Ezekiel 37.12-14・Ps.130.1+2, 5+6, 7a+8・John 11.3-7, 17, 20-27, 33b-45
by Eeso
Today is Fifth Sunday of Lent. We have in our Mass today the last of the three special prayer intention for Adult Christian Initiation. As we come closer to our Holy Week liturgy, we continue to pray together with the candidates for Baptism, and together find encouragements amidst realities in human life such as sickness, other sufferings, and death. Let us spend at this point of our Lenten reflection a little more time reflecting on the Passion & Death of Jesus, and understand the Resurrection of Jesus as a sign of hope to seemingly hopeless cases/events happening in our small communities, respective homes, and in our world today. We have in our Gospel today the raising of Lazarus from the death. With this, Jesus is saying, “Im the Resurrection and the Life.”
(1) Our reading from the book of the prophet Ezekiel talks about the intention/reason of God on raising His People from the grave. It is a story about a valley full of dead bones brought to life, that is, a parable about Israel, dead in sin and idolatry, being brought back to life in God – a life that recognizes the power of God. God`s intention is for them to know from the heart that He is their Lord.
(2) Lazarus represents all those being brought back to life, life in God. He of course represents all those who are brought into new life by baptism. We may reflect on these two points:
(a) Baptism is entry into a new life, that says, in my old life there was no recognition about Jesus as my Savior, and in my new life, the Spirit of Christ is fully recognized.
(b) Called to daily conversion, I repent, and so I am brought back to life.
(c) In my quiet time I ask myself, as Jesus`s disciple, how am I able to let new life in Christ in many ways grow so that the unending mercy and love of God be better known to others and many other places
(3) Our vocation/calling: Let us put our interests daily to spiritual things, and to things that last. Since we are all raised from old to new life, our concern is not too much on material and branded things, and many other things that may lead us to long estrangement to the giver of Life who is Jesus, not His but our own makings.
We do not intend to have lifeless homes and society. Maybe, our self-centeredness,
and selfishness has long been hurting our neighbors and contributes a lot to human sufferings and death. Let us contribute on raising death to life. We continue to pray that we will all acknowledge a new society that Jesus introduced more than 2000 years ago. Let us all work together rise from the culture of hate and indifference, let us bring back to life our sleeping hearts so we can fully live according to gospel values. While we help out bring back people`s lives, may we better understand Jesus as the Resurrection and the Life
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