“Come out!”

“Come out!”

Fifth Sunday of Lent – A 

Unless you have had elect celebrating the scrutinies, the last time your assembly heard this Gospel was at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in March of 2020. Since then, we have had over 1 million deaths in the United States from this virus and 6.5 million worldwide.

We have experienced other deaths, too, these past few years: the death of trust in systems that worked . . . at least for the privileged few; the decline of overall health and life expectancy; a generation’s suffocation by debt; the catastrophic destruction of our planet’s ecosystem; the casualties of gun violence that no longer happen “over there” but right here wherever we gather. With so much dying all around us, perhaps the greatest death so many face is the loss of hope itself.

Despite the crowd’s and our own lack of faith, out of love for us Jesus calls upon the Father to give life to what has long been dead. He does not require our belief for him to do this. Click To Tweet

Into that putrid tomb of despair where the stench has rotted us numb, Jesus cries to us, “Come out!” Even as we blame him—if only you had been here—Jesus commands that we be untied from our paralyzing hopelessness.

Despite the crowd’s and our own lack of faith, out of love for us Jesus calls upon the Father to give life to what has long been dead. He does not require our belief for him to do this. Rather, faith is the only way we will be able to witness the death of death itself.

This post was first published in “GIA Quarterly: A Liturgical Music Journal.”
Image credit: gyro from Getty Images.

Read more reflections on the Sunday readings here:

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *