Homily – Fifth Sunday of Lent (C)

I once heard that Ian Thorpe liked to feel pain while training.  At the peak of his training he would push his body until he was physically sick, until he could take no more, until he could not go on.  Training at high altitudes was not uncommon for him or for other elite athletes because it increased the pain and the pressure due to the decrease in oxygen.  Ian and others love to push themselves and the reward is not only winning the race but experiencing the human body at its peak and perfection.

The Christian community is also a body.  We are a body.  St Paul uses the image of training in his letter to the Philippians in this Sunday’s reading: “Not that I have become perfect yet; I have not yet won, but I am still running, trying to capture the prize for which Christ Jesus captured me.  All I can say is that I forget the past and I strain ahead for what is still to come.  I am racing for the finish for the prize to which God calls us upwards to receive in Christ Jesus.”  What is the finishing line?  Paul tells us, “I believe that nothing can happen that will outweigh the supreme advantage of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.   All I want is to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and to share his sufferings by reproducing the pattern of his dearth.  That is the way that I can hope to take my place in the resurrection of the dead.”

What kind of training does this involve?  According to the gospels of Lent it begins with the practice of mercy, the discipline of not condemning, the large heartedness of forgiveness and the examination of our actions and words.  “If there is one of you who has not sinned let them be the first to throw a stone at her.  Has no one condemned you?  No Sir.  Neither do I condemn you.  Go away and don’t sin any more.”  (John 8)

With these words to encourage us and with Paul’s call to ‘strain ahead’, let us take up the remainder of Lent with the practice of mercy; the discipline of not condemning, the large heartedness of forgiveness and the self-examination of our words and actions.  Sometimes we, like the athletes, need to push ourselves.  Mercy does not always come naturally.  Likewise at times we need to stretch ourselves to forgive or brace ourselves not to condemn.  But these things draw us closer to sharing in the power of the resurrection which brings life where there is no life, hope where there is hopelessness and new beginnings where dead ends seemed to confront us.

Fr Brendan