The Season of Lent is approaching its close and we are on the last of the trifecta of lengthy Gospel Readings from St. John in the Liturgical “Year A”. Next Sunday is Palm Sunday which will usher us into Holy Week, and as we draw closer to Easter, we find the Readings revolving around the theme of Death, Resurrection and Life.

The First Reading, taken from the Prophet Ezekiel, is God’s own interpretation of the “Dry Bones” vision; shown to the Prophet where Ezekiel was instructed to prophesy life to the vast army of dry bones which received restoration of flesh and came to life as soon as the Prophet did as he was instructed. Here (in the First Reading), God reveals to the Prophet the meaning of the preceding vision. God was going to terminate Israel’s hopelessness in exile and effect a restoration that would see Israel returned to her ancestral habitat. Israel’s exile is interpreted as some kind of death, so real that all that is left of her is a mass of disjointed skeletons. Through the power of God’s Word, God’s Spirit will resuscitate and restore Israel to her pre-exilic state where she enjoyed liberty on her own land. Through this, Israel shall know that God is the Lord.

Beginning last weekend, using the Gospel of St. John and forming a trifecta of liturgical weekends, the Church introduced us to the mysteries of the Sacraments. This is to increase the understanding of the Catechumens about the mysteries they are about to receive, and to the Baptized, a renewal and recommitment to the fruits of the Sacraments. The Readings last weekend exposed the mysteries of sanctifying Grace which Christ bestows on all believers through the Sacraments in order to graciously grant them eternal life. This weekend, the Readings are themed around anointing and light.

Water is among the most essential needs of a human being, the absence of which is very likely to ignite an irrepressible thirst that can only be satisfied by it or a similarly drinkable liquid. On their way to the Promised Land, the people of Israel had to journey through deserts that lacked sources of drinking water. The people grumbled against Moses who turned to God for a solution to the problem. The Lord instructed Moses to strike a rock with his staff and the people drank the water that flowed from it. The physical thirst of the Israelites in the desert was a sign pointing to a greater thirst, our thirst for God Himself which cannot be satisfied with physical water. In Psalm 42:1-2, the Psalmist puts it succinctly, “like the deer that yearns for running streams, so my soul is longing for you my God.” Like Israel, we often mask our real longing for God with the deal for pleasure and material things.

The Season of Lent is always an important annual segment of our journey of faith. For this reason, we are invited by the Church, through the Readings, to reflect on the beginning of the journey of faith embarked on by Abraham our Father in Faith, and the defining moment of the Transfiguration, Jesus’ theophany after which Scripture reports “He set His face towards Jerusalem” (LK 9:51). Both journeys provide a living standard by which we, as Christians, can measure our own journey of faith.

With the reception of ashes on our foreheads, signifying repentance, renewal and a commitment to a more robust followership of Christ, we begin the Holy Season of Lent. Through fasting, prayer and almsgiving, we shall ascend to the Holy Mountain of Easter when we shall celebrate the triumph of our Lord Jesus Christ over sin and death and renew our hope in the resurrection of the body. Lent shall run from Ash Wednesday until the evening mass of the Lord’s Supper on Holy Thursday, which then begins the Sacred Paschal Triduum.

The First Reading on this First Sunday of Lent recalls when and how our first ancestors were tempted to disobey God and how evil, as a direct consequence of their disobedience, entered the world which was good when God created it. The serpent, who represents Satan the Tempter, approached Eve and managed to convince her to eat of the Tree of Knowledge against Divine prohibition.

The Gospel passage this weekend is a completion of the subunit in the “Sermon on the Mount” corpus where Jesus engaged His disciples in a discourse on the Law. This subunit can be found in Matthew 5:17-48 and deals with Jesus’ teaching of the irreplaceability of the Law of God which can be truly observed from the pure motive of love. In the first part of this subunit, Jesus makes use of four of the Commandments to deepen our understanding of the Law by insisting on, not only external observance of the Torah, but also on true internal conversion that admits only love as the genuine motive of the Law. Jesus completes the discourse on the Law, through critical examination and elucidation of two more articles of the Law, how the virtue of His would-be disciples must exceed that of the Scribes and Pharisees, transcending external observances and mere religiosity to embrace true Christian Spirituality which aims at Holiness in radical imitation of God’s holiness.

After listening to Jesus’ teaching on the Beatitudes and hearing Him use the strong and very consequential metaphors of salt and light to describe his would-be disciples, the audience of the “Sermon on the Mount’’ must have come to the realization that they were dealing with a special kind of teacher with undoubtedly revolutionary ideas about religion. They may have imagined that given the positive rendition of the Beatitudes, in contrast to the prohibitive nature of the decalogue, and given the manner he positioned His disciples as agents of a new world order, Jesus was probably going to abrogate the letters of the law and replace same with new and more revolutionary precepts that would be a more formidable vehicle for His very radical ideas.

The Gospel passage this weekend is taken from the “Sermon on the Mount” corpus, and immediately follows Jesus’ proclamation of the Beatitudes, the ordinary and necessary precepts for a true Christian life. St. Matthew recounts that Jesus ascended the mountain from where He taught the people who gathered around it in order to listen to Him.

Many of us have encountered politicians who try to convince us to vote them into public office by explaining to us what is wrong with the system, what they believe, and how they intend to make our lives better. Some of us have also identified with certain political parties or ideologies because of the manifestos that define and moderate their political worldview. We may also have been lured into relationships with businesses and corporations who got us through compelling advertisements of their mission statements that assured us of their position as our best option.

From the year 2019, and following Pope Francis’ directives, the third Sunday of Ordinary Time of every year is set aside for the celebration of the Word of God. The purpose of this celebration is to re-emphasize the centrality and absolute importance of the Word of God, not only in the Liturgy of the Church, but also in our individual lives. We are urged to reflect on the joy of the Gospel and invited to lend and commit ourselves to the universal and joyful proclamation of and witnessing to the Gospel values knowing that the ultimate reward for faithfully sharing this joy in our world and time disproportionately outweighs whatever cost we may incur and have to bear in the process.

With the celebration of the Baptism of the Lord on Monday this week, we effectively brought to a close the Holy Season of Christmas. The Baptism of the Lord symbolizes the beginning of the public ministry of Jesus. On Tuesday, we were ushered into the first part of Ordinary Time which will continue until the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday when we shall begin the Season of Lent and celebrate Eastertide thereafter.

This weekend the Church celebrates the Epiphany of the Lord. Epiphany, or Theophany, is the self-revelation or manifestation of God to the world. The first chapter of St. Matthew’s Gospel attempts a chronological demonstration of the authenticity of Jesus’ Messiahship by tracing His genealogy back to King David, and farther to the Patriarchs, thereby establishing not only Davidic descent but also His unbroken ancestral connection to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

In the Liturgy of the Catholic Church, the first day of every year is celebrated as the “Solemnity of Mary, the Holy Mother of God.” On this day, when we thank the Lord for the blessing of a new year and look forward in hope for an abundance of God’s gratuitous gifts, the Holy Church commends all of us to the unfailing maternal intercession of Mary, Mother of Our Divine Lord, and illuminates some of her virtues for us to imitate. With the Virgin Mother of God interceding for us, we can rest assured that God’s benevolence will find us.