5th Sunday of Lent (B)

(Edited) Reflections (from) 5th Sunday of Lent Year B, March 29, 2009

First reading: Jeremiah 31:31-34
Responsorial Psalm: Psalm 51
Second reading: Hebrews 5:7-9
Gospel reading: John 12:20-33

"...If it dies, it produces much fruit."

In the Fifth Sunday of Lent, the gospel presents Jesus speaking about His impending Passion. The passage in John's gospel specifies the Passion as an "hour" - with the Lord Himself mentioning that His hour is coming to pass. That "hour" involves everything in His passion, death and resurrection: beginning with His arrest, to His crucifixion, death on the Cross and resurrection. Aside from the "hour", Jesus also mentions the image of a grain of wheat falling to the earth, and then dies. The Lord uses this analogy to help His hearers understand His dying not as a loss, but one that produces much fruit. It is Christ's will that all who follow Him understand that losses or deaths in its many forms, small or big, if rooted in His life and work, will bear fruit for the greater good.

This Sunday's gospel makes all aware that though Jesus is divine, He was also human. And He expressed it well by saying, "My soul is troubled now, yet what should I say - Father, save Me from this hour?" Jesus knew He was sent by the Father to save the world. And God spoke in a voice from the heavens to make the people also aware of who Jesus is, and what would transpire in that hour that will come to pass. It is an "hour" for the glory of God - a mystery so deep, clothed in the appearance of the Crucifixion, and one which God's wisdom transcends all human reason or philosophy.

It is human to worry, fear or be anxious about the realities of losses and deaths. Some psychologists made a survey, and surprisingly, it was not death that man fears the most but speaking before a crowd of people he does not know. But even with this modern survey, the fear of death has been in the mind of ancient man for it is a reality not known to him. Man fears anything unknown. But Jesus' death helps man understand what it is in the context of faith in a Father who knows all. Since death is a spiritual reality unseen, an analogy is used to understand it in a context of natural faith: like a grain of wheat that falls to the earth and dies, and produces much fruit. Faith in Jesus is keeping to His word in faith - that death leads to resurrection, to new life - in this world, and in the next.