14 March 2027 · Latin Rite
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“Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” John 12:24
On the Fifth Sunday of Lent the Church stands at the door of the Passion. Two weeks remain before Easter, and the readings speak of an hour, a covenant and a seed. Jeremiah lived through the collapse of everything: the Temple destroyed, the king blinded, the people deported. The covenant of Sinai lay broken, “a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, says the LORD.” Yet in that darkness God promised something no one had dared to imagine: “The days are surely coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new covenant.” It will not be written on stone tablets but within: “I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.” No one will need to teach his neighbour, “Know the LORD,” “for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest… for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.” This is the only place in the Old Testament where the words “new covenant” appear, and Jesus will take them into his hands at the Last Supper: “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.” The Psalm is the prayer of a heart that needs exactly this: “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me.”
In the Gospel some Greeks, Gentiles who had come up to worship at the Passover, approach Philip with a simple request: “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” Philip tells Andrew, and the two of them, the apostles with Greek names, bring the request to Jesus. His answer seems at first to ignore them: “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.” All through John's Gospel the hour “had not yet come.” Now, when the nations begin to arrive, it has. And Jesus explains what glory means: “Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” The Greeks will see Jesus, and the whole world will see him, but only after the seed has been buried and has risen as a harvest. Then Jesus lets us see his heart: “Now my soul is troubled. And what should I say, ‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your name.” This is John's Gethsemane. A voice from heaven answers: “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.” Some hear thunder; some think an angel has spoken. And Jesus says: “I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” He means the cross. The cross is not his defeat; it is the throne from which he draws the world.
The Letter to the Hebrews shows us the same hour from inside: “In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to the one who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission.” He was heard, not by being spared death, but by being raised from it. “Although he was a Son, he learned obedience through what he suffered,” and so became “the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him.” This is the law written on the heart: the Son's obedience, poured into us by the Holy Spirit. Jesus does not ask us to do what he has not done: “Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also.” Every Christian life is a grain of wheat. We die a little in every act of self-giving, every forgiven injury, every Lenten sacrifice, and God turns it into fruit. Where there are catechumens, the Church today reads the Gospel of Lazarus and celebrates the Third Scrutiny, praying that the elect may be freed from the power of death. Both Gospels say the same: Jesus is “the resurrection and the life,” and the grave is the place where God's harvest begins. From today, in many churches, the crosses are veiled. It is a fast of the eyes, so that on Good Friday we may look on the Crucified with new hearts.
Theme: “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.”
A covenant written on the heart, a clean heart created, the nations seeking Jesus, and the seed that dies to bear fruit.
“But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.” Jeremiah 31:33
“And he did the same with the cup after supper, saying, “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.” Luke 22:20
Apply: At Mass this week, at the words over the chalice, renew your covenant with God in your heart.
“Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me.” Psalm 51:10
“So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!” 2 Corinthians 5:17
Apply: Make your Easter confession this week, before Holy Week begins.
“I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.” Isaiah 49:6
“They came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, and said to him, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.”” John 12:21
Apply: Invite one person to come with you to a Holy Week service.
“When you make his life an offering for sin, he shall see his offspring, and shall prolong his days;” Isaiah 53:10
“Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” John 12:24
Apply: Offer one hidden sacrifice each day until Easter, as a grain of wheat for someone you love.
God writes a new covenant on our hearts in the blood of Christ and creates in us clean hearts.
The world wishes to see Jesus, and it sees him lifted up on the cross, the grain of wheat that bears the harvest of Easter.
Take-home resolution: Make a good confession before Holy Week and offer one hidden sacrifice each day until Easter.
Dear brothers and sisters, today Jeremiah speaks to a people whose covenant with God lay broken. And God says: the days are surely coming… when I will make a new covenant (Jeremiah 31:31). Not on stone, but on the heart: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts.
At the Last Supper Jesus took a cup and said: this cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood. At every Mass that covenant is renewed. And God's promise comes true: I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.
In the Gospel some Greeks come and say to Philip: sir, we wish to see Jesus (John 12:21). That is the longing of every human heart. And Jesus answers: the hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.
