LITURGICAL PLANNING

Fifth Sunday of Lent

Year B / Sunday, March 21, 2021

This Sunday’s Readings:

Jeremiah 31:31–34

Psalm 51:3–4, 12–3, 14–15

Hebrews 5:7–9

John 12:20–33

“WE WOULD LIKE TO SEE JESUS.” That is the opening request given to the disciples in today’s Gospel by those from the outside of Jesus’s circle of followers. Throughout John’s Gospel, to see and hear Jesus is to know Jesus and to know the Father. By extension, to see and hear Jesus’s followers is to encounter Jesus himself, for, as the Gospel says, where Jesus is, there will his servants be. We see this intimate unity between Jesus and his disciples (meaning us) foreshadowed in the abundant fruit that his followers will yield if they die to themselves in imitation of Jesus. In Jesus’s prayer before his arrest, we will hear again of the intimate unity between Father and Son and, thus, between Son and those who have received the Spirit of love shared by the Father and Son.

As we near the end of Lent and the time when we must renew our baptismal vows as followers of Jesus and “other Christs,” can it be said of us that Jesus will be seen wherever his servants are? If those from outside the circle of our parish communities listen in to our daily conversations, will they hear Jesus’s words of self-giving love? If they witness our actions in the world, will they see and know the Lord in their midst?

—Diana Macalintal

Suggested Music

Expanded listings for Sundays and Solemnities can be found at issuu.com/giamusic.

MYSTAGOGY MOMENT:

Covenant. When was the last time you used that word? We make promises to do things for other people. We try to make resolutions each New Year. We feel we have obligations that need to be fulfilled. But a covenant? That’s not a word we hear every day. Covenant seems to have more weight than just a simple promise. A covenant creates a bond so strong that nothing can break it. It is engrained in the fiber of our beings. That is how strong God’s promises are to us. His promise of forgiveness. His promise to be with us always. His promise of eternal life.

– Victoria Zibell