Eagerly, I Run: A Reflection on the Fifth Sunday of Lent (Year B)
The readings for this Fifth Sunday of Lent in Year B are replete with what it means for us to follow Christ with our entire being so that we can be fully configured to Him and be transformed, becoming Christ-like, acting in love, just as Jesus loved us to the Cross. The Collect sets the tone. It doesn’t ask that we just be able to love more but that “we walk eagerly in that same charity with which, out of love for the world, your Son handed himself over to death.” Eagerly. Not strolling to get there eventually or taking side trips along the way. “Eagerly I run in the way of your commands,” says the Psalmist in Psalm 119. One thinks of meeting people you love and haven’t seen for a while. You want to run to them and hug them!
So, how do we embark on this adventure of love? First, we must die.
“We want to see Jesus,” say the Greeks to Philip, hoping he’ll give them an “in”. Evidently, Philip isn’t so sure he can give them access to Jesus. So, he goes to Andrew and together they ask Jesus. One can almost hear them, “You ask him.” “No, you know him better. You ask him.” “No. Let’s go together!” Showing that they perhaps still don’t entirely trust Jesus. In a few weeks, on Holy Thursday, we’ll hear Philip say to Jesus, “Show us the Father and we will be satisfied.”
The answer Jesus gives to our inquiring duo isn’t probably what they expected: “unless a grain of wheat falls to the earth and dies it remains only a single grain, but if it dies, it yields a rich harvest.” At this time of year, many a gardener hearing this Gospel will be nodding in agreement because if the seeds in their greenhouses or on their windowsills don’t die and become seedlings there will be no garden this summer. No matter how advanced our technology is, the expectation of that first tiny, tiny, sign of life coming out of the earth is an experience of breathless expectation.
Perhaps shortly after we were born, or maybe as recently as last year, we died and as a result found that we live. When we were submerged in the waters of baptism we died with Christ and now truly live in him as adopted sons and daughters of God. That transformation through the grace of the Sacrament is just the beginning of becoming holy; the first glimpse of new life coming up through the earth.
We still have the effects of original sin. We still struggle to choose the good and reject the bad. Our hearts need to be purified through God’s grace in us so that the eyes of our hearts can “read” the law of God burned into them. The more we encounter Jesus personally through prayer and above all through the sacraments of Confession and the Holy Eucharist, the more we will imitate Jesus and become like him. God always respects our freedom, leaving us free to respond to his gift of divine life in us, but He does most of the work! We don’t have to sculpt ourselves! God will transform us into being Christ-like if we let him. To become malleable the secret is to obey him, just as in the Second Reading from Hebrews tell us, he obeyed the Father.
Jesus said to St. Catherine of Siena, “All the way to Heaven is the way, because I am the way.” For a Christian, buried in Christ, Eternal Life is not a wish for the future. It begins now. So many Christians are afraid of physical death. We act as though Jesus has not drawn us to himself on the Cross in love. Perhaps it is because we are too attached to the things of this world and not so anxious to run eagerly toward his merciful embrace.
Today, take some moments and put down your cell phone and in its place hold and caress the crucifix—the one on your rosary or the one hanging on your wall. Spend time with it in silence, contemplating the mystery of Jesus’ love for us, answering his love with your own. “If anyone serves me, the Father will honor him.”