But what kind of glory? Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit (John 12:24). The glory of Jesus is the cross. His soul is troubled, as Hebrews says, with loud cries and tears; yet he says: Father, glorify your name. And from the cross he will draw all people to himself.
Every Christian is called to be a grain of wheat. Whoever serves me must follow me. We die a little each time we forgive, each time we give without being thanked, each time we choose God over ourselves. It feels like loss. It is really a harvest.
Today, in many churches, the crosses are veiled, and in some the Church celebrates the Third Scrutiny with the Gospel of Lazarus. Let us pray for the elect. And let us pray the Psalm with all our heart: create in me a clean heart, O God. Then, at Easter, we will see Jesus. Amen.
Children, Jesus held up a seed of wheat and said: if this seed is planted in the ground, it can grow into a big plant with lots of new seeds!
Jesus is like that seed. He died on the cross and rose again, and now his life is in all of us. When we share and forgive, we are seeds of love too.
By your help, we beseech you, Lord our God, may we walk eagerly in that same charity with which, out of love for the world, your Son handed himself over to death. Who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever. Amen. Let us also pray: Lord Jesus, grain of wheat buried for us, write your new covenant on our hearts. Create in us clean hearts, draw us to yourself from the cross, and call the elect out of every tomb into the life of Easter. Amen.
This Fifth Sunday of Lent, in the Year B readings, brings us to the threshold of the Passion, and the four readings tell of a new covenant and of what it costs. Jeremiah promises that God will write his law on the heart. The psalm asks for exactly that: “Create in me a clean heart, O God.” Hebrews shows Jesus in prayer, “with loud cries and tears”, learning obedience through suffering. And John brings some Greeks to the door, and Jesus answers with the picture of a grain of wheat falling into the ground.
The readings move from promise to price. A new heart is what God offers, and the Cross is how he gives it. Next Sunday the Church will carry palms and read the Passion. The key words today are heart, obedience and hour.
Setting.
Chapters 30–31 of Jeremiah are often called his Book of Consolation. They stand in a book mostly filled with warnings, and many scholars connect them with the years around the fall of Jerusalem to Babylon. The prophet had lived through King Josiah's reform (about 622 BC), yet Judah's sin is still “engraved on the tablet of their hearts” (17:1). Now he looks past the catastrophe.
“The house of Israel and the house of Judah” means the whole people, the northern kingdom that fell in 722/721 BC and the southern kingdom, whose ruin Jeremiah saw. This is the only place in the Old Testament that uses the words “new covenant”. The idea has close companions in Ezekiel 36:26 and Deuteronomy 30:6.
Structure.
Key words.
Verse by verse.
“The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah.” (31:31)
God speaks these words to Israel. Jesus takes them up at the Last Supper (Luke 22:20; 1 Corinthians 11:25), and the priest repeats them at every Mass over the chalice: “the Blood of the new and eternal covenant”.
“It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand … though I was their husband, says the Lord.” (31:32)
“By the hand” is the picture of a parent and a small child. “Their husband” translates bā‘altî, which can also mean “their master”; the POC reads “their Lord”. The Greek Old Testament, which Hebrews 8:9 follows, has a different sense here: “I had no concern for them.”
“I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts;” (31:33)
At Sinai God wrote on stone (Exodus 31:18). Here the writing surface is a person. St Augustine, in his work On the Spirit and the Letter, says that what is written on the heart is the presence of the Holy Spirit himself, who pours out love (in substance).
“for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.” (31:34)
This is the reason for everything before it, for the verse begins “for”. The new covenant starts with mercy. God's “not remembering” does not mean that he forgets; it means that he no longer holds the sin against us.
How the Church reads it.
The Catechism teaches that the New Law, the law of the Gospel, fulfils this promise: it is an interior law of charity (CCC 1965), and, in St Thomas Aquinas's words, “the grace of the Holy Spirit given to the faithful through faith in Christ” (CCC 1966). Hebrews 8:8–12 quotes the whole passage. The Church also insists that “the Old Covenant has never been revoked” (CCC 121), and that the Jewish people remain beloved of God (Nostra Aetate 4; CCC 839). So we read Jeremiah's promise with gratitude to the people to whom it was first spoken.
