5th Sunday of Lent
Dying to live
Do you remember what it was like to learn to share? That grudging allowing of someone else to have or use a toy that you wanted? Do you remember how excruciating it felt? Like it was killing you on the inside?
Sharing is a glaring example, but I bet if we begin to think about it, we can all come up with countless examples of moments where every instinct was screaming at us not to do something as we chose, perhaps reluctantly and under pressure from others, to let someone else go first, or to forgive, or to tidy up the mess that wasn’t ours. None of these things seem to come naturally – we have to be taught. And it seems, in my experience, to be the stuff of “adulting”.
Ironically, while we spend a lot of our childhood dreaming of being grown up and getting to do what we want, we discover as adults that all of the lessons that we have imbibed about selflessness are actually lessons in the logic of love. We then spend the rest of our lives choosing to do things we don’t want to do as conscious acts of love for others.
Jesus consistently takes these lessons to a new level. From the beginning of his public ministry we hear him speak of loving not just friends and family, but strangers and even enemies. Ultimately, he says, the greatest love is seen in willingness to die for another. Then he goes on to demonstrate this “greatest love” by dying for us. And, as St Paul points out, it is one thing to die for someone good or innocent or whom you are very close to, but what makes Jesus’ love for us extraordinary was his choice to die for us before we have proven ourselves to be any of those things. In him we consistently see the compassionate heart of God.
This kind of loving is one that we aren’t actually humanly capable of without help. Just like our parents and teachers had to teach us to share and forgive and speak the truth, so God has taught us how to love. And it looks like the Cross.
Jesus is very clear that following him means taking the road to the cross. This is not because he is glorifying suffering in itself, but because ultimately, to truly love means to die to ourselves. God has done us the honour of inviting us to become like him. God is love. Therefore we too are called to become love. Hence the cross.
Thankfully, we don’t have to do it alone. That’s what the first reading is referring to when God says that he will write his law on our hearts. The Holy Spirit, given to us at our Baptism, is the love of God dwelling within us. As we learn more and more to listen to the Spirit in our hearts, we will find ourselves choosing again and again the way of suffering love.
Perhaps the way to recognise the prompting of the Spirit may be first of all in hindsight. Looking back over a day, we can recall those moments where we got in touch with the child inside, where we can recognise the excruciating inner fight against something we knew that we “probably should” do. Then, with the help of the Spirit, we can “be the adult” to ourselves, listening to our own arguments and pain, but ultimately assessing which choice was the way to love and life, and resolving, with God’s help, to choose it next time.
Reflection questions:
1. Do you recognise in yourself that inner fight against what you think or know you should do?
2. What is the hardest thing that you have had to do for love of another?
3. Do you see the Cross as God’s great act of love for you? Why or why not?
Katherine Stone
This blog was originally written for the Diocese of Wollongong