From the Catholic Liturgy for the 5th Sunday of Lent, March 18, 2018. OT: Jeremiah 31:31-34; Responsorial Psalm 51; Gospel John 12:20-33. Theme: New Life, New Heart.
I’m sure most of you are at least somewhat familiar with
12-step recovery groups. The fundamental principle of these groups is that
those become truly powerless over certain substances or behaviors can find
freedom with a new life and a new heart
by living the 12-steps, which are a spiritual program rooted in God.
But I think what most of us don’t realize is that we
are all addicts who are in need of healing and recovery. We are all powerless
over the effects of original sin in our lives.
Not a one of us can break free of sin and selfishness on our own. Not a
one of us can live an unselfish life consistently
without the power of God breaking into our lives and changing us from the
inside out.
The new life and new heart that we can receive by
facing up to our powerlessness to sin and turning to God for healing and
transformation is what we hear promised us in today’s first reading from
Jeremiah. And the dying to self that this involves in order to arrive at a new
life, is a powerful example of Jesus’ words in today’s Gospel: that we must
die like a grain of wheat planted in the soil, so that we can become something
new and transformed.
Today's responsorial psalm, Psalm 51, was written by
King David of Jerusalem, who is an inspring example of recovery from
destructive behavior. This is the same David whom God chose to defeat Goliath,
and whom God chose to be anointed as king. And yet, he allowed his destructive
selfhsiness to turn him into a liar, an adulterer and a murderer.
One day he caught sight of Bathsheba, the wife of
Uriah, his most trusted soldiers,
bathing and his compulsive lust for her took over, demanding its fulfilment. He
had his way with her and when he found out she was pregnant, David had a talk
with Uriah. He tried to convince him to spend the night with her before leaving
for war, but Uriah was a soldier's soldier and refused to break the rule about
intimacy on the night before a battle. Then
David did something much more horrible than his adultery: he ordered Uriah to the
front line with instructions that no one was to cover his back in war. Uriah
was killed and so David thought he had found a way to cover up his behavior and
save his reputation. Eevryone would just assume that the baby was Uriah's.
Now, this is where we enter the story with this
morning’s psalm. God informs the prophet Nathan of David’s sins and sends him
to the king with a message of repentance
and hope, a promise of healing and transformation. Fortunately, David
responds positively to this intervention and begs God for a new heart, a new
life which we see expressed in the words of the psalm that we have prayed this
mornig. He repents. He does not deny his awful choice, but confesses his sin to
the Lord and acknopwledges that only God can change him, can transform him from
the inside out.
David begs God
to keep walking with him in life and to guide him by the Holy Spirit. Like
those who find freedom from addiction in their recovery and then reach out to other addicts, David proclaims that he will teach
transgressors God’s ways and will help
them to return to Him. And indeed he did
so for the rest fo his life. He was so
transformed and loved by the people that he became a model and example of
everything the promised Messiah should be.
If there is one thing the Scriptures tell us over and
over again is that God does not condemn those who honestly turn to Him. And
that he ius rich in mercy. He washes us
of our guilt and cleanses us no matter what our pasts may have been. He offers
everyone of us a new heart, a new relationship with Him no matter how often we
sin and turn back to Him. We always have the hope and promise that our dying to
sin and selfishness will result in a new and transformed life.
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