Fifth Sunday of Lent!

It's Sunday!
April 10 - 5th. Sunday of Lent


This Sunday marks a distinct advance on last Sunday in the sends that we were thentalking of "giving light" to people in darkness, but today there is something more tremendous: GIVING LIFE to a dead man! And we remember the other story of the sisters when Martha - always the active element - prepares a mealfor the Lord, but Mary just listens to his words:this time she sits at home while Martha is granted the incredible joy of seeing her brother restored to life. Which sister do you identify with?


The First Reading, from the Prophet Ezekiel, brings us back to some of the darkest days of the Chosen People, what we call the "Babylonian captivity." The pagan king, Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, marched against Jerusalem, forced the people to surrender and carried into exile into Babylon royal officials and some of theupper classes among whom was Ezekiel. Later, in 587 B.C, he laid siege to Jerusalem and destroyed it. It was a bad time for the Jews but Ezekiel continued to reassure them that, in spite of everything, their exile was not at an end but at a turning-point. This Reading prepares Ezekiel's fellow-exiles for the coming new age. This is all the more true for us today because in our case the new times have arrived, we are living in them and Christ is living in us since Baptism. We are condemned to death but assured of True Life forever.


The Responsorial Psalm confirms the First Reading - the words are well known to us - and are self-explanatory.


The Second Reading, from our holy Patron's Letter to the Romans, provides the clearest and most informative commentary on the entire liturgy of this Sunday. Oncewe are baptized, the Spirit of Jesus is living in us and with us and we have perfectly clear ideas of what the future holds: it holds a pledge of resurrection and life without end. Jesus does not see death as the end but rather as the indispensable entry into LIFE or, perhaps better, the continuation and unfolding of the divine life we have right now. At death we don't really GO anywhere - we are already there and death just reveals our reality! Good for us but always we must have a thought for our less-fortunate brothers and sisters who may well have long since lost contact with the Lord and so are exposed to enter suddenly into life without end but not, unfortunately, a life of happiness: rather a life of at least short-term delay and suffering not to talk of - which God forbid - a life of endless death.


In the Gospel, Christ tells Martha: "Your brother will rise again," and she trusts him totally. As we have just reflected, he says this also to us but not in the same way. Martha did not know what to expect next. We do. It is with the entire Church that he raises his voice in prayer to the Father . When a parish has adult baptisms this becomes clearer. The Church says to the newly-baptized: "Lazarus, come out!" And then: "Unbind him and let him go." The newly-baptized adult is wonderfully
freed from all sin by this tremendous gift of God and of the Church.


Christ is also "deeply-moved" as he contemplates the tomb of Lazarus.


Lazarus. This Is not a merely human reaction but expresses the profound sorrow of Christ, the God-man, for what sin has done to human beings. The First Creation - Adam and Eve - has substantially failed. Now Christ - and Mary - have the long- drawn-out task of salvaging what they can from the wreckage of a misguided humanity.


There are many other interpretations of this particular Gospel but they all come to the same conclusion: the incredible blindness of us men and women and the equally-incredible love and concern of our heavenly Father.


On particular aspect of the call to Lazarus is the call going out at this time of the year for Catholics to return to the Church and, most of all, to the make of a good Confession. Something is being accomplished - these calls are being heard and in the big cities Confessions are all around the clock. Still, there is always room for more improvement and one of our major intentions for these special Sundays must be that many poor sinners - the words are the words of our Lady of Fatima as she showed Hell to the little children - will return to their anxious and loving Father and begin in advance to celebrate the joy of Easter.