FIFTH SUNDAY OF LENT

29 MARCH 2020

          The prophet Ezekiel addresses a people devoid of hope.  The Babylonians have destroyed their temple and Jerusalem.  Both are now in ashes.  They had killed most of the population.  The survivors are now living in exile in Babylon.  Like their temple and city, they had been reduced to ashes.  Ezekiel has insisted that this current situation is their fault.  They had not been faithful to the Covenant with God.  However, he also gives them hope.  He reminds them that God never wants to leave them in ashes.  God will remain faithful to his promise, even when they did not.  God will open the graves of their exile and return them to their Promised Land.

            When Jesus walks into Bethany, he also confronts a hopeless situation.  His closest friends, Martha and Mary, are in the deepest grief over the death of their brother and his friend Lazarus.  Lazarus has been in the tomb for four days.  There is absolutely no hope for Lazarus.  In a hot climate without any kind of embalming, his body is already decaying.  Death, the ultimate enemy of every human person, has triumphed again.

            In the Gospel of Saint John, Jesus performs seven miracles.  John calls them signs.  In this, the last and greatest of the signs, Jesus addresses his Father in prayer, confronts that enemy, and calls Lazarus out of the tomb.  Lazarus comes out, bound hand and foot.  Even though the sisters may be very happy, Lazarus will die again.  In this greatest sign, Jesus points to his own battle with the enemy.  Unlike Lazarus, Jesus will emerge from his tomb with the burial cloths put to the side.  In his victory over death, Jesus will be transformed, never to die again.

            When we entered this Season of Lent, we were marked with ashes, reminding us of our connection with Ezekiel’s people and Lazarus.  In normal times, those preparing for the Sacraments of Initiation at the Easter Vigil would go through the third scrutiny today.  In that scrutiny, they would be reminded of all that would have caused them death.  They would have been reminded that their sins would be washed away in the waters of Baptism.  They will be sealed with the Holy Spirit and fed for the first time with the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ.

            For the rest of us, those ashes remind us not only of our own eventual death, but also of our refusal to live our baptismal promises and slip back into the tomb of sin.  In the Gospels, Jesus brings three people back from death.  Each miracle can help us connect with our spiritual condition affected by sin.  In raising the young daughter of Jairus, we are reminded that we can be in the early stages of sin.  It has not yet taken root.  In raising the only son of the widowed woman of Nain, we are reminded that sin can be taking a greater hold on us.  In raising Lazarus who had been in the tomb for four days, we are reminded of what happens when sin cuts off our relationship with God and each other.  We are tempted to believe that there is no hope.

            No matter where we are in our spiritual lives, Jesus has the power to free us, just as he freed all three people from the enemy, death.  But even more importantly, he strengthens us to renew our faith in his resurrection when we come to Easter.  Faith in his resurrection is central to our faith.  Faith does not take away our pain when we lose our loved ones to death.  But, as Thomas Aquinas reminds us, belief in the resurrection helps us in four ways.  It helps remove the sadness when our loved ones die.  It can help remove our own fear of death.  It reminds us of the importance of performing diligent acts.  It helps us draw away from evil.  In these next two weeks of continued isolation, we pray for a deeper faith in the power of Jesus Christ to free us from the bondage of sin through the power of his resurrection from the dead.

FOURTH SUNDAY OF LENT

22 MARCH 2020

          In Genesis, God creates light and separates it from darkness on the first day of creation.  Throughout the Old Testament, we see light and darkness used repeatedly to symbolize day and night, good and evil, knowledge and ignorance, and divine and demonic.  Saint Paul picks up this symbolism in his Letter to the Ephesians.  He reminds them that they were once darkness.  Now that they have been baptized, they are light in the Lord.  He reminds them that they cannot take part in the fruitless works of darkness any more.  Instead, they need to live as children of light, living the virtues of goodness and righteousness and truth. 

            At the very beginning of his Gospel, Saint John says that Jesus is the eternal Word of God who was present in the beginning.  Jesus is the light shining on in darkness, a darkness that did not overcome it.  The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us, and we have seen his glory: the glory of an only Son coming from the Father filled with enduring love. 

