5th Sunday of Lent March 21-22, 2015

From today’s First Scripture reading from the prophet Jeremiah we read: “The days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah…I will place my law within then and write it upon their hearts; I will be their God, and they shall be my people.”

Jeremiah’s mission was to reshape the people of Israel into something beautiful for God. In the first chapter of the book we learn that God shaped Jeremiah in his mother’s womb for this important work. If only Jeremiah’s words could form the people to do God’s work too. But like clay unresponsive to the hands of the potter, the people of Israel remained unresponsive to the word of God.

Jeremiah uses the expression “new covenant.” What makes this covenant new is not its content because God still speaks of my law, but the newness of the covenant refers to the place where it can be found. The old covenant was associated with commandments written in stone. The people had to match to standards that were outside of them. But this proclamation from Jeremiah sets the covenant is written in their hearts. Instead of giving them rules to follow, God wants to infuse their hearts with the fire of divine love. When the covenant is scripted in their hearts, they will share the very passion of God.
They will experience the presence and the forgiveness of God written in their hearts. They would be a people no longer commanded by external standards, but God’s love and God’s law is to found with them. By faithfulness to God’s covenant that is within, we become our best selves, the people we are called to be.

As we reflect on this Jeremiah reading, this leaves us with one question. Are we willing to risk the cost of having God’s law written on our hearts? Our covenant with God is written in our hearts. Our spirituality is part of our DNA. Yes, we all have demons that can throw us off-center, which can derail us from being our best selves: our self-centeredness, our greed, our lust, our need for power and control.

If our covenant is written in our hearts, it is not enough to set aside an hour a week to give thanks to God at Mass, or even to tithe 10% of our time, talent, and treasure, it is not enough to be a part-time disciple of Jesus. We need to be all in. Everything we say and do is part of our spirituality and our covenant with God. God is present to us 24/7.
The Letter to the Hebrews then points us to the new covenant. The new covenant is the mystery of Jesus that is written in our hearts. The spirit of Jesus is within us, the community of the baptized.

This Letter to the Hebrews points to the mystery of Jesus within us and also the shocking truth that “Jesus learned obedience through suffering.” Jesus had to struggle to live his vocation. As a man Jesus become conscious of fulfilling his Father’s will through suffering, the cross, and the crucifixion. Jesus revealed God’s merciful love for us and became the source of eternal salvation to all who believing in Him. Jesus had already gone to the heart of the human struggle for meaning, and by his suffering he learned obedience. In the mystery of the Incarnation, Jesus was fully man and experienced the suffering of humanity.

In the Gospel, Jesus describes his own paschal mystery with the imagery: ”Amen, Amen, I say to you, unless a grain of what falls to the earth and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat; but if it dies, it produces much fruit.” The grains of wheat need to die to be reborn. Jesus died out of love for us and rose to again in His risen life so that we share in the Lord’s eternal life. Thanks be to God.

Jesus explains in the Gospel that his moment of glory is about to arrive, and does not hesitate to say that he knows what it will cost. He then teaches his disciples what it means to hate the life this world offers. We are left with the question can we abandon the love of this world for the sake of life in God. Can Pope Francis, Mother Theresa, and the martyred Archbishop Oscar Romero be mentors for us to teach that the covenant of God’s love that is written in our hearts is our pearl of great price.

Modern humanism has embraced the notion of personal perfection through education, exercise, diet, travel, and aesthetic beauty. This gives us the lifestyle that passes for a full, satisfying life. What else is there?

Jesus shocks us with the paradox he is about to embrace: death on a cross. Jesus reveals God as the One who empties his heart into the world even as it rejects the divine offer of reconciliation. God’s unconditional love transforms enemies into friends, cleanses the heart of selfishness and restores the center of balance to a world disjointed and disoriented by human self-centeredness.

In the parish email this week to prepare us for this Sunday’s gospel, we see Lent is a way of preparing ourselves so that the seed of faith may be planted in us and then multiplied to feed others. Like the grain of wheat, we must experience dying to ourselves in Lent so that we can then know the miracle of life. Our Gospel question of the week is: in what ways have you been dying to yourself in order to experience life in Christ?