Saturday of the Fifth Week in Lent 2023
Let’s start off our reflection with a few facts that need to be remembered if we are to understand why the Church gives us these rich Scripture passages to consider today: First, the prophecy of Ezekiel the priest was given to the Babylonian exiles about six centuries before the birth of Jesus. The twelve tribes of Israel had been ripped from the Holy Land over several decades, first from the north and then from the south, the area of Judah. So Jerusalem was a distant memory for a few, and a kind of never-never land for those younger than sixty. Ezekiel’s prophecy for a grand reunion would have sounded impossible.
Second, King David was dead for maybe a thousand years. So the one king who would unite north and south as a single nation was not that person from history, but a special descendant of David, who would rule, not for a decade or two, but forever. For all time into eternity. And he would lead the people in total justice and peace. That means their prior adultery and fornication and theft and murder would be gone, totally gone. Again, it sounds impossible for anybody who has observed humans for any length of time. But with God dwelling in their midst, what a beautiful dream it was!
Third, the prophet Jeremiah, who ministered a little earlier in time, was essentially predicting the same glorious age. His words focus on the restoration of the paradise possible in the Holy Land, with abundant grain, wine and olive oil, with healthy and numerous cattle and sheep, and joyful young people and old. But Jeremiah himself had been dragged off to Egypt, where he died. So another impossible dream.
Lastly, when Jesus, who looked a lot like a Messiah because of His words and miracles, actually came to Jerusalem, the gang of corrupt officials who ran the city in collusion with the Roman procurator rejected Him. Here was the man who showed by His mighty works that He could perhaps make the prophecies of Ezekiel and Jeremiah and all the other prophets happen. He had shown His power. He had forgiven sins–the real cause of their problems and ours. Just a couple of days earlier, He had raised a dead man, Lazarus, who was so dead that he had begun to stink. Yet the big men in town, who had grown fat on power and wealth accumulated by various kinds of theft, met to discuss this Jesus, they saw the signs He had performed as being threats, not fulfillments. They not only saw Jesus as just another magical madman from the sticks, but if they had been paying attention they should have also known He was claiming equality with God. He criticized all of the leading sects–Pharisees and Sadducees and collaborators alike–so that they feared a popular uprising and violent removal of their power and wealth. So when the big boss, Caiphas, the high priest, seized the floor, he didn’t hesitate to call the rest of them idiots, and then performed what he thought was a wicked calculus: “it is expedient for you that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation should not perish.” And St. John interprets it correctly as a prophecy. Jesus would indeed die, not just for the Jews, but for every human being before the first century, in that century, and forever afterward until the world’s end. That means for you and for me, so that, forgiven of our sins, we could enter into the kind of relationship with God that Ezekiel and Jeremiah and all the other prophets described. All we need to do is believe in our Lord and Savior and, empowered by the sacraments, live and die in love. We will then be part of that grand reunion in heaven.
