Homily: 5th Sunday of Lent (Year B)

Readings: Jer 31:31-34; Ps 51; Heb 5:7-9; Jn 12: 20-33

When I was a kid in suburban New York, during the spring and summer months, my mom would sometimes ask me to help her weed her gardens. I always grumbled because she usually called me away from really important stuff, like playing stickball…but I obeyed. If you don’t know what stickball is, just ask someone who grew up in New York.

Anyway, Mom had two gardens, a small vegetable garden in the backyard and a rose garden out front. I’d usually end up in the rose garden, getting attacked by the thorns. I refused to wear the gloves she’d given me because they were pink girly gloves with flowers all over them. Out in the front yard, I couldn’t risk being seen. Some things are more important than pain and suffering.

Mom had names for her two gardens: Eden and Gethsemane. One day I asked, “Why those names?”

“The Garden of Eden,” she said, “far more than our little vegetable garden, was filled with wonderful things to eat, all kinds of fruit and vegetables that God provided for Adam and Eve. It was a very nice place. 

"But our beautiful rose garden, as you’ve discovered, can also be a painful place. I’m sure the Garden of Gethsemane was beautiful with its ancient olive trees, but for Jesus it became a place of deep suffering.”

“Perhaps tonight,” she said, “after supper, we can read about these two gardens in the Bible” – Mom’s way of opening the Scriptures to us.

Thorns Protect the Rose

This memory of long ago came to mind as I read the readings with which the Church blessed us today.

First, we heard the prophet Jeremiah, as he revealed the purpose of all that had come before, the fulfillment of the promises, the covenants God made with Abraham, Moses, and David. All will be fulfilled, Jeremiah tells God’s People, through a New eternal Covenant, very different from the Old. The Holy Spirit revealed to the prophet that God will pour His Law into His People and write it on their hearts. “All will know me,” says the Lord, ”from the least to the greatest.” This is the New Covenant fulfilled by Jesus, the eternal High Priest, the Son of God who offers Himself in sacrifice for the salvation of all, the salvation of everyone, from the least to the greatest.

Moments from now, Father will take the chalice in his hands and proclaim the words of consecration, Jesus’ words at the Last Supper:

“For this is the chalice of my Blood, the Blood of the New and Eternal Covenant, which will be poured out for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins.”

Did you catch all that? The New Covenant is sealed in the Blood of the Son, the Blood of the Lamb of God, Blood poured out for us. Why?

“I will forgive their evildoing and remember their sin no more.” We are redeemed.

As Mom explained to me, “It began in Eden, in that garden filled with good things. But sin brought it all to an end, which led to more sin, to illness and pain and suffering, and to death itself.”

Those weren’t very happy words to throw at a ten-year-old kid, but Mom always spoke the truth to us. Then, pointing to the crucifix, she said: “God made a promise. Jesus, who is God Himself, died for us on that Cross, so we might be forgiven of all of sins, and live forever with Him in heaven.”

Well, pretty good catechesis. It hit the high points and heaven sounded better than suffering and death. So, I asked, “What about the rose garden?” Her answer?

“Jesus spent the night before He died in the Garden of Gethsemane to prepare Himself for the Cross. He saw all the bad things people had done…so hard for Him that His sweat became like drops of blood. And those band-aids on your hands are just a tiny sign of what Jesus suffered for you and me.” Then like every Catholic mother in those days said to her kids when they companied, “Offer it up!”

Olive Tree in Gethsemane

In John’s Gospel, speaking to Andrew and Philip, Jesus looks to His Passion, and His humanity is there in His words:

“I am troubled now. Yet what should I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? But it was for this purpose that I came to this hour. Father, glorify your name.”

…and again, we’re reminded of this in today’s 2^nd reading from Hebrews:

“…He offered prayers and supplications with loud cries and tears to the one who was able to save Him from death.”

Yes, Jesus knew He would have to suffer. But it’s also in Hebrews where our unknown author makes an astounding theological claim:

“God made His Son perfect through suffering”

We ask ourselves, “How could God’s Son need to be made perfect? And why through suffering?” But that’s not all. Hebrews goes on to tell us, “He learned obedience from what He suffered.”

What does it all mean? For Jesus to be made perfect doesn’t mean He was ever morally flawed. No, He freely chose to take on human nature in its fallen state, with its weaknesses, pain, and death; and through His suffering to perfect His human nature in holiness. In the Garden and during His Passion, Jesus allowed the evil of the world to pour over Him, and out of this to create the most perfect act of love, trust, and obedience to God that could ever come from a human heart. It was in this furnace of suffering that His human nature was refined to perfection, transformed for His entrance into divine glory through His Resurrection.

To make us holy, Jesus had to become one with us. As St. Paul reminds us, our salvation comes from God, Who lowered Himself to share our very being, in all but sin. Jesus, then, Son of God and Son of Man, is not ashamed to call us His sisters and brothers. Indeed, He’s overjoyed, for He became one of us in the most radical way: He became our blood relative.

All of this sets a pretty high standard for you and me. How did He put it in the Sermon on the Mount?

“So be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect.” [Mt 5:48]

Again, what does it all mean for us? Let’s look first at ourselves, then turn again to the Gospel.

Here we are, most of us retired, living comfortable lives in central Florida. From a global perspective, materially, we’re probably in the top 10%. And for those of you still working, thank you. Thank you for funding our social security.

Yes, indeed, we have lives worth living, don’t we? But are they lives worth loving? 

Jesus speaks:

“Those who love their life lose it, those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.”

For Jesus, loving earthly life means placing it above all else. To hate our life in this world just means it must never outweigh our striving for eternal life. Yes, unless the grain of wheat dies, it cannot bear fruit. Can we die to this life? Can we, too, accept our suffering, the thorns in our lives, that lead to the perfection God desires of us.

How many today make the pleasures, comforts, wealth of their earthly lives ends in themselves? Indeed, we live in a world that preaches the denial of mortality, that offers a thousand ways to ease physical or mental pain, that promises youth even to the oldest among us, yet leaves us spiritually dead.

Some weeks ago, while visiting a parishioner in the hospital, I had a brief chat with the patient who shared his room. His first words to me: “My wife died years ago, but now because of my heart, I can’t play golf anymore. It’s made my Ife no longer worth living.”

How very sad that nothing in his life was more important. Yes, “those who love their life lose it.”

What, then, is more important than our life in this world? Jesus provides the answer:

Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also. Whoever serves me, the Father will honor.

Yes, our confession of faith is necessary, but also insufficient. We must live our faith. We must serve.

Perhaps this should be our focus during these final days of Lent.

I can’t tell you how God is calling each of you to serve. His call, what He expects of us, is the fruit of our own prayer life, our willingness to listen to God’s Word as He speaks to us. God calls some, like the rich young man in the Gospel, to sell everything, and give it all to the poor. And yet, He doesn’t ask that of everyone. But to all of us, God commands: “Follow me and serve!” Get you hands dirty, brothers and sisters…

Feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, welcome the stranger, visit the sick and imprisoned…and inherit the Kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.

All of us aren’t called to be global missionaries, but how many lonely, despairing people in your neighborhood live forgotten lives? Do you know?

How many, like the Greeks who came to Philip, would like to see Jesus, to see Jesus in their lives, to hear His Word, to taste His goodness?

How many are waiting…waiting for you or for me or for someone else to share God’s love with them?

How many?