This Sunday is called Passion Sunday. Not Palm Sunday – that comes next weekend. The reason we begin already to speak of the Passion this Sunday is because the liturgy features today the moment when our Lord set His face towards Jerusalem and to His great ordeal. As He says in the gospel reading today, the hour had finally arrived.
“And there were certain Gentiles, among those that had come up to worship at the feast, who approached Philip, the man from Bethsaida in Galilee, and made a request of him; ‘Sir,’ they said, ‘we desire to see Jesus.’ Philip came and told Andrew, and together Andrew and Philip went and told Jesus. And Jesus answered them thus, ‘The time has come now for the Son of Man to achieve His glory.'”
Gospel of S. John, 12: 20-23 [link]
What hour is that? If we read through the latter part of the Old Testament, we hear prophets repeatedly speaking, shouting, singing about the Day of the Lord, that awesome Day, when He will bring about His justice and His salvation. The God Who lives beyond time ordered that we human beings live within time. The reason for this is that time permits us to change, to mend our way, to repent and return to Him. By our dispositions at the end of our time will we be judged, and pray God we shall all die a good and holy death, in union with Him, so bringing a good state of soul with us into eternity, into timelessness. But, because we live within time, to bring about our change of heart and our conversion to Him, God entered into time Himself in the being of Christ. And God thus living within time carefully planned the moment when He would accomplish His end, and sacrifice His life for the salvation of mankind.
At the end of thirty years of dedication to this mission, Christ had arranged that He should ascend the mountain to Jerusalem and be sacrificed at the very moment that the Passover lambs were being sacrificed in the Holy City. The sacrifice of those lambs commemorated the original passover lambs of the book of Exodus that enabled the passing of death over the Hebrews in Egypt under Moses. The sacrifice of this Lamb of God would enable the passing of death over all men and women who embraced Him. This is not an easy thing – to sacrifice one’s life even for his friends – and we must always remember that this Son of God was also a Son of Man – a human being. What a terror for Him, especially knowing by His divine foresight the manner of His torture and death.
“Christ, during His earthly life, offered prayer and entreaty to the God who could save Him from death, not without a piercing cry, not without tears; yet with such piety as won Him a hearing. Son of God though He was, He learned obedience in the school of suffering, and now, His full achievement reached, He wins eternal salvation for all those who render obedience to Him.”
Letter to the Hebrews, 5: 7-9 [link]
What does this second reading say? He offered up entreaty and prayer, even with tears, that He may be saved out of death, and He was given authority by God the Father to return to life once more. But note that it says that He had to submit Himself in obedience to the command of God the Father, and perfectly unite His human will to the divine Will that also was His. And it all began as He first turned His face towards the Holy City, the God Who was honoured in the Temple there now looking forward to dying there. And the signal was given, as in the gospel reading, by the arrival of some Greeks to see Christ. Greeks who were obviously not Jewish. Here is another premonition of the coming birth of the Church – a community of both Jews and Gentiles, united together, as the prophets had long predicted. If we want a good idea of what was in the minds of Christ’s hearers as He now solemnly declared His coming death, we could pull out the prophecy of Isaiah and read through the last two chapters of it.
“Hark, a stir of tumult in the city, a stir in the temple! It is the stir the Lord makes, as He brings retribution on his enemies! Without travail, the mother has given birth; before her time a mother of men. Never till now was such a tale heard, such a sight witnessed; should a nation’s pangs come upon it in a day, a whole people be born at once? Such are the pangs of Sion, such is the birth of her children. ‘What,’ says the Lord thy God, ‘shall I, that bring children to the birth, want power to bring them forth? Shall I, that give life to the womb, want strength to open it?’ Lovers of Jerusalem, rejoice with her, be glad for her sake; make holiday with her, you that mourned for her till now. So shall you be her foster-children, suckled plentifully with her consolations, drinking in, to your hearts’ content, the abundant glory that is hers. Thus says the Lord, Peace shall flow through her like a river, the wealth of the nations shall pour into her like a torrent in flood; this shall be the milk you drain, like children carried at the breast, fondled on a mother’s lap. I will console you then, like a mother caressing her son, and all your consolation shall be in Jerusalem; your eyes feasted with it, your hearts content, vigorous as the fresh grass your whole frame. Thus to His servants the Lord makes known His power; His enemies shall have no quarter given them.”
Prophecy of Isaias, 66: 6-14 [link]
New foster-children, then, for mother Jerusalem – or rather, for Mother Church. If her children are the Hebrew people, her foster-children will be Gentiles and Greeks. The hour has come for the birth of the Church. Our first reading today speaks of the new covenant of Christ, to be established when those days arrive, when the Law of God will no longer be merely in books to be read out but written into the hearts of all who love God, through the action of the Holy Spirit. But all this glory – the Christian Pentecost and the union of all mankind, Jew and non-Jew alike – required first the evil of the Passion to fall upon Christ, by Whose devotion to His Father and perseverance through suffering the God Who saw mankind leave Him in the persons of Adam and Eve would now be glorified in mankind returning to Him through the person of Christ. When they have returned to Him, they will no longer need to have the Law taught to them by priests and scribes; they will live according to the mind of God.
“A time is coming, the Lord says, when I mean to ratify a new covenant with the people of Israel and with the people of Juda. It will not be like the covenant which I made with their fathers, on the day when I took them by the hand, to rescue them from Egypt; that they should break My covenant, and I, all the while, their master, the Lord says. No, this is the covenant I will grant the people of Israel, the Lord says, when that time comes. I will implant My law in their innermost thoughts, engrave it in their hearts; I will be their God, and they shall be My people.”
Prophecy of Jeremias, 31: 31-33 [link]
And the Voice descended from on high in the gospel reading, and some of them thought it was thunder on a cloudy day. The Voice declared, I have glorified My Name in My beloved Son, and I shall glorify it again in His Church through all ages. Sentence is thus declared upon a sinful world that rejects Christ, but from this world, when He is raised up upon the cross in great suffering, He will draw forth His Church in glory.
Catholic Louth and Mablethorpe 