Ashes to Glory

Details: 25 March 2011

Cycle A

This year the prescribed readings for the Gospel passages for the Sundays of Lent in the Latin Rite are in "cycle A" of the Sunday Lectionary. The passages for the Third, Fourth, and Fifth Sundays of Lent in this cycle are especially appropriate for making Lent the season of preparation for Baptism for the catechumens, as well as for all of us faithful to be preparing for the renewal of our baptismal commitments and vows at Easter. Those next three Sunday Gospel pericopes have to do with water, light, and life. Our reflecting on those Gospel passages, Pope Benedict XVI tells us, can be "an opportunity to return to the foundation of Christian life in a baptismal itinerary." Those passages from the New Testament "are the great announcement of what God carries out in this sacrament, a stupendous baptismal catechesis directed at each of us."

The Third Sunday passage gives us the fascinating story of Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well of Jacob (John 4:5-42). That incident reminds us that in our Baptism "we too were touched by the water that saves." At the end of the account, the Samaritans of the town of Sichar, after listening to Jesus, told that woman, "We no longer believe because of what you have said for we have heard for ourselves and know that this in truth is the Savior of the world." The passage to be heard on the next Sunday, the Fourth of Lent this year, is Saint John’s account of the healing of the man born blind (John 9:1-41). The account also has a significant baptismal theme in that, after Christ anointed the man’s eyes with clay, the man had to bathe in the pool of Siloe to obtain his sight. With typical Johannine irony, the passage relates how the man born blind in innocence is enabled by our Savior to obtain his sight both physically and spiritually, while the Pharisees, although sighted physically, are in reality spiritually blind. Our Lord proclaims, "For judgment have I come into this world, that those who do not see may see, and that they who do see may become blind."

The liturgical Gospel passage for the Fifth Sunday of Lent this year is the account of the raising of Lazarus from the dead (John 11:1-45). It is one of three resurrections from the dead worked by Christ which are related in the New Testament. (the daughter of Jairus and the son of the widow of Naim: Mark 5:21-43; Luke 7:11-17). Lazarus lived with his sisters, Mary and Martha, in the village of Bethany and was evidently very much loved by Jesus. Pope Benedict XVI says, "Jesus, raising Lazarus from the dead, teaches us about life. In Baptism we pass from death to life and become capable of pleasing God, of causing the old man to die so as to live in the Spirit of the Risen One." The Holy Father exhorts us, "On this Lenten journey, let us be attentive to welcoming Christ’s invitation to follow Him more decisively and coherently, (Matthew 16:24: Mark 8:34; Luke 9:23), renewing the grace and commitments of our Baptism so as to clothe ourselves in Christ and thus reaching Easter renewed, and being able to say with Saint Paul: It is no longer I who live, but Christ Who lives in me" (Galatians 2:20).

Obedience

As the penitential season of Lent progresses toward our celebration of Christ’s triumphant and glorious resurrection, it is also appropriate to meditate on His saving obedience and, following His example and with the help of His grace, to renew our own humble "obedience to faith" (Romans 1:5), which must accompany our work of Lenten baptismal renewal in order to make it efficacious. Many saints have written and spoken about the importance of obedience. Saint Francis de Sales, for instance, said, "The Devil does not fear austerity, but he fears holy obedience. When God puts inspirations into a human heart, the first that He gives is obedience. Blessed are the obedient, for God will never allow them to go astray!" Saint Benedict wrote in his rule, "Humility before God is the fundamental virtue and the first degree of humility is obedience."

Pope Benedict XVI has written that God makes it necessary that "the New Covenant must be founded on an obedience that is irrevocable and inviolable. This obedience, now located at the very root of human nature, is the obedience of the Son, Who made Himself a Servant and took all human disobedience upon Himself in His obedience even unto death, suffering it right to the end and conquering it. God cannot simply ignore man’s disobedience and all the evil of history. He cannot treat it as if it were inconsequential or meaningless.... That which is wrong, the reality of evil, cannot simply be ignored. It cannot just be left to stand. It must be dealt with. It must be overcome. And, the fact is that God now confronts evil Himself, because men are incapable of doing so. Therein lies the unconditional goodness of God, which can never be opposed to truth or to the justice that goes with it. "If we are faithless, He remains faithful, for He cannot deny Himself" (2 Timothy 2:13).

Empowering Example

Saint Peter explained that the passion and death Jesus not only provides us with possibility of obtaining the grace from God without which we cannot be saved, but also gives us a most precious model. ""Unto this indeed you were called because Christ has suffered for you, leaving you an example that you may follow in His steps" (1 Peter 2:21). Our Lord saved us not only because He was the most innocent of innocent victims, a spotless Lamb Who suffered pain and death utterly unjustly due to the multiplicity and wickedness of human sins and out of His unbounded love, but most of all because He did this voluntarily in obedience to His Father’s divine will. "He humbled Himself, becoming obedient to death, even to death on a cross" (Philippians 2:8). Saint Paul explains, "For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so by one Man’s obedience many will be made righteous" (Romans 5:19). The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that "by His obedience unto death, Jesus accomplished the substitution of the Suffering Servant, Who makes Himself an offering for sin, when He bore the sins of many, and Who shall make many be accounted righteous, for He shall bear their iniquities" (Isaiah 53:10-12). Saint Peter reminds us that Jesus "bore our sins in His Body upon the tree that we, having died to sin, might live to justice and by His stripes you were healed" (1 Peter 2:24).

In the Garden of Gethsemane we hear how the human will of our Savior was in perfect conformity with His divine will regarding His passion and death. When He taught us to pray to the Father: "Thy will be done..", He made those human words the guiding light of His conformity to the Father’s command, saying in His agony, "Not My will, but Yours be done..."(Luke 22:42).

C.S.Lewis notes that heaven is populated by souls who in their lifetime repeated the words to God "Thy will be done", while hell is peopled with souls who said instead, "My will be done". "Obedience is submission to the authority of God, obeying the divine law, the laws of the Catholic Church in those things that pertain to salvation, and obeying legitimate civil authority which has its origin in God for the sake of the common good and the order of society." Obedience undertaken in grace is an imitation of Christ and a source of true freedom and grand joy. In Lent let us commit ourselves anew to obedience and thus draw closer to His cross and to our renewal of baptismal innocence.