WE DIE IN LENT AND RISE TO LIFE AT EASTER WITH CHRIST JESUS: OUR LORD AND SAVIOUR
The whole exercise of the Lenten season is a spiritual calling for us to die in Lent and to rise to new life in Christ Jesus, our Lord and Saviour who conquers and defeats Satan, evil, sin and death. Therefore, the pillar held of Lenten observances is articulated in this biblical phrase: ¨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. Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will preserve it for eternal life.¨ John 12:20-33.
LENT IS DYING TO SELF
This could be understood as:
1. One focus of lent is to reflect on our death and to see our way through it. We all must die, as much as we do not like the fact. We try to hide, dodge it or deny it. Yet, we cannot escape it. Dying is profitable not a loss.
2. Lenten experience is dying to all forms of sins, evil and inclinations to raise with Christ at Paschal. This is the nucleus of Jesus’ passion and death that led to a profitable salvation with his resurrection which is a victory against sin, death, evil and the devil for us.
OUR THEME
The readings of this fifth Sunday of Lent offer us the living hope in Christ the Resurrection and Life. As well as, the assurance of an empathetic God who feels, relates and connects with us in pains, sorrows and agonies.
Resurrection Hope is the central theme of the Scripture readings for the Fifth Sunday of Lent. We can see the progression in themes from the thirst for living water (on the Third Sunday of Lent), through the desire to be healed of our spiritual blindness (Fourth Sunday) to our ultimate desire to share in eternal life with the risen Lord (Fifth Sunday).
However, amidst the main theme of death with hope in the resurrection. That challenges us to be alive and not spiritually dead by mortal sin. Jesus also invites us to life through dying to sins, and evil inclinations in us and self.
Indeed, Jesus challenges us to live in a loving relationship with him every day, so that he may raise us at our death to inherit eternal life with him. Life is what God offers us living our lives in dying to self.
Besides, these themes of life, death and resurrection, we see the true nature of God revealed to us in Christ Jesus who wept for his friend Laraus. Thus, he reveals the brokenness of God to us all in our daily and inevitable situations in life. God in Christ Jesus wept is a beautiful theme to preach and contemplate this penultimate Sunday to the Holy Week of Jesus’ passion, death and resurrection.
FIRST READING: EZEKIEL 37:12-14
The Prophet Jeremiah 31:31-34 shows us that despite the difficult relationship and unfaithful history of his people, God is always willing to seek them out or willing to start a New Covenant with them. “All, from least to greatest, shall know me, says the Lord, for I will forgive their evildoing and remember their sin no more.”
In the first reading, the Prophet Ezekiel 37:12-14, on God´s command he prophesies life and restoration to the dead bones and the graves and they all rise to life in abundance. A beautiful sign that God is a giver and restorer of life. In God, nothing is impossible even dry bones can come alive.
SECOND READING: ROMANS 8:8-11
The Letter to the Hebrews 5:7-9 speaks so clearly of the sufferings of the Lord Jesus: “Son though he was, he learned obedience from what he suffered; and when he was made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him.”
Romans 8:8-11, St. Paul affirms that the Living Spirit of God that raises Jesus from the dead is indwelling us and that the Spirit will give life to our mortal bodies: though dead in sin, lives through righteousness in Christ. Hence, for Paul, in baptism we have died to sin, to rise to new life. This is the Easter spirit when we are all raised to live in Christ Jesus.
THE GOSPEL: JOHN 11:1-45
The gospel of John 11:1-45 presents us with an incredible story of Jesus and the resurrection of his friend Lazarus from the dead.
The name Lazarus means “God is my help”. Lazarus was sick and maybe in critical condition and his sisters sent a loving message of information to Jesus a trusted and loving friend without request to come to Bethany. Of course, the empathetic Jesus knew what is at stake: the worries of Mary and Martha over their brother´s condition.
IS GOD INDIFFERENT TO US?
After Jesus received the message of Lazarus’ illness, he stayed away for two days more. Why? The delay or silence of God is not God’s refusal or insensitivity to our needs, but God being God acts willingly and not compelled by us at his opportune time.
The moment of mourning can lead to denying the reality, of God and a lot of why questions. Martha and Mary expressed this to Jesus amidst mourning, “If you had been here.” she said, “my brother would not have died.” It is human, natural and normal to feel this rage, anger and disappointment with God.
However, faith invites hope in the resurrection and this is what Jesus Christ confirmed to Martha and Mary. “Your brother will rise again.” Jesus assures her because, “I am the Resurrection and the Life,” and “He who believes in me will live even if he has died; and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die.”
CHRIST AS OUR RESURRECTION
1. Jesus was not talking of physical death, after all, everyone must die Christians and non-Christians alike.
2. In Christ, man is victorious over death the last enemy and mystery to man. Science and technology, scientists and technicians have better the lot of man with their scientific and technological investigations of researches over the years and centuries. However, the phenomenon of death is still an enigma to them. Christ is the only overcomes death and also gives life to the dead.
3. Human death is no longer a loss, a tragedy, and a sadness, it is a transitional transformation in Christ. This is the eternal hope of immortality, the resurrection and the life to come in glory.
4. Equally, Jesus was thinking of the death of sin. He was saying: “Even if a man is dead in sin, even if, through his sins, he has lost all that makes life worth calling life, I can make him alive again.”
5. In Christ, when we enter into a new relationship with God, we equally into a new relationship with life. He is the Life, the Truth and the Way and He is the Resurrection of us all. Hence, sin and its final consequence: death has no power, no domination or condemnation over us.
JESUS WEPT
Jesus, the God who was moved to pity, sorrow, emotion and wept. This gave us one of the shortest verses of the Bible: “Jesus wept” John 11:35.
a. Jesus wept showing he is an empathetic God-Man able to feel, relate and connect with our sorrows, pains and mourning.
b. Jesus wept means we have no distance from God’s inability of feeling our emotions like the Greek projects of their gods: isolated, passionless and compassionless.
c. Jesus wept shows us the possible way of overcoming our grief and pains of the death of loved ones. The emotion of tears or crying is no sign of weakness, but healing, sanity and therapeutic—the relief sign of sighing save the heavy hearts for cardiac arrest, stroke or other chronic diseases.
d. Jesus wept to defeat the argument “men don’t cry “leaving more widows than widowers in the world. The shedding tears of a woman are her greatest weapon against life´s tensions, stresses, pains and frustrations.
The biggest and most significant lesson of the gospel passage is not just the resurrected power of God to bring us back from the dead. Amidst our woes, lamentations, wails, cries and agonies of the Coronavirus plaguing humanity, we have an assurance of an empathetic God who feels, relates and connects with our sorrows and seemingly hopeless conditions.
Jesus has done, Jesus does, and Jesus will always do his part to call us to life like Lazarus, during this epidemic, but as people (Christians and human beings) will collaborate to set ourselves free from the shackle of death by observing medical experts concerns to stay at home and others indications.
OUR PRAYER
Lord Jesus Christ, the Resurrection and the Life for every man and woman who is dead in sin and dead to God today. The Resurrection of all the dead known to God alone. Help the wailing humanity in the agony of our daily dying physically of diseases and suffering, as well as our spiritual dying through sins and vices. We beseech you to grant us the breath of life, so that there may be life, health and sanity in our lives. Amen
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