Alberic Jacovone OSB
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YEAR B
FIFTH SUNDAY OF LENT - 2.4.06
Jer 31,31-4; Heb 5,7-9; Jn 12,20-33
From selfish to self-giving
Unless
the wheat-grain falls & dies... In today's Gospel Jesus uses strong language
in order to make his point. He says: 'My hour has come', yeas, my time of
suffering, loss, sorrow, abandonment -even failure & shameful death- has now
come. Naturally, Jesus is disturbed & at first he tends to reject it; but he
must accept & take it, since it's for 'this hour' that he has come. Yes, he
must choose to literally die & give his life so that we may gain abundant
& eternal life. Insightful & powerful is the example he gives: 'unless a
grain of wheat falls on the ground & dies..., it cannot yield a rich
harvest', & then he concludes saying: 'when I will be lifted up (on the
cross) then I will draw all to myself'... Here John's Gospel reaches the deepest
insight in the mystery of suffering, as it can bring about a miracle of abundant
life. Not only Jesus but everyone of his followers must adopt the same logic
about suffering: it's worth accepting to die to self in order for the people we
love to gain abundant life. Then we too draw all to God & inspire one
another in love. The paradox is that there is no real happiness, without trials
& a humble schooling which comes from suffering & hurt, loss & cross
& death. Our Christian faith offers a constant challenge to our human
condition. To follow Jesus completely will always include to be ready to suffer
with him. He himself found hard to adopt this logic, but he accepted to do God's
will, inviting us to die to our selfish nature. Lent is a time of intense prayer
when we ask God to change our selfishness into self-giving & learn to die to
ourselves...
Stay
in love, when tragedy hits. In his first Encyclical "God is Love: (Deus
caritas est)", Pope
Benedict XVI talks at length about our Christian calling to go from selfishness
to selfgiving.
He bases our Christian service on Paul's 'Magna Carta' in 1Cor 13: 'without
love we are
nothing'. He says: no 'do-good' activity is sufficient unless it expresses our
love for man, a love
nourished by our encounter with
Christ. As we serve others we do not
consider ourselves superior beings... & since the Lord is close to the
broken hearted, we
serve in all humility, imitating Jesus who was humble to the point of cross
& death. Being able to help is no merit or achievement, it's a duty of
grace, in the sense that we ourselves
receive help. The more we do for others, the more we appropriate the words of
Christ: 'we are useless servants' (Lk17,10). There are times -the Pope
continues- when the
burden of need & our own limitations might tempt us to be discouraged: let's
reflect that
we are only instruments in the Lord's hands. We must not presume that we alone
are personally
responsible for building a better world... Our living a personal relationship
with Christ is decisive, is we are not to fall into arrogant contempt for man
(something not only unconstructive but destructive), or into discouragement
& resignation. Prayer as a means of drawing
ever new strength from Christ is concretely & urgently needed. Clearly, when
we pray, we do not claim to change or correct God's plans. Rather we seek an
encounter with the Father & ask him to pour on us his Spirit, as we abandon
ourselves to his will: only this will save us from danger of fanaticism or
terrorism. At times when we cannot understand why God refrains from intervening,
we are never stopped to cry out as Jesus did on the cross: 'My God, why have you
forsaken me'?. Especially then, we try to remain unshakably certain that God is
our Father & loves us, even if his silence remains incomprehensible to us.
God's love for us stands out in the pierced heart of Jesus on the cross. Let's
try to experience & imitate that unselfish love.... Says the Pope.
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