This is the third Scrutiny Sunday and again we hear from the Gospel of John, this Scrutiny Sunday we face, in the gospel, the third scrutiny challenge which comes from death—which can be a challenge and obstacle to our own Catholic faith lived well. No matter who we are we will all face the challenge of death as it relates to trusting and believing in God. We will have to deal with the death of a loved one—perhaps a child or dear spouse, the loss of a parent far too early in life or we will watch someone we love suffer in great pain. At some point we too will face our own mortality and have to struggle in faith with how well we lived our life as a Christian. These are great challenges to faith. And as the Scrutiny’s ask us: what are the obstacles to faith and how do we look to the power of Jesus Christ to overcome these obstacles and lead us into deeper belief? All of us will, if we are lucky, have a chance to review our lives as think about the most important aspects of life, the things we did or failed to do, and the things we would do differently IF we could only have a “do over.”

It would be interesting to ask ourselves what was the most important day of my life? Some might answer: the day I fell in love or was married. Others might say the day my child was born and I became a parent. Again others might say, if they were a priest, my Ordination day, and the possibilities for answering that question might be as many as there are people to ask.
But for the Christian, the most important day of our human life is the day of our Baptism. (Fr. James Sullivan, a priest of the Archdiocese of Hartford, mentioned this at our Priests’ Penance Service at Holy Family Monastery last week). Baptism is the day not when God first loved us, for that happened before we were even formed in our mother’s womb, but on the day of our Baptism our hearts were first opened to the working of God’s Grace, the indelible mark of the Holy Spirit that washes away sin and instills in us the grace of God so that our hearts might become open to
accepting His Will for our own lives—a direction is given and a yearning is offered for the desire to love God freely and openly so that we may become His lover and follower in this world and the next. This is an amazing day for us! And what is God’s Will for us?

In today’s Gospel we hear that answer. Today Jesus encounters Lazarus’ sisters, Martha and Mary, who are mourning their brother’s death. Jesus too is overwhelmed at the loss of His friend. It is one of the more emotional gospel accounts. And it highlights God’s love and desire for us to be with Him for all eternity, to share in His Divine Life and to live as children of the Light forever in the Kingdom of Heaven—but the “light building” begins at our Baptism and continues and grows during and throughout our entire human life. We are given the grace of God at Baptism to begin this journey BUT the journey grows and continues throughout the whole of our Christian Catholic life.

As Fr. Sullivan said to us priests, while our physical bodies meet their peak in the mid-20s to early 30s, because of the grace of God our spiritual peak can continue to grow in our 80s and 90s and beyond—in fact it will continue to grow until we see and meet the face of God. This is the indelible mark of Baptism, the grace of God which is nurtured and strengthened by the sacramental life of the Church and through our growth in understanding the Word of God and in-and-through the power and life of the Community of Believers—the Church—in which we live and participate.

So let us take this Fifth Week of Lent, the third of the Scrutiny Sundays, and look more deeply at our own faith lives and ask ourselves those two important questions—a sort of self-scrutinizing: what are my personal obstacles to faith, and how can I look anew at the power of Christ to overcome these obstacles and move into a deeper relationship with Christ and His Father, my Lord and my God. In answering these two questions we will review how we live out our Catholic faith, how we incorporate it into our daily activities of life. For in the end, when we meet Him face-to-face, we will depend on His Mercy certainly; but can we depend on having done the best we could have hoped for. There is an old saying that as one gets older has more meaning: there is not time like the present. Amen! It is still Lent.