21 March 2021
Fifth Sunday of Lent
While love may have roots in pleasure, it has the ability to transcend pleasure to stretch towards value. We might initially gravitate towards those who are pleasing to us, whose views with whom we agree, or who fascinate us. Love burrows deeper from an exterior to apprehend another person’s interior. Love eventually begins to touch the shadows, insecurities, naivete, and psychological wounds we would like to hide. We value the other person to enter into their interior messiness of another person.
Our first reading shows that Israel cannot do anything that makes the Lord turn away from a loving gaze. The Israelites struggle to fulfill their side of their covenant partnership. Instead, the Lord declares that their infidelity draws the Lord nearer, nearer to the extent of writing a new covenant upon their hearts. God does not hold their past actions against them, and we can pray to God with the psalmist again for the “joy of your salvation.”
Jesus offers an image of redemptive love in our Gospel passage with the grain of wheat that falls to the ground and dies. What appears to be death and feels that way is only the first part of renewal. Granted, quick categorization of things as ‘death’ or ‘life’ is harmful. A discernment is necessary to understand what pain or harm am I being asked to undertake in loving another. Abuse or unjust systems need to be challenged; it is good that people possess the resources they need to live a truly authentic human life. The dying to self we are meant to undertake is an interior transformation. It is the movement from a self-centered ego, a limited worldview, or a superficial love. It is a love that risks its very itself that is able to enter the messiness of another.
Jesus loves us to enter our lives and our world. In order to love like Christ, we have to receive it first. We have received it in the gift of the sacraments, in our relationships with family and friends, and in the quiet moments of prayer. Lent is an opportunity to remember the ways the Lord has entered our lives, to steep ourselves once again in this fundamental reality. Only then are we able to move out of ourselves towards another like Christ.
Where have I given and received redemptive love during the past year?