Fr Paul Gooley reads today from the Gospel of John (5: 17-30) in which Jesus talks to his disciples about the relationship between God, the Father and the Son. Fr Paul says in the passage just before this Gospel, Jesus was being attacked by ‘the Jews’ for working on the Sabbath. They were especially upset at Jesus claiming the right to work on the Sabbath, because only God has to work on the Sabbath – babies are born (he has to give them life) and people die (God has to judge them). In this passage, Jesus now reflects on the witness given by the healing to the relationship between him and the Father. This reflection is perhaps the clearest and richest statement of the relationship between Father and Son all in the Gospels. This Johannine passage is a dynamic definition, in terms of will and power and function. At beginning and end the passage is bracketed by the statement that Father and Son have the same will: there is no distinction in what they desire and do: whatever the Father does, the Son does too (v 19), and ‘I seek not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me’ (v 30). In more detail, to give life is the supreme prerogative of God, for no one else can give life. But just as the Father gives life, so the Son gives life (v 21 and v 25). Only the power to give life comes to the Son from the Father (v 26). This does not mean that the Son is inferior to the Father; far from it, for they both have the same power, though in the Son it is a derivative power. Similarly, it is also the function of God to judge (v 22 and v 27). The Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son. But the Son, in his turn, judges no one, for throughout the Gospel we see human beings judging themselves by their reaction to Jesus. But here again, the Son’s function in judging, though total and absolute, is derivative, for the Father ‘has entrusted all judgment to the Son so that all may honour the Son as they honour the Father.’ Fr Paul puts before us today’s Gospel challenge – to take some time to reflect on the relationship between the Father and the Son.