Msgr. Joseph Prior
Posted March 12, 2021
(See the readings for the Fourth Sunday of Lent, March 14)
"celebrate, O Jerusalem," is the doorway antiphon for this Sunday's liturgy. The day is from time to time referred to as Laetare Sunday, "laetare" that means "have a good time." throughout our adventure through Lent the get together for this Sunday requires the priest and deacon to put on rose-coloured vestments. The liturgy reminds us that as we experience through Lent we've notable purpose to have fun for the Lord loves us, and through his ardour, loss of life and resurrection frees us from sin and demise.
the first analyzing from second Chronicles first recollects the circumstance in Israel that resulted in the Babylonian exile. "Infidelity" changed into added to "infidelity." Prophets had been despatched and not noted. The Lord's Temple was profaned. Then the Babylonians came, conquered and destroyed the country. The Temple of the Lord become desecrated and destroyed as changed into the holy city of Jerusalem. The peoples had been exiled as captives and brought to the faraway lands of Mesopotamia (current day Iraq).
The pain of exile and the loss of Jerusalem and the Promised Land is mirrored in Psalm 137. "with the aid of the rivers of Babylon, we sat and wept after we remembered Zion … For there our captors requested us for songs, and our despoilers urged us to be joyful … How may we sing a music of the Lord in a overseas land? If I neglect you Jerusalem, let my right-hand wither."
The rejoicing comes not in response to infidelity or exile, reasonably that the Lord remembered his americans, forgave their sins and redeemed them throughout the hand of Cyrus, King of Persia. approximately 50 years after the exile started, the Babylonians had been defeated by the Persians. Cyrus issued a decree permitting the captured peoples to return home and to rebuild the Temple, the condo of the Lord. There the people would sing once more in pleasure.
The revelation of God's love and mercy will reach its achievement in Jesus the Christ. The Gospel passage recalls Jesus' evaluating his ardour, loss of life and resurrection to a lots past event within the lifetime of Israel. right through the time that they were wandering in the wasteland for forty years, a awful pestilence stumbled on them. Many individuals have been death. The individuals referred to as out to the Lord acknowledging their sins and requesting deliverance.
The Lord suggested Moses to style a serpent in bronze and mount it on a pole. He did this. each time a person stricken would appear on the graphic, they had been healed. The Lord heard the cry of the individuals and that they had been delivered. Jesus sees this event as a foreshadowing or a coaching for his being lifted up on the wood of the pass. The purpose is that this: "For God so loved the area that he gave his only Son, in order that every person who believes in him may no longer perish but might have eternal lifestyles. For God did not ship his Son into the realm to condemn the area, but that the world could be saved via him."
here's why the graphic of the move plays this kind of favourite and visible role in our lives, our church buildings, our constructions and our homes. it's throughout the move that God's judgment of mercy comes upon us and we're delivered, at a superb charge on his half, from sin and death. The "lifting up" of Jesus doesn't conclusion with the move. After the three days in the tomb, he is "lifted up" and rises from the lifeless — the clear manifestation of his victory.
Two different topics that run through the Gospel are also mentioned. the first being "gentle and darkness," the different "fact." Jesus is the "gentle" that comes into the world which many times is associated with "darkness." When the term is used this manner it does not mean the first rate things of the world but the dangerous, these issues that don't seem to be of God.
So a call has to be made. moving toward and into the easy is a choice for Christ, and for the mercy and lifestyles he offers. relocating towards the darkness is a choice to continue to be separated and on my own.
"fact" is the second theme. Later in the Gospel Jesus will say: "i am the style, and the certainty, and the existence; no one involves the daddy except through me." dwelling in Christ is the way by which we come to the easy. a decision for Christ is the alternative for actuality and light-weight.
Our experience in Lent is moving towards the get together of Jesus' ardour, loss of life and resurrection – the Paschal mystery. Our penitential practices throughout the season don't forget the first-rate conclusion to which we are directed – mercy and existence. Into the sufferings of lifestyles whether or not they be outstanding or small, individual or shared, comes the light of life. Jesus has embraced human suffering and supplies us from its power.
St. Paul says it this fashion: "God, who is wealthy in mercy, as a result of the terrific love he had for us, even once we had been useless in our transgressions, brought us to lifestyles with Christ — through grace you have been saved — raised us up with him, and seated us with him in the heavens in Christ Jesus, that in the a while to come he may demonstrate the immeasurable riches of his grace in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. For via grace you were saved through faith."
And so we have fun.
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Msgr. Joseph Prior is pastor of Our girl of Grace Parish, Penndel, and a former professor of Sacred Scripture and rector of St. Charles Borromeo Seminary.
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