FIFTH SUNDAY OF LENT; PASSION SUNDAY 21st MARCH

 FIFTH SUNDAY OF LENT

PASSION SUNDAY
21st MARCH



The fifth Sunday of Lent is the start of Passiontide, the two week period leading up to Good Friday, culminating in Easter Sunday, in which the focus of Holy Mother Church turns to the Passion of Our Lord - the word “Passion” from the Latin, meaning “suffering”.
From today until Holy Saturday, after Grace and at the finish of each decade of the Rosary, (instead of the Gloria Patri), is said:
V. Christus factus est pro nobis obediens usque ad mortem.
R. Mortem autem crucis.
[V. Christ was obedient unto death.
R. Death by the Cross].
The Church enters a mournful period of the Liturgy, more solemn than the hitherto reflective period of the Lenten preparation.
The statues are veiled and remain covered until the Easter Vigil on Holy Saturday, specifically at the singing of the Gloria. The statues and pictures are covered with a plain, unornamented violet veil before Vespers on the Saturday preceding, with the exception of the Stations of the Cross. This remains no matter what feast days occur during that period, until the Gloria in excelsis on Holy Saturday, where Christ fully reveals His Divinity.
The Gloria is omitted in the Asperges. The Gospel today is from St John 8: 46-59, which culminates, significantly with the following passage:
“If I glorify Myself, My glory is nothing: it is My Father that glorifieth Me, of whom you say that He is your God, and you have not known Him: but I know Him: and if I say that I know Him not, I shall be like you, a liar. But I do know Him and do keep His word. Abraham your father rejoiced that he might see My day: he saw it and was glad.
The Jews therefore said to Him: Thou art not yet fifty years old: and hast Thou seen Abraham?
Jesus said to them: Amen, amen, I say to you, before Abraham was made, I am.
They took up stones therefore to cast at Him: but Jesus hid Himself, and went out of the Temple.”
The words: “Jesus hid Himself” in Latin: “Jesus autem abscondit” were the traditional time in the Papal Chapel that the veiling took place: The veiling is a symbolic representation for the fact that Christ no longer publicly walked among His people during this time. Even more significantly, it is symbolic of His Divinity, from that time, "Jesus autem abscondit", hidden until revealed by His Resurrection. The veiling of His Divinity is the more nuanced because it is by this Gospel passage of John that Christ specifically, (and, to the Sanhedrin, blasphemously), points to His Divine identity: “before Abraham was, I AM “(John 8:58).
By these words, Jesus was claiming as His own the Divine Name that had been revealed to Moses (see Exodus 3:14). This was the name of God that was so holy that it was forbidden to be spoken, except by the priest in the Temple. Our Lord is saying that He existed before Abraham, that He is the same Divine identity as that revealed to Moses. That He is God.
The liturgy of the Church is directed to His Passion from this day, culminating in Holy Week. His Passion is the suffering of Christ the man who died for our sakes. In the words of St Thomas Aquinas, Adore Te:
"On the Cross Thy Godhead made no sign to men,
Here Thy very manhood steals from human ken:
Both are my confession, both are my belief,
And I pray the prayer of the dying thief."
It is a good custom for the home to reflect the liturgical seasons - to veil the crucifixes and statues in the home and the home altar during this period as part of the Lenten meditation on His Passion; to reflect on the solemn events and the total commitment of love that Christ engaged in for each of us as the Sacrificial Lamb of God.
Image from: catholic company post on Lent

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