As we approach Palm Sunday and Holy Week, the readings for this Sunday’s liturgy start preparing us for Jesus’ passion and death. In the Gospel we read the equivalent of Jesus’ agony in the garden as presented by John. In the gospel according to John, Jesus does not plead to the Father that the chalice of passion be taken away from him, instead, the passion is Jesus’ moment of glory. In the passion, death and resurrection of Jesus, the Father’s name will be glorified.
The prophet Jeremiah tells us that God will now write His law, not on the scrolls of the torah, but in our hearts. We have no need to go searching for God’s Will, God speaks to us in our own heart. The question is for us to understand God’s Will and to do our best to achieve this every day of our life. As we approach Jesus’ death and resurrection, we learn that Jesus does the will of the Father by submitting to his passion and death for our salvation. Jesus, the Son of God, is continually in touch with his Father’s Will. Through Jesus’ death and resurrection, especially in the gospel according to John, we too become children of God, through his writing of his law in our hearts.
The author of the letter to the Hebrews teaches us that we become one with the Father’s Will through our obedience to God, following in Jesus’ footsteps. Jesus learnt to obey through suffering. Does my suffering and carrying of my cross in the discipleship of Jesus lead me to obey God as I pray “thy will be done…”
Fr. Henry