Daily Retreat 04/02/06

2006 Apr 2 SUN: FIFTH SUNDAY OF LENT.

Jer 31: 31-34/ Ps 50(51): 3-4. 12-13. 14-15 (12a)/ Heb 5: 7-9/ Jn 12: 20-33

From today’s readings: "I will place My law within them and write it upon their hearts; I will be their God, and they shall be My people.... A clean heart create for me, O God, and a steadfast spirit renew within me.... Son though He was, He learned obedience from what He suffered; and when He was made perfect, He became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey Him.... Unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat; but if it dies, it produces much fruit! "

A Great Anniversary

A year ago today, Pope John Paul the Great ended his earthly pilgrimage. Although all the world was saddened by the news of his death, there was also a well-founded hope that such an inspirational servant of God would come to share fully in his Master’s heavenly joy. Providentially, because John Paul II died a week after Easter, on the vigil of Divine Mercy Sunday, the Church’s liturgy and scripture readings focused on the Lord’s victory over sin and death, and His promise that His faithful followers would share in His Easter resurrection.

This year, the anniversary of John Paul’s death occurs two weeks before Easter, on this tense fifth Sunday of Lent, the last week before this penitential season’s climax of Holy Week. The scripture readings do not yet exult with the jubilation of Easter victory - rather, they pine with sobering insights about suffering and death. Not about pointless suffering and meaningless death, but just the opposite: redemptive suffering, and life-giving death!

In the second reading, the Epistle to the Hebrews reminds us about Jesus that, "Son though He was, He learned obedience from what He suffered; and when He was made perfect, He became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey Him." This reminder just spells out the implications of Christ’s own insight when He applied it to Himself: Amen, amen, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat; but if it dies, it produces much fruit!

Plain and simple, there is no authentic Christianity that passes over the Passion of the Christ! For when plain carbon suffers the crushing weight of unbearable tribulation, it is transformed into a diamond. Likewise, when human life is laden with the burden of suffering, then that raw material can be transformed into the crown jewel of the spiritual life.

But suffering is like nuclear energy. We all shy away from it because it is such an obvious threat: suffering can hurt us, poison us, even destroy us! And yet, if we can know how to approach it the right way, if we can even embrace our suffering in the same way that Jesus willingly took up His Cross, then it becomes the most potent power of love, for suffering is what takes human love and fashions it into divine love! It is the whetstone used to sharpen our zeal and our love for the Lord.

For when Christ came among us as a man, He who had the divine nature Himself took on suffering and took on death. Why did He do that? He did that to pay the price for our sins. He did that so that suffering and death would be, not just an unpleasant aspect of human nature, but a transforming reflection of divine love. Jesus, true God and true man, suffered and died. And He suffered and died in a way that shows us how we can take all of the suffering in our lives and present it to God as an offering of love.

Pope John Paul the Great was a model for uniting his sufferings to the redemptive sufferings of Christ. In his final years, the media focused on the Pope’s failing health, and some even suggested years ago that it was time for him to "retire." But John Paul II saw things differently - rather than impeding his pastoral work and devotion, the Pope’s suffering paradoxically enhanced his ministry, because it was offered and used by him as an eloquent reminder of Christ’s redemptive suffering and life-giving death.

You and I all have some suffering in our lives - when the suffering, great or small, is united with the redemptive suffering of Christ, then we, like John Paul the Great and like the martyrs, can even come to rejoice to have been found worthy to follow the footsteps of Christ on the Via Dolorosa, the sorrowful Way of the Cross, the Path of the Passion, the Street of Suffering, the Trail of Tribulation which Christ blazed as the Route of Redemption and the triumphant thoroughfare that leads to Easter!