Fifth Sunday of Lent (B)
(Jeremiah,
31:31-34; Hebrews, 5:7-9; John 12:20-30)
My dear brothers and
sisters in Christ, when relations between Israel and the Lord her God had, so
to speak, broken down, with the result that the Lord determined to punish
Israel’s faithlessness by sending her children to exile in Babylon, the Lord
had, nevertheless, taken care to assure Jeremiah, and through him the whole
people of Israel that, despite the adversity and fear to be endured, there
would be a future to look forward to, to hope for, after the years of exile and
apparent abandonment. He spoke of a new
covenant -- the covenant to be ultimately ratified in the blood of Jesus --
saying:
“This is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those
days,” says the LORD: “I will place My law within them and write it upon their
hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.”
Israel had not been
faithful to the covenant God had made with her through Moses; she had sought to
behave as did the nations around her, not truly wanting to be a chosen people,
holy as her God was holy. The pride and
pomp, the pleasures and plenty, of the surrounding nations having seduced her,
she wanted to enjoy such things with them.
After around seventy
years of exile in Babylon, on returning to Judea, thanks to Cyrus king of the
Medes and Persians who had conquered Babylon, the Jews recognized their
ancestors’ unfaithfulness to the Law of Moses and did try to reverse that
infidelity by close, indeed minute, study of the Law and its implications,
together with a scrupulous, and at times excessively literal, observance of all
its prescriptions. This resulted in them
proudly putting scholarly knowledge and extravagant observance of the Law first
and foremost, while gradually losing touch with humble humanity and the spirit
of the Law. Their attention came to
centre on the people’s awareness of their own knowledge and practice of all the
Law’s requirements, of their exact conformity with each and every prescription
whether written by God or deduced and handed down by themselves. They had the
Law, as it were, on the operating table, and like supremely skilful surgeons or
morticians, they cut and dissected each and every individual passage and phrase
of the Law for classification and documentation; but all the while, the
over-riding meaning and significance of the Law was becoming more and more
unrecognisable to them, for, having cut the body up into every conceivable
constituent part, they were increasingly unable to put it together again as a
vital and recognizable whole. Instead
of themselves being formed by the Law they were re-fashioning the Law according
to their own ideology and preferences.
When the Lord spoke
to Jeremiah of a new covenant, He had, most critically, said:
I will place MY law within them and write it upon their hearts.
God would Himself
place His new Law of the new Covenant into man’s mind and heart to guide
and inspire him: man would not be allowed to take charge of it in order to make
it fit into his merely human categories; on the contrary, this new Law from
within -- gifted us by the Father, through His Son, and the inspiration of the
Holy Spirit -- would raise man up, above and beyond himself, to the level of a
true child of God, and living member of the Body of Christ.
Surely this
historical precedent is reflected in Our Lord’s own fundamental choice of
Church before book: He could have written, drafted, or caused to be suitably
prepared, an authoritative Personal account of His own life’s work, teaching,
and intentions; but He made no such attempt.
Instead He chose to found a Church based upon the witness and testimony
of apostles chosen by Himself after prayer to His Father, then founded and
established for all time by the outpouring of His Spirit. This choice ultimately determined and
signifies the central importance of faith in the Christian and Catholic way of
life, as the supreme means of man’s total gift of self to God: in accordance
with the witness and teaching of a humanly visible Church -- the Body of Christ
– and on the basis of faith in the supernatural promise and enduring presence
of Jesus to His Church, with the supreme power and sublime wisdom of the Holy
Spirit ever at work in her. Catholic,
Christian faith is not commitment to any independent understanding of chosen books,
no matter how holy, of themselves, such books might be, no matter how
authoritative that understanding considered by human standards.
Later on we were
told of a voice coming from heaven in response to Jesus’ prayer, a voice some
bystanders thought was that of an angel speaking with Jesus, while others
considered it to have been nothing more than a peal of thunder. Jesus knew it to be the voice of His Father,
but He made it expressly clear that:
This voice did not come
for My sake but for yours.
For Jesus was always
seeking to give His utmost for the greater glory of His Father; and loving Him
in such a way -- utterly and absolutely -- He denied Himself, in the little
things as well as the great ones, with a total and selfless commitment that
would remain the most sublime model for His future disciples’ life of
faith.
And that choice and
appreciation is mirrored in today’s Gospel reading by a most striking fact, for
in the Gospel reading today we are told:
There were some Greeks among those who had come up to worship at the feast;
they came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, and asked him, “Sir, we
would like to see Jesus.” Philip went
and told Andrew; then Andrew and Philip went and told Jesus.
