Fifth Sunday of Lent March 28
The theme: - A great desire leads to encounter and encounter leads to a change!
The power of desires! I am thinking of the last time Mega Millions was at $ 216 million. I imagined myself winning the amount. And if I did, I imagined paying off the parish debt, setting up a great Catholic school system for Lima, and helping those who die of starvation. But I did not win. So here I am still poor and my genuine good desires dangling like a pie in the sky. But I have other desires. For all of us, desires are a part of our life. Some of these desires are fulfilled and some of these are not. I met a couple last week who really desire a child and they don’t have one. I know somebody desired to overcome his addiction and have a family and now he is married and is expecting his first child. In particular, I want to recognize in our midst those catechumens and candidates who for a whole year had desired Christ union with the Church. At This Easter, God will bring their desire for fulfillment
Look at the Gospel passage. In the Gospel we see a group of people namely the Greeks desire God. They had come to Jerusalem and met Philip that they wanted to see Jesus. Jesus by then must have become very popular and all wanted to have a glimpse of him. We are not told if those Greeks ever did see Jesus but we do know that Jesus gave to his disciples a special teaching: Jesus says how can we experience God?
He proposes two ways: First of all, “Unless a grain of wheat falls on the ground and dies, it remains a single grain; but if it dies, it yields a rich harvest.” The grain, of course, does not actually die but it is totally transformed into something altogether new - roots, leaves and fruit. What Jesus wants to say is that exterior things do not matter and what is needed is the interior disposition of the person. We have Mathew, Zachaeus, Peter and several others who finally become his followers. Secondly, Jesus is speaking about his own death and resurrection through the symbolic words of dying and rising. He is the source of salvation for those who obey Him. We are called on to answer God’s call and to be drawn to the Lord. This is possible if we are able to rely on the spirit that opens our hearts to him. We must always be thankful to the Lord for what He sends us, trusting in His infinite grace to sanctify us through His Spirit. Therefore Jesus further adds to say: “Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also. Whoever serves me, the Father will honor.” Jesus says is that only when we sacrifice all for his sake and keep him as our priority, only when we are ready to let go of ourselves totally of all we have and are in love and must be ready to serve others then only our spiritual desires will be fulfilled. It also means walking with Jesus and with Mary all the way to Calvary, wherever that happens to be for each of us. We are called to be at the service of the other people.
In the first reading, we have heard that God made a covenant with his people God promised to write His laws in our hearts that we will all know Him, that our sins would be forgiven and that our sins will never again be remembered by God. As Christians, we all know that the New Covenant of grace was instituted by Jesus at the Last Supper. But God says that he will write His laws in our hearts and that we will all know Him. Over and above the gift of a new heart, God promised to place within us a new human spirit. With the new heart and the new human spirit, we would become God’s people and He would be our God. This is the new agreement, the beautiful promise that God made with us as His people, that He would help us to become good by writing His laws in our hearts. Through this Divine manifestation, we as God’s people will always know what is right and wrong, what makes God happy or sad. God’s laws are always written in our hearts because, our Teacher, the Holy Spirit dwells within us. We have become living Temples of the Holy Spirit. As God’s children, when we were born again through faith in Jesus and the Sacrament of Baptism, our past sins were forgiven up until the moment that we received the Sacrament of our new birth.
In today’s second reading, the author says that in His human nature, Jesus learned obedience through what He suffered. Through suffering, Jesus was made perfect. Through perfection, He became the source of salvation for all who obey Him. From this perfect example of obedience and submission, we learn that through suffering, our souls are sanctified. When we endure hunger, we are spiritually enlightened to the needs of those who suffer hunger. From every form of suffering, there is a spiritual lesson to be learned. Suffering sanctifies the soul so it may become more in the likeness of Christ who is perfect.