Palm Sunday of the Lord's Passion

St. Mark mentions different individuals in his account of the passion, all of whom invite us to ponder what we might learn from them.  Certainly one of the most touching is the woman who anointed Jesus with perfumed oil in Simon’s house in Bethany.  As Jesus said at the time, she is still remembered for what she did for Jesus.  Simon of Cyrene is another who is remembered for his carrying the cross for Jesus.

One individual, among the many others, has intrigued me ever since I first listened to the passion being read in church over 50 years ago.  His identity is a mystery, although one theory among others is very appealing.  This is the young man who runs away naked from Gethsemane.  Some Scripture scholars believe that the young man is John Mark, St. Mark himself.  It is known that John Mark’s mother was the one who offered Jesus and His disciples a place to celebrate the Passover.  The theory is that once everyone had departed, Mark went to sleep, but was awakened when the Roman soldiers led by Judas came looking for Jesus.  When they didn’t find Jesus there, they moved on since Judas would have known where they went.  Mark decided to follow them without getting dressed, which would explain the one piece of linen cloth that he left behind when he ran from Gethsemane.

When the soldiers arrested Jesus, everything must have been threatening and dangerous, causing everyone to flee.  The soldiers tried to grab the others as they were rushing away, and the young man was so desperate to escape that he runs off naked as a soldier grabs at him.  When life becomes difficult or dangerous, don’t we want to run, feeling naked and vulnerable?  Instead of staying still and trusting that God is with us, we run away or hide within ourselves.  But if the young man was St. Mark, we know that he later became a part of the Christian community, and filled with the Holy Spirit, became a missionary and evangelist.  Even in the middle of the passion, the naked young man reminds that there is always a second chance with Jesus, no matter what we’ve done in the past.

At the end of today’s gospel, Mark tells us that there were many women who were with Jesus through His Passion.  They had followed Him in Galilee and ministered to Him.  Some we know; others were known only to each other and to Jesus. Their courage, faithfulness, and perseverance are beautiful, especially in contrast to the men who fled in fear.  Don’t we know some of their sisters today who are as faithful and fearless as they were? Seeing their example, we might ask God for the grace to be like them as we seek to be faithful to Jesus in our lives.

We now begin the week we call holy, as we recall again the Last Supper, the Passion and Death, and the Resurrection.  Much of it is mystery; all of it is love.  Trusting in that love, we watch Jesus and learn from Him, hoping to be given a share in His glory.

5th Sunday in Lent

God promises in the first reading from Jeremiah that with the New Covenant he will make with the house of Israel and the house of Judah he will forgive evildoing and will remember their sin no more.  Once our evildoing is forgiven, God does not remember our sins.  Our God is that good to us.  We hear each time we are at Mass that the Blood of Jesus is the New and Eternal Covenant.  Jesus gave up His Body and His Blood so that we would be forgiven and our sins would be forgotten.

All of us sin.  We sin often.  We sometimes sin seriously.  So this is Good News to know that we can be forgiven and all can be forgotten, but first we need to admit that we have sinned and then ask for forgiveness.  That is not always easy to do and to confess our sins to a priest in order to receive absolution can be very humbling.  But we all have to do that.  And when we do, God forgives and forgets and fills us with grace.

Once we are forgiven, we begin again to be obedient.  The second reading from the letter to the Hebrews tells us that Jesus, even though He was the Son of God, learned to be obedient through what He suffered.  His suffering shows us how to be faithful to God and how much God loves us.  Suffering makes us more like Jesus.  When we die to ourselves, God can work more powerfully through us.  We look to the needs of others and in doing do, become more like Jesus.

In today’s gospel, some Greeks went to Philip and said, “Sir, we would like to see Jesus.” They had heard about Jesus and they wanted to see Him.  In St. John’s gospel, to see means to believe, and to believe in Jesus brings eternal life.  Do we have a desire each day to see Jesus, to believe in Him, to have eternal life with him?  Too often, we take the Lord for granted and forget we need to see Him and believe in Him for eternal life.  

In response to the Greeks’ request, Philip went to Andrew, and then Andrew and Philip went to Jesus.  The two apostles did what they could to make sure the Greeks saw Jesus.  When is the last time, we helped others to see Jesus, as Andrew and Philip did? There may be people in our lives who won’t come to know Jesus without our help.  Jesus needs us and relies on us to bring others to Him.

