I would like to do something a bit different this morning. Rather than develop a homily as such, I would like to lead you in a meditation upon one word, one concept which we find in today’s Gospel. Today we come upon the word hour. I want to dwell on this with you in a meditative spirit.
First, to begin we need a little background. We just heard the phrase, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.” The concept of the hour has a deep theological meaning in the entire Gospel of John. Actually I found nineteen times in that Gospel where Jesus uses the phrase, “The hour”.
We first come upon this concept at the Wedding Feast of Cana when Jesus says to his Mother, “Woman what concern has this for you or me? My hour has not yet come.”
Jesus tells the woman at the well that the hour is coming when people will worship in spirit and in truth.
The second sign of the Messiah in the Gospel of John emphasizes the hour that a boy is cured.
Jesus says that the hour is coming when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God.
Temple officials often tried to arrest Jesus, but they couldn’t because his hour had not yet come.
In today’s Gospel Jesus announces that the hour is upon him.
Today’s Gospel also contains the Johannine equivalent of the Agony in the Garden, during which time Jesus says, “What should I say, ‘Father save me from this hour?’ No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour.”
John introduces the Passion of the Lord by saying, “Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart from this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own in the world, he loved them to the end.”
Jesus concludes the Great Discourse of the Last Supper by praying to his Father, “the hour has come, glorify your Son so that your Son may glorify you.”
Obviously, when Jesus uses the phrase, hour, he isn’t merely referring to the time of day it might be. No, he is speaking about a central moment of human history. The hour is the moment that the world will be transformed. The hour is the point of human history when spiritual life will be restored. The hour is the moment when death and evil will be defeated by Love. The hour is the moment when the mortal will receive immortality.
Let’s begin our meditation:
And Jesus said in today’s Gospel, “When I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw everyone to myself.”
The power of the cross.
The power of the love of God.
The central moment of human history.
The hour.
We Christians live in this moment, this hour. Whether we stood at the foot of the cross like Mary and John or whether we were born two thousand years later, the hour is real to us. We are there. We are always before the Lord on the cross. We kneel during the Eucharistic Prayer of the Mass and pray to the Father with the Lord as he offers his Body and Blood for us. Every Mass renews the hour.
We exalt when a baby, a child or an adult is baptized because we have witnessed that person being directed into the hour, the hour where spiritual joins physical. We weep when a loved one dies, but our faith is full of hope for now the hour becomes the physical joining the spiritual.
The hour of the Lord is real for us when we come into the Church and meditate before the Cross, or, to put it frankly, just look at it, and then it hits us, “My God, Jesus, you did this for me? How much must you love me?” The hour of the Lord is real for us when we feel ourselves united to him on his cross, drawn to him as the Gospel prophesied, and lifted up from the burdens of this life into the realm of the spiritual.
When we celebrate a funeral, the priest will often incense the body at the final commendation as a sign of our prayers rising up to God for the deceased and as a sign that the body is holy, because God dwelt there. During the ritual we sing the song of farewell. After incensing the body, I like to stand in front of the crucifix and wait for the last verse to begin. These are the words of Job, “I know that my Redeemer lives, the last day I shall rise again.” At that point I incense the cross as a sign that it is all one for us: the death of Christ on the cross, the death of our loved ones, our deaths, the rising of Christ from the dead, the rising of our loved ones body and soul, our longed for and hoped for union with them and Him for all eternity. Its all one.
Its all the hour of the Lord.
In the middle of the nineteenth century, around the 1835, Alexander Means, meditated on the cross and wrote the words to the hymn, What Wondrous Love is This:
What wondrous love is this, O my soul, that caused the Lord of Bliss to bear this dreadful curse for my soul.
To God and to the Lamb, I will sing. To God and to the Lamb who is the great “I AM”, I will sing.
And when from death I’m free, I’ll sing on. And when from death I’m free, I’ll sing joyfully. And through eternity, I’ll sing on.
Through the sacrificial love of Jesus Christ, his hour has become our hour, his death has become our life, our deaths have become his life, his love. In the Paradisio, the third book of Dante’s Divine Comedy the poet speaks about the whirl of love that is heaven as each person unites his or her love to the Love of God, all becoming one in love yet each remaining an individual lover.
Death and life are united. Sacrifice and gift are merged.
Love Conquers All.
This is why we honor the cross.
This is why we wear crosses around our necks.
This is why the purpose of our lives is to realize,
to make real, the love of Christ in our homes and in our lives.
We have to allow Christ’s love to direct our lives.
His hour is our hour.
And his hour is upon us.
DRAWN TO THE CROSS
A group of Greeks, probably pagans, approached the disciples with an admirable request: “We would like to see Jesus.” On hearing this request, Jesus responded with a passionate discourse in which he summarized the profound destiny of his life. The hour has come. Everyone, Jews and Greeks, will soon understand the mystery of his life and death: “When I am lifted from the earth, I shall draw all men to myself.”
When Jesus is lifted upon a cross and he appears crucified on Golgotha, everyone will understand God’s inscrutable love; they will understand that God is love and only love towards all people. They will feel the attraction towards the Crucified. They will see in Him the ultimate manifestation of God’s mystery.
To reach such state, naturally, one must have heard much more than the doctrine of Redemption, and much more than simply following the services of Holy Week. We have to concentrate our interior eyes upon Jesus, allowing ourselves to be moved by the final gestures of the Crucified, as he surrendered his life for a better world for all; a world that finds its salvation in God.
