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Friday 15 March 2024

5th Sunday of Lent Year B, 2024

  

(Jeremiah 31:31-34; Hebrews 5:7-9; Saint John 12:20-33)

The whole purpose of Our Blessed Lord’s life and death upon earth can be summed up in the words of His prayer:

            Father, glorify Your name!

In today’s Gospel account He was near the end of His life: He had performed striking miracles, healed countless sick, and possessed persons.  Above all, however, it was His teaching-with-authority that had provoked most attention from Galilee to Jerusalem among those who exercised or coveted power (John 15: 24):

If I had not done among them the works which no one else did, they would not be guilty of sin; but now they have seen and hated both Me and My Father. 

And now, among the crowds coming to Jerusalem from all over the Mediterranean and  Middle East for the imminent Jewish Passover, certain Greeks had sought out Philip of Bethsaida, a disciple of Jesus, asking that he might introduce them to Jesus. Philip asked Andrew to back him up in making such a  striking request known to Jesus.

Learning of the pagans’ request to speak with himself as a unique religious teacher, Jesus immediately realized that the climax of His life, as God-made-man for God’s glory and mankind’s salvation, was at hand. The Romans had over-all military power to control (crush if necessary) the crowds, and punish trouble-makers; The Sadducee Temple authorities had their share of (Roman) power to govern Jerusalem’s world-famous Temple and its ceremonial worship; the Pharisees and their Scribes had assumed authority over the traditional religious teaching being given to faithful Jews, and now there was Jesus of Nazareth: whose Personal, and Teaching authority, was alarming all those I have just mentioned, exercising and coveting more people-power.

At this juncture, Jesus had come to realize that His life’s fulfilment would only be attained by His allowing, by His embracing, His Father’s authority, and will-to-bring- to-fulfilment that for which He, Jesus, had been sent as God’s ultimate response to Abraham who -- out of obedience to God – had, long-ago, been willing to sacrifice his own son; a response that leads all one-God believers (Jews and Muslims), and all Christians to speak of ‘father Abraham’ (Genesis 26:3-5):

I will establish the oath that I swore to Abraham, … in your offspring all the nations God’s of the earth shall be blessed, for Abraham obeyed My voice.  

And, likewise, fulfilment for all Jews obedient to the Law of Moses and believers in the promise made there of a coming God-inspired prophet (Deuteronomy 18:15):

The Lord your God shall raise up for you a prophet like me (Moses) from among you, from your brothers – it is to him that you shall listen.

And to that sublime end the devil himself would be permitted, in his overweening pride and ultimate stupidity, to bring about his own downfall by doing to Jesus what he had long-desired to do since having being humiliated in their desert contest at the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry.  This renewal of that contest would be the decisive moment when the ignorance and hatred of sin would be cast out, and the beauty and truth of the Kingdom of God ushered in as the ruling power for the future formation, development, and fulfilment of a new People of God throughout the whole world: a people called to embrace a transformation of life, from an earthly life inexorably enmeshed in sin, into the freedom of the children of God: a heavenly and eternal life to be bestowed upon all believers in Jesus as Son of God and only Saviour of mankind:

Now the ruler of this world is to be cast out.  And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to Myself.

Those around Jesus heard Him glorify His Father, but when a voice came from heaven proclaiming that the Father was about to be supremely glorified through the death of His Son, they were divided in their opinions: some were humbled by the mystery and said, ‘It was an angel speaking to Him’. Others, probably the majority, shrugged off what they could not immediately understand and said, ‘It was a clap of thunder!’

People of God, a like division still arises today, when Christian, even Catholic, people, are faced with personal suffering.  Such suffering is inevitable in this life and we who want to be true disciples of Jesus, must learn, with Jesus, to allow our heavenly Father to lead us to our fulfilment as disciples of  His by embracing our suffering – in the power of Jesus’ most Holy Spirit – as our share in His self-sacrifice of love.

For there are certain truths in life, People of God, which can only be appreciated by allowing life to teach us; our intellect alone cannot, in the case of such truths, give us a satisfactory understanding, and most certainly cannot give us an adequate appreciation of them.  For example, authorities in free societies try to carefully avoid making martyrs of opposing factions or individuals; somehow punishment seems to strengthen, focus, such opposition, not destroy it.

