SERMON PREACHED BY FR NEVILLE CONNELL

LENT 5 SAN DIEGO, 8.00 a.m. and11.00 a.m. APRIL 2^nd, 2006

I was once parish priest of a rural parish where a major crop was potatoes – there were lots of families of Irish extraction in the district! As I was visiting one day the newly visible potato plants were being irrigated.

I asked a parishioner as to when they began the watering, before the plants appeared or after. His answer was, only after the plants appeared,

because there is enough moisture in the seed potato to get them started below ground, and give them new life.

I found this example of enormous help at funerals, because while they could understand Jesus’ words about the grain of wheat, potatoes were part of their lives. In this way one could begin to ,shall we say, dig below the surface of people’s spiritual experience, to help them to make the connection between their worship on Sunday and their day to day existence.

And as their personal spiritual experience was deepened, so their worship on Sunday, or whenever, would be deepened. Long ago, Jeremiah the prophet was well aware of this, the danger of formalism in worship,

religion kept for the Sabbath only. The Prophet Amos also had strong words to say about this.

Jeremiah insisted that within the framework of the worshipping community there had to be a personal commitment on the part of the individual worshipper. He was given a vision by God of such a community,” the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah… this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it upon their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people...for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord…”

It is the Church’s conviction that what Jeremiah hoped for came true in

Jesus Christ. Jesus is now drawing nearer to Jerusalem; we join him through our worship, in this way sharing in our remembrance of the making of the New Covenant, or New Testament. And in so doing, we renew our commitment to the New Covenant, to our hope for eternal life in Heaven.

At the heart of a covenant is sacrifice, making holy; sacrifice involves obedience, the letting go of our desire to control, of our wills, so that we may be broken and remade. Jesus himself knew what it was to let go of his will, in the garden of Gethsemane; as our Second Reading tells us, ”In the days of his flesh,

Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to him who was able to save him from death…”

The suffering of sacrifice is often indeed physical, but it is also interior, in the heart and the mind, and can be just as severe. As our Gospel Reading says, ”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…”

‘There’, is with Jesus on Palm Sunday, next Sunday, very excited; at the table on Maundy Thursday, sometimes closer to Judas than to Jesus; in the crowds on Good Friday, jeering perhaps, or sorrowful; near the Cross on Calvary with Our Lady and St John, or at a distance, embarrassed, not wanting to be identified with Jesus.

But ‘there’, also means to be with the women going to the tomb to anoint the body of Jesus; to be with SS Peter and John when the breathless St Mary Magdalene rushes in to tell them the amazing news that the tomb was empty; perhaps even with Mary in the garden as she met the risen Lord Jesus, like her confused at first, and then overjoyed.

“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” We are back to potatoes. We are the grain of wheat, we are individual potatoes, we have within us through Holy Baptism the moisture for our new lives; in the Blessed Sacrament of the New Covenant, we have the irrigation we need for life, for our journey of sacrifice, making holy. “and I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all to myself”. By our sacrifice, as we are made holy, may we draw people to Jesus.

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The Readings: Jeremiah 31:31-34;Hebrews 5:1-10;St John 12:20-33.