OMELIE / Omelie EN

17 mar 2024

17/03/2024 - 5th Sunday of Lent - B

17/03/2024 - 5^th Sunday of Lent - B

Reading 1 JER 31,31-34 Psalm 50 Reading 2 HEB 5,7-9 Gospel JN 12,20-33

We are now close to Easter, so to the time in which we will relive, joining the risen Jesus, the grace of our Baptism. The Word of God is making us aware of the seriousness of this. It is really about being inserted in Jesus’s holiness, in His divinity, and this entitles also to be part of His journey towards the cross. In fact, it is in His blood that is sealed the new Covenant with God, the one everlasting and which not even sin and the man’s betrayal can break. Jeremiah describes it as us joining God’s intentions: His law will not be felt as something coming from outside, but it will stay in us, because we will receive His Holy Spirit. And our closeness to Him will produce the forgiveness of our sins.

Our sins are the reason for Jesus’s prayer and suffering. He has died for our sins: this means first of all that they have required His death, but also that He has accepted to die to free us from the deadly effect they have on us. Thanks to His death He is the “the source of eternal salvation” for those who obey Him, so those who share His love for God and men.

In today’s mentality which is spread and works in the world sin is ignored. The consequence of this is not appreciating the value of Jesus’s life and death, and He is seen only as a wise and good man, who can give some advice and good example, but not much more.

By listening to today’s Word we are helped to look very seriously at our life, which needs salvation. If Jesus had not died and risen, we would have been on our own, with only our strengths, which have very limited power against the enemy of our life. Jesus, facing death, which is the weapon of our enemy, has won over it, because He has filled the space and time of death with His life, His light, His love.

Jesus’s death has become His glory, the time for showing everyone that in Him the greatness and the power of God’s love were at work. Raised on the cross, Jesus has attracted men’s eyes, everyone’s, Jews and Pagans: that is the very fundamental moment of their salvation. This is why Jesus attached a prophetic importance to the fact that some Greeks, so Pagans, are trying to meet Him, to see Him. This search is the sign that it is time for Him to climb on His throne, on the cross, to give back to the Father His life lived in this world.

He so fulfills the greatest gesture of love: the place where He makes this offering is also the place of His glory, the throne of His royalty. Jesus is completely aware of this, so this is why, on one hand He feels in His soul the anxiety so much that He is tempted to ask the Father to be able to avoid that time, on the other hand He knows this is the path He needs to follow to fulfill the mission He was sent to accomplish, to win against “the prince of this world”. So, He firmly asks the Father to be able to glorify His name through the offer of His life.

The Father, letting a voice from the heavens to be heard, confirms that Jesus’s offer has been accepted. His disciples can take part in this act of love, the ones who want to follow and serve Him.

By living our Baptism we join Jesus, to offer ourselves, and we will be united to Him also to enjoy the eternal reward of the Father, the life and the joy without end.