2 Chr 36:14-16, 19-23
Ps 137 1-6
Eph 2:4-10
Jn 3:14-21
"Laetare Jerusalem:
et conventum facite omnes
qui diligitis eam."
"Rejoice, O Jerusalem;
and gather round,
all you who love her."
The Fourth Sunday of Lent is traditionally called Laetare Sunday. The name deriving from the first word of the entrance antiphon, Laetare. Rejoice.
We mark Laetare Sunday visually by replacing the somber purple vestments with dusty rose. Note, dusty rose is NOT, it is absolutely not, hot pink. There is a difference. The vestments for Laetare Sunday must not be the same as the color associated with Pepto-Bismol. The vestments visually remind us of a lightening of mood, transient though it may be, now that the penitential time is more than half over. That change of color is an important signifier of what the late Jesuit Father Jim Schall described in one of his many essays. "Laetare Sunday is traditionally called a respite. It makes us begin to feel the nearness of the Passion and the Resurrection, but with a reminder that even amid the Lenten fast and the coming remembrance of the Crucifixion, we are not to forget that Christianity is a religion of joy." He goes to explain that, "Christianity is a religion of joy since it knows this world is not all there is; there is something precious beyond the world." That precious something is apparent in today's readings and particularly in John's Gospel.
The Jewish Study Bible notes that "one of the hallmarks of the Book of Chronicles is its strict notion of divine providence and retribution . . . (through which) virtuous deeds lead to reward, (and) bad deeds bring punishment and suffering." The book's uniqueness is its view of Divine compassion instead of retribution and punishment as the operative principle. It is God's Divine compassion that allows for repentance and forgiveness of sin. That compassion brings an eternal message of hope.
No matter how often the Israelites violated the covenant forgiveness was available. God never forgot the covenant even when his people did so deliberately and repeatedly, even when they chose to worship false pagan gods. We are blessed because out of God's mercy we receive forgiveness for our sins in the sacrament of confession, again and again, as often as we wish to partake of it.
Psalm 137 is fascinating. It reflects the notion of retribution for sin found in Chronicles. It illustrates the importance of holding to God, the importance of recalling and living within the covenant God made with His people.
It is also one of the few instances in the psalter in which a physician can make an accurate diagnosis.
"If I forget you O Jerusalem,
may my right hand wither,
may my tongue cleave
to the roof of my mouth
if I remember you not."
For the sin of forgetting the covenant, the psalmist is calling down upon himself the Ancient Near Eastern version of the old schoolyard oath, "If I am lying may God strike me dead." He is calling down a very specific punishment that many would find worse than being dead.
Should he sin by forgetting what God had done for his people, the psalmist is asking that he be punished by having a stroke on the left side of his brain, the type of stroke that results in paralysis of the right hand and arm; both of which eventually atrophy and wither and manifesting with the garbled speech of expressive aphasia that does, in fact, sound as if the tongue were stuck to the roof of the mouth.
It is important to note that God is not threatening this punishment. The psalmist is calling it down upon himself as punishment if he forgets. Given the Ancient Near East understanding of disease he is saying that it would be better to be dead than to forget God and His covenant with the people.
St. John Paul II of happy memory took words from Paul's Letter to the Ephesian for the title of his second encyclical Dives in Misericordia, Rich in Mercy, an encyclical in which he explored the mystery of redemption. In section seven he wrote: " . . . mercy is an indispensable dimension of love; it is . . . love's second name, and, at the same time, the specific manner in which love is revealed and effected . . ."
We have been saved by grace and mercy. John tells us as much in the gospel when he wrote, "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life."
This truth never loses its power to stun the believer into silence while leaving the non-believer perplexed by the scandal of the cross. It is critical to recall when contemplating these words, that they do not even hint that we will not die. Rather, these words overthrow the power of death itself. We all will die. Ideally that moment will occur at the natural end of our lives rather than through so-called physician prescribed death, a euphemism for putting down the ill or demented elderly. We will all die but death itself has lost its power over us and will never regain it.
"Laetare Jerusalem:
et conventum facite omnes
qui diligitis eam."
__________________________________________
Photos from a monastery
Sun-catcher in the cloister of a monastery
Fr. Jack, SJ, MD
No comments:
Post a Comment