FIFTH SUNDAY OF LENT, CYCLE C

[cappie]

“I believe nothing can happen that will outweigh the supreme advantage of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For him I have accepted the loss of everything, and I look on everything as so much rubbish if only I can have Christ and be given a place in him.”  These are very autobiographical lines from St Paul, who once thought he had all the answers, but found out differently on the road to Damascus.

 Now St Paul is not really saying that the good things of life are not good, but it’s the comparison all else pales in significance when you look at what knowing Christ, gaining Christ, gives us. This is the goal of life. Other things can be a part of that, can even contribute to that goal. Insofar as they do, then we should enjoy them as gifts from God. But insofar as they get in the way, distract us, even take the place of Christ in our life, then we must count them as loss, dump them in the trash, so to speak.

Also, as we all we know well, even the good things of life, gifts of God for our enjoyment, are perishable. Natural disasters, death, or even loss of family and loved ones, our own physical frailties and impending deaths are inevitable. As the Jesuit philosopher and theologian Pierre Teilhard de Chardin wrote in The Divine Milieu: “there still remains that slow, essential deterioration which we cannot escape old age little by little robbing us of ourselves and pushing us towards the end. It is indeed true that only Jesus Christ is the same, yesterday, today, and forever.”

What is it that really matters?   ‘All I want is to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and to share his sufferings by reproducing the pattern of his death.’ writes St. Paul.

Note that the power is in the resurrection of Christ. During Holy Week we will be focusing on Jesus’ passion and death, and that is a necessary part of our journey to Easter. But even in the heart of Lent, we must not lose sight of the fact that we are Easter people. It has been said, truly, that you cannot have Easter without Good Friday. But Good Friday wouldn’t be as good if it weren’t for Easter. If Jesus had simply suffered and died, and that was the end of the story, why would we want to share in his suffering? In fact, if we were putting our trust in a Christ who was not raised from the dead, we would be, as Paul tells us in another passage, “of all people most to be pitied.”

How are we to share in his sufferings?  Perhaps during Lent, we have practiced some kind of fasting in the kinds or quantities of food we eat, or in our enjoyment of some other pleasures. Or perhaps we have chosen instead to take on some spiritual discipline for this holy season. This is a very small way to share in Christ’s suffering, to become like him in his death. Perhaps we need simply to die a little to ourselves to focus on others and not just on our own concerns and the concerns of those near and dear to us. Jesus said that whatever we do to the least of his brothers and sisters we do to, or for, him.  It’s not too late to make that a part of our Lenten practice. In fact, we can and should do it anytime, no matter what the season.

Finally, St Paul tells us,  “All I can say is that I forget the past and I strain ahead for what is still to come; I am racing for the finish, for the prize to which God calls us upwards to receive in Christ Jesus.”

What lies behind is done. Maybe we have done some really good things in our life. Maybe we, have done some really good things this Lent. If so, that is fine and appropriate,  or maybe we haven’t done such a good job this Lent. Maybe we had good intentions but didn’t follow through with them. Maybe, in fact, we fell flat on our faces. Maybe there are sins in our past lives that are dragging us down. Well, nevertheless, there is Good News: we can put all that behind us, too. With the woman in the gospel, we’re invited to take a first step towards forgiveness, towards a renewed relationship with each other and with God.

So, whatever we’ve done or failed to do this Lent, whatever we’ve done or failed to do our whole lives long, there is just one thing we need to do now: forget what lies behind and strain forward to what lies ahead.  We’re invited to experience the joy of reconciliation in Lent; to experience a change of heart, so we might see a new deed come to light, a vision of new life, which the prophet Isaiah speaks of in the first reading. And this new life doesn’t simply depend on our own effort, which St Paul powerfully affirms in the second reading, but is God’s gift to us, in Jesus: we have only to receive him into our lives.