April 9, 2000 -- 5th Sunday of Lent "B"
Jer
31,31-34; Heb
5,7-9; John
12,20-33
H O M I L Y
The text from Jeremiah that we heard in
the first reading of this Mass is one of the most beautiful text from the Bible
on conversion. First, it describes
conversion as a gift from God; but most of all, it describes it not as a simple change of behavior, not as the
replacement of an "ego" by
another "ego", but as a profound change of the heart. And by profound change of the heart we must
understand not simply a purer heart, a heart that desires nicer things, but a
heart that has become so impregnated by the Spirit of God that it spontaneously
desires what God desires. "I will
place my law within [you], says the Lord, and write it upon your hearts... No
longer will you need to teach your friends and kinsmen how to know the Lord,
All, from least to greatest, shall know me, says the Lord."
This is radical obedience to God. Radical, because it is obedience through the
root (radix) of our being.
But how does God realize in us that
change? How does he teach us his law? How do we learn obedience? There
is no other way than the way that Christ himself has taught us; the way that he himself used.
The Epistle to the Hebrews tells us of
his prayers and supplications with loud cries and tears to God, and then adds:
"he learned obedience through suffering"... Have not all made the
experience that the most important things in life are learned through
suffering, and could never be learned through a whole life of study. But then the text adds that He became a
source of salvation for all who obey him. So we are called to obey him just as he has obeyed the Father, in the
same radical way, through the same radical surrender of our whole
existence. But how can we learn
obedience, if not through suffering, as he did?
This is why he tells us, in the Gospel:
"Unless the grain of wheat falls to the earth and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat. But if it dies, it produces much fruit. The man who loves his life loses it, while
the man who hates his life in this world preserves it to life eternal."
What it is the meaning of that riddle
that we find quite a few times in the Gospel (in slightly different forms): "the one who saves his life will
lose it; the man who loses his life
will save it"? To save one's life
means to hold onto it, to love it and be attached to it and therefore to fear
death. To lose one's life is to let go
of it, to be detached from it and therefore to be willing to die. The paradox is that the person who fears
death is already dead, whereas the one who has ceased to fear death has at that
moment begun to live.
But why must someone be ready to suffer
and to die? ‑‑ Does that make sense at all? The key word here is "compassion"
(= suffering with). The one thing that
Jesus was determined to destroy was suffering and death: the suffering of the
poor and the oppressed, the suffering of the sick, the suffering and death of
all the victims of injustice first of all. But the only way to destroy suffering is to give up all worldly values
and suffer the consequences.
Only the willingness to suffer
can conquer suffering in the world. Compassion destroys suffering by suffering with and on behalf of those
who suffer. A sympathy with the poor
that is unwilling to share their sufferings would be a useless emotion. One cannot share the blessings of the poor
unless one is willing to share their sufferings. The same thing can be said of
death.
This is what Jesus has done for us. This
is what we will commemorate in our celebrations of the next few weeks. Let us find in today's Eucharist the
strength to follow in his steps.
Armand VEILLEUX