It Will End in God's Praise

02-04-2017 FIFTH SUNDAY OF LENT

SCRIPTURAL READING:

1. Ezekiel 37:12-14

Ps. 130:1-2.3-4.5-7a.7b-8 (R. 7b).

1. 2 Rom. 8:8-11; Accl; Jn. 11:25a.26
2. Gospel Jn 11:1-45

THEME: IT WILL END IN GOD’S PRAISE

The man who converses with God is the man who remains strong willed in the face of opposition. He is the man who is calm and filled with great spiritual resources and insight. He is the man who is said to be filled. His life is ordered and strengthened. He is the man with power and yet learns from the Lord how to use it in order to bring about the glory of God. He is the man who sees the hand of God in everything that happens to him even when others see it from a carnal point of view. He is a man with great conviction and faith-filled in the fact that God will do it because God is sufficient. He is a man not to say that he is without tears or sorrow but he is one with whom we say with the word of God in Psalm 30:5 “tears may flow in the night but joy comes in the morning.” He is one with whom scriptures also says in Psalm 30:2-3 “I cried to you for help, O Lord my God, and you healed me; you kept me from the grave. I was on my way to the depths below, but you restored my life.”

He is one with whom we can say with psalm 37:25 “I am an old man now; I have lived a long time, but I have never seen a good man abandoned by the Lord or his children begging for food.”

He is one who is said to have found the truth and is always self-possessed. He is said to be calm in the midst of crisis because he is convinced that it will always end in praise. We must note that calmness is the radiant light which adds a luster to all the virtues. Like the nimbus round the head of a saint, it surrounds virtue with its shinning halo. Without calmness a man’s greatest strength is but a kind of exaggerated weakness. The question is asked, where is a man’s spiritual strength-where, indeed, is his ordinary manly strength-who loses his balance with almost every petty disturbance from without? And what enduring influence can a man have who forgets himself in sinful abandonment or unseemly rage in the hour of temptation and crisis?

Beloved in Christ, we see in the gospel reading the calmness and resource exhibited by Jesus about his friend Lazarus. He didn’t hurry off but was calm and reassured his disciples that it will end in the praise of God.

Dear friends we ask, what could be the source of such calmness and resource in Jesus? Was it because he was the son of God? But he was also a man like us except sin. Let us note that word “sin.” He was a man from whom we could learn something valueable for our time in this season of lent and also for a life time. he was a man of prayer and acted on the base. One striking thing is he was without sin. So without the presence of sin he was able to function well and perform the works of God. He was pure and filled with great faith and with the power of the Holy Spirit.

We see that sin brings so much with it even when we consider it as very interesting and easy to carry out. It has so much consequence upon our life, upon our functionality as Christians. Upon our image as Son and daughters of the Lord. Upon our freedom, upon our joy and peace. That is why the second reading of today taken from St. Paul’s letter to the Romans 8:8 says; those who live in the flesh cannot please God. In another translation it says those who obey their human nature cannot please God. This holds very true beloved in Christ.

Those who do not put a check upon themselves, whose emotions and passions are their masters, who crave excitements and race after unholy pleasures-these are not yet fit for a life of joyful victory, and can neither appreciate nor receive the beautiful jewel of calmness. They may pray for peace with their lips, but they do not desire it in their hearts, or the word “peace” may only mean to them another kind of periodic pleasure which they desire to enjoy. They may appear calm but it doesn’t have depth, it is only an exaggerated calmness. They appear to be happy but it is only an exaggerated happiness because they are deriving their happiness from sin and it destroys.

In the life of calm there are no fitful periods of sinful excitement followed by reactionary hours of sorrow and remorse. There are no foolish elations followed by equal foolish depressions; no degrading actions followed by misery and loss of self-respect; but all these things are put away, and what remains is truth, and truth is forever encircled with peace.

The disciples of Jesus had to learn it. Not just the command to call lazarus  back to life but what leads to it. We must learn to learn from Jesus everyday and everytime. We could see and of course read it during the days that proceed after the easter Sunday that the fearful and cowardly disciples were now men who performed signs and wonders because they cooperated with the grace of the Holy Spirit not necessary because the holy Spirit was given but they had to cooperate with it by living sin-free life. it was with this power that they were able to organize and eliminate sin from their midst as in the case of Ananias and Sapphira in Acts 5:1-11.

Beloved in Christ, the calm life is one unbroken bliss. You notice that once sin comes into your life it scatters and disorganizes you, your goal, your dream and your vision, keeps you in bondage and makes forever gloomy and sad, miserable and forlon, dirty and in the shadows even when you appear neat on the outside. You become unnecessarily judgmental and, blind, and confused yet claiming to be wise and holy. Whereas you are just a walking corpse. You hide both from yourself and your normal duties and feel the lack of power to do your normal and ususal assignments. You see your duties as burdensome because you always want to be left alone. You are scattered.

