March 22, 2015
Fifth Sunday of Lent
Dear Parishioners,
The gripping drama of the rising of Lazarus points towards Jesus as the Lord of Life and prepares us for the celebration of our sharing in his life at Easter. But today’s Gospel is more than this. It is a call for us to consider if we too are in a tomb, and if so, it asks us to hear the voice of Jesus calling us to strengthen our courage, and to come out of the tomb. It calls us to walk with Jesus.
Each of us encounters death in many disguises both within society and within ourselves. Some people are walking dead. As Benjamin Franklin pointed out: “Some people die at twenty-five and aren’t buried until they are ninety-five.” It is possible to bury ourselves so deeply in our psyche that we are unable to salvage ourselves.
When I was at my parish in Toronto, I visited an elderly woman who was homebound. My visits to her were always very difficult. She would be sitting in her living room with the curtains drawn, the TV blaring. During each visit she would tell me that life wasn’t worth living. She complained bitterly about her family. “I might as well not have any children,” she would tell me. “They don’t come to visit me and only call me once or twice a month, and I think my friends have all died or have forgotten about me.”
Over time, it became apparent that she could not look after herself. So her children arranged for her to move into a stepped-care facility. Worried about how she might handle the move, they asked me to visit her as soon as she got settled. When I went in I inquired at the desk about where to find her. They gave me her room number. “But she won’t be in her room,” they told me. “She’ll probably be down in the lounge.” And sure enough, there she was, her face lit up as she chatted with her new friends. She told me about all the activities that she had signed up for. She had a whole new lease on life.
If we went around the church this morning, I have no doubt that we could find as many stories of transformation as we have people. We would hear stories of how God is working in people’s lives to bring about change, we would hear how God continues to strengthen people’s faith, we would hear how people reach out to bring life to others.
Our call as Christians is to renew our own lives to bring new life into the situations we encounter in our daily lives and at work, and ultimately, to renew the face of the earth. Dorothy Soelle, a Roman Catholic theologian and writer, says that she learned that one of God’s names is ‘All-is-possible.’ She writes: “I know that if I cannot talk to ‘All-is possible,’ if I do not listen to ‘All-is-possible,’ if I do not believe in ‘All-is-possible,’ then I am dead.” My prayer on this Fifth Sunday of Lent is to ask ‘All-is-possible’ to be present in me each day.
As we journey into these last days of Lent let us ask ‘All-is-possible’ to be present to us today, and to bring life, change, and renewal to our lives. Let us allow God to make us the people he created us to be!
Fr. Leonard+