Fifth Sunday of Lent

How many are following the NCAA Division 1 basketball championships? Unfortunately, my favorite teams didn’t make it this year. We all like winners, don't we!

I had dinner recently at RumFish Grill at St. Pete Beach. They have a huge fish tank. It reminded me of a story.

 An Army general's lobster dinner arrived, and the lobster was missing a claw. "What's this?" he asked. The waiter explained: “Our lobsters are in a tank. They often fight, and sometimes lose a claw.” The general bellowed: “Then bring me a winner!”

 Anyway, we’ll know the basketball champions April 3/4.

Today’s word of God takes us back to the 6^th century before Jesus. Ancient Babylonia destroyed Jerusalem and demolished the temple and deported many Jews.

Yet at the end of that century, set free by Persia, the Jews returned to their homeland to rebuild. The author here proclaims that God will breathe hope into the Jews in spite of their catastrophes. Yes, God will usher in a new age: fertile land; abundant produce; flowing rivers; and a newly created people will praise God. 

The author may well ask you and me: when was the last time we gave hope to someone with a word of encouragement, a helping hand?

St. Paul writes to the Christian community in Philippi from a jail cell, perhaps in Rome. And what motivates Paul? Jesus Christ “possesses” him.  And ever since, Paul proclaimed the good news. And what’s the good news? We share in God’s divine life through faith in Jesus Christ.  And so, Paul sets his eyes on “what lies ahead”, eternal life beyond death. Paul may ask us: do we set our eyes on eternal life?

In John's Gospel, Jesus meets a woman accused of adultery. I wonder if the author Nathaniel Hawthorne read this story before he wrote The Scarlet Letter: a novel about sin, guilt, and the letter A for adulterer. Did you know that Rose Hawthorne, founder of the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne, was Nathaniel’s daughter? These sisters care for terminally ill cancer patients.

 Anyway, people gathered around Jesus. Did you ever wonder what Jesus wrote on the ground? Was he doodling? Asking God for advice? Was he calling for a pause so that everyone could think about their own life? What about the man in this adulterous relationship? Why were people not accusing him?

In so many words, Jesus says to us in this story, “Don’t be so negatively judgmental about other people.” All of us need forgiveness. Jesus came: to forgive, heal, transform us, to save us from death and propel us into a glorious future, as he did to this woman in the Gospel.

This story invites you and me to reflect on our own willingness to forgive people who have wronged us, intentionally or unintentionally. Forgiveness is a primary characteristic of discipleship.

 A folk wisdom says, “forgive and forget.” But sometimes we can’t forgive unless we remember—for example, a wrong done to us, a betrayal of a confidence or of relationship. Sometimes we even have to ask for God’s grace to forgive ourselves so we can move forward.

 In a favorite book of mine, The Hiding Place, Corrie Ten Boom describes how she lectured throughout post-WWII Europe about the need to forgive. Some of you know the story. After one of her talks, a former SS guard came up to her.

Suddenly, Corrie remembered as though she was re-living the concentration camp experience: the laughing guards, the heaps of clothes on the floor, the frightened face of her own sister.

When this repentant former SS guard extended his hand to shake hers, she, who had preached so often about forgiveness, kept her hand at her side as she began to have vengeful thoughts.

 Then she remembered: Jesus died for this man; Jesus forgives him. “Lord Jesus,” she prayed, “forgive me and help me to forgive him.” She tried to smile, to raise her hand. But she couldn’t. And so again she breathed a silent prayer: “Jesus, I can’t forgive him for what he did to my sister and so many other people I knew. Give me your forgiveness.”

 She discovered that forgiveness depends not on her but upon God’s grace. When Jesus tells us to love our enemies, he also gives us the grace to love, to forgive.

To forgive as Christ forgives is sometimes impossible to do on our own. But Christ doesn’t ask us to forgive on our own. He asks that we participate in his gift of forgiveness.

Forgiveness is an act of the will that overrides our negative feelings. It is possible not when we try on our own but when we trust God to bring healing and forgiveness and reconciliation. And as God constantly searches out the lost and the stranger, so should we.

 The Gospel invites us to forgive one another as Jesus forgave, to wish them well even if we still have negative feelings. Forgiveness can transform someone into a person of hope.

 I pray that God will give all of us the grace to participate in the forgiveness of Christ so that we can be at peace with ourselves and one another and God, faithful disciples of Jesus.