Jesus teaches in today’s gospel that if we want to live, we have to die.  If we want to preserve our life for eternity, we have to hate our life here.  And if we want to serve Him, we have to follow Him, and that will entail suffering.  His hour is coming and with a certain urgency Jesus wants all to know what they need to do.

In today’s gospel, God the Father speaks with thunder and assures Jesus that He has glorified His name and will do it again.  Jesus explains that this is the time for judgment and for defeating the ruler of this world, the devil.  And when He is lifted up from the earth on the Cross, He will draw everyone to Himself. 

In these last 10 days of Lent before the Triduum begins, we make our way to the Cross to remember again that we are forgiven and we are loved, and we are called to live and to die as Jesus did.

4th Sunday of Lent

The cross of Jesus in John’s gospel symbolizes two parts of our life as Christians: suffering and victory.  We know that when we follow Jesus, we have to take up our own cross.  But we know too that faithfulness in carrying that cross bring us victory.  Too often, we forget about the need for suffering and instead focus only on the victory.  But they are closely connected and when we believe in Jesus, we will not have one without the other.  God uses the suffering to bring about the victory.

In today’s gospel, Jesus tells Nicodemus, “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.”  During the years in the desert after the exodus from Egypt, the people became impatient and complained against God and Moses.  As a result, God sent serpents that bit people, causing many to die.  That suffering made the people realize how seriously they had sinned and they repented and turned to God and to Moses for help.  God then told Moses to make a bronze serpent and put it on a pole, and anyone who was bitten and looked at the serpent would live.

How strange and mysterious that is for God to have an image of the serpent, the source of death, be used for healing.   People were forced to face their fear and look at what could have killed them in order to live.  In speaking to Nicodemus, Jesus is saying that his being lifted up on the cross is the same as the serpent being lifted up on the pole.

Jesus took our sins upon himself when he was crucified and suffered death in order to save us.  When we look at Jesus on his cross then, we see suffering, which is something most of us fear.  Yet when we look at the cross, we come to see that it is the source of the victory over sin and death that Jesus won for us.

The greatest sign of love ever is the cross of Christ.  Jesus was the Lamb of God who allowed himself to be sacrificed to take away our sins.  God could have forgiven us simply by saying it.  But the Lord wanted to show us that real love is sacrificial.  He loved us with everything he had.  When we love, we ought to be willing to give up everything for the one we love.  As Jesus did it for us, we are to do it for others in the same way.

Suffering is painful, but God can use it to get our attention.  When we suffer and do not turn to God, we are in serious trouble.  But when the suffering causes us to cry out to God, the Lord will come to help us.

We need to believe in Jesus and live according to his words.  Without Jesus, we are dead. We need to choose light over darkness, good over evil.  We need to believe in the One who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.  Then, and only then, will we have eternal life. 

3rd Sunday of Lent

The Temple in Jerusalem at the time of Jesus was the most important place for the Jewish people, for that is where they encountered God.  People traveled there for holy days to offer sacrifice to the Lord.  In today’s gospel, Jesus takes dramatic action when He sees how some were mistreating the Temple, using it for worldly, sinful practices.  He drove out the animals and overthrew the moneychangers’ tables, for His Father’s house has been turned into a marketplace. 

Jesus then tells them that His own Body is the new Temple and when the Temple of His Body is destroyed, He will raise it up again. Those listening thought He was talking about the Temple building and even the disciples did not understand that He was talking about Himself until after the Resurrection.

We know and believe that through our baptism each of us is a Temple of God as well.  The Holy Spirit dwells within us.  God lives within us. Joined to Jesus, we too bear the presence of God everywhere we are. 

Lent is a time for us to take a look and see what we need to do in order to live up to who we are.  We are Temples that also are in need of cleansing.  Our words and actions are not always suitable for those who are the dwelling place of God.  God is love and asks us to be love as well.  Jesus came to serve and not to be served and asks us to do the same.  The fruit of the Holy Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.  The Spirit wants our lives to be filled with those same fruits, but often the fruits are not every evident.

Lent is a time to tell God we are sorry for our sins and that we would like to change our ways.  By making a good confession, we receive grace that will help to make us holy.  As we approach the holiest days of the year – Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter Sunday – we owe it to God and to ourselves to be in better spiritual shape then than we are now.  As we continue with Mass, we ask Jesus to help us in the next few weeks to let go of our sins and to seek the graces and gifts that He is eager to give us.