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Fifth Sunday of Lent, Year C, March 25, 2007

First reading, Isaiah 43:16-21

"A voice cries out: In the desert prepare the way of the Lord. Make straight in the wasteland a highway for our God! Every valley shall be filled in, every mountain and hill made low ...

• The "way in the sea" and the snuffed out army and charioteers refer to the memory of how God liberated the Hebrews from slavery in Egypt, several centuries before the Babylonian Captivity.
• Those events of the past are not the only liberation to savor. A new one is afoot.
• The prospect of a trip homeward through the desert is daunting, but God will make the desert anew. Thus the drought will be relieved with springs and rivers, and the usually threatening wild animals will cower before God leading the people.

Our Liturgical Setting: Judah's situation was, on a national level, like that of the woman in today's gospel, and Jesus' response to her situation is as new, as God's response to Judah's distress in Babylon.

Your Proclamation: You're a prophet speaking for God trying to encourage a dispirited people. So:

1. You appeal to their collective memory.
2. You pepper them with quick, incisive phrases about the newness of what you're doing.
3. You address their fears about doing what you ask of them.

Then pause again, and resume a more stately pace, building to a majestic-sounding final statement of purpose, "that they might announce my praise."

Second Reading, Philippians 3:8-14

Verse by Verse: We've summarized verse 8 above.
Verse 9 ([that I may] be found in [Christ] ...) contrasts two ways one might get righteousness, that is, a right relationship with God. The failed way is "any righteousness of my own, based on [my keeping of] the law. The only real way is to accept righteousness as an undeserved gift of God's grace. Faith here means belief that Jesus Christ has won this righteousness for us. Faith also means that honest admission that I cannot keep any law well enough to earn righteousness, and the confidence that God is good enough to give it anyway.
Verse 10 (... to know him [Christ] and the power of his resurrection ...): Unfortunately, the New American Bible translation, used in most Roman Catholic churches in the U.S., appends this as a run-on sentence spilling sloppily out of verse 9. The 1972 edition of the NAB made verse 10 a separate sentence: "I wish to know Christ and the power flowing from his resurrection; likewise to know how to share in his sufferings by being formed into the pattern of his death." In any case, note that Paul loves Christ so much as to want to share in his sufferings, even in his death.
Verse 11 returns to Paul's desire to share Christ's resurrection, even now. This verse is also rendered more separately in some translations, e.g., the New Revised Standard Version: "if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead."
Verses 12 and 13: The "it" which Paul has not yet taken hold of is that righteousness. He acknowledges the progressive character of spiritual growth. But again, in a new way, he says the initiative and power are on God's side, not his own: I haven't grasped it yet, but I have been grasped by Christ.
Verse 14 reiterates the ongoing nature of the spiritual journey. The expression "forgetting what lies behind" refers to Paul's prior attempts at self-righteousness, and perhaps his persecution of the church before his conversion (mentioned in verse 6, immediately before our liturgical passage). This forgetting of the past ties this reading to today's first reading, where Judah is invited by a forgiving God to forget its past sins and their dreadful consequences, and to today's gospel, a well known, vivid story of Jesus forgiving a sinner.

Proclaiming It: This is Paul at his most candid. He speaks openly about how his theological insights came to bear on his personal life. So it calls for careful proclamation. You're speaking as if you were a man who is admitting a colossal, decades-long, well-meaning mistake. He's telling good friends (the Christians at Philippi) how his current way of life contrasts with his former way. He's emphatic about it, too.

Prepare for your proclamation by reading all of Chapter 3, studying it until you understand the development that Paul has come through. Then read these verses slowly, with contrast and emphasis so that an uninitiated listener can appreciate the development, too. Pause where your common sense, persuaded perhaps by what you're read here, tells you the logical breaks are. Don't be bound by the punctuation or lack of it in your particular lectionary.

Several other commentaries on these passages. All are thoughtful, all quite readable, from the scholarly to the popular. Links may be incomplete more than a few weeks before the "due date."
Father Roger Karban of Belleville, Illinois, USA, writes a newspaper column about every Sunday's readings. Here are his essays for today's passages, from: 1998 2001 courtesy of The Evangelist, official publication of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany, New York, USA. And here's a link to his twenty-five most recent columns, courtesy of the Fellowship of Southern Illinois Laity.	Father Frank Cleary's 2004 column on these readings, from the Saint Louis Review. Lutheran pastor and college teacher Dan Nelson's notes for a study group Dan's undated page has the heading "Lent 5."
The Text This Week; links to homilies, art works, movies and other resources on the week's scripture themes	Six essays on the readings by thoughtful, prayerful scholars from one of the USA's best Catholic liturgy websites, at Saint Louis University.

The Lectionary selections in the frame at the left, if any, are there for your convenience. The publishers of the page in that frame have no connection, except for membership in the one Body of Christ, with the publisher of this page. Likewise the publishers of the pages on the links above.