The Fourth Sunday of Lent 1 Sm 16:1, 6-7, 10-13; Ps 23; Eph 5:8-14; Jn 9:1-41
We have now reached the mid-point of Lent and many of us will be taking a short break from our Lenten observances. At the same time, others will be renewing their resolve to start Lent! Either way, for all of us Lent is a time of reflection and renewal, and an opportunity to focus our attention more clearly on the love and mercy of Jesus Christ and our response to it.
Lent is about letting Jesus into our lives. The trouble is that once he’s there our lives change, and I would go as far as to say that he wreaks havoc on our comfort zones. When Christ is the measure of our lives we learn to think and act in his way and everything we do is for his honour and glory. Inevitably this means giving up habits of life and mind which will bring us challenges and discomfort.
So the real grace of Lent is not so much our doing things for God but allowing his grace to flow into us and change our lives accordingly. In order to do this we need a means by which we can grow in the knowledge and love of God; we cannot do it by our own lights. In his famous Lenten sermon “The Cross of Christ the Measure of the World”, Blessed John Henry Newman says:
How are we to look at things? This is the question that all people of observation ask themselves, and answer each in his own way. They wish to think by rule; by something within them, which may harmonise and adjust, what is without them. Now let me ask, what is … given us by revelation to estimate and measure this world by? The event of this season – the crucifixion of the Son of God.
Newman is reminding us that the suffering and death of Christ is the means by which grace and freedom were given to us. He is asking us to look beyond the shadows of this world to the eternal world which will endure for ever. Our Lenten pilgrimage trains us to seek eternity and to mould our lives on the values of the Cross. If Christ’s sacrificial death on the Cross is to be the measure of our lives then it should reach every corner of them and influence everything we do.
The Lutheran theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer said that we must never take Christ’s sacrifice for granted. Like Newman, he maintains that our friendship with Christ came through the Crucifixion and that grace should never be cheapened because it comes to us at such a high price. He warns us about looking for easy paths and answers in our friendship with Christ. In his book The Cost of Discipleship, he writes:
Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, and grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.
Bonhoeffer and his fellow German academic St Teresa Benedicta of the Cross both made the Cross the measure of their lives, even to making the ultimate sacrifice. Before her transportation to Auschwitz St Teresa Benedicta wrote: “One can only gain a scientia crucis (knowledge of the cross) if one has thoroughly experienced the cross. I have been convinced of this from the first moment onwards and have said with all my heart: Ave, Crux, Spes unica (Hail, Cross, our only hope).”
As we continue our Lenten journey we can learn from these great figures of modern Christianity to take seriously the mystery of the Cross and to embrace its consequences. Our world needs to hear the message of the Cross and we are called to proclaim it. Although we may be misunderstood, we need to remind society that equality and human rights are not the invention of European secularism but fundamental Christian principles rooted in the prophetic voice of the Old Testament.
What happens to the least of our brothers and sisters matters deeply to God. We need to be prophets, reminding the world that the alternative vision of Christ’s kingdom is life-enhancing, fulfilling and truly human. Every act that breaks down barriers in Christ’s name is a witness to our age of the timeless values of God’s kingdom. Only the Cross makes sense of our broken world.
If we are to use the remaining weeks of Lent well, perhaps we should step back and ask ourselves what the death of our Lord means to us and how it influences our daily lives. Bonhoeffer and St Teresa Benedicta died in response to the immeasurable love that Christ showed them. Lent is an opportunity for each of us to respond to that same love and to plant the Cross firmly in the centre of our lives.
The Rt Rev Robert Byrne co is an auxiliary bishop of Birmingham. This is the fifth in our Lenten series written by bishops from across Britain
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