GOING UP TO JERUSALEM

 


Sunday, Fourth week of lent/2024
Reflection from Friar Nicholas Okeke,OP

Theme: Going up to Jerusalem

The first reading from the book of 2 Chronicles explained the Babylonian captivity as the result of the sins of children of Israel. When they refused to listen to the word of God spoken through the prophets and amend their lives, the Lord allowed the consequences of their sins to overtake them. The divine will decreed seventy years in captivity in Babylon. After the seventy years God remembered his love and faithfulness to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and his promise to David.  He had mercy on them and rescued them from their captivity and restored them to the land. This was an act of God’s mercy and love. God extended this loving mercy he showed to Israel to the whole nations by sending his only Begotten Son to the world. Just as he rescued Israel from their captivity in Babylon, he has willed to rescue all nations from their slavery to sin and evil by the life of his Son our Lord Jesus Christ. Hence, the salvation is a free gift to all and not merited by any. 

For the work of restoration of the children of Israel, God raised Cyrus king of Persia to act in accordance with his divine will for the rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem, the restoration of his people and the divine worship. “The Lord, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth; he has ordered me to build him a Temple in Jerusalem, in Judah. Whoever there is among you of all his people, may his God be with him! Let him go up.” This word of Cyrus the king could fit well into the mouth of our Saviour for the restoration of God’s people in the whole world. The restoration of Israel and the rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem was based on the promise God made to his faithful ones. It was a free gift to all who were restored, for they did not merit it by their own life. St. Paul in the second reading holds the same position for all the redeemed of God throughout the world. “God loved us with so much love that he was generous with his mercy: when were dead through our sins, he brought us to life through Christ—it is through grace that you have been saved—and raised us up with and gave us a place with him in heaven, in Christ Jesus.”

This is the point of discussion between our Lord and Nicodemus in the gospel. Jesus describes his path of ascension to his divine throne as through pain, suffering and death. It is the same path that every child of God will take to go up to Jerusalem; that is, to arrive at the spiritual restoration that the Father has decreed out of his infinite love and mercy for all who have faith in his Son Jesus Christ. This latter Jerusalem is not a physical place, nor the Temple a physical one; these are spiritual realities of which the physical ones were shadows or symbols. The path is through death because mortality will not possess a spiritual inheritance. This necessitates a spiritual birth of which our Lord taught Nicodemus. So, the death of what is mortal marks the birth of a spiritual life in those who believe in the Son of God. The true faithful of God will ascend with the Son to the eternal Jerusalem, but the corrupt ones will remain in darkness and in death. “On this ground is sentence pronounced: that though the light has come into the world men have shown they prefer darkness to light because their deeds were evil.” The gifts of Jerusalem, the Temple, and the Light are free, yet so many would refuse to ascend. Come let us ascend to Jerusalem.

Let us pray: Grant us, Lord, the grace we need to die to self, in order to ascend to a new life in Christ Jesus.

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