Whereas the duties that are considered burdensome to the sinful man is considered joy to the calm man; indeed, in the calm life, the word “duty” receives a new meaning; it is no longer opposed to happiness, but it is one with happiness. The calm man, the right-seeing man, cannot separate joy from duty; such separation belongs to the mind and life of the pleasure-hunter and lover of excitement.

Calmness is difficult to attain because men cling blindly to the lower disturbances of the mind for the passing pleasure which those disturbances afford. Even sorrow is sometimes fronted in an improper way or selfish way that you are happy with your own success or another person’s failure. But though difficult to attain, the way which leads to its attainment is simple; it consists in abandoning all those excitements and disturbances which are opposed to it, and in fortifying one’s self in those steadfast virtues which do not change with changing events and circumstances, which have no violent reactions, and which therefore bestow perpetual satisfaction and abiding peace.

He only finds peace who conquers himself, who strives day by day, after greater self-possession, greater self-control, and greater calmness of the mind. One can only be a joy to himself and a blessing to others in the measure that he has command of himself; and such self-command is gained only by persistent practice. A man must conquer his weaknesses by daily effort, he must understand them and study how to eliminate them from his character, and if he continues to strive, not giving way, he will gradually become victorious and with each step of victory attained, he will be so much calm, he will be strong and capable and blessed, fit to perform his duties faultlessly, and to meet all events with an untroubled spirit. He will be able to fight the battles of life fearlessly and make the world richer with his presence.

The struggle must be daily seeking at all cost to overcome the self and as such you gain knowledge of the subtle intricacies of the mind and this divine knowledge enables him to become established in calmness. Without self-knowledge there can be no abiding peace of mind, and those who are carried away by passions cannot approach the holy place where calmness reigns. The weak man is like one who, having mounted a fiery steed, allows it to run away with him, and carry him wherever it wills, the strong man is like one who, having mounted the steed, governs it with a masterly hand, and makes it go in whatever direction, and at whatever speed he commands.

Jesus remained calm and was able to speak life even when Martha and Martha came to with tears of sorrow in their hearts. Even when the people concluded the case of Lazarus that since he had been dead for four days he would smell,, even when the crowd standing there passed cynical comments, he only gave a sigh that came straight from the heart, wept, gave thanks to God and issued forth the command and the resultant effect was that Lazarus came back to life. not only that he issued forth another command, untie him and let him go free, meaning death could not stop him, sin will not stop, whatever barriers will not stop him rather he is to walk free and this reminds us again of the first reading where the lord “behold, I will open your graves, and raise you from your graves, O my people; and I will bring you home into the land of Israel. And you shall know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves, and raise you from your graves, O my people.”

The simple truth is that we want this kind of miracle to happen in our lives where we shall gain victory over our crisis, where we shall sing and praise the name of the Lord before men and women of the goodness and wonders of the Lord, yet again the fact remains that not too many are willing to pay the true prize to get that miracle done.

God is always ready to cooperate with us, the question is are you going to be ready to cooperate with God?

In the realm of the spirit there is no delay, in the physical, what delays you or is holding you back?

God wants true worship that we may come pure, strong, capable, and blessed but are we true worshippers?

God wants faith. The question is, do you have faith in your heart? Is there any seed of doubt in you even when there is no sin in your life-do you have faith?

God desires progress. The question is, are you willing to progress, move forward or wanting to be stagnant yet claiming you want progress?

God wants you to be joy-filled. Are you experiencing true joy or is it a camouflage?

God wants you to look up to him as the resurrection and the life that there is nothing dead in you he cannot raise up. The question is, do you look up to him or you are looking at the crowd? Are you allowing the crowd disorganize and disorient you?

God wants steadfastness. The question is, are you steadfast with the Lord? or do you consider it a burden to do the things of God?

God wants you to have true peace. The question is, do you seek after true peace or is your definition of peace the absence of disturbance so that you may continue a life of sin? That is a kind of leave me alone joor it’s my life abeg I just want to keep up with this sin because I can’t do without it and I am enjoying it.

God is proud of you. The question is, are you proud of yourself? What dampens your self-worth, self-esteem, self-concept?

Dear friends, God wants you to be free, we must seek to be free and this can only be done when we depend solely on God. Material things are not what truly glorifies the presence of God in our lives but our spiritual life. so we must grow to enrich ourselves spiritually.

We pray this day, that God gives us the grace to follow him true and true we ask this though Christ our Lord. Amen.