            In today’s Gospel, Jesus reveals the light of his presence.  He responds to the darkness of his disciples when they ask if his blindness was because of his sin or the sin of his parents.  Jesus insists that neither answer is true.  Jesus alludes to the second chapter of Genesis when God took clay, breathed in it, and formed the first human being.  He makes clay with his saliva, smears it on the blind man’s eyes, and tells him to wash in the Pool of Siloam, which means “sent.”

            Now that the man can see light, he confronts the growing darkness of others.  His neighbors cannot believe that he is the same man who used to beg.  The Pharisees, who are the religious leaders, begin to hassle him, because they claim that Jesus is a sinner for healing him on the Sabbath.  His parents are afraid of the religious leaders and refuse to cooperate.  Finally, the religious leaders throw the newly sighted man out of the synagogue, plunging themselves into a complete darkness that refuses to see the light.  Then the man sees Jesus with his own eyes, fulfilling the desire of so many psalmists yearning to see the face of God.  He has come to see the light shining in the face of Jesus Christ, and he worships him.

            In normal times, we would pray the second scrutiny over those preparing for Baptism today.  But these are not normal times.  In the midst of the darkness of this pandemic, we pray for those who have traveled from darkness to see the light of Christ promising them new life through the waters of baptism.  Like the man born blind, they have come to see the face of God in Jesus Christ.  They will receive candles lit from the Easter Candle after they have emerged from the life-giving waters as a reminder that they the light of Christ shines through them.        

            If the Elect are like the man born blind, we who have been baptized can easily slip into the darkness of the religious leaders of his day.  When we fail to live our baptismal promises, we avert our eyes from the face of Jesus Christ and allow the darkness to overcome us.  Especially in these dark days of isolation, it is easy to allow the darkness to overwhelm us.  In turning our gaze toward his presence in our lives, we can allow his light to shine through us in reaching out to other people.  Instead of hoarding things and worrying about ourselves, we can reach out to neighbors who are isolated or discouraged.  We can lend a hand to those who need help.  We can be light and see the face of Christ in others.  We call today “Laetare Sunday,” which means to rejoice.  We do not wear the gold of Easter Sunday.  We wear the rose of that early morning light before the sun comes up.  We can be the face of Christ that gives light in darkness.

THIRD SUNDAY OF LENT

15 MARCH 2020

          With the relentless heat of the sun beating down, the climate in the Holy Land is very hot.  After my Sabbatical in the Holy Land twenty years ago, I can empathize with Jesus at Jacob’s well.  Not only is he tired from his journey, but he is very thirsty.   In the ancient world, wells provided welcome relief from thirst.  They were also places where people attended to other issues.  After he escaped Pharaoh, Moses mediated a dispute at a well in Midian.  For his efforts, the priest of Midian offered his daughter, Zipporah, to Moses in marriage.  Isaac met his bride Rebecca at a well, and Jacob met his bride Rachel at this same well.

            Today, the one who changed water into wine at the wedding feast of Cana is looking for more than a drink of water at this well.  In asking a Samaritan woman for a drink, he crosses many boundaries of religious convention.  Jews and Samaritans were avowed enemies.  Neither Jewish nor Samaritan men would ever address a woman in public, especially a woman who had to come in the heat of the noonday sun to avoid the scorn of her neighbors who would gather to draw water in the cooler morning or evening.  In his conversation with this woman, he reveals his thirst for her salvation and his desire to give her the living waters of eternal life.

            She is stunned that he shows kindness to someone who is at the bottom of society.  She responds to his kindness with openness to what he has to say.  She is moved by his gentle mention of her marital status.  After they had been conquered by the Assyrians, the Samaritans had allowed five different groups of people to bring in their own gods.  Jesus gently rebukes their idolatry, expressed in prophetic language as adultery.  He moves her challenge about which mountain is better for worship to a promise that all who believe in him will worship in spirit and in truth.  She accepts him as the promised Messiah, leaves her most valuable possession (her water jar) at the well, and becomes the first evangelist.

            Jesus addresses these words to those preparing for baptism at the Easter Vigil.  Like the woman at the well, these good people (the Elect) have grown steadily in faith.  They have reached the point in their conversion that they are thirsting for the living water which will bring them new life with the only one who can satisfy our ultimate thirsts for meaning.  Today, at the 10:00 Mass, we will pray the first Scrutiny over them.  In that Scrutiny, they will allow God to name their sins.  They will trust that God scrutinizes whatever is evil in their lives.  They will be invited to turn away from anything that keeps them from a full liberated life with Christ. 

