Fifth Sunday of Lent, 3/21

What a fascinating set of readings we have today. In the first reading we enter into the high point of the book of the Prophet Jeremiah where the term “New Covenant” is mentioned for the first and only time in all of the Old Testament. And what will be the place/realm of this new covenant? The heart! The problem in the time of the prophets was a problem of the human heart. One could argue that it has been the perennial problem with humanity from the very beginning. And instead of rejecting us God promises us (through Jeremiah) that he will make a new covenant with us in which he will give us a new heart.

Then in the Psalm we look into our own hearts and plead with the psalmist that God might cleanse our hearts that continue to suffer sin and its effect upon us. There is a recognition that even when we know what is right we do not choose it. Like Jeremiah, the psalmist recognizes that we are helpless. We cannot fix our own hearts.

And finally in this extraordinarily mysterious Gospel Jesus tells his Apostles, “The hour has come for the Son of man to be glorified.” I’m sure this raised the excitement of the Apostles. Their friend, their mentor, their messiah, who has been so misunderstood will finally be vindicated! But their excitement was curved when in the same breath Jesus says, “unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat; but if it dies, it produces much fruit”?

This is the irony Christianity. This is the fulfillment of the prophets. This is the answer to the problem of the heart. Jesus, the Son of God, who admits that his own heart is troubled must have given thought to the option of turning away from God in the way that Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, Solomon and Israel all did in their moment of temptation. Jesus asks himself, “What should I say? Father, save me from this hour?” But no, Jesus was different. Jesus wasn’t going to choose selfishness over love. “It was for this purpose that I came... Father, glorify your name.” This is the new heart of the covenant to which we must unite our own:The humble, docile, obedient heart—the Sacred Heart of Jesus Christ.

Michael Gokie, SCV