Today we recall with reverence how totally Jesus shared in the depths of human suffering. But by enduring his passion in a spirit of loving trust in God the Father, he paid the price for all human sinfulness, and won for us the gift of salvation. In his Servant Song Isaiah declares his trust that God never abandons those who risk all for a cause they believes in, regardless of scorn or rejection.
Today’s liturgy gives us a preview of the events we will celebrate in the Easter Triduum later this week. The passion, death and resurrection of Jesus are the focus of this and every Sunday celebration.
In order that all the dispersed children of God can lock hands and hearts and become one family as the prophet Ezekiel announced, they are not asked to lose anything at all. Many centuries after Ezekiel’s vision, the apostle Paul asked his converts to “ponder and preserve all that is true, honest, pure, admirable, decent, virtuous or worthy of praise.”
Both Jeremiah and Jesus are hounded by friends and even by relatives who turned against them. Those erstwhile, fair-weather companions feel angry at Jeremiah or Jesus, when their personal interests and security were threatened. Jeremiah trusts in the Lord who “saves the life of the poor” and…
The promises to Abraham reach into the future, even into centuries beyond our present age. In his vocational encounter with God, the patriarch anticipated a day when all the nations of the world will be united as though they were blood-relatives, all of them offspring of their one father…
The young men in the book of Daniel follow their consciences and trust in God in spite of what happens to them: “If our God can save us , may he save us! But even if he will not, still we will not serve your God, O king!” With impressive serenity they accept the consequences.
The symbol of Israel’s sin, the saraph serpent (the Hebrew word saraph means burning), which threatened them with its poisonous bite, is transformed into an instrument of salvation…
The key to genuine religion is given in one line about Susanna: Through her tears she looked up to heaven, for she trusted in the Lord with her whole heart. By contrast we learn that her two accusers suppressed their consciences and would not raise their eyes to heaven. When we fix our gaze on heaven, and let ourselves to be absorbed in God, we acquire an extraordinary peace.
Jesus’ coming late to Lazarus’ funeral was at the risk of his own death, but he promises resurrection and eternal life to all who trust in him. The death and new life theme also runs through today’s readings; in the first reading, the whole nation of Israel during their long exile felt like a dried-up corpse; and for St Paul, the dynamic of dying and rising with Christ is at the heart of each Christian’s life.
In just over ten days time, the Easter Triduum will begin, on Holy Thursday evening. The time when baptism is celebrated is now very close. We ask God’s help for all the adults and children preparing for baptism this Easter, and pray that we may be fit and ready to renew our baptismal vows at the same feast.
Because Lent summons us to more extended prayer and reflection, with daily Eucharistic celebration and special biblical readings, we need to review the norms for reading the Bible profitably. Today’s selections from Jeremiah and the gospel of John offer some help for interpreting the Bible today.
At the depth of each person there is a mysterious life, not only created by God but also directed by God at each and every hour. There is an hour of peace and an hour of violence, an hour of birth and an hour of re-birth into eternity. Just as death and immortality are won-drously absorbed in God’s infinite knowledge and loving care, so also is the birth, the inner character and temperament, the sequence of life. These most essential parts of our person, these most crucial moments of our existence are all locked in the secrecy of God’s divine life.
These readings center around complaints and responses. Since criticism is a very human reaction, we should all feel very much at home! God complains to Moses about the people of Israel: how stiff-necked they were! He wants to quit this stubborn mob and start a new chosen nation in Moses and his sons, with the promise, “I will make you a great nation.”
These readings center around complaints and responses. Since criticism is a very human reaction, we should all feel very much at home! God complains to Moses about the people of Israel: how stiff-necked they were! He wants to quit this stubborn mob and start a new chosen nation in Moses and his sons, with the promise, “I will make you a great nation.”
The biblical readings from Isaiah 40 to 55 (a rich section of prophecy, dating from the Babylonian exile) and from the gospel of John are rich with tenderness and power. Heaven and earth sing in celebrating the Lord’s carving through the mountains to bring his people home from afar. Almost in the same breath the prophet sees this mighty God as a mother full of tender love for the child in her womb.
Lent acts as an annual call to renewal, and can easily be used as a seven-week period of formation. New ministries can be started and existing ones renewed, while the whole parish becomes refreshed and ready to answer its baptismal call to service…
We live in an age of pollution and crisis. Our earth’s air and our water are becoming so contaminated that we fear an ecological crisis. The fresh-water image, therefore, in the prophecy of Ezekiel has all the more appeal today; its miraculous origin all the more necessary. Only by the mercy of God, it seems, can the destruction of our planet be reversed. Ezekiel offers us reasons to hope and pray.
Through Isaiah, God promises us “new heavens and a new earth.” We look forward to a vibrant life, even better than just the old-made-new… for it will be a new creation, a total transformation. Although in the next age we and everyone else will somehow be the same persons who lived on this old planet earth, God’s creative power will lead into a heavenly existence so marvelous that the things of the past shall not be remembered . . .No longer shall the sounds of weeping be heard there.
Are we, in some ways, “walking in darkness,” unaware of our true spritual state, blind to the gravest of our faults and to the needs of others. The Gospel remedy is to let the Spirit of Jesus shine into our hearts this very day, to take away our blindness and help us see things his way. But sometimes too, by undervaluing our gifts or being only too burdened by our failures, we might fail to make our proper mark in life – just as young David’s family never imagined that he could possibly serve God’s people as their king. St Paul assures us that each individual person is gifted and chosen, enabled through baptism to live in God’s shining grace, and to share it with others.
Traditionally, this Sunday is called Laetare Sunday, which means ‘a day for joy’. Lent is half over, and the celebration of the death and resurrection of Jesus is nearer. At this midpoint of Lent, it is traditional to honour mothers, treasuring those still with us and praying for those we have lost to death.
