5th Sunday of Lent B - Homily 1

Homily 1 - 2006

I love this second Reading. I’ll tell you why... It talks of Christ being the source of our eternal salvation. Salvation is one of those cliché words: What does it mean? Well, the Reading helps us figure that out. When talking about Christ, it spoke about his being saved: He prayed to the one who had the power to save him (out of death). And then it went on to identify his being saved with his becoming perfect. Perfect – another cliché word. It means: fully made. So Christ became fully made, that is, fully human, fully mature. Salvation means becoming fully, completely human. 

That gives rise to another question: What does it mean to be fully, completely human? Perhaps the answer can be had by answering another question: How do we become fully human? Jesus again is the model. He became fully human, perfect, by learning to obey God: He learnt to obey through suffering.. or, by submitting to God: He submitted so humbly that his prayer (to be saved) was heard.  

Problems again. Obeying and submitting don’t sound very appealing to the modern ear. What does obey mean? adults obeying, mature adults obeying? Our word comes from a Greek word (via Latin!). It means to listen from under, or from up against. It is a picture word. My image is of having my ear up against the heart of the other. It means to attune to the heart of another, not to give in to their power, but to synchronise with the deep desires, the dreams, the hopes, the values, the convictions, the commitment of the other. It means bringing my heart into line with the heart of the other.  

So Jesus was saved, became perfect, became fully human, by learning the heart of God, by probing the depths of the heart of God. But the author also talked of submission. He submitted so humbly that his prayer was heard. He was not talking about Jesus surrendering his sense of personal dignity, allowing himself to be walked over, but to freely choose to love – which simply meant to put the beloved’s true interests before his own surface needs and wants. If he came to learn, it sounds like it happened over time: he learnt to obey.. How did he learn to obey across time? The author said: During his life on earth, Christ offered up prayer and entreaty, aloud and in silent tears,to God who had the power to save him. Basically he learnt to obey, he learnt the heart of God, by prayer, by meditation. 

But how do we know our growing isn’t just theory? How do we bring it from sounding nice, to being real? The author mentioned suffering, death – He learnt to obey through suffering... He prayed to the God who had the power to save him out of death... Suffering and death were in fact the context within which he came to check himself out. They forced him, as it were, to be honest with himself. Did he really see things that way? He didn’t like suffering.  Who does? unless they’re mad. Perhaps there are other ways.... And then there’s ... suffering and suffering... But when the chips were down, he preferred to grow as a man, to become fully human, to actualise his deepest human potential rather than to avoid suffering, even to the point of death.  

We follow the same path to full humanness, to salvation by tuning in to the heart of Christ: He becomes for all who obey him the source of eternal salvation. That is the task of prayer, of meditation – as it was with Christ. But not only meditation: practice, too: we choose the submission inevitably involved in loving: to put others’ true interests before our own surface needs and wants. And the usual context to lead us from theory to reality is suffering; from kidding ourselves to raw honesty, is the readiness to pay the price.