Come, Lord! Show us the path To life-giving death…
5st Sunday of Lent B, March 17, 2024
Jesus suggested the path for us to follow through the parable of the grain of wheat. By accepting to give His life, Christ saved us; He gave us life.
Since the beginning of Lent, we have been reciting and singing Psalm 50. Have mercy on us, Lord, for we have sinned. It is not because Christ is forgetful that we constantly repeat these words but because this psalm is the psalm of mercy. Sinners ask to be rebuilt from the inside. They hope to share their joy with their neighbours. Thus, a New Covenant becomes possible in Christ. On the cross, Jesus showed us the way. He offered himself to us to guide us through the murky waters of death. He showed us the path to eternal life. And Jesus gave us an example of courage in his last moments of life. “Now my soul is troubled. Should I pray, ‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, it was for this very reason I came to this hour. Father, glorify your name! ” Here we touch on the heart of the mystery of Christ, the mystery of His great Passion, this passion of which we are so afraid that it becomes muddled with our suffering and our death. Our time is marked more than ever by fear and the refusal of suffering of all kinds: physical, mental… We are devoting considerable efforts to erase suffering from our lives even if it means preferring death.
We would prefer if the Son had gloriously survived, achieving an immediate victory without suffering and death. But Jesus wanted to empathize with us, to follow us into our most distressing trials and into death itself that comes for us all. For that is the price of love!
From now on, very difficult moments in our life can serve as a life path, a path of love, of a life given, of a life offered to save the world. Christ draws us to Him with his great love. He brings us to the Father so that we can live with Him in His glory, in His house, forever.