5th Sunday of Lent

In today’s Gospel (John 12:20-33), we encounter Jesus in Jerusalem. He knows that the hour has come for him to be glorified. Jesus knows that he is about to die and he knows how it is to happen, as he refers to being “lifted up.” He says, “I will draw everyone to myself,” a fitting reminder to us that Jesus does not give his life only for the sins of a few, but so that all may be offered forgiveness and redemption. Jesus chooses to become that grain of wheat that falls to the ground and dies that it may produce the fruit of salvation for all who believe. He tells us that if we are to serve him, then we must follow him, taking up our crosses and joining him on Mount Calvary – that one day, we may more fully share in his victory.

In our baptism, we, too, are like a grain of wheat; dying to sin, that we may come alive in Christ Jesus. As the Letter to the Hebrews tells us, on the cross, Jesus became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him. The Lord teaches us about the cost of discipleship. Jesus held nothing back in obtaining salvation for us by defeating our greatest enemies which are sin, Satan, and death. We are called to share in the Lord’s suffering. As Pope St. John Paul II wrote: human suffering only finds meaning when seen as a participation in the suffering of Christ.

On the cross, Jesus fulfills the new covenant announced by Jeremiah in today’s First Reading (Jeremiah 31:31-34). No longer will God’s law be carved in stone, as God had done for Moses on Mount Sinai during the Exodus. Rather, in Christ, God’s law is written on the human heart with the blood of Jesus. “I will be their God, and they shall be my people,” God says through his prophet. Jeremiah is prophesying a new beginning – a fresh start for God’s people. “I will forgive their evildoing and remember their sin no more.” As God is so willing to freely and frequently forgive the wrongs that we have done, so are we commanded to do the same for others.

As our Lenten journey inches closer to the events of Palm Sunday and Holy Week, we turn to Jesus as he approaches “his hour” on the lonesome road to Calvary. As Jesus offered prayers and supplications with loud cries and tears for our salvation, so, too, we join our pains and sufferings with his. We bring him our fears, our faults, our failings, and even our lack of forgiveness, that all might be washed away by the water and blood that flows from his side on the cross.