On this Fourth Sunday of Lent, Laetare Sunday, we hear our next step in the story of Salvation History of God’s Chosen People. The descendants of Abraham (whose fidelity to God we saw tested on the Second Sunday of Lent) received the Law from God (as we heard last week on the Third Sunday of Lent) and then wandered in the wilderness until entering the Promised Land. God was abiding among his people in the tabernacle (or meeting tent) until King David proposed building God a house, a Temple. Instead, God established a covenant with King David making of him a dynastic house. The first Temple would be completed by King David’s son and heir, King Solomon, only to be destroyed by the Babylonians (in 587 BC). On this Fourth Sunday of Lent, we hear how God remains faithful to the covenants he has made with his people as he restores them to their land and has the foreign overlord, King Cyrus of Persia, release the Israelites from their captivity in Babylon and even funds their rebuilding of the Second Temple in Jerusalem. As we ponder this story, I invite you to consider, “What holds me in bondage and how can our trust in God’s fidelity give us hope for a deliverer to lead us out of exile and restore us to the Promised Land?” This would be a good time to revisit (or make) a model of the Temple for your prayer corner or to check out the videos I shared last week under the Gospel about the centrality of the Temple. Last summer I also gained a lot by reading Steven Smith’s The House of the Lord: A Catholic Biblical Theology of God’s Temple Presence in the Old and New Testaments (Franciscan, 2017).
This Sunday is known as Laetare Sunday from the Introit (or Entrance Chant taken from Isaiah 66:10), “Rejoice Jerusalem…” and serves as a respite from our testing during these 40 days of exile. I encourage you to read Isaiah 66 with your family and tease out together the connections the Church wants us to see with the readings we heard last week. Following the Laetare antiphon the Church appoints Psalm 122, “I rejoiced when they said to me, ‘Let us go to the house of the Lord’” to be sung at the beginning of Mass. Slowly reading Psalm 122 in order to meditate on these words (to chew on, savor, or mull them over) is an opportunity to pray using the same words and emotions which Jesus had as he entered into his own holy city. This Mid-Lent Laetare Sunday also makes today a parallel to the Late Advent Gaudete Sunday, a respite amid our penitential preparations. You will see Fr. David donning rose or pink vestments and the paraments on the altar and ambo in the sanctuary may also be rose or pink. You might forgo your Lenten disciplines on this day and rejoice as today offers a foreshadowing of the coming day of the Lord’s Resurrection. In the UK this Sunday has been observed for six or more centuries as Mothering Sunday, an opportunity to visit one’s “mother church,” that is the parish (or other church) where you were baptized. If you are able to do so, please go check it out. I used to enjoy taking those Christians who were seeking admission/reception into the full communion of the Catholic Church to visit and give thanks for the churches of their baptism as a mark of our Christian unity. If you can’t make a pilgrimage to your mother church (the church where you were baptized) or to our Cathedral of St. James (the mother church of our archdiocese), you might make a pilgrimage to pray Sunday Vespers (Evening Prayer) with our parish family at St. Patrick, Tacoma at 6:00PM. See https://www.saintpats.org/parish/lent/ for more information.
Our Gospel for this Fourth Sunday of Lent (B) keeps us in John’s Gospel as we pick up right after Jesus has cleansed the Temple which we heard last Sunday. Nicodemus, a good Pharisee, comes to Jesus who once again predicts his execution, his being “lifted up” like the healing snake in the desert (see Numbers 21:4-9 which we also hear for the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross every September 14). Every time we gaze at a Crucifix or hold one in our hand as we pray the Rosary we are being healed by Christ who took upon himself our sinful nature which he transfigures, giving us the opportunity to experience his healing mercy. Jesus will indeed be lifted up on Calvary, mocked, and pierced as he dies on the Cross. But he will also be lifted up as his resurrected body ascends on high on the fortieth day. This might be a good time to make sure you have a Crucifix placed prominently in each room of your house where you gaze upon the one who heals us of our alienation from God. As we hear from the Gospel of John in these remaining Sundays of Lent, during Holy Week, and Easter Week you might want to set aside some time to read the whole Gospel of John. For years I have used the 2003 Gospel of John film (the one with Henry Ian Cusick as Jesus) since it narrates word for word the Good News Bible translation without additions or omissions.