Now such truths are especially prominent in matters of religion.   Our Blessed Lord Himself said earlier in St. John’s Gospel (7:17):

If any man’s will is to do God’s will, he shall know whether My teaching is from God or whether I am speaking on My own authority.

In other words, we can only begin to truly recognize God’s will for us individually, personally, by our acting in conformity with the whole of His revelation, and, above all, by obedience to His Church-proclaimed and Scripture-manifested will.   Such moral, spiritual truth, however, can only be gradually assimilated into our being by being humbly received, sincerely obeyed, and patiently loved, as an integral, essential, and indeed decisive aspect of our on-going life.

The greatest of all the Christian truths which can only be understood by living them,  is   that the Father’s name, and Jesus Himself, are supremely glorified by Jesus’ death on the Cross.  Jesus’ following words resulted from His living of that truth:

Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life,  (John 12:25)

At first hearing, those words seem contradictory and meaningless, yet they are, in reality, spiritually logical and redolent with divine wisdom, because Jesus added:

            If anyone serves Me, he must follow Me. (12:26)

Of course, the word ‘hate’ is not to be understood literally, we can’t hate our life in this world literally, any more than we can hate our father and mother, brother and sister as we read in one of Our Lord’s sayings; it is a figure of speech, a way of speaking current in Our Lord’s time in Palestine, meaning that, under certain conditions, we must be prepared to regard our life in this world, our love for father, mother, brothers and sisters, children and possessions, reputation and respect, as of secondary importance.  When, that is, their consideration would conflict with the absolute demands of the Supreme Good: God and eternal life.

This doctrine that suffering, humbly accepted and fully embraced in faith, can be the gateway to a higher and better life, is one of the greatest lights and supreme blessings of Christianity.  It is, however, a light and a blessing we must cherish by putting it into practice in accordance with those words of Jesus: allowing it to guide, rule our response to the ever-recurring, difficulties, problems, and alas, even sorrows, we come across in our experience of life as His true disciples.

We Catholics especially need to be convinced of this, that God can make the inevitable sufferings we experience on earth into blessings for eternal life for those who love His beloved Son enough to imitate Him, walk in His way here below.

People of God, when grief, anxiety, pain, come your way, try to recall what our Faith teaches us: that in God alone is our fulness of life and being.  Because He made us out of nothing, He alone knows us entirely through and through, and because He made us for Himself, He alone loves us for what we most truly are.  With such an awareness, in times of trial, short prayers – deeply intended -- are most fitting: Lord,  I thank You, I trust You, I love You, my God and my All’

Don’t look for results from Him; rather, put and keep yourself at peace, cradled in faith.

That attitude well befits a true disciple of Jesus Who, when His own agony was beginning, took His suffering to His Father in prayer. Indeed, it was by His persevering in such loving obedience and total trust, that what had been lost by the first Adam in the Garden of Eden, was redeemed by the Second Adam in the Garden of Gethsemane.  As we heard in our second reading:

Although He was a son, He learned obedience through what He suffered; and being made perfect, He became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey Him.

Therefore, surely, we His disciples should endeavour to follow in His steps.  The greatest opportunity that can come our way is the moment when suffering comes -- unasked for, unsought, unprovoked – into our lives; that is the moment when God Himself is, as it were, knocking at the door of our will for permission to Himself glorify His own name in us and through us, by means of the suffering He wants us to share with Him. Such suffering is found abundantly in family life where there are grand-parents, parents, and children, and where children can so easily be used as bargaining-chips for either grand-parents or parents, to get what they want … creating situations where emotion rules imperiously and God’s teaching and guidance is ignored.

 

Dear People of God, Jesus did not ask to understand His Cross, but He prayed most earnestly that He might have strength to embrace it.  We, for our part, cannot fully understand our crosses, but let us gratefully follow Our Blessed Lord’s example in His prayer, and in His consenting ‘YES’ to His Father, and death to Himself.