Happy St. Patrick's Day/St. Joseph's Table. How many are following the March basketball madness? I don't know about you, but I'm rooting for Villanova!
I asked a friend of mine to describe how he managed to stay happily married for 50 years. He responded, “I treat my wife as my best friend. And for our 25th wedding anniversary we went to Italy.” Wonderful! I then asked what he’s planning for their 50th wedding anniversary? He replied, “I'm going to Italy to bring her back home.”
This Fifth Sunday of Lent, the word of God takes us back in our imaginations to the 6th century before Jesus, to a man named Jeremiah, known to many as “Mr. Doom and Gloom.”
Jeremiah in fact was an optimist. The 6th century was a catastrophe for the Hebrews. Babylonia conquered Israel, murdered the king, devastated Jerusalem, tore down the Temple and deported many Hebrews to Babylonia. Yet, in the midst of this tragedy, Jeremiah dreams of a new covenant with God, a new friendship summed up in that magnificent phrase, “You are my people and I am your God.”
This new covenant will be written in their hearts. Yes, the Hebrews will be able to keep their promises to God.
Jeremiah challenges us to be faithful to God, to ask at the start of every day for the grace to live a life worthy of our calling as sons and daughters of God our Father, co-heirs to eternal life.
The author of the letter to the Hebrews speaks about the saving work of Jesus Christ. Jesus is completely human and completely divine—that is the mystery of the Incarnation. This Jesus, through his dying and rising, has rescued us from death, from nothingness, and has opened up to us new possibilities of life beyond this earthly life: eternal life. And this Jesus, already transfigured into a new heavenly reality, anticipates our own future when God too will transfigure us into a new heavenly reality.
The author of Hebrews challenges us to remember our ultimate purpose: salvation or eternal life with God.
In the Gospel according to John, Jesus is in Jerusalem for the Passover meal which celebrates the exodus: the deliverance of the Hebrews from their oppressors in Ancient Egypt. Here in Jerusalem, Gentiles, non-Jews, are seeking out Jesus. They want to see him. To see Jesus, for the author, is to believe in him. Yes, the hour has come for Jesus. Only by his dying and rising will we have life, eternal life.
That is the point of the parable about the grain of wheat. Only if Jesus is lifted up on a cross, buried in a tomb only to burst forth gloriously into a new spiritual kind of embodiment, will the risen Christ draw all men and women to himself, into a new heavenly reality.
And just as religious Jews on March 31 will start to celebrate their passover or seder service, so too we at the Easter vigil will celebrate Jesus’ passage or “Passover” from death to life: a passage that liberates us from death and gifts us with God’s life.
Yes, Jesus is indeed our savior. He is indeed our salvation. But what means salvation?
We live in a culture that advertises countless phony forms of salvation. We see ads for expensive cosmetic surgeries, and the latest drugs. We are told these will save us – from old age, from anxiety, from obesity, from pain or illness or whatever … we will look and feel better if we only do this or take that.
And then there are bumper stickers: “Jesus Saves.” But again, from what?
In the Gospels, Jesus “saves” when he heals, when he forgives, when he satisfies our spiritual hunger.
For St. Paul, salvation means that we possess within ourselves, by virtue of the waters of baptism, God’s grace, the gift of God’s triune life. Paul uses several words to describe salvation: “liberation from death”, “justification” or “a right relationship with God.” That's salvation for Paul: the gift of God’s triune life within us, God’s grace.
Salvation is really a life-long process, not a quick fix that happens in an instant, like some fundamentalist preachers say. In following Jesus, we continually have to struggle against the darkness within ourselves.
The word “salvation” tries to answer a fundamental question: What is the ultimate purpose of my life? Whether we are powerful or powerless, rich or poor, brilliant or dull, American or otherwise, the purpose of life for all is to be in relationship with God. That’s why we are here: to seek and find friendship with God forever.
The Catholic answer to the question, why are we here? acknowledges the brevity and fragility of human life. We're young and suddenly we wake up one day old. It also acknowledges our freedom to choose good over evil, right over wrong, the true over the false. And vice versa, unfortunately! Hence each of us is responsible, accountable, for the way in which we choose to live.
Tragically, some people do choose evil. Some governments deny people their basic human rights. People do do violence to one another, in countries around the world. Witness Syria and the Congo. The Catholic tradition calls this “original sin”: the tendency or pull within us to sometimes choose wrong over right, evil over good, falsehood over truth.
Yet human beings cry out for healing, redemption, salvation. But who can save us? Some have sought human solutions. They have looked for answers in the world of things, in other persons, in the great “isms” of past centuries.
The Catholic tradition looks beyond the world of things, to a power beyond ourselves, a God who is not indifferent to our brokenness, our alienation. An all-good God who loves us unconditionally.
Bishop Lynch touched upon this during our parish mission. He noted Pope Francis’s observation that sometimes religion can seem “mechanical,”praying this or doing that almost by rote. But Christianity is a religion of relationships and in Jesus Christ we encounter the living, breathing face of God’s mercy.
Yes, God became flesh in Jesus of Nazareth and is alive by the power of the Spirit and is in our midst today—alive within us by virtue of the waters of baptism; alive in our midst in the Scriptures proclaimed and celebrated in the signs of bread and wine upon this altar. We possess within our fragile selves the gift of God’s triune life, God’s grace.
Yes, we are born to be in relationship with God. But we must continually struggle against the dark forces within ourselves that threaten to fracture that relationship, to derail us on our journey toward our heavenly dwelling place.
Salvation ultimately means God abiding in us and we in God.
And so I pray today that, as we hear the word of God in Jeremiah, Hebrews and John, we will recharge ourselves to seek God first in our everyday lives, that we will reenergize ourselves to be a leaven in our community.
And how do we do this? By renewing and living out our baptismal promises to God; by a change of heart away from a self-centered life toward a God-centered, other-centered, mercy-filled life.
Our faith proclaims that God’s life leaps out of death; beyond the agony of our Good Fridays is the ecstasy of Easter. Yes, Jesus Christ is risen. And because he lives, we live.
