Road to Emmaus Third Sunday of Lent

Mar 3, 2010

First Reading – Ex 3:1-8a, 13-15
Responsorial Psalm – Ps 103:1-4, 6-8, 11
Second Reading – 1 Cor 10:1-6, 10-12
Gospel Reading – Lk 13:1-9

On the Third Sunday of Lent, the Church provides us with some amazing readings. When we look at them together, they lead us towards repentance.

The first reading, taken from the book of Exodus, recounts Moses’ encounter with God in the burning bush. God call Moses while he is shepherding in the land of Midian and tells him to go back to Egypt in order to set God’s people free. God then reveals to Moses his most holy name, “I AM.” God goes on to command Moses to tell the people that He is the God of their fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. In other words, Moses must remind the people that He is the God who has remained, and who will continue to remain, faithful to the covenants He swore to those three patriarchs.

In the second reading from his first letter to the Corinthians, St. Paul reminds his readers what happened after Moses responded to God’s call. They “all passed through the sea,” and, while in the desert, drank from the spiritual rock. They were delivered from bondage and given provision for their journey. Paul emphasizes that God remained faithful to his covenant.

However, St. Paul also reminds his readers of the people’s response to the Lord. They grumbled because of their slavery to the Egyptians. But they also grumbled against the Lord, as though he were also trying to enslave and kill them. Because they did not repent, they were “struck down in the desert.”

In the Gospel reading, taken from St. Luke, the theme of repentance is continued. Luke Timothy John notes in his commentary, The Gospel of Luke: “Luke has Jesus respond to these reports of death in the city in classic prophetic style; they are turned to warning examples for his listeners. The people who died were not more deserving of death than others. One cannot argue from sudden and violent death to the enormity of sin. Indeed, Jesus himself will suffer a death that appears to be as much a punishment for sin. But the prophet’s point is that death itself, with the judgment of God, is always so close. It can happen when engaged in ritual. It can happen standing under a wall. And when it happens so suddenly, there is no time to repent. Rabbi Eliezer had declared that a person should repent the day before death. But his disciples said that a person could die any day, therefore all of life should be one of repentance. The repentance called for by the prophet Jesus, of course, is not simply a turning from sin but an acceptance of the visitation of God in the proclamation of God’s kingdom” (p. 213).

During this Lenten season we are called to repent with a contrite heart. Let us seek out the sacrament of mercy. Thus, we will be able to hear the glorious words of Christ on the lips of a priest, “I absolve you from your sins in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”

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