DOWN BUT LIFTED UP; DEAD BUT BROUGHT BACK TO LIFE
Sunday Morning Worship / Gospel Reflection / Catholic Homily 4th Sunday of Lent Year B March 22, 2009 It was the lowest point in the history of the chosen people of God! Worse than the situation they were in, there was none… being on exile, being far from the land promised to their forefathers, far from the temple, far from what they have gotten used to, far from the familiar sights and sounds of home, far from the security that comes from the knowledge that what one does is never foreign, never strange to anybody around him or her. The chosen people of God were down in the depths of communal humiliation and suffering… at Babylon, where the purity of their faith could not find perfect expression. “ By the rivers of Babylon, there they sat and wept, on the poplars that grew there, there they hung up their harps.” On top of all this, Jerusalem, the holy city was left in ruins, destroyed by the gentile conquerors. The Israelites, for all intents and purposes, were “pitched past pitch o...