Thereupon, however,
we are told nothing whatsoever about any Personal contact between Jesus and these ‘first-fruits’ of the
Gentiles! How strange! Why?
Jesus saw the saving
presence of His Father’s Law at work in the hearts and minds of these Greek
pilgrims and from this He recognized that His own work was nearly complete: His
saving Death, poured-out Blood, and Resurrection alone could seal and ratify
His new Covenant and enable His Church to take up and continue His saving work
on earth, beginning with these Greeks and continuing throughout the rest of
time among all nations and peoples of the world. Now, with complete selflessness and total
trust in His Father, He ‘handed over the reins’ of His life’s work and imminent
Death to the Church of His choice saying:
The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Amen, amen, I say to you, unless a grain of
wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat; but if it
dies, it produces much fruit. Now is the
time of judgment on this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven
out. And when I am lifted up from the
earth, I will draw everyone to Myself.
What significance
does all this have for us, here and now?
Much indeed; because in today’s readings we have been given an outline
of our human situation in the world today.
Although
Christianity is spread world-wide today, many, many Christians behave like the
Israelites of old: they do not want to belong to a chosen people called to be
holy because their God is holy; they want to be free, they say, to taste
whatever the world has to offer; they do not want a law which would forewarn
them let alone forbid such unacceptable practices. The irony of their situation, however, is
that though they might claim, at times vociferously, to be advocates of
freedom, they gladly abdicate their freedom of spirit by enslaving themselves
-- becoming addicts indeed -- to pleasure, money, and pride.
There are others who
like the Jews, apparently zealous, try to manipulate the Gospel and indeed God
Himself, rather than allow themselves to be formed by the Spirit according to
the way of the Good News of Jesus. They
seize upon some particular aspect or teaching of that Good News and then try
make their choice the whole of the Gospel message: they rejoice in their
version of the Good News but have no time or desire to let their minds be
illuminated and guided by the whole Gospel.
The Gospel, some say, is Good news, which, for them, means that
Christians should be make themselves seen to be continually rejoicing with
clap-happy attitudes which worldly people can recognize. Others will seize upon the discipline of the
Gospel and forget compassion, sympathy and understanding for others: strong in
their own observance of that discipline they freely give way to criticism of
the failings and weaknesses they think they observe in others. Even more frequently encountered today is the
idea that the Gospel is compassion and love to such an extent that the Gospel
has no commands and no sanctions, nor does the majesty of God demand any
soul-sanctifying reverence or humility from us.
People of God, the
Father has drawn us to Jesus in Mother Church, and He has given us His Holy
Spirit, not simply to save us from sin and death, but to save us from sin and
death by reforming us for heavenly life.
That formation extends to and involves the whole of our being: the way
we think, the way we love; the hopes we cherish for the future and the ideals
we try to realize here and now; the joys we gratefully embrace and the sorrows
we patiently accept; the service we seek to give and the selfishness we try to
reject. Because we are being formed for
a life we cannot yet see, a heavenly life, therefore we cannot prescribe for
ourselves; on the contrary, we have to pray the Holy Spirit that He will guide
us in the way of Jesus; and, having prayed thus, we must have the humility to
accept life as coming from Him and the patience to respond with love for Him in
whatever situation we find ourselves involved:
Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world
will preserve it for eternal life.
Whoever serves Me must follow Me; and where I am, there also will My
servant be. The Father will honour whoever serves Me.
Perhaps the
greatest, most difficult and yet most beautiful lesson we have to learn from
the Gospel is love of the Cross, because the Cross seems to contradict all that
is natural within us. We have to be
willing, therefore, to accept, with Jesus, that we are here for a purpose which
is not of our own choosing, it is God’s purpose and plan for each and every one
of us individually, in Jesus: one which, through the Cross, we seek to embrace
personally and fulfil sincerely throughout our life; one that is already --
here on earth -- our greatest privilege, one that will be -- in heaven -- our
supreme glory:
“I am troubled now. Yet what should I say, ‘Father, save me from this
hour’? But it was for this purpose that
I came to this hour. Father, glorify
your name.” Then a voice came from heaven, “I have glorified it and will
glorify it again.”
In order that God’s
name be glorified and His purpose be fulfilled in and through us, we have to be
totally informed by the presence, and reformed by the working, of His Holy
Spirit in our lives. Let us therefore
beseech the Spirit to form us in Jesus for the Father, to the extent that we
may be brought to cry out with Him:
Father, glorify you name
and hopefully be
privileged to share, in Him, that heavenly response:
I
have glorified it (in my Son), and I will glorify it again (in you, my child).
