Bishop William F. Medley greets a woman during the Rite of Election and Call to Continuing Conversion celebration at St. Stephen Cathedral in Owensboro on Feb. 17, 2024. This celebration is the final step for candidates and catechumens who will enter the Catholic Church at the Easter Vigil. RILEY GREIF | WKC
Source & Summit: Fifth Sunday of Lent
(The faithful) taking part in the Eucharistic sacrifice, which is the source and summit of the whole Christian life, offer the Divine Victim to God, and themselves along with it.
-The Second Vatican Council fathers in Lumen Gentium, #11
Source & Summit is a feature of The Western Kentucky Catholic online, celebrating the National Eucharistic Revival: Year of Parish Revival. Intended to help Catholics of our parishes to probe the riches of our liturgical year and celebrate the liturgy well, the column will always start with the Bible readings for the Mass of the Day to help us reflect on, and help to “unpack” and expand our experiences at liturgy into the domestic church (the home) and the workplace.
Sunday reflections will be based on the Lord’s Day, the Liturgy, the Eucharist, and, occasionally, community.
Sunday, March 17, 2024
Fifth Sunday of Lent
https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/031724.cfm
Jeremiah 31:31-34
Psalm 51: 3-4, 12-15
Hebrews 5: 7-9
John 12:20-33
By this point in the Lenten season, I am sure that most of us are ready for Easter to hurry up and get here! Yes, Lent is a beautiful and necessary season to reflect upon God’s goodness and grace he so generously bestows upon us, but we’ve been pondering these great blessings for almost a month now. As people saved by the Paschal Mystery of Jesus, we are eager to celebrate his Resurrection from the dead! And yes, rightly so, we are eager to celebrate Jesus’ resurrection, because his resurrection is our resurrection from the dead too.
Just as we are eager to celebrate God’s saving graces in the Paschal Mystery, so too is God joyfully ready and willing to raise us to new life. The new life given to us by God is part of God’s new covenant of salvation for humanity so beautifully prefigured in the first reading from the book of the prophet Jeremiah. In this new covenant with us, God will save and restore fallen humanity once and for all in the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. The reader can sense the overflowing eagerness from God who ardently desires to save His people and draw them back to Himself. God can’t wait to save us, telling the whole of humanity “I will be their God, and they will be my people.”
Yes, the days of Holy Week, the Sacred Triduum, and the Resurrection are drawing closer. What blessed joy this brings to the hearts of God’s people. What joy it brings to God to save us! May the lifting up of Christ from the earth unite us closer to God and one another.
-Fr. Brandon Williams
Fr. Brandon is the Pastor of St. Augustine Parish in Grayson Springs, St. Anthony Parish in Peonia and St. Benedict in Wax, as well as Co-Coordinator of the Office of Worship.
To learn more about the Diocese of Owensboro’s celebration of the National Eucharistic Revival, visit https://owensborodiocese.org/eucharistic-revival/.
