Saturday March 27

FIFTH WEEK OF LENT

  

Gathering What Is Scattered

 

Introduction

At a time of the purifying trial of the exile, Ezekiel preaches God’s utopian dream: Israel will be gathered into one: one nation, one land, one sanctuary, ruled by one shepherd and servant king under one God in a covenant of peace.

After the resurrection of Lazarus, the cynical high priest and leaders decide to put embarrassing troublemaker Jesus to death for opportunistic reasons of state. But John, and Christians with him, realize that Jesus’ death for the sake of all will ultimately unify us all in his kingdom.

We are today still scattered and divided tribes, within the Church and outside it. Is unity for us utopia or a firm hope? Do we realize it can be attained only by respect, love and sacrifice?

 

Opening Prayer

Lord God, creator and Father of all,
your sons and daughters
are still scattered and divided:
Christians and non-Christians,
various Churches and sects
claiming exclusive rights on your Son,
and each of them full of factions.
Make us dream again the dream
which you alone can make possible:
that we can all be one
if we believe and follow him
who died to unite all that is scattered,
Jesus Christ, our Lord for ever.

 

Reading 1: Ez 37:21-28

Thus says the Lord GOD:
I will take the children of Israel from among the nations
to which they have come,
and gather them from all sides to bring them back to their land.
I will make them one nation upon the land,
in the mountains of Israel,
and there shall be one prince for them all.
Never again shall they be two nations,
and never again shall they be divided into two kingdoms.

No longer shall they defile themselves with their idols,
their abominations, and all their transgressions.
I will deliver them from all their sins of apostasy,
and cleanse them so that they may be my people
and I may be their God.
My servant David shall be prince over them,
and there shall be one shepherd for them all;
they shall live by my statutes and carefully observe my decrees.
They shall live on the land that I gave to my servant Jacob,
the land where their fathers lived;
they shall live on it forever,
they, and their children, and their children’s children,
with my servant David their prince forever.
I will make with them a covenant of peace;
it shall be an everlasting covenant with them,
and I will multiply them, and put my sanctuary among them forever.
My dwelling shall be with them;
I will be their God, and they shall be my people.
Thus the nations shall know that it is I, the LORD,
who make Israel holy,
when my sanctuary shall be set up among them forever.

 

Responsorial Psalm: Jer 31:10, 11-12ABCD, 13

(see 10d) The Lord will guard us, as a shepherd guards his flock.
Hear the word of the LORD, O nations,
proclaim it on distant isles, and say:
He who scattered Israel, now gathers them together,
he guards them as a shepherd his flock.
R. The Lord will guard us, as a shepherd guards his flock.

The LORD shall ransom Jacob,
he shall redeem him from the hand of his conqueror.
Shouting, they shall mount the heights of Zion,
they shall come streaming to the Lord’s blessings:
The grain, the wine, and the oil,
the sheep and the oxen.
R. The Lord will guard us, as a shepherd guards his flock.

Then the virgins shall make merry and dance,
and young men and old as well.
I will turn their mourning into joy,
I will console and gladden them after their sorrows.
R. The Lord will guard us, as a shepherd guards his flock.

 

Verse before the Gospel: Ez 18:31

Cast away from you all the crimes you have committed, says the LORD,
and make for yourselves a new heart and a new spirit.

 

Gospel: Jn 11:45-56

Many of the Jews who had come to Mary
and seen what Jesus had done began to believe in him.
But some of them went to the Pharisees
and told them what Jesus had done.
So the chief priests and the Pharisees
convened the Sanhedrin and said,
“What are we going to do?
This man is performing many signs.
If we leave him alone, all will believe in him,
and the Romans will come
and take away both our land and our nation.”
But one of them, Caiaphas,
who was high priest that year, said to them,
“You know nothing,
nor do you consider that it is better for you
that one man should die instead of the people,
so that the whole nation may not perish.”
He did not say this on his own,
but since he was high priest for that year,
he prophesied that Jesus was going to die for the nation,
and not only for the nation,
but also to gather into one the dispersed children of God.
So from that day on they planned to kill him.

So Jesus no longer walked about in public among the Jews,
but he left for the region near the desert,
to a town called Ephraim,
and there he remained with his disciples.

Now the Passover of the Jews was near,
and many went up from the country to Jerusalem
before Passover to purify themselves.
They looked for Jesus and said to one another
as they were in the temple area, “What do you think?
That he will not come to the feast?”

 

Intercessions

• That our world may become one in seeking peace for all, with access for all nations to the goods of our world and respect and understanding for every people on earth, we pray:
• That the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus may bring together the divided and scattered Churches, we pray:
• That our communities may be find unity in prayer, sharing and mutual service, we pray:

 

Prayer over the Gifts

Lord our God,
you have called us together
at the table of your Son.
Unite us in him,
make us one of heart and mind,
that we may become to a divided world
a sign that unity is possible
when we can meet in Christ Jesus,
your Son and our Lord for ever.

 

Prayer after Communion

Lord, our God and Father,
you want us to become one
under Christ, our shepherd and servant.
May we learn from him
to be servants of love and truth
and to sacrifice our clannish interests
for the sake of the good of all.
Under the guidance of your Son
may we truly be your people
and you our God for ever and ever.

 

Blessing

How far we are still from the ideal of one heart and one mind, be it in our world, our Churches, our communities. May God bring his scattered children together and bless us, the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

 

Commentary

We are now on the threshold of Holy Week and today’s Gospel sets the stage for the coming events. The tension between Jesus and the Jews (Pharisees and high priests) has reached a point of no return. Now an official meeting of the highest level is held and a full-fledged decision is made, and instructions are given for its implementation. It is curious and tragic, paradoxical, that the final reason for the decision to put him to death is the fact that Jesus has brought a man back to life. By raising Lazarus to life Jesus has sealed his own death.
“…it is better for you that one man die for the sake of the people, than that the whole nation be destroyed.”
Caiaphas, the hight priest, did not know the God of Jesus. His “god” was the devil, a murderer from the beginning, the one from whom they inherited their unquestioned attitude to death. He coolly passes the judgement: “it is better that one man dies”.
Caiaphas’s cold-blooded pragmatism has been followed across the centuries by a variety of national leaders: so called national interest so often overriding all other concerns; and even in the modern world the excuse of nationalism is used as justification for immoral procedures, such as suppression of political or religious minorities or pre-emptive military strikes and torture.
In fact, the members of the Sanhedrin were less concerned about national interest than about their own power base. Interestingly, it was the deliberate and general rejection of Jesus’ way of non-violent love as the means to life and freedom, that led the Romans to destroy Jerusalem and the Jewish state, just forty years after the murder of Jesus.
Though the raising of Lazarus from death would soon lead to Jesus’ death and, through it, to the revelation of God’s glory, the timing of Jesus’ hour would be determined by Jesus’ free will and not by political decision-makers.
And chooses the time of the Passover. The Hebrew people had taken their first steps towards freedom at the time of the original Passover. On that eventful night, lambs had been killed and, through their blood sprinkled on their doorsteps, the sword of the destroying angels was averted. Now a new liberation was about to dawn. The people’s real liberation would be brought about, no longer by the blood of lambs, but by the blood of Jesus, who would deliberately walk into violent death as the price of his love for the world.
Tomorrow, Palm Sunday, we enter the Holy Week, the decisive turning point in human history. Let us prepare ourselves to walk with Jesus to witness his Passion.