LENT – A TIME OF PREPARATION
FOR EASTER
Via Three-way Spiritual Journey
Fr. Freddie Santhumayor,
SVD
The three Sundays of Lent (in Year A) deal with three spiritual truths from
Jn’s gospel: the third Sunday identifies Jesus as living water who quenches our spiritual thirst for God and his love, the
fourth Sunday identifies him as the Light
of the World who heals our spiritual blindness to our sins and blindness of faith in him, and the fifth
Sunday identifies him as the Life and
the Resurrection who raises us up from our spiritual death which separates us from God. [N.B.: All Scripture references are only from
Jn’s gospel.]
(1) Third Sunday of
Lent: Quenching our spiritual thirst (4:5-42)
3
issues block us from recognizing Jesus:
(1) Prejudices
of the kind, which Samaritans and Jews had against one another (4:9).
(2) Lack of faith
in the giver of living water, symbolized by the Samaritan woman calling Jesus
as an ordinary “sir” in the beginning (4:11).
(3)
Our personal sins and sins of our
communities/congregations which we
try to cover up or justify.
To
become worthy to receive the living water like the woman we have to fulfil three conditions:
We
must (1) know the gift of God; (2)
recognize the one who is speaking;
and (3) ask for that water (4:10).
Jesus
himself (= one who is speaking) in the first place is the gift of God and the source of living water for lost sinners
like us (4:10).
But,
there is another future gift of
living water, which will become a spring
of water gushing up to eternal life (4:13). This spring or river of living
water is the gift of the Holy Spirit (7:37-39).
To
receive both these gifts, we must recognize and believe that the one who is
speaking to us now (= Jesus) is not an ordinary “sir” (4:11), but the revelation of the Father’s love for
sinners like us.
What
is that ‘living water’ which Jesus
wants to offer? It is water that gives life.
From John’s gospel we know that his concept of ‘life’ always refers to divine
or eternal life – a participation in God’s own life through faith in Jesus (which
can be presently experienced to some extent here on earth itself).
Besides
this, living water may also symbolize the gifts of God’s unconditional love, supernatural grace and salvation offered
to all those who ask for it.
As
Jesus challenged the Samaritan woman to look into herself and remove another obstacle to become a recipient of
living water by saying -- “Go, call your husband, and come back” (4:16) – he
challenges us also during this Lent. Lenten Season is the right time to bring our
several ‘husbands’ (= sins and
worldly pleasures by which we temporarily satisfy our inner thirst for happiness) to Jesus’ feet.
Now is
the fitting time to realize that our ‘water-pot’ (= worldly standards) and
material water (possessions and positions) are not everything. We must leave (renounce) our ‘water-pot’ (= selfish
ways/ worldly attachments) and humbly beg the Lord to shower his gifts of mercy
and pardon on us.
What
are we thirsty for? Lenten Season is the most appropriate time to admit how thirsty we are for God’s values – his
love, mercy, forgiveness, salvation and grace to grow in divine life. Material
things can never satisfy our inner (spiritual)
thirst.
Self-discovery
leads to the discovery of God, or revelation of one’s own self and the revelation
of God go hand in hand. Conversion to Christ begins with a sense of sin – a realization that the type of life we are living
is not the one we are supposed to live as persons called to a consecrated life,
then a deepening of faith in him.
(2) Fourth Sunday of
Lent: Healing our spiritual blindness (9:1-41)
Physical
blindness is caused neither by one’s personal sins nor one’s parents', but spiritual blindness is surely caused by
one’s sins.
The
blind man here is presented as a faithful
disciple who obeys what the Master commands by washing his face with water of the pool named ‘Siloam’ (which means
Sent, 9:7). This symbolizes an inner washing – of sins by the water of
baptism by which a disciple becomes ‘one
who is sent’ (= a missionary).
At first,
the blind man knows Jesus only as a man
called Jesus (9:11), then as a
prophet (9:17), later on as a man
from God (9:33), and finally as the heavenly and divine person, Son of Man (9:35). His faith culminates
in an act of worship of Jesus as the Lord (9:38).
He is
a model for us for making a progress
from ignorance of Jesus to confession of faith in him and boldly
bearing witness to him.
