5TH SUNDAY OF LENT YEAR A

Readings:
Ezekiel 37:12-14
Psalm 130:1-6b, 7b-8
Romans 8:8-11
John 11:1-45

The Theme of the Readings: New Life
The theme of the readings is God's gift of spiritual awakening and transformation that leads to "new life" in an intimate covenant relationship with God. In the First Reading, God promised His people, suffering in the Babylonian exile, that one day He would send His Spirit to gather and reconcile His scattered and divided people, resurrecting them to "new life" beyond the limits of physical life.

The Responsorial Psalm continues the theme of "new life." It is one of the seven Penitential Psalms in which God promises to redeem His people from their past iniquities. The First Advent of Jesus Christ fulfills this Penitential Psalms. Jesus's very name in Hebrew, Yahshua, means "God is salvation;" It carries the promise that God will redeem His people from their sins and give them a "new life" through a new covenant relationship with Him.

In the Second Reading, St. Paul wrote to the Christians in Rome that Christ makes it possible to live "according to the Spirit" of God. He emphasized that only those reborn in the Spirit of God through the Sacrament of Baptism can truly belong to Him and have the right to be called children in the family of God. Paul wrote that living in the spirit of Christ causes Christians to look forward to being alive in a way that makes earthy life a pale counterfeit kind of living. Life in the Spirit is a long-term investment that will reap enormous benefits because God stands behind that investment.

The raising of Lazarus from the dead in our Gospel Reading is a sign of Jesus's victory over death that He accomplished in His bodily resurrection from the grave. It is a sign of the hope of the promised "new life" that awaits all of us who follow Christ by submitting to a spiritual rebirth through water and the Spirit in the Sacrament of Baptism (the Second Reading). It is also the promise of the bodily resurrection of the dead at the end of time when Christ returns to claim His Church and raise her to glory (1 Thes 4:13-16; 5:23; Rev 20:11-15).

The prophesied anointing of "new life" through God's Spirit promised by the prophets comes to fulfillment in Jesus Christ. He continually pours out the Holy Spirit upon His Church to associate her with His self-sacrificial offering to the Father on the altar of the Cross. Jesus kept His promise to His disciples in His homily at the Last Supper when, fifty days after His Resurrection, He sent the promised "Advocate," the Holy Spirit, to His Church on the Jewish feast of Pentecost. The Holy Spirit's mission is to continually fill, indwell, nourish, heal, and direct the people of His Church in their generational journey to bear witness to His love and intercession for the world.

The ministry of God the Holy Spirit is active in the lives of believers in every generation through the Eucharist and the other Sacraments Christ gave His Church. God's grace continually works through the Holy Spirit to bear the "good fruit" of righteousness in the "new life" in Christ of all baptized Christians as they live, not according to the secular world, but according to the Spirit. After the miracle on Pentecost Sunday, as Peter addressed the crowd of Jews, they cried out to him and the other Apostle: "What are we to, my brothers?" Peter said to them: "Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is made to you and to your children and to all those far off, whomever the Lord our God will call" (Acts 2:38-39).

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT:
(Agape Bible Study)
(Psalms for the Liturgical Year (livingwithchrist.ca))

00:00 – Intro
00:17 – Collect
00:41 – First Reading
01:17 – Responsorial Psalm
04:04 – Second Reading
04:55 – Gospel Reading
10:49 – Recommended Videos

Видео 5TH SUNDAY OF LENT YEAR A канала Sunday Readings