5th Sunday of Lent (Year B)
Jer 31:31-34; Ps 50; Heb 5:7-9; Jn 12:20-33
I’ve a question that’s relatively important this last Sunday of Lent, the last Sunday before we enter into Holy Week. My question’s relatively simple as well – How has your Lent been thus far? I ask this question because it seems important to pause and reflect during our Lenten journey and to check on the state of our hearts as well as the direction in which we’re going. Some might think, ‘Isn’t it too late to do a reflection on Lent seeing that it’s almost over?’ I’d disagree with them because it’s better to do a reflection late in Lent than not to do one at all.
Polemics aside, one asks, How has your Lent been thus far? Let’s break this down a little further. From ‘How’, one could look at the actual Lenten practices and examine how we spent our Lent. How successful were we in fasting, praying and giving alms? From ‘Lent’ one can ask oneself what Lent actually means to us. From ‘your’, we go a little deeper and try to look for the internal movements that we’ve felt during our Lenten journey and how they’ve moved us in our relationship with God. From ‘now’, we look at the state of our hearts at the present moment. How are we doing?
The questions are important for two reasons. Firstly, there is always a risk of us allowing our Lenten practices, no matter how pious and well-intentioned, to become procedural and habitual. When that happens, one loses the personal, spiritual meaning that they hold. The question for refection on our Lent gives us space to reflect and deepen our Lenten journey. Secondly, the questions offer us a means of aligning our journeys closer to its destination. In a fairly closed journey like that of Lent, it’s good to keep an eye on our destination that in turn gives meaning to all our action then. But what is this destination in the first place?
The readings of today give us an idea about the two ways towards the principle destination of our Christian lives – salvation and life eternal. The Gospel describes the external route. The Lord calls the disciples to follow him through suffering and difficulty. As if that’s not enough, he calls us to lose and even hate our earthly lives. A parenthetical note on ‘hate’: in Hebrew and Aramaic, which Jesus would have spoken in, there are no comparatives and superlatives as we know them so many scholars presume that Jesus would have been exhorting the disciples to ‘love the world less’ than God instead of hating it outright. End parenthesis. We see the necessity of journeying with Jesus towards His cross as part of our faith lives as it is in this journey and at the end in the cross that He gains eternal life for us. We want to share in the glory but that entails sharing in the sufferings before.
The prophet Jeremiah gives us a different and slightly more subtle way that is equally important. He proclaimed God saying ‘I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts’. The external law becomes less important than the one that guides us from within. With the law within our hearts, we recognise that we are indeed people of God. The Psalm adds that we need pure hearts – hearts that not only recognise God but guide our actions in ways that bring us towards Him. Lenten practices that are done out of such hearts inscribed with the eternal law of God can become like internal compasses that bring us to the destination that we all seek, salvation and life eternal.
Both ways, internal and external, bring us to God and Lent is a blessed time for us to examine how we’re moving in our faith journey. It’s also a time for us to try to adjust our direction towards God. A maritime analogy might help. When a boat moves on the sea or on a large lake, it’s always affected by waves and currents. This is especially so in human-powered boats and thus the coxswain or navigator has the responsibility to keep the boat going in the right direction. I’ve learned from experience that this is not easy. The waves and currents always push the boat away from the line that one wants to travel on. I’ve learned from my time in kayaks and dragonboats that when travelling near the coast, it’s important to find a fixed point to point the bow of the boat towards so that one can reach one’s destination without too much trouble. The fixed point in our Christian lives is God and the gift of eternal life. The spiritual practices, liturgies and personal reflection are the ways in which we adjust our journeys towards the destination. No matter the waves of normal life, if we keep our eyes on the true destination, we will get there.
In conclusion, I think it’s appropriate to repeat the questions about our Lenten journeys, to prepare ourselves better for Holy Week and the glory of the Resurrection.
- How have we spent our Lent thus far?
- What does Lent mean to me?
- What internal spiritual movements have I felt?
- What’s the state of my heart now?
We pray for the blessings of God during these last weeks before the Holy Triduum, for God to keep us on the right path. Even as we pass through the suffering and sorrow of the passion and death of Jesus, we pray that our eyes be kept on the destination and the glory and salvation that comes with Easter. Amen.