Straining Forward

March 17, 2013

Fifth Sunday of Lent 2013 C

By Rev. Joe McCloskey, SJ

Remember not the events of the past, the things of long ago consider not; see, I am doing something new!  Now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?  In the desert I make a way, in the wasteland, rivers.  Isaiah 43:18-19

Just one thing: forgetting what lies behind but straining forward to what lies ahead,
I continue my pursuit toward the goal, the prize of God’s upward calling, in Christ Jesus.  Philippians 3:14

They said to him, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the very act of committing adultery.  Now in the law, Moses commanded us to stone such women.  So what do you say?”  They said this to test him, so that they could have some charge to bring against him.  Jesus bent down and began to write on the ground with his finger.  But when they continued asking him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let the one among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.”  John 8:4-7

Piety

Piety allows us to see the good that can be found in anyone.    Paul holds everything that is not Christ as nothing.  For him the supreme good is what is found in Jesus as our Lord and Master.  The Woman that was caught in adultery is any one of us that looks deeply at self and sees not just the evil that we would not do, but also the good that we do not do.  The Lord does not condemn us.  We have a Lord that knows everything about us because he in his humanity has been alive to life.   He is like us in everything but sin.  He takes our sin to himself.   Paul looks at his own life when he discovered that it was Christ he was persecuting when he was punishing Christians.  He speaks about his own journey with powerful words.  Piety is our being taken possession of by Christ.   We have no righteousness of our own based on the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ.  We know Christ and the power of his resurrection.  We share his suffering by being conformed to his dying by our prayer, fasting and good works.  Conformed to his death we know we may attain the resurrection from the dead.   Our piety helps us to strive for what lies ahead, the prize of God’s upward calling in Christ Jesus. 

Study

Because we have not attained perfect maturity which would be in living our lives completely in Jesus, we study the life of Christ to discover what more we can do to put on Christ.  God loves us so much that we can never really understand what our creation means.  He created us to have someone to love.  He did not create us for what we would do in his name.  He gives us his perfect love which is the birth of his son into our lives.  The only limit on God’s love in our life is how imperfectly we love his son.    Jesus is the perfection of God’s love for us.  He loved us so much he wanted to be one of us.  We could not respond to such a love without Christ.  Love goes toward union with the beloved.  How conformed we are to Christ measures the perfection of our love for God.  We cannot love the God we do not see if we do not love the neighbor we do see.    Our love of God takes us to union with Christ in all our neighbors.  When we look at Christ we see what is possible to us.  God gives us Christ to be the perfection of our love.  When our search for Christ is over, we will know ourselves in the Christ we are called to be.  Our study of Christ through our prayers and the scriptures teaches us what we need to do.

Action

Action speaks louder than all our protestations of love of God.  How we live like Christ is the perfection of the actions of our lives.  We are his hands and his feet in our world today.  Where our love guides us is the operation of the Spirit in our lives.    We pray that all our actions have their beginning in Christ.  He would live through our love for one another.  Like Paul, we have not already attained perfect maturity.  But we keep on going that we may possess the love of Christ.  By our love of him  we can  be his love for our world.  We are called to heaven by living out our love of one another.   Living with Christ, we rise with him.   There is no greater love than to give our lives for one another.  Love makes our world go round.  Love is God’s work in us.