ARCHDIOCESE OF PHILADELPHIA

Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ...now and forever!

"The Lord has done great things for us; we are filled with joy."

 

On this Fifth Sunday of Lent, I welcome you to the Cathedral Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul.  Today, more than midway through our Lenten journey, we encounter God’s mercy in splendid ways that give us hope. As I welcome and celebrate together with you, our brothers and sisters with disabilities, your families, friends and care providers, I acclaim with the psalmist, "The Lord has done great things for us; we are filled with joy" (Ps 126:3).  Today, we gather to celebrate the treasured expression of God’s vision that lives and breathes in people with disabilities. We celebrate the gifts, the culture and even the crosses carried so magnificently in your lives.  How you enrich the Church with your lives, with your talents, with your witness, your courage and your love! Today we praise God for the wholeness and redemption that He brings to us just as we are, just as He has created us.  We praise God for the dignity and profound equality as children of God that we enjoy in His love.  In speaking to people with disabilities, our Holy Father Pope Benedict XVI spoke these words: “Dear brothers and sisters, the Church needs your contribution, to answer fully and faithfully to the Lord’s will…. Humanity needs your gifts, which are prophecies of the Kingdom of God” (March 19, 2007).

              The readings today offer us a wonderful vision of hope.   The First Reading from Isaiah recounts God’s mighty actions in restoring Israel as a nation after years of captivity in Babylon.  The people of Israel missed their land and longed to be home as God’s family. Isaiah reminds us that we should remember not the events of the past but, instead, behold the beautiful image of God doing something entirely new.   Something new is soon to take place. The people of Israel, and you and I, are invited to look ahead to where the desert will bloom, rivers will flow and there will be new life for the people God has chosen.  Their new creation will be the new memory-point of their identity. All this, God is doing for a people whom He formed for Himself that they might announce His praise.  We are engrafted on to that people.   Our baptism into Christ forms us into a people with an identity that makes us a new creation.  As we claim this dignity, we too are called to announce God’s praise.  We each do this in different ways.  While we may not be able to see, we can still share the vision of God’s merciful love; while we may not be able to hear, we can still heed God’s call to service and discipleship; and while we may not be able to walk, we can still follow the path that leads to an encounter with our Lord Jesus Christ.

In the Second Reading, Saint Paul, in his Letter to the Philippians, reminds us to “forget what lies behind” and to look toward a future full of hope.  This letter reveals to us Saint Paul’s efforts to strain forward as an athlete strives to win the prize.  We can hear in Saint Paul’s words that this is no easy pursuit; it involves effort, suffering and possibly the loss of everything. Yet, what he attains is the supreme good of knowing Christ Jesus, his Lord.  Saint Paul realizes that relying on himself alone would be sheer hopelessness.  May we, like Saint Paul, rely on faith and the power of Christ’s resurrection.  Thus, with the words of Saint Paul echoing in our ears and keeping in our mind’s eye the profound example of our blessed Mother Mary, who experienced the agony of watching Jesus’ passion and death, we too experience suffering and dying to ourselves daily in many ways.

Dear brothers and sisters with disabilities, you  know first hand the physical, emotional and mental suffering of life.  All of us, at one time or another, witness the vulnerability and diminishment of those whom we love.  This is a unique way in which we are conformed to the suffering and death of Jesus. However, as Saint  Paul reminds us, Christ Jesus has taken possession of us and we are able to hold on to the supreme good of sharing in the glory of His resurrection.

Today’s gospel is a story very familiar to us.  We can envision the accusing crowd trying to trap Jesus, the misery of the adulterous woman and Jesus bending down as He writes on the ground with His finger.  Jesus does something new. He shames the honored members of the community and honors the shamed. This story that begins with deathly accusations ends with divine mercy. Whereas the community’s condemnation would have led the adulterous woman to death, Jesus’ mercy offers her new life.  A story that begins with human beings testing the divine, ends with a divine invitation to repentance and new life.  After the crowd went away one by one, Scripture tells us that Jesus “was left alone with the woman before him” (John 8:9).  Can we imagine that being alone, face to face with Jesus.    Saint Augustine uses these words to describe this encounter:  “Only two were left, misery and mercy.”  What an amazing encounter of grace and divine mercy! Jesus does not condemn the woman. He does however condemn her act. He says to her “sin no more,” then he calls her to repent and choose a new way of living. Imagine her life after this encounter.  No longer is she a woman of misery but a woman whose life is opened up to hope.  Lent calls us to the same kind of encounter with Jesus so that we may come face to face with the truth of our personal situation and our need for divine mercy.  Central to this Gospel event and central to our Lenten journey is our encounter with Jesus.  This divine encounter is directed to repentance, to God’s mercy and to the promise of new and abundant life.  

As we gather here today at the Sacred Liturgy of the Eucharist, we intimately encounter Christ.  We come before Him present in the proclamation of the Divine Word and in the Eucharistic Sacrifice.  Jesus is here with us in Word and Sacrament and in the Mystical Body of His Church of which each of us is an honored member.  Jesus is with us every day of our lives, always offering us the magnificent gift of His presence and love.  May we open our hearts to the loving mercy of God, always offered and revealed by Christ in words and actions.   May we be bearers of that mercy to each other so that our lives will give praise to our God.  "The Lord has done great things for us; we are filled with joy." And may we always realize that God intends to complete in us and through us in the world His plan of loving mercy.  As we continue to journey with Jesus this Lent, may we embrace His suffering in order to celebrate with Him the glory of His Easter Resurrection.  Amen.