As I mentioned last week there is some variation in the selection of texts proclaimed at Mass on the Third, Fourth, and Fifth Sundays of Lent in different parishes. For example, I will be at St. James Cathedral for this Fourth Sunday of Lent accompanying an O’Dea sophomore who is in his final days of preparing for Christian initiation at the Easter Vigil. Josiah and all the Elect will listen to the proclamation of Jesus’ healing of the man born blind (John 9) as part of the Church’s celebration of their Scrutiny (which always use the Year A readings). The experience of this examination prepares not only the Elect for Holy Baptism but also provokes each of us to examine our hearts to make a good confession. You might use the Ten Commandments (as we heard last Sunday) to carry out your Examination of Conscience. Then, through the ministry entrusted to the priest, our penance and absolution, those healing prescriptions given us, set us free from the fetters of sin, unbind us from shame, and invite us to enter with wide eyes wide open into the promised land given us, so that our hearts can be a Temple cleansed for the presence of God to dwell in us as we are invited to share in Holy Communion.
This Sunday, unrelated to Laetare Sunday, also sees us changing our clocks with Daylight Saving Time, “springing forward.” While the latter is not an ecclesial event—though it may make you late to Mass if we’re not prepared—it does raise an important point about our relationship with time which is also taken up in the first unit of the most recent online course which I’m facilitating, “The Liturgical Year: What Is It and Why Does It Matter?” https://tinyurl.com/yfwzuff6 developed by Notre Dame liturgical theologian Dr. Tim O’Malley. O’Malley started off our course reflecting on how our modern, post-industrial world seeks to control time, to make time a quantified commodity that can be exchanged for some other good—usually money. Our desire to control, manipulate, and make full use of time as a resource seeks to avoid the reality of transience, decay, and other unpleasant experiences (like the Cross). Our modern age accelerates change and tends to increase anxiety as we’re constantly looking for novelty through what Pope Francis calls “rapidification” (Laudato Si’, 18). The logic of quantitative time requires us to produce more, be novel, and chase endless stimuli all of which spirals us ever faster and faster while leaving us less able to find a stable center. For the Christian, though, “the medicine of leisure” (Joseph Pieper, Happiness and Contemplation) can rescue us from this treadmill. The gift of Sabbath can grant us freedom from busyness. The goal of Christian life is contemplation, to be timelessly in the presence of God. In this regard the quality of our time and accepting each given moment as a unique, unrepeatable, and non-fungible gift to encounter God is a precondition for worship. The seven-day week, with a day set aside for worship of God alone, is in fact the first gift God gives his chosen people and becomes the outward mark of their relationship with God. Long before and long after a Temple served as a place for faithful Jews to worship God, God himself set apart (made holy, sanctified) a time for worship. Lent, as we heard on Ash Wednesday, is indeed “a very acceptable time” to encounter God. God has chosen to enter into space and time, not just in the Holy Land some 2000 years ago, but here and now, in this Mass at this point in your life, to meet you in his mysteries. Will you risk the loss of control and give your time over to God to encounter him anew? Can this irritant of changing our clocks to Daylight Saving Time be a gift to change how we perceive time, an occasion to shift from using time as a quantitative commodity to instead accepting time as a gift by which God draws us into eternity (Romano Guardini, Liturgy and Liturgical Formation)? Can we accept Sunday as that time to truly rest in the presence of God, to delight in him as he delights in us? As this online course continues to unfold I look forward to pulling additional elements to share with you about the history, theology, and devotional practices of the Liturgical Year.
Lastly, you all know that next Sunday is March 17. It is the Fifth Sunday of Lent, the beginning of Passiontide, and, if it were not a Sunday, the memorial of St. Patrick, patron of Ireland and my confirmation saint. While the world around us may have come to associate the celebration of St. Patrick with green rivers, corned beef, stout beer, and rousing music let us not forget that St. Patrick, the Apostle to Ireland, embraced a life of radical asceticism that characterized much of Celtic Christianity and laid down his life to share the good news of Jesus Christ with those who once held him as a slave. I will share more about St. Patrick and other holy men oas I review our sanctoral next week; however, you might want to add to your watching queue The Secret of Kells (2009) for a family movie night and check out this 11’ video about the life of St. Patrick which I share with my students: https://youtu.be/YnJt7SvkL3g Every year my family also watches this playful retelling of St. Patrick from VeggieTales: https://youtu.be/gBhG-7pj43E
Until next week, keep up your holy Lenten disciplines of prayer, fasting, and giving alms especially with the CRS Rice Bowl.
Stat Crux dum volvitur orbis,
iCasad 