Do you wish to see Jesus?

Jesus: Yes you surely can!

5th Sunday in Lent: 18th March, 2018
Jer 31:31-34; Heb 5: 7-9; Jn 12: 20-23

The Word today has an open invitation: Do you really wish to see Jesus? 

Wishing to see Jesus is a fitting exercise during the Lent; Jesus responds to the request and in the meanwhile teaches us an important lesson in knowing God and growing in that knowledge. 

You Can!
It is possible at times that we say that we cannot know God, imagining God to be far away from us and from our human understanding. Jesus breaks that myth about God and brings God close to us, as close as God becoming human and living amidst us. In Jesus, God establishes what Jeremiah exclaims: that everyone will know God. Each and every one of us can know God and know God personally and intimately. Jesus makes the whole journey so easy and instead of challenging us to rise up to his level, he comes down to our status and assures us that we can have a relationship that is so concrete and real, with God.

Yes, You Can!
Jesus promises us another favour: that He will draw us to Himself! I am reminded of an anecdote that I have heard when I was a boy, about that little girl who got lost on a trek into the forest.  It started to grow dark and the little girl was frightened, she hid herself behind a bush and remained there a bit scared. The father began to go in search his little one, worried and anxious. At a point, he reached the bush where the girl was hiding and as he peeped in to check that bush out,  the girl shouted with a great relief: "Daddy! I found you!" At times we think we are in search of God, or that we find God and understand God. The fact is the other way around. God is in search of us constantly. It is God who draws us to Godself. No one can come to me unless drawn by the Father (Jn 6:44) Jesus had declared and he assures us today that he will himself draw us to where he is (Jn 12:32). He wants us to be where he is; Jesus wants us to share his world, his priorities, his mission and his vision of God. 

Yes, You Surely Can!
Jesus wants us to be like him, who learnt obedience from what he suffered. Lent is a time when we dwell on Jesus' suffering, not to emotionally sympathise with the suffering servant, but to understand the meaning of obedience in life, to prepare ourselves to be like Jesus, always open to the will of God and ready to surrender ourselves into God's hands. The more we surrender into the hands of God, the more serene we can become even at the face of all the trials that our life holds out to us! The less we surrender, the more anxious we become! This is why, the Lord suggests to us that we learn of him who is meek and humble of heart and thus find rest to our souls (cf. Mt 11:29). 

Let the rest of the season of lent be an exercise of this spiritual discipline to surrender ourselves into the all powerful hand of God and find rest to our worried, anxious and restless souls. And the right point to start is where we find those gentlemen from Greece, enquiring: 'Sir, we would like to see Jesus'!

FRANCIS' FIVE - #4

FIVE YEARS OF POPE FRANCIS 

March 13, 2013 - the day Pope Francis took on the divine mandate of leading the People of God. It has been five years and there are FIVE strong orientations that this wonderful person of God has given the Church and the world. 

4. FAMILY - where Christian faith is lived 

Family was one of the first themes that Pope Francis chose to animate the Church on. As he took over from Pope Benedict, the Church had just completed the Synod on Faith and the Year of Faith. Lumen Fidei and Evangelii Gaudium were presented for our reflection. As soon as that was done, the Pontiff called for not just one, but two synods - one Extraordinary and the other Ordinary - both on the theme of the Family. He made a very clear and loud statement already then that Family is the central element of the Church and it is in the families that Christian faith is lived, shared, passed on and strengthened for the entire Church. 

Amoris Laetitia, the Joy of Love, as a Post Synodal Exhortation might have created unprecedented ripples in the Church among the theologians and the thinkers, but the message that the Pope underlines there is very simple and straightforward: Christian Families have to become schools of faith and love, from where the joy of the Gospel can emanate without ceasing. The synods, the World assembly of Families and the entire Catechesis that he undertook for families, married couples and couples who are in preparation for marriage, is a clear sign of the importance he attaches to families in living the Christian faith today. 

One image that I just cannot forget of Pope Francis is when he met couples after an audience, he met an expectant young mother, and he did not only bless the couple but blessed the child in the womb drawing a sign of the Cross on her stomach... Oh what an awesome person he is, just awe-inspiring! Some just reduce him to a mere pro-lifer... no he is not just that. It is a clear statement of what a Family is called to - to bring forth into the world the miracles that God has in store! Pope Francis' insistence on the need for the Family to become the place where faith is lived and shared, the children are educated in it and where the elders are edified by the children's practice of it. 

Family is a God given gift to humanity to experience God's love in a inimitably concrete manner, in flesh and blood, in words and acts, in body and mind! May we give heed to the call from the Lord to grow in our families and grow our families, into true people of God.