5th Sunday of Lent Fr. Leo
“I will place my law within them and write it upon their hearts; I will be their God, and they shall be my people.” (Jer 31:33)
This verse from our first reading of Jeremiah defines what it means to have a conscience. It is that inborn sense of what is good and from that what is not. We are taught to develop our conscience. Which means to learn to listen to the voice of truth and love within us. This learning is something we must personally engage in. It is not being blindly obedient to any external voice. If it were, we would not be personally engaged from our hearts. In which case, we have not developed our conscience.
Jesus never blindly followed the rules of Judaism. That’s what got him into trouble with religion. He healed on the Sabbath because that is what love required even if it was contrary to the law. Our guide needs to be the Spirit of Jesus Christ, and it would do us well to pray over and over the line from our psalm response: “Create a clean heart in me, O God.”
St. Paul makes a good point about following Christ. Just as the human Jesus prayed not to suffer, his faithful conscience led him to embrace suffering as God’s way of casting out all evil that brings death in all its forms. Our conscience is our guide here too, and we can learn to accept our share in the cross as redemptive, and do so in love and joy when we do it in love of God and our brothers and sisters.
Our gospel today from St. John, explains the place of suffering in discipleship. Just as Jesus chose to suffer for our redemption, so we too, will have our moments when the Spirit will groan within us and cry out to God for his blessings upon all humanity. When we embrace our trials out of love for others, they become more manageable. Examples are caring for aging parents, raising children, and living the monastic life to share the lonely experience of Gethsemane interceding for all humanity, that God’s love and Spirit may be embraced and experienced by all.
Suffering destroys and is an experience of death, but embracing suffering in Faith, so we die to what is not good, can transform our suffering into redemption, blessing and a source of deep joy amid the pain. Like all disciples, we will each have to choose to follow our conscience, pick up our cross, and strive to live in God’s Spirit of love, or not. Let us pray together that we do choose discipleship.