Probably, however, we shall discover the real Jesus only when we are drawn to him, as he surrenders to his Father, and delivers his life in order to suffer and die so that others may have a better life. It was then that we heard Jesus say: “Whoever wants to serve me, he must follow me; wherever I am there will my servant also be.”
Everything starts from the desire to serve Jesus, collaborate in his task, living only for his project, and follow him in his footsteps, in order to imitate his gestures and the various ways in which God loves us. It will be only then that we shall become his followers.
In other words, we must share in his life and destiny: “wherever I am, my servant will be there, too.” To be a Christian, one has to be where Jesus was, be occupied in the things Jesus did, achieve what he achieved, and hang from the cross as he did, and later be at the right hand of his Father.
What would the Church look like if it were attracted by the Crucified, motivated by the desire to serve Him alone, and be occupied in the things that kept him always occupied? What kind of a Church would be able to attract all people to Jesus?
HIDDEN TREASURE
In a book called “Peace of Mind,” a famous psychiatrist says, “The supreme foe of inner victory is rigid pride.” The Bible often calls it being “stiff-necked.” In Biblical terms it means a kind of know-it-all arrogance that excludes the possibility of admitting the need to change. The stiff-necked person is saying, in effect, “No one, not even God, can enlighten me further.”
Jesus says that the grain must die to be productive, and we must hate our lives to preserve them. We want to believe Jesus, but we are ambivalent. We understand that the grain must die, but we cannot comprehend that we must “empty ourselves” if we want to succeed in life!
“Truly, truly I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. He who loves his life loses it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. If any one serves me, he must follow me; and where I am, there shall my servant be also; if any one serves me, my Father will honour him.”
With these words, Jesus was preparing his disciples for his own death. He was teaching them that the great God who had sent Him works through a process of death/resurrection, and that, by His death, new life would come into the world.
The only way to solve our dilemma and really believe Jesus is to recall that physical nature is different from human nature. Animals need not devise a self-improvement program; nature imposes its own discipline. Only humans are unlimited. Therefore, we must be self-limiting, we must control our appetites, and we must bow under a life’s giving discipline.
Asceticism has several complementary components. The first one is travelling light.
We can always manage with less than we imagine. Some people learn this in sickness or tragedy or unemployment. When you are in the army or travelling around the world, you learn to travel light and take with you only the barest essentials.
The second step in the ascetic life is “letting go.” Not just possessions, but control and power and stature and authority. Just as we learn how few things we really need, so we gradually learn how little control over people and events we really need. Ascetic living puts us in our cosmic place, gives us earthly humility. The next step is “opening up.”Later in the gospel of today, Jesus gives the disciples a stunning demonstration of how this works. He “rose from supper, laid aside his garments, and girded himself with a towel. Then he poured water into a basin, and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel.” And when He had finished, He said to them, “Do you know what I have done for you? You call me teacher and Lord, and you are right, for so I am. If I, then, Your Lord and Your Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet.”
In another place, Jesus said to His disciples, “Whoever would be greatest among you must be your servant, even as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve.”
In Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Fable”, a mountain and a squirrel are having a quarrel. The debate ends with the squirrel saying, “If I am not as large as you, you are not as small as I; and not half so spry. I’ll not deny you make a pretty squirrel track. Talents differ. All is well and wisely put: If I cannot carry forests on my back, neither can you crack a nut.”
THE HOUR HAS COME
Today’s text contains two different messages or episodes centered round this word – the hour has come. This “hour” is the moment of the Father’s glorification, and the son’s ultimate surrender of his life. The second episode centers on Christ’s pronouncement, “My soul is troubled.” St. John has not described the painful scenes of the Garden of Olives, because it would not fit into John’s theological idea of Jesus in total control of the events preceding the Passion. Hence John has transferred those human expressions of weakness or fear to this self-controlled statement, “My soul is troubled, my hour is come…”
The “hour has come” refers to a theological time – that moment predetermined by His Father, which Christ accepts willingly. The evangelist will refer to the “sixth hour,” which was the exact time when the sacrifice of the Paschal Lamb took place.
This hour of death is, therefore, not a moment of failure, but the moment of the glorification of the Father though the Son. Surrendering one’s life, like a grain of wheat, gives rise to the plenitude and glory of God
“We would like to see Jesus”. The reference to those Greek people who expressed their wish to see Jesus remains a minor mystery or curiosity in this passage. John does not say whether they were granted the audience, and John goes straight to write what Christ told his followers – the message about his imminent death:
– Christ knows that His death is near. Like a grain of wheat, death leads to life.
– Christ knows that His death will be for the salvation of all. “I’ll draw all…”
– Christ sees His death as a victory over the forces of evil.
– Christ, however, is deeply “troubled” and his soul is in anguish.
– Whoever wants to be his disciple must follow Him and share in His death.
“Unless the grain of wheat…”
This is a challenging and provocative affirmation: unless we die, we will not bear fruit. The fruit starts to grow within the grain that starts to die. Jesus is talking about himself and addressing it to His followers. God does not want death or suffering. He is the God of life. But there is one kind of suffering and death that we must be willing to accept – the death and suffering which is necessary to liberate other people from similar death. True love cannot be indifferent to the suffering and death of others.
A grain of wheat must fall to the ground and die to produce fruit; otherwise it is just grain. Surrender your comfort for the sake of staying faithful to God. Loving God is a way we live, not a rule we follow.