Reflection for the Fifth Sunday in Lent Year A 2023

      Everything eventually falls apart. Things break, clothes wear out, and glass shatters. Our lives get broken too. Dreams may not come true, friends drift apart, and marriages fail. Trust is often betrayed, brothers and sisters fight against each other, and we complete against each other every day rather than work together. It seems that all of life is fleeting and that nothing ever seems to last. At times when we experience this type of brokenness in our lives and in our world we might even say,” I might as well be dead.” When our hopes and dreams seems beyond our reach and love seems lost, we have experienced death. We all die in many ways emotionally and spiritually before our actual physical death. If you take a moment now you will be able to identify in our life several times when you have experienced the sense of death that was just described. When was a time in your life when all seemed lost or when all of your hope was gone?
                 As w recall these experiences of death in our life we remember the readings from the scripture that we have just heard. Prophet Ezekiel is tellings the people that God will raise them from their graves. Saint Paul tells us that we will be raised up just as Jesus was raised from the dead. Saint John describes Jesus wept when he heard about his friend Lazarus  and grieved with Mary and Martha. Jesus also makes it clear that no experience of death is final and that his Father guarantees us that life is forever even if we experience it was fleeting.
                Jesus not only guarantees us that we will be raised up after our physical death, he assured us that he can untie us from all those things that bind us now, that keep us from being fully alive. If we hope to be raised up after our physical death we need to allow Jesus to untie us from the betrayals, the broken dreams, the lost of loves, and the hatred and sin now in our lives. Jesus assured us that we can turn   from hatred to compassion, from violence to love, from despair to hope, from evil to good because he did, and has shown us the way.
                 We do not have to wait until the end of our earthly life to experience the resurrection. We can turn over to Jesus today all of those things that keep us from being truly alive with hope and love. We must name those things that  bind us. Let Jesus show us how to trust again, how to dream new dreams, how to love again, how to live with faith, that life is forever, in a world where everything seems to be broken or lost. If we do this now then in our Easter celebration we will truly experience a rebirth of new life along with our catechumens.,
God bless you all
Fr. Dominic
Your brother in Christ