Tuesday of the Fifth Week of Lent
Intention: For all who were affected by Monday’s mass shooting in Boulder, Colorado, especially for the repose of the souls of the victims, for comfort and support for their families and friends, and for the healing of the community.
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.
A Lenten Reflection
It might be said that the story of Jesus could be told in a single word: Immanuel – “God is with us.” God chose to become one of us in the person of his only Son, who would live and die as the ultimate act of complete empathy, of radical self-emptying, and of saving love. This was the Incarnation, the moment when God visited his people with the good news of their salvation.
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. This shatters the illusion that we and God are distant from each other, that God is too unapproachable and that we are too unworthy for us ever to touch. In the person of Jesus is revealed the sacredness of who we really are. This is very much at the heart of what it means for us to be redeemed. In the words of scholar Thomas Howard, “The Incarnation took all that properly belongs to our humanity and delivered it back to us, redeemed.”
In his book, Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis wrote, “The Son of God became man to enable men to become the sons of God.” The season of Lent is set aside so that we might more intensely contemplate the passion, death, and resurrection of our Lord as God’s gracious returning of us back to us. We can ponder that Jesus reclaimed us for the Father and for ourselves, reaffirming our own identity and the meaning of the lives that we live. And we can go forward as persons filled with the light of God’s love and meant to be its ambassadors in this world.
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 live with righteousness and compassion. May we turn our minds away from selfishness and stay 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.