Being There

The 5^th Sunday of Lent – Cycle B

Jeremiah 31:31-34; Hebrews 5:7-9; John 12:20-33

A couple of weeks ago, after I vested and came into the church for Mass, a little boy about three years old passed by. I bent down, looked at him, and said, “Hi!” He stopped, looked back at me with a big smile, and said, “Hi, Jesus!” I didn’t have the heart to break the bad news to him, but I did say, “Oh, I wish!” That came to mind when I read about the Greeks approaching Philip and saying they would like to see Jesus. I thought, “I would, too! Come to think of it, I’d like to see a lot more of him in myself!”

In today’s gospel, Jesus tells us how to do that. First, he says that whoever serves him will follow him. So, he wants us to go where he goes – to “be there.” Where? He tells us: When I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw everyone to myself. This is the third time in John’s gospel that Jesus has used those words, “lifted up,” and it’s pretty clear what he means; he’s talking about the cross.

At first, you wouldn’t know it because he speaks of glory, but when he talks about wheat falling to the ground and dying, of losing our lives by loving them too much, and saving our lives by leaving things behind, Jesus means a lot more than just our being there as he suffers and dies; he means us being there, too, suffering with him, dying with him.

It’s easy to understand why our first instinct might be to resist that. It’s like the comedian Woody Allen once said, “I’m not afraid to die. I just don’t want to be there when it happens.” We want the rewards that Christ’s resurrection has in store, but we don’t want to go through the suffering it takes to get there. Why should we have to “be there” for all that suffering, anyway?

I think the best answer to that is by way of an example. God could have designed parenthood a whole different way. He could have just delivered to your door a 25 year-old; fully employed, living on their own, college-educated, perfect teeth, well-adjusted, and faithful to the Church. Think of it! No sleepless nights with sick kids, no long hours at little league practices, dance or singing lessons, no braces, no problems at school, no refereeing sibling rivalries, no frustrations, no disappointments, no failures. What could possibly be wrong with that? Well, go back to those years from pregnancy to adulthood; think of all the sacrifices you made to “be there” for them, what raising those kids ended up meaning to you and to them. You and they have hundreds if not thousands of precious, irreplaceable memories locked up in those years; in raising them day after day, year after year, good times and bad, you learned about life, about love, about people, about yourself, and about God. You have poured your life into those kids, and there is no sacrifice too great for that kind of love. Being there for them is just what you do.

How could it be any different for God, who is love? No sacrifice is too great for His children, not even the life of His Only Son. What is the cross? It is the visible sign of the greatest invisible reality: a love worth dying for; a love His children can live for; a love that draws them all to Himself, the source of eternal salvation for them.

This is why we are here: For the sake of that love. At every Mass, we bring all the sacrifices of our lives, every joy, every sorrow; we join them to the bread and wine brought up at the Offertory; we raise them to the Father along with the sacrifice of Christ, that the Father will take them, transubstantiate them, and then feed us with the bread of angels – the glorified body of His Only Son, who wants no more than to dwell within our hearts, that we may know him. Remember in the first reading, the heart is where the prophet told us that God would place His law, and the heart of the law is love.

So, when we wonder how we can see Christ more clearly in ourselves, take a moment to reflect on what it means to “be there” with Christ. He always invites us to follow him, but it’s going to cost us something. We have to leave behind some things we want, take up others we don’t want, and persist despite failure. Thanks to the hope and infinite mercy of the New and eternal Covenant born of the blood of Christ, every day is a chance for a new beginning, an opportunity to start again, to keep going, or to turn around if we’re going the wrong way. The important thing is that, like him who fell three times on his way to Calvary, what matters is not that we fall, but that we get back up and keep going, all for the sake of being there with Christ – the Love that Never Dies.

—