Fourth Sunday of Lent
Today’s Eucharist focuses on the fullness of the message. We already know God, we are already in the Promised Land, the old has passed, and we are in the new. It is the Good News, and the urgent invitation: “Come to your Father’s house.”
JOSHUA 5:9-12
And the Lord said to Joshua, “Today I have rolled away the reproach of Egypt from you.” And so the name of that place is called Gilgal to this day. While the Israelites were encamped at Gilgal, they kept the Passover on the fourteenth day of the month in the evening on the plains of Jericho. And the day after the Passover, on that very day, they ate of the produce of the land, unleavened cakes and parched grain. And the manna ceased the day after they ate of the produce of the land. And there was no longer manna for the people of Israel, but they ate of the fruit of the land of Canaan that year.
This is a text in which the pilgrimage of Israel “ends,” the “forty” years in the desert. They are in the homeland, in the “land flowing with milk and honey,” celebrating the Covenant Banquet with God in the Promised Land.
2 CORINTHIANS 5:17-21
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.
All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.
Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.
For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
Such is our life. We are in the Kingdom. The old has passed, the fear of God, the ignorance of what it means to live, the fulfillment of the Law through rewards and punishments. God does not take our transgressions into account, but rather makes his Word, Jesus, available to us. Through Him we find reconciliation with God.
In this we have come to know the love that God has for us: in that he made his own Son “to be sin” for us. We went after false gods, now we return to the Father, we find Him again. It is not He who is reconciled with us, but we who find Him again.
Therefore, we are ambassadors of Christ, we are bearers of the Good News: that if God is for us, who can be against us? That if God is the defense attorney, who will be the judge? Therefore, let us live in the New Life, as citizens of heaven, as messengers of the Kingdom.
José Enrique Galarreta, S.J.