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The Catholic Leader, March 22, 2020
www.catholicleader.com.auYour Daily Bread
NEXT Sunday, the 5th Sunday of Lent, has
the great story of the raising to life of the
dead Lazarus.
Like the earlier two stories, read in the
two previous weeks, The Woman at the
Well and The Man Blind from Birth, this
third story of the Raising to Life of the
Dead Lazarus is found only in the Fourth
Gospel.
This should point our attention away
from what may or may not have hap-
pened historically to the deeper truth of
what the story symbolised, both for its
author and for its first readers.
Both its author and its first intended
readers, living in the 90s towards the
end of the 1st Century, were persons of
Christian faith, people who had begun to
believe in two wonderful things.
They believed in the truth for our hu-
man salvation that Jesus had become the
Risen Christ.
What does it mean to believe that Jesus
has become a power mediating to believe
God’s love throughout the world?
It means to believe with all other Chris-
tians, not rationally prove or observe by
our senses, the mystery of what God has
worked in Jesus after his death.
Inseparable from this, we also believe,
not because we have to or because
we are told by others, but because we
have begun through our openness and
responsiveness to the deeper levels of
life around us and in us, to experience the
same power of God’s love working in the
hearts of believers.
Love for Christians is much than an
emotion, precious as this is.
Love is God’s power, the Holy Spirit, by
which God creates the world.
Love is the power, the Holy Spirit, by
whom God raises Jesus from death.
Love is the power, the Holy Spirit, the
love Jesus already mediates to us, shares
with us, interiorly now in this life, and will
complete in a bodily way in our dying.
These two great truths we believe
as Christians: God has raised Jesus to
become the Risen (Cosmic) Christ; and
this raising power of God’s love is already
interiorly felt in believers, those who risk
believing in the mystery of life, to be open
and responsive to life.
Expressions and confirmation of these
two great truths are offered to us in the
symbolism of the story of the Raising of
Lazarus.
It is not the resurrection of Lazarus, for
that is still a future event for him as it is for
all of us.
This story of the Raising of Lazarus, and
the two previous stories of the Samaritan
Woman and the Blind Man from Birth
are meditations in the Fourth Gospel to
confirm and deepen our faith in the Risen
Jesus and our present experience of its
reality.
It is a great impoverishment to omit
parts of this rich meditation on the mystery
of Christi’s Resurrection and our sharing in
it already begun.
Read this Gospel Story of Lazarus slowly
and prayerfully.
Even do the same with the consoling
promise in the brief First Reading, from the
6th century BC prophet Ezekiel, and with
the sure hope in the brief Second Read-
ing, from Paul’s Letter to the Romans.
If there is a concern for time, shorten the
homily that follows.
The late
Fr John Reilly SJ
wrote this
commentary in 2017.
TOGETHER with St Rose of Lima, Turibius
is the first known saint of the New World,
serving in Peru, South America, for 26 years.
Born in Spain and educated for the law,
he became professor of law at the University
of Salamanca and eventually became chief
judge of the Inquisition at Granada.
He succeeded too well. But he was not
sharp enough a lawyer to prevent a surprising
sequence of events.
When the archdiocese of Lima in Peru
required a new leader, Turibius was chosen to
fill the post.
He was the one person with the strength
of character and holiness of spirit to heal the
scandals that had infected that area.
He cited all the canons that forbade giving
laymen ecclesiastical dignities, but he was
overruled.
Turibius was ordained priest and bishop
and sent to Peru, where he found colonialism
at its worst. The Spanish conquerors were
guilty of every sort of oppression of the na-
tive population.
Abuses among the clergy were flagrant,
and he devoted his energies and suffering to
5th Sunday of Lent – March 29
1st Reading: Ezekiel 37:12-14
2nd Reading: Romans 8:8-11
Gospel: John 11:1-45
4th Sunday of Lent – March 22
1st Reading: 1 Sam. 16:1, 6-7, 10-13
2nd Reading: Romans 5:8-14
Gospel: John 9:1-41
Next Sunday’s readings
BY FR JOHN REILLY
St Turibius of Mogrovejo
SAINTLY LIFE
FEAST DAYS THIS WEEK
Monday -
St Turibius de Mogrovejo
Patron of Peru
Wednesday -
Annunciation of the Lord
First celebrated in the fourth or fifth century
Ministry in
Peru:
St
Turibius of
Mogrovejo
served in
Peru for 26
years.
this area first.
He began the long and arduous visitation of
an immense archdiocese, studying the language,
staying two or three days in each place, often with
neither bed nor food.
Turibius confessed every morning to his chap-
lain, and celebrated Mass with fervour.
