw his glory’ expresses the summit of revelation at the Incarnation. By his first sign at Cana Jesus made his glory known (2:11), but the fullness of his glory is to be shown only by the Hour of his Passion and Resurrection, the two being seen as one single moment: ‘Now, Father, it is time for you to glorify me with that glory I had with you before the world was (17:5). So, the revelation of God’s glory in Jesus is another way of expressing the divinity of Christ.With this in mind, Jesus at the end of this Gospel adopts as his own the divine name, ‘I AM’.Fr Paul says today’s Gospel challenge is reflect on the glory conferred on Jesus by the Father and to reflect on that name – I AM.