Lenten Journey Unveiled: Christians Embrace Obedience, Sacrifice, and Inner Renewal

The following piece is based on the Catholic readings for the Fifth Sunday of Lent

By Dylan Waggoner

Pittsburg, Kan — It can be a bit hard to draw any conclusions from the readings presented to us at mass, or they may seem rather alien or sterile. We need some kind of context.

This is the season of Lent; of fasting, prayer, almsgiving, and repentance. What do these readings tell us about Lent? We hear the prophet Jeremiah say, “The days are coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah.” Jesus brings forth this covenant. Further, Jeremiah says, “It will not be like the covenant I made with their fathers the day I took them by the hand … I will place my law within them and write it upon their hearts.” This is crucial for grasping Christ’s covenant, as highlighted in the Didache Bible’s commentary on Jeremiah: “The New Covenant promised by God would not be written on tablets of stone but on the human heart.”

In the Psalms, David cries out, “A clean heart create for me, O God, and a steadfast spirit renew within me.” He pleads for God to transform him at the heart and soul level, desiring to follow God’s will out of love, not mere duty to the law.

This is reflected in today’s reading of the Letter to the Hebrews, where St. Paul highlights Christ’s obedience: “In the days when Christ Jesus was in the flesh, he offered prayers and supplications with loud cries and tears to the one who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverence. Son though he was, he learned obedience from what he suffered.”

Christ, the Son of God, offered prayers and tears to the Father. His reward was not relief; rather, he was tempered by his suffering. He was given an eternal gift of grace rather than a temporal gift of relief. His suffering allowed him to give himself more to the Father, loving him in spite of suffering.

Paul wraps up this idea by stating, “and when he was made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him.”

Paul means perfection in a different way than we might be thinking. The Didache Bible states, “As God, Christ had perfect knowledge, but as a man, he had to gain knowledge through experience. Since we are born with a fallen nature, we must learn, often in a painstaking way, to conform our wills to the will of the Father.”

Once purely divine, Christ experienced a shift in obedience with human nature. Prior to the incarnation, his obedience was unaffected by human struggles. It was divine obedience. Now, amidst pain, hunger, and mistreatment, he perfectly lived out obedience, showing us that we were capable of it in a way we never thought possible.

This brings us to the Gospel today, in which Jesus tells us what it means to follow him as he followed the Father. “Amen, amen, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat; but if it dies, it produces much fruit. Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will preserve it for eternal life.” Christ points to the nature of a wheat grain: if it doesn’t sacrifice itself, it remains but fails to fulfill its purpose. If Christ doesn’t die, he remains separate from us and doesn’t save humanity.

Obedience to Christ is the ultimate goal. If we don’t willingly surrender our lives, egos, and pleasures, we won’t bear fruit. The Church emphasizes in Lent and year-round self-denial the importance of letting go of false priorities, just as a grain of wheat lets go of its self-preservation, to cooperate in ongoing salvation and bring forth more grains of wheat who can die as we have.