General. The day is fast approaching when we commemorate the Passion and Death of the Son of God on the Cross. All his life consisted of an ever-going walk to Jerusalem, so that He might there do the Father’s Will and die on the Cross. This Holy Rood was a source of scandal to Jews and an incongruity to Greeks. Jesus, who very well knew what lay hidden in man’s heart, spoke out in full truth and penetrated deeply into humanity by preaching and healing. In the same manner as Christ’s life was fully centred on the Cross, so should our life if only we understand that the wheat seed can produce a hundredfold if it falls on fertile ground and dies unto itself (its existence as a seed). A very remindful concept of what the Eucharist is indeed all about.

Jeremiah. God wants to make a new Pact with us by writing His law on the flesh of our hearts and be our only God. Although He leads us away from the pagan idols which take over our lives and takes us out from the land of Egypt where we are held as slaves, we often break His pact and turn back to the golden calf which we had denied in Baptism. Yet in the new pact of forgiveness which God is ever prepared to renew with us, He will no longer recall our past evil doing.

Epistle to the Hebrews. As Jesus also had a human nature, he was also fearful of death, as in Gethsemane, and prayed the Father not to drink from the cup (where lots were cast, meaning the future event) which He had prepared for him. Yet Jesus had by now learnt from the past painful events of his life that to obey really meant to do God’s Will and it is for this reason that the Father made him Lord (Kurios) over all creaton and empowered him to save humanity if only a person believes in Him and listens to His Word.

St John. When the hour arrived that the Son of man was to be glorified, this had to come through in the same way like when the kernel of a seed dies to give an abundance of growth and fruit. When Jesus entered God’s Will and was raised on the Cross, he drew the all humanity towards him to serve God and follow him towards life everlasting which only dying unto oneself by mortification can give.

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