Today’s responsorial Psalm, one of the great laments in the entirety of the Psalter, captures some sense of the despondency we can sometimes feel when we come face to face with our brokenness. Like the Israelites in bondage, in exile in Babylon, we are often exiled from God, bound by sin, and we find ourselves sitting, weeping, unable to rise, to sing of, or believe in, God’s love for us.
But Lent’s spirit of confession and penance is not at all meant to make us despondent. Even in our sinfulness we are never without the hope of God’s mercy and forgiveness, and on this Laetare Sunday our readings are particularly strong reminders of how God’s mercy and love raise us up from despondency and restore us to the fullness of life.
In our first reading today the Book of Chronicles records the history of Jerusalem’s destruction at the hands of her enemies, and explains the reasons for Israel’s captivity in Babylon:
“The people added infidelity to infidelity, practicing all the abominations of the nations and polluting the Lord’s temple which He had consecrated in Jerusalem.”
Jerusalem was the heart of Jewish life. More than a city with a temple, it was a Temple with a city around it. The Jerusalem Temple was the place where God dwelled and where His priests mediated between God and the people. Every year faithful Jews came from every corner of Israel and “went up” to the holy city.
But as the Book of Chronicles explains, the people had polluted the Temple and been unfaithful to the covenant the Lord had made with them. Their captivity in Babylon was not only a punishment from God, it was the necessary result of their sinfulness – their sinfulness made them incapable of going up to Jerusalem to meet the Lord worthily.
And yet God remained ever faithful. Even in their sinfulness, God was preparing His people’s salvation. According to the promise He made through His prophet Jeremiah, King Cyrus of Persia becomes the instrument of God’s plan: he releases Israel from bondage and begins to rebuild the Jerusalem Temple.
“Whoever, therefore, among you belongs to any part of His people,” Cyrus declares, “let him go up, and may his God be with him.”
God had heard the lament of Israel and his mercy restored them to life in Jerusalem. Once again, the people were able to go up to the holy city, to encounter the living God, because God went with them! They were lifted up from the captivity of their sinfulness and exile – they once again sang the songs of Judah.
What about us? What about our exile from God, our bondage in sin?
Our Gospel, and our second reading make clear that we too have been lifted up, have been restored to life by God’s merciful love.
In His conversation with Nicodemus, Jesus refers to Israel’s forty years in the desert. Attacked by deadly seraph serpents God tells Moses to make a bronze serpent, mount it on a pole and raise it up before the people. Whoever looks on it, God promises, will not die, but will live.
Jesus Himself says in today’s Gospel: “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in Him may have eternal life . . . For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him might not perish but might have eternal life.”
For the Christian, the Temple is not a building but the very body of Christ. It is in Christ Himself that God and humanity meet. Nailed to, and raised up on the Cross, it is precisely in the moment of Jesus’ suffering and seeming defeat that Jesus in fact triumphs over sin and death and is raised up to glory by His heavenly Father.
Since, by Baptism, we have been incorporated into, made a part of the body of Christ, our flesh too is a Temple of His Holy Spirit. In Christ, God has stooped down – He went with us into death, precisely so that He might raise us up with Him to new life.
Indeed, St. Paul reminds us, in his letter to the Ephesians: “Even when we were dead in our transgressions, God brought us to life with Christ, raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavens, that in the ages to come He might show the immeasurable riches of His grace.”
Friends, although this is almost unfathomably good news, Jesus makes clear that we have the choice to believe and live this reality, or not. If we’re honest with ourselves, we know that we can often prefer the darkness. It’s often easier, more comfortable for us to keep living the old sins we’ve become accustomed to, and before long, we add “infidelity to infidelity.”
Perhaps even worse, we can remain despondent – refusing to believe that if we ask Him, God can and will raise us up from our old life, to new life in Christ.
But our Laetare Sunday invites and reminds us to rejoice: to rejoice that “by grace, we have been saved through faith;” to rejoice in our God who “so loved the world that He gave His only Son, that everyone who believes in Him might not perish but might have eternal life.”
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