Among those to whom he gave the Sacrament
of Confirmation was the future St Rose of Lima,
and possibly the future St Martin de Porres.
After 1590, he had the help of another great
missionary, St Francis Solanus.
Though poor his people were sensitive, dread-
ing to accept public charity from others.
Turibius solved the problem by helping them
anonymously.
God’s intervention in history
This is Pope Benedict XVI’s
address delivered at the
Shrine of the Annunciation in
Nazareth, after the celebration
of Vespers with the bishops,
priests, religious and ecclesial
movements of Galilee on May
14, 2009
IT is profoundly moving for me to
be present with you today in the
very place where the Word of God
was made flesh and came to dwell
among us.
How fitting that we should gather here to sing
the Evening Prayer of the Church, giving praise
and thanks to God for the marvels he has done
for us.
And in this place where Jesus himself grew to
maturity and learned the Hebrew tongue, I greet
the Hebrew-speaking Christians, a reminder to
us of the Jewish roots of our faith.
What happened here in Nazareth, far from the
gaze of the world, was a singular act of God, a
powerful intervention in history, through which a
child was conceived who was to bring salvation
to the whole world.
The wonder of the Incarnation continues to
challenge us to open up our understanding to
the limitless possibilities of God’s transforming
power, of his love for us, his desire to be united
with us.
Here the eternally begotten Son of God
became man, and so made it possible for us,
his brothers and sisters, to share in his divine
sonship.
That downward movement of self-emptying
love made possible the upward movement of
exaltation in which we too are raised to share in
the life of God himself (cf. Philippians 2:6-11).
The Spirit who “came upon Mary” (cf. Luke
1:35) is the same Spirit who hovered over the
waters at the dawn of Creation (cf. Genesis
1:2).
We are reminded that the Incarnation was a
new creative act.
When our Lord Jesus Christ was conceived
in Mary’s virginal womb through the power of
the Holy Spirit, God united himself with our
created humanity, entering into a permanent
new relationship with us and ushering in a new
Creation.
The narrative of the Annunciation illustrates
God’s extraordinary courtesy.
He does not impose himself, he does not
simply pre-determine the part that Mary will
play in his plan for our salvation – he first seeks
her consent.
In the original Creation there was clearly no
question of God seeking the consent of his crea-
tures, but in this new Creation he does so.
Mary stands in the place of all humanity.
She speaks for us all when she responds to the
angel’s invitation.
St Bernard describes how the whole court
of heaven was waiting with eager anticipation
for her word of consent that consummated the
nuptial union between God and humanity.
Mary said, “Let it be done to me according to
your word.”
And the Word of God became flesh.
When we reflect on this joyful mystery, it
gives us hope, the sure hope that God will
continue to reach into our history, to act with
creative power so as to achieve goals which by
human reckoning seem impossible.
It challenges us to open ourselves to the trans-
forming action of the Creator Spirit who makes
us new, makes us one with him, and fills us with
his life.
It invites us, with exquisite courtesy, to
consent to his dwelling within us, to welcome
the Word of God into our hearts, enabling us to
Fiat:
Annunciation (c. 1472-1475), is thought to be Leonardo da Vinci’s earliest complete work.
respond to him in love and to reach out in love
towards one another.
In the State of Israel and the Palestinian
Territories, Christians form a minority of the
population.
Perhaps at times you feel that your voice
counts for little.
Many of your fellow Christians have emi-
grated, in the hope of finding greater security
and better prospects elsewhere.
Your situation calls to mind that of the young
virgin Mary, who led a hidden life in Nazareth,
with little by way of worldly wealth or influ-
ence.
Yet to quote Mary’s words in her great hymn
of praise, the Magnificat, God has looked upon
his servant in her lowliness, he has filled the
hungry with good things.
Draw strength from Mary’s canticle, which
very soon we will be singing in union with the
whole Church throughout the world.
Have the confidence to be faithful to Christ
and to remain here in the land that he sanctified
with his own presence.
Like Mary, you have a part to play in God’s
plan for salvation, by bringing Christ forth into
the world, by bearing witness to him and spread-
ing his message of peace and unity.
For this, it is essential that you should be
united among yourselves, so that the Church in
the Holy Land can be clearly recognised as “a
sign and instrument of communion with God and
of the unity of the entire human race” (Lumen
Gentium, 1).
Your unity in faith, hope and love is a fruit of
the Holy Spirit dwelling within you, enabling
you to be effective instruments of God’s peace,
helping to build genuine reconciliation between
the different peoples who recognise Abraham as
their father in faith.
For, as Mary joyfully proclaimed in her Mag-
nificat, God is ever “mindful of his mercy, the
mercy promised to our forefathers, to Abraham
and his children for ever” (Luke 1:54-55).
Zenit