5th Sunday of Lent (Cycle B)

April 2, 2006

by Reverend Richard D. Wilson, Pastor

“No longer will they have need to teach their friends and relatives how to know the LORD.”

These words in the 1^st reading might give us the erroneous idea that what is going on downstairs and in the rectory right now is unnecessary – that we should just cancel our CCD classes, because God said in the Old Testament that He would be bringing about a new covenant where “All, from least to greatest, shall know [God],” and since we’re living in New Testament times, we might think that everything is all set now.

This is called Presumption – we presume that everything we personally are doing is okay with God, so we don’t need to learn anything more about God, or about religion, or about why the Catholic Church teaches what it does.

In the face of this, we heard in the 2^nd reading that Jesus “learned obedience from what He suffered.” So, if even the Son of God learned something, maybe we need to do so, too.

I am heartened by the folks who have been in the “Renew” Groups this Lent, continuing on in their studies of the Catholic faith. We also have some adults preparing for the Easter sacraments on Monday and Wednesday evenings – and as mentioned earlier, we have 100’s of youngsters learning about God in our CCD classes.

But we need to remember again that line – “He learned obedience from what He suffered.” And look at Christ’s own prediction of how He would teach from the Cross: “When I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw everyone to myself.”

To come to truly know and love God requires acceptance of some painful realities on our part. As He says, “We have to be ready to give up everything, even our very lives, to be able to follow Him to paradise.”

Since I last preached at this Mass, the Catholic Church has had its share of good and bad news. The good news has been the induction of Bishop O’Malley into the College of Cardinals and I am grateful to the Standard-Times for letting me bring you that news each day from Rome. It truly was a wonderful event, between the example of Cardinal Sean’s humble prayerfulness at being selected and his joy at seeing so many people from the different stages of his life, including people from the parish. I was also quite moved by Pope Benedict’s homilies, speaking about the yes’s given to God by Jesus, Mary and Peter.

I think we need to keep events like that in mind when we’re tempted to condemn the Church for its failure to follow our own liberal or conservative mindset. From the past month’s news, I am thinking of the Church’s role in the gay adoption case, which angered one set of folks (with Bishop Sean depicted in the Standard-Times as throwing babies out a window, along with the bath water), while the Church also angered conservative folks by standing up for immigrants, regardless of their legal status. I know that “liberal & conservative” titles do not exactly fit here, since some folks might be with the bishops on both issues, while some others might disagree on both matters.

But in all of this, we need to remember Christ’s words, “I will draw everyone to myself.” With the help of fishermen like St. Andrew in today’s Gospel, He is trying to “reel” everyone in, be they Jew or Greek, native born or foreign born, regardless of to whom they feel attracted. But once He reels us in, Christ wants us to say from the heart the words of the psalm, “Create a clean heart in me, O God.”

This clean heart He wants for us doesn’t come easy, just as cardiac surgery is no walk in the park. This clean heart is not just something for “them,” for “the sinners.” If we think we don’t need to change anything at all in our lives, then we haven’t been listening enough to the Divine teacher.

It’s easy to say that the bishops need to change – the crisis reminded us how human and sinful they could be. But what about all the holy lay people who teach the same truths that the bishops do? They were not discredited by the abuse scandal, and they continue to uphold teachings which are difficult, which are not easy even for themselves, and yet they trust in God.

Online, a Baptist minister from Georgia tried to explain what Jeremiah was saying about people no longer needing instruction in the faith. She said that this would only happen at the end of time, the Eschaton, when Christ will come at the end of the world, when all will finally agree to love God and love their neighbor.