Conversion – from death to life
THE WORD IN LENT 2026 – SATURDAY FIFTH WEEK
March 28 – Ezekiel 37:21-28; John 11: 45-56
Our Lenten journey of Listening and Fasting, as a time of
Conversion, has practically reached its end… because from tomorrow we begin the
Holy Week with the Passion Sunday. In fact, it is towards this week we have
been preparing ourselves these past five weeks… the immediate objective of
which is to contemplate the passion and death of the Lord. We would begin that
with the solemn celebration of tomorrow…the palm Sunday, which is rightly also
called the Passion Sunday.
What was the purpose of the passion…what did it achieve? Let us
begin with that question: the first reading today answers that without hesitation
– to bring everyone home and make them One People, the people of God. The
discourse of the Shepherd returns, with Christ who offers himself to be that Good
Shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep, that no one of them shall be
lost.
God never forgets the covenant made – I shall be your God and you
shall be my people! And hence, even when we the people distanced ourselves from
God and turned our backs, God’s response was to send God’s only Son, who comes
as the Shepherd who gathers the flock into one. How does he do it – through his
death. That is why that was a life-giving death.
A death that gives new life, new life as people of God, the redeemed
of God, the flock gathered unto God; a death that brings life to the full, a
life in abundance, in spite of the shortcomings and fragilities that we face; a
death that takes us to eternal life, a life in communion with the Lord of life who
is eternal, thus making us eternal too!
We see this prophesied today in the Word – not by Ezekiel whom we listen
to in the first reading, but the high priest who despised Jesus. It is he who
declares that Jesus would be the “one man to die for the people”; that Jesus
was to die to gather together in unity the scattered children of God. It is
this death that has given us life – new life, fullness of life and eternal life…
life-giving death.