Tuesday of the Fifth Week of Lent
This Week’s Intention: For justice in our world, especially for all who are forgotten or excluded, abandoned or abused, persecuted or exploited, that people of good will might rise to their defense and come to their aid.
Today’s Gospel | John 8:21-30
Jesus said to the Pharisees: “I am going away and you will look for me, but you will die in your sin. Where I am going you cannot come.” So the Jews said, “He is not going to kill himself, is he, because he said, ‘Where I am going you cannot come’?” He said to them, “You belong to what is below, I belong to what is above. You belong to this world, but I do not belong to this world. That is why I told you that you will die in your sins. For if you do not believe that I AM, you will die in your sins.” So they said to him, “Who are you?” Jesus said to them, “What I told you from the beginning. I have much to say about you in condemnation. But the one who sent me is true, and what I heard from him I tell the world.” They did not realize that he was speaking to them of the Father. So Jesus said to them, “When you lift up the Son of Man, then you will realize that I AM, and that I do nothing on my own, but I say only what the Father taught me. The one who sent me is with me. He has not left me alone, because I always do what is pleasing to him.” Because he spoke this way, many came to believe in him.
Lenten Reflection
The story of Jesus is the story of Immanuel: God is with us. At its simplest, it tells us that God chose to become one of us in the person of his only Son. Jesus would live and die as an ultimate divine act of self-emptying and saving love. This was the reason for the Incarnation, for God becoming man. However, the story tells more. The miracle of the Incarnation is not only that it made Jesus’ redemptive work possible, but that it was in itself Jesus’ redemptive work.
In his classic work, The Cost of Discipleship, Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote, “In the Incarnation the whole human race recovers the dignity of the image of God.” This is very much at the heart of what it means for us to be redeemed. So often in his sayings and parables, Jesus used the image of things lost, then found, to describe the coming of God’s Kingdom. Most listeners probably were very ready to identify with who or what was lost. They were much less prepared for the surprise that God was the one relentlessly searching for them. This was not how they saw themselves or God, and it was in Jesus that they would encounter the truth.
The saving revelation of the Incarnation – the reconciliation of God and humanity in the person of Jesus – was that God and we can and do dwell together within each other. It overcame the illusion that we and God are distant from each other, that God is too unapproachable and we are too unworthy for us to ever touch. Jesus showed us ourselves as we really are, which is unconditionally loved, and showed God where he really is, which is completely and perpetually with us. We need not succumb to fear, nor attempt to flee. Both will be futile acts. As Bonhoeffer explained, “Where reason is indignant, where our nature rebels, where our piety anxiously keeps us away: that is precisely where God loves to be…God marches right in.”
The season of Lent is set aside so that we might more intensely contemplate the passion, death, and resurrection of our Lord. Such contemplation eventually leads to inexpressible gratefulness for that overwhelming gift. In many ways it was about more than us, but in many ways it was all about us. We realize that Jesus reclaimed us for the Father and for ourselves, reconnecting our creations to Creation, our words to Word, our hopes to Hope, our lives to Life. In the words of scholar Thomas Howard, “The Incarnation took all that properly belongs to our humanity and delivered it back to us, redeemed.”
Prayer
Eternal Father, your Son came that we might hear your voice and return ourselves to you. During this holy time of Lent, fill us with the grace that will help us to change our hearts. Guide us, so that we may walk in your righteousness and holiness. May we turn our minds away from selfishness and walk on your path to goodness and service. Fill us with the desire to welcome your truth and to do your will. We ask this of you who lives and reigns with your Son and the Holy Spirit, one God forever and ever. Amen.
St. John Baptist de La Salle, pray for us.
Live Jesus in our hearts forever.