Society of African Missions, 5th Sunday of Lent 2021 – Year B

[Jesus said] “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. 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.      John 12:23-24.

Click here to read today’s Sunday Mass Readings.

Click on words highlighted in red for further information.

[Today, the traditional date for St. Patrick’s Day, is superseded by the Fifth Sunday of Lent;  however, Éirinn go Brách for the day when everyone is Irish!]

A strange gospel today. A group of “Greeks”, which, in this context, might mean Jews (or Jewish sympathizers) who are probably not from the Holy Land, ask to see Jesus, and are not heard of again! One wonders if their request was even honored. But Jesus’ response constitutes the essence of today’s gospel. First the sitz im leben, as the theologians say – what is the context of the passage? These are the clues. These people are Greeks, possibly non-Jews, that is to say, Gentiles. They may have come from the Decapolis, a Greek term describing ten towns or cities in and around the Holy Land principally populated by Greek-speaking people (and remember, Greek was the international language of the Roman Empire at that time; it became Latin years later; it is the reason the New Testament is written entirely in the Greek of that time).

The Greeks approached Philip and Andrew, significant because they have Greek, non-Jewish names. It probably meant all of these people spoke Greek as their first tongue, and might have looked on Hebrew as, perhaps, a tricky foreign language. But what all that meant was that Jesus’ fame had been spreading beyond the traditional Holy Land of the Jews. That is possibly the explanation of Jesus’ outburst: The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified! The more his fame spread, the greater the hostility of the Jewish leaders towards him. Put that together with his greatest of all miracles, the raising of Lazarus at about the same time, plus the fact that all this was near the feast of Passover, things seem to be drawing to a climax. This might also explain Jesus saying, “I am troubled now. Yet what should I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? But it was for this purpose that I came to this hour. Father, glorify your name.” He knew that the greatest test of his faith in God and himself was near.

Look at the first reading today. It is as if it had been written by Jeremiah with Jesus in mind! “All, from least to greatest, shall know me” he says of God. That can also be applied to the Lord. Then there’s the second reading, which says of Jesus, “he learned obedience from what he suffered; and when he was made perfect.” This states clearly that he stood by the identity he was given at his baptism, and at the transfiguration, that he was the Son of God, and he stood true to his vocation, as the Anointed, the Christ, the Messiah of God after the Holy Spirit had descended on him also at his baptism. The refusal to deny either of those claims led directly to his condemnation for blasphemy and his crucifixion. His agonized realization of all this is seen in today’s gospel passage, and who among us would not have reacted in any other way? The mystery is, of course, why on earth did those Jewish leaders not see clearly the fulfillment of all the messianic prophecies in this one man? It has to have been their own conviction, based on careful pruning of the Scriptures to suit their own understanding, that the Messiah had to be a military figure conquering the Romans and re-establishing the kingdom of David. And Jesus was clearly not that man!

And what of us today? Do we cry out in agonized tone that being Christ to the world has led to our rejection and downfall? Or, possibly more likely, do we cry out that we have not lived up to the same vocation and identity given us at baptism to be and act as Christ to the world? Well that is what Lent is all about, to see into ourselves, and if necessary, resolve to change things so that we can truly stand next to the Lord, who is the embodiment of forgiveness, in faith and hope, and actually be Christ to the world. And for each of us, that might mean a very great challenge, to stand up and be counted as a true Christian, alongside Jesus himself. May the Lord give us the courage and conviction so to do.

Mosaic in the Church of Santa Prudenziana, Christ Teacher and Lawgiver 3rd-4th century, Rome, Italy.

PLEASE FORWARD THIS REFLECTION TO THOSE YOU THINK WOULD APPRECIATE IT.

THANK YOU.

Reflections on next Sunday’s Mass Readings will be posted on Wednesday.

Please send your reactions to: RogerJohn@aol.com

© SundayMassReadings.com