            Jesus addresses these words to all of us who have already received the life giving waters of Baptism.  We are like the disciples who return with physical food and are shocked that he is talking with a woman who is a Samaritan.  We are called to admit that we have not always lived faithfully the promises made at our Baptisms.  Through our Lenten disciplines, we open our hearts to allow God to name our sin and scrutinize the evil in our lives.  He invites us to turn away from anything that keeps us from living a full liberated life with Christ.  The call to conversion involves turning away from those things that seem to satisfy our thirsts, but cannot.

            In turning more completely toward Jesus Christ and away from those thirsts that can never satisfy, we can learn from the journey of the Israelite from slavery in Egypt to freedom in the Promised Land.  Like them, we will encounter roadblocks on the way to conversion.  I think that the Coronavirus is one of them!  It took them forty years to become fully free.  It takes time for us to turn away from sin, which always involves some form of slavery.  Like them, we are always tempted to look back.  Is the Lord in our midst or not?  The Samaritan woman at the well responded with a resounding yes.  She invites us to do the same.

SECOND SUNDAY OF LENT

8 MARCH 2020

          Saint Matthew wrote his Gospel for Jewish Christians.  In writing to them, he knew that they would automatically understand certain details in his message.  One of those details involves the importance of mountains to the children of Abraham.  This detail is lost to us who live in the open plains of Indiana.  Mountains were places where human beings encountered God.  Matthew’s readers would remember the details of the 28^th chapter of the Prophet Ezekiel.  Ezekiel speaks about the beginnings of humanity in the Garden of Eden, where people were in perfect harmony with God before sin entered the world.  He located the Garden on a mountain.  God revealed his presence to Moses on Mount Sinai with dramatic images of fire and clouds and earthquakes.  God had entered into a covenant of love with Israel, his beloved people whom he had led out of slavery in Egypt.  But God was distant.  No one could touch that holy mountain.  Many centuries later, Elijah fled to that same mountain (which the northern kingdom called “Mount Horeb”) and expected to find God in those same dramatic signs.  Instead, he found God in the tiny, whispering sound.  Solomon built his temple on Mount Zion, filling the temple with the smoke of the incense.  God dwelled in his temple on that mountain, to which people could enter.  However, only a priest could enter the Holy of Holies once a year.

            What happens on Mount Tabor is significant, and the original readers of Matthew’s Gospel would have understood immediately.  In being transfigured on a mountain, we see those same elements of God’s presence from the other significant mountains of Israel’s history.  Peter, James, and John are given a glimpse of his true divine nature, with the light and cloud coming from him.  However, he is not distant from them, and they can readily approach him in his divinity and humanity.  He converses with Moses and Elijah, signaling that he has fulfilled all the prophecies of the Hebrew Scriptures.  He is God’s beloved Son, and he dwells in our midst.

            As God’s beloved Son, Jesus will descend from that mountain and travel with his disciples to another mountain – Mount Calvary.  Instead of being clothed in white garments, he will be stripped naked and nailed to a cross.  Instead of being surrounded by two holy witnesses, he will be surrounded by two thieves.  Instead of basking in a brilliant light, he will be engulfed in darkness and the shadow of death.

            Today’s Gospel reminds us that Jesus Christ has pitched his tent in our midst and walks with us.  Our Lenten disciplines of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving strengthen our conviction that he is truly approachable.  But they also prepare us to walk the way to Calvary with him.  They strengthen us to die to ourselves and our own desires so that we can be transformed with him by the power of the Resurrection.  They remind us that we can carry our crosses with Jesus, trusting that our crosses will not be the end, just as his cross was not the end.  The disciplines encourage us to follow the steadfast faith of Abram, who courageously left all that was familiar to him to trust God’s guidance to a land and descendants that would be blessed by God.

            The Gospel of Saint Matthew ends on another mountain.  His disciples follow his instructions after he had been raised from the dead.  Gathered on that mountain, they see him and worship him.  They also express their doubts.  From that mountain, he sends them to make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  He promises to be with them always, until the end of the age.  We are the recipients of that great commission.  As baptized disciples, the Lord sends us from this mountain to trust in his presence and proclaim the good news of salvation to others.