18 March 2018
5th Sunday of Lent, Year B
So you came into church today and noticed, “Hey, something is
different.” And, of course, you see our
statues are covered in purple cloth.
Something is different. And
what’s changed is: where we are in the season of Lent. We’re a week away from Palm Sunday and the
start of Holy Week. Very soon Lent will
come to an end. But before we get to
Easter, we go deeper into the spirit of this season, and we begin to focus more
on the Passion.
We see more purple, that reminder of penitence. We cover our statues as a way to fast from
images. We become more intent on prayer
and works of charity, almsgiving, and such.
Before the light of Easter comes, things get a little darker. They get more intense, more subdued, and more
focused on the mysteries of our faith we’ll be celebrating next week. And at the heart of those mysteries is the
Passion.
So, yes, something is different. We’ve turned the corner, and the Passion is
coming into view—not only Christ’s Passion, but our own.
Over the past five weeks we’ve prayed more, we’ve fasted,
we’ve given alms. And we’ll keep doing
that. And those are all disciplines
which help us redirect our passions. God
has made us to be passionate creatures. He’s
made us capable of being moved in our souls by the force of intense emotions
and feelings. And, in that, he’s made us
like himself.
We call Jesus’ Passion his “passion” because he fulfilled
perfectly this idea of being “moved,” to the point that his life was swept up
into this thing he was passionate about; namely, the Kingdom of God, the Will
of God, and salvation. If you think of
somebody who really “gets into” what his or her interests and talents are,
that’s what we mean by “passion.” They
give their lives over to that thing.
They’re passionate about the thing they have a passion for.
And our Lenten prayer, fasting, and almsgiving is meant to
redirect our passions toward what God is passionate about. The Lord is passionate about: human dignity,
justice, life, mercy, beauty, truth, and so on.
Lent is about redirecting our passions (or at least, broadening our
passions) to include what God is passionate about.
Lent seems to boil down to Jesus asking us: Can you have
passion in your heart for what I am passionate about? After five weeks of Lent, something is
different. We’re entering into a time of
more intense personal reflection: Am I becoming passionate (at least, a little
more) about what the Lord is passionate about?
Am I beginning to let his Passion become my passion, too? And that’s a deep question for reflection
here in the last couple of weeks of Lent.
Something is different.
And it’s reflected in Scripture, and in the language we hear.
The Letter to the Hebrews talks about how Jesus learned
“obedience” through what he “suffered.”
Obedience and suffering: those are two intense words for us. Number one, we treasure our individual
liberty, and so the idea of obedience isn’t something we swallow very well
(even with a “spoonful of sugar,” it doesn’t go down well). And number two, most of us don’t like to feel
pain or distress; and so we keep that idea of suffering at arm’s length. “Obedience” and “suffering” are two ideas
that trip the passionate side of us, and we say, “No. No, I’m not going there.”
But, you know, Scripture wasn’t written in English. It was written in Greek and Hebrew.
The word “obey” is from the Latin “obedíre,” which means
basically “to listen to” someone. And
the Greek in Scripture is “hupa-kónay,” which means “to respond to someone
who’s speaking.” “Obedience” doesn’t
mean “do what I say or die.” That’s not
obedience; that’s tyranny. Obedience
begins with trust; it begins with a relationship. A person who “obeys” says, “I trust you. I trust you, and I trust that what you say is
good, and so I’m gonna do it.” To be
obedient is to be passionate about
our God who is...trustworthy. Obedience
is about a partnership with God, and that’s something we can be passionate
about.
And the word “suffer” is from the Latin “sufferíre,” which
literally means “to hold up something from underneath,” to “sustain”
something. Just think of trying to
change a light fixture on the ceiling; you have to hold that thing up there
while you connect the wirings and get it attached to the ceiling.” Well, you’re “suffering” that light
fixture...you’re holding it up. In the
Scriptures, the Greek word here is “pás-koh,” which sounds a lot like
“paschal”...as in the paschal lamb and the paschal mysteries.
“Pas-koh” means “to feel heavy emotion.” It means to feel heavy emotion, to bear the
weight of something—and this in important, it’s an emotion or a weight that’s
either bad or good. We think of suffering and we think of
something bad, something painful. But that’s
not necessarily what suffering is.
Any parent or grandparent who has carried the heavy weight of
seeing their kids or grandkids leave their faith knows what suffering is. But it’s not a bad suffering; it’s a good
suffering. And the weight is the weight
of having a caring heart, a loving heart.
When Jesus wept over Jerusalem, “soon to be destroyed for its lack of
faith,” he suffered. But what he was
holding up was his own immense Sacred Heart, which fewer and fewer people
seemed to care about. He suffered
because he loved.
And so, suffering isn’t about enduring needless, pointless
pain. It’s about being passionate about
love: love of God, love of neighbor, and an intense emotional desire to see the
Kingdom of God be a reality. And that
kind of suffering is something we can be passionate about, as Jesus is.
“Obedience” and “suffering” aren’t words we like to
hear. But if we understand them, we see
that they’re ways we can make the Lord’s passions our own as well. Again, after five weeks of Lent, something is
different. We’re entering into a time of
more intense personal reflection: Am I becoming passionate (at least, a little
more) about what the Lord is passionate about?
Am I beginning to let his Passion become my passion, too?
This weekend, our soon-to-be First Communicants will be
handing out loaves of blessed bread.
But, more to the point, they’ll be “sharing” that food with others. It could be seen as a form of almsgiving:
giving to others from what we have. And
almsgiving is a way we share in the passion the Lord has for charity,
neighborliness, and selfless giving.
Also, this weekend we’ll celebrate the Sacrament of the
Anointing of the Sick. The Church
teaches that those who are sick in any sort of way serve as reminders to all of
us to be passionate about the things of God; to be people of hope, even in the
face of illness; to be people of faith; to be people of great love who comfort
and console one another. The Lord is
passionate about these things: faith, hope, and love; he’s passionate about
those things which endure forever, beyond bodily illness or health.
Prayer, fasting, almsgiving, care for the sick,
neighborliness...they’re all things we get involved in because they remind us
to be passionate about the things the Lord himself is passionate about.
But, it’s important to clarify something here. The Lord isn’t asking us to stop living our
lives and to substitute his in its place.
The Lord doesn’t want us to annihilate ourselves and our passions. That would be totally contrary to what the
Lord is all about! No, the Lord is
asking us to keep being passionate about the things we’re passionate about (our
hobbies, our skills, our talents), but...also to be just a little bit more passionate about what his passions are.
We have to turn to the original Greek Scriptures to
understand that. When Jesus talks about
“loving” or “hating” our life in this world, we hear them as very
black-and-white terms. But that’s not
what Jesus means. According to St. John,
he says, “ὁ μισῶν τὴν ψυχὴν αὐτοῦ ἐν κόσμῳ τούτῳ [ho misón tayn psukáyn owtú en
kósmo túto].” Our life here on earth and
our life in heaven aren’t opposed to one another; they exist side-by-side.
And Jesus says, “Love your life here on earth; it is my gift
to you. But love the life of heaven just
a little bit more. Be passionate, but be
just a little bit more passionate about God and his vision of the
Kingdom.” Our patroness, Saint Clare,
said the same thing. She said: “Hold
everything...’hold’ everything, but with a light grasp.”
Be passionate. But,
especially, be passionate about our Lord, who is passionate about us.
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