5th Sunday of Lent
Passiontide – the Home Stretch of the Lenten Journey
Our 3rd through 8th graders in the New Albany deanery have a track meet today, which got me thinking. When I was in high school, I ran track. I wasn’t any good, but I was on the team. The longer the race, the more you knew that at the end you would need to give the ‘kick’. On a short 100m sprint, the entire race is the ‘kick’: all you have for all the distance. As one progresses in level of competition and skills and strengths increase, the distance where it is really all out increases. Yet at some distance level, which varies, there is a need to manage one’s energy and pace to be able to compete well throughout, while still having something left for the last push or kick. Whether that’s the last lap of a 2-mile (3200m) or the last 100m of an 800m race, there is this drive to finish even stronger than you’ve been running so far. This is all to win the race!
I doubt St Paul ever ran track, but he understood the Kick, finishing strong, and the desire to win!
“For I am already being poured out like a libation, and the time of my departure is at hand. I have competed well; I have finished the race; I have kept the faith. From now on the crown of righteousness awaits me, which the Lord, the just judge, will award to me on that day, and not only to me, but to all who have longed for his appearance.” (II Timothy 4:6-8)
This reading is often selected as an option for funerals, and not just for former athletes. Our faith journey is also a race. More a marathon than a sprint, but winning still has much to do with the finish, as well as the start and middle. How many Christians through the ages have had immense encounters with Christ and are then filled with zeal for the Lord, only to ‘burn out’ and ‘fizzle’. Going astray or going cold as the grind of the journey continues on. The real mark of Christian life has much more to do with the daily living of it than it does with the momentous acts of faith or temporary experiences of the Spirit. Our Faith must be lived from beginning to glorious end. We must “Run so as to win!” (I Corinthians 9:24). This is not just true at the race’s beginning or its glorious finish line, but throughout. It is often that difficult middle where we can stumble and fall. Where the fatigue, the boredom, the pain can make us want to just stop. If we manage to push through those difficult days of the middle, then we come to the final kick. Keeping the faith at the end. For those who do so, something that can often be best judged after the race is finished – that is at once the person has finished the race and moved on to the Lord at physical death – we can see how the dearly departed has ‘finished the race & kept the faith’. We can see the full arc, the full track, of their life leading to Christ in the Church. A funeral can, in this sense, be an immense experience of Faith & Grace. It can be the final witness for the faithful disciple who lived that discipline throughout life through the kick at the finish line.
As we approach these last few days of Lent and are ready to walk the Way of the Cross with Christ, we see His final ‘kick’ on display. We see our Lord Jesus truly ‘being poured out like a libation, and the time of my departure is at hand.’ He finished strong. He loved truly. He forgave freely.
Lent is meant to be a mini-experience of the whole of our Christian Faith race. We had the eager start on Ash Wednesday (when the Church is filled to capacity.) We have the more challenging grind of 40 days in between filled with their embrace of Prayer-Fasting-Almsgiving. With today, the 5th Sunday of Lent we enter into what is know as Passiontide. The last stretch of Lent. It is the Church encouraging us to finish strong. To get primed for the Holy Week Kick. During these last days of Lent, we are challenged in a particular way to pour out the libation of ourselves like Christ. Leaving it all out there. To set aside the goods of this world more intentionally, so as to embrace the tremendous holy work of Christ’s salvation. He accomplished and is accomplishing in us His perfect Sacrifice upon the Cross and Resurrection. Just as a track coach might ring a bell to mark the final lap and the clarion call to give it your all – to start the kick – the Church coaches us into this last leg of Lent with the visual reminder of Passiontide: covering the statues and the cross. Encouraging us to ‘run by faith and not to by sight’ (Cf. II Corinthians 5:7). Run! Not for a fading crown of laurels, but for a thorny crown of Eternal Life.
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Lenten Adoration of the Most Holy Eucharist
Didn’t sign up? Don’t worry. Just Show up & Pray!
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Nothing Less than saints for the Holy Family of God.
Holy Family, Led by the Holy Spirit, Pray for us.
~ Fr Jeremy M. Gries