His neighbours
continue to remain in ignorance (9:
8-12); his parents fail to confess Jesus publicly out of fear of excommunication (9:23); and the Pharisees obstinately refuse to accept/admit the
truth in spite of seeing it with their eyes (9:24, 40).
Those
who are blind see and those who
think they can see are blind (9:39).
Spiritually
all of us were born blind. At baptism we received the sight or light of faith. Lent
is a time to admit that we repeatedly
become spiritually blind and prepare ourselves to wash our inner selves
once again with the baptismal water at Easter Vigil, and see the Risen Christ in faith and acclaim, “Lord, I do believe” (9:38).
What
is spiritual blindness? Spiritual
Blindness is a common biblical metaphor for the inability of a person to
understand or grasp a spiritual truth
or its true meaning. We can become spiritually blind in many ways such as:
(1) by
judging people merely on their external appearance without knowing their
internal motives; (2) by not admitting our wrongdoings, weaknesses and failures
and justifying our misbehaviour; (3) by always pointing out at others’ faults
and closing our eyes on our own; (4) by ‘killing’ (deeply hurting) people with
our heart-piercing words and abusive language or harsh judgements; (5) by
continuing to nurse lustful attachments towards so-called special “friends”;
(6) by allowing money, power and position to blind us; (7) by our inability to
see the hand of God behind our sorrows and hardships, or to see any good behind
our sufferings; (8) by our inability to see the needs, difficulties and
suffering of others; (9) by refusing to see the disastrous effects of casteism,
groupism and many other ‘isms’; and (10)
by not seeing the root cause crimes, corruption and many other social evils. Is
it not sin or selfishness of human heart, which perpetrates these evils or
masterminds them? Do we see how we directly or indirectly contribute to some of
these and other life-negating forces in the world?
(3) Fifth Sunday of Lent: Rising from our spiritual
death (11:1-45)
Jesus
is the source of life or the life-giver
to those who are spiritually dead. Raising Lazarus from death is a
symbol for loosening the bonds of spiritual or eternal death and giving us the hope of the final resurrection.
Jesus is the life of God in its fullness, or he fully shares the
life of the Father, because of his oneness
or unity with the Father (1:4). That is why he is the Life itself (14:6). And
that divine life he shares with
those who “believe” in him (= those who are
personally attached or committed to him and put their trust in him).
Faith in Jesus creates such a close communion with him that divine life which
is in him flows into believers. And physical death cannot cut off that life.
Since the believer is in close union with Jesus who is the Life, how can this
spark of divine life be extinguished with death?
Jesus brings the gift of divine life to
those who believe in him so that those who receive it shall never die spiritually, even if they die physically
(11:26).
What is spiritual death? St.
Paul
Lent
is the time to put our faith in Jesus’ power over life and death and say:
“Lord, I do believe in your power to raise me up from the tomb of spiritual
death caused by – (1) my selfishness and wrongdoings; (2) my insensitivity to
the needs and feelings of our others; (3) my unconcern to the sufferings of others; and
(4) living a life without any hope.
Lent
is the fitting time to come out of the grave of fears, self-centeredness, negativity, bitterness, unforgiving
attitude and rise to a new life of grace.
This realization will reach its climax on Easter when we renew our baptismal
experience of putting to death
(destroying) sin and living the resurrected
life of holiness and grace.
Jesus liberates us from the mediocrity of
faith and a Christian life without vitality (zeal). Sometimes we live as if we
have not shared in Christ’s resurrection at baptism and act as if we are
already ‘dead’ by our lack of enthusiasm or zest for life.
Just
as Jesus wept at the tomb of Lazarus, he may be weeping at our own ‘tombs’ of lifelessness, lovelessness,
inactivity, unenthusiastic life, broken relationships, alienation from God and community.
Unlike Lazarus, we have been in our ‘tombs’ for more than four days and may not
like to open them for fear of the stench
of what is inside – bitterness, revenge, jealousies, lust, negativity, corruption
and all other evils. Lent is the time to hand over our lives to the power of
Jesus and hear him crying with a loud voice: “Lazarus, (or so-and-so) come out
of your tomb.”
