Fifth Sunday of Lent
By Sister Marianne
Jeremiah 31:31-34
Psalm 51:3-4, 12-13, 14-15
John 12:20-33
Greek seekers desire to “see Jesus” (John 12:21), probably hoping to understand Christ’s mystery through his external image. Jesus does not entertain this request. His following pronouncements about his “hour” and glorification belong not to the area of the eyes, but that of the ear, the organ of silence, darkness and inner discernment. The parable of the grain of wheat belongs to this same realm: the grain has to die slowly in the darkness of the soil to produce much fruit.
What soil is meant here? Not just physical soil, but the soil of our hearts that needs to accept the grain, give it space and time to die and to germinate at its own pace.
John’s words of ‘loving’ and ‘hating’ our life kept coming back to me as a question: am I not to ‘love’ my Benedictine life? And how, or what, am I to hate in it so as “to preserve it for eternal life” (John 12:25)? The Greek word for life psyche is helpful: it designates one’s ‘own, inner’, self-directed life. The Greek verb for ‘to hate’ can also mean ‘to become indifferent.’ Thinking about my own life I remember how in my early Tribunal work I also desired to write articles about how to apply marriage law to satisfy my academic ambitions. But in time I became ‘indifferent’ to this self-directed project because I discerned that doing the slow, often hard work on my cases contributed more to the people’s lives than articles written for canonists. In other words: in loving my own project I could ‘lose’ my “life”, the very gift God had given me by sending me to become a canonist. Accepting daily the painstaking and, at the beginning, often unsuccessful, work on my cases became my entire graced ministry as I realized that this modest work would contribute directly to the actual faith life of my Petitioners.
And what does Jesus mean by “being troubled now”? He has become ‘indifferent’ to what was certainly his cherished hope of a successful mission among the Jews and is facing a painful death with sorrow and trust that God, his loving Father, will somehow glorify him. Like Jesus, we have to let go of our preferred view of a community with steady growth; we may ‘hate’ or try to deny our diminishment, but we are called to trust that God’s seeds – planted over 147 years – will bring fruit in the dark space of patient discernment and take the message of our Benedictine life into a yet unknown future.
Jeremiah also focuses on the inner realm. The prophet boldly announces that God will “place [his] law within” us and “write it on our hearts.” (Jer 31:33). Aren’t heart and law opposites? Yet law here means God’s teaching together with his “age-old love” and fidelity (Jer 31:3), laws that have room for mercy and healing even in the face betrayal. Do we have this law written on our hearts so that in dark and challenging periods, we discern God’s unwavering love? And can I in my troubled times let compunction pierce my heart so that I can recognize my offenses – a recognition born from “a broken, humbled heart” as Ps 51 says?
With such a heart we can hear God’s voice from heaven: the crowd hears thunder, scrambled noise, while we as faithful disciples, hear a voice that “comes for our sake” (John 12:31) – the voice of truth amid the din of untruths reverberating through cyberspace. This voice confirms us in our humble service and trust that Jesus with the Father and the Holy Spirit will restore time and again “the joy of our salvation” and “sustain us with a willing spirit” (Ps 51:14). With these words from Ps 51 let us walk with Jesus toward whatever future God will reveal to us.