Sunday 7 April 2019
FIFTH SUNDAY OF LENT 2019
Morning Masses 8.30am Said & 10.15am Sung Parish Mass
12 Noon- Sung Ordinariate Use
for Passion Sunday
6pm Evening Said Mass
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Thursday 11th April 11.30am Ordinariate Chrism Mass
at Our Lady of the Assumption and St Gregory,Warwick Street W1
Principal Celebrant H.E.Archbishop-The Papal Nuncio
NO EVENING MASS THIS WEEK
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Something New: Scott Hahn Reflects on the
Fifth Sunday of Lent
Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo, Christ and the Woman Caught in Adultery, c. 1750-1753
Isaiah 43:16–21
Psalm 126:1–6
Philippians 3:8–14
John 8:1–11
The Liturgy this Lent has shown us the God of the Exodus. He is a
mighty and gracious God, Who out of faithfulness to His covenant has
done “great things” for His people, as today’s Psalm puts it.
But the “things of long ago,” Isaiah tells us in today’s First
Reading, are nothing compared to the “something new” that He will do in
the future.
Today’s First Reading and Psalm look back to the marvelous deeds of
the Exodus. Both see in the Exodus a pattern and prophecy of the future,
when God will restore the fortunes of His people fallen in sin. The
readings today look forward to a still greater Exodus, when God will
gather in the exiled tribes of Israel that had been scattered to the
four winds, the ends of the earth.
The new Exodus that Israel waited and hoped for has come in the death
and resurrection of Jesus. Like the adulterous woman in today’s Gospel,
all have been spared by the Lord’s compassion. All have heard His words
of forgiveness, His urging to repentance, to be sinners no more. Like
Paul in today’s Epistle, Christ has taken possession of every one,
claimed each as a child of our heavenly Father.
In the Church, God has formed a people for Himself to announce His
praise, just as Isaiah said He would. And as Isaiah promised, He has
given His “chosen people” living waters to drink in the desert
wastelands of the world (see John 7:37–39).
But our God is ever a God of the future, not of the past. We are to
live with hopeful hearts, “forgetting what lies behind but straining
forward to what lies ahead,” as Paul tells us. His salvation, Paul says,
is power in the present, “the power of His resurrection.”
We are to live awaiting a still greater and final Exodus, pursuing
“the goal, the prize of God’s upward calling,” striving in faith to
attain the last new thing God promises—”the resurrection of the dead.”
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