Setting.
The Miserere, as it is called from its first word in Latin, is the most famous of the penitential psalms. Its heading links it with David after Nathan confronted him over Bathsheba and Uriah (2 Samuel 12). Many scholars think that it reached its present form later, perhaps around the exile, which would explain its last verses on the rebuilding of Jerusalem. It is the prayer of anyone who has sinned and knows it.
The Lectionary takes the opening plea and the second half, skipping the confession of vv. 3–9, so that it answers Jeremiah directly.
Structure.
Key words.
Verse by verse.
“Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love;” (51:1)
The first word is a plea, not a defence.
“Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me.” (51:10)
This is Jeremiah's promise turned into a prayer. What God said he would do, the sinner now asks him to do.
“Do not cast me away from your presence, and do not take your holy spirit from me.” (51:11)
The worst thing the psalmist can imagine is not punishment but separation from God.
“Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and sustain in me a willing spirit.” (51:12)
Repentance is meant to end in joy. Lent is not a season for a gloomy heart.
How the Church reads it.
The Catechism says that interior conversion is above all the work of God's grace, who gives us the strength to begin anew, and that the human heart needs God to give it a new heart (CCC 1431–1432). The Latin Church prays this psalm at Morning Prayer each Friday in the Liturgy of the Hours, and Psalm 51 has long been a prayer for those preparing to go to Confession.
Setting.
Hebrews calls itself a “word of exhortation” (13:22), and it was addressed to Christians who were growing tired. The author is not named. Chapters 4–5 have just said that we have a high priest who can “sympathize with our weaknesses” and who was tested in every way, “yet without sin” (4:15). A high priest must be chosen from among mortals and able to deal gently with the weak (5:1–2). These three verses show that Jesus truly is one of us.
Structure.
Key words.
Verse by verse.
“In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to the one who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission.” (5:7)
The scene recalls Gethsemane (Mark 14:33–36), and today's Gospel gives John's version of it (12:27). “He was heard”, and yet he died. The Greek for “from death” can mean “out of death”: the Father did not spare him the grave, but he brought him through it in the Resurrection. The Catechism says that all the troubles of humanity for all time are gathered up in this cry, and that the Father answers them by raising his Son (CCC 2606).
“Although he was a Son, he learned obedience through what he suffered;” (5:8)
The Catechism applies this to us: if the Son learned obedience in this way, how much more should we, who are sinners and creatures (CCC 2825). See the question below.
“and having been made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him,” (5:9)
The obedience runs both ways: he obeyed the Father, and those who are saved obey him. Salvation is his gift, and we receive it by following him.
How the Church reads it.
The Church confesses that Christ has two wills, divine and human, and that his human will follows his divine will without resistance (Third Council of Constantinople; CCC 475). The horror of death that he felt in the garden (CCC 612) shows that his humanity is real. The Fathers defended this truth; St Gregory of Nazianzus gave the reason: what has not been assumed has not been healed (Letter 101). When we pray at Mass in our own distress, we are praying with one who has been there.
Setting.
This is the last Passover of Jesus' life (12:1). He has entered Jerusalem to the crowd's acclaim (12:12–19), and the Pharisees have just said, “Look, the world has gone after him!” (12:19). Immediately, in John's telling, some Greeks appear. They are probably Gentiles who worship the God of Israel, sometimes called “God-fearers”, and not Greek-speaking Jews, for John's word is Hellēnes.
Philip and Andrew are the only two of the Twelve with Greek names, and Philip comes from Bethsaida, a town near the Gentile territory (1:44). John does not say whether the Greeks ever reached Jesus. Their request simply sets off his answer: the hour has come, and through it the nations will come.
Structure.
Key words.
Verse by verse.
“They came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, and said to him, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.”” (12:21)
In John “to see” often means more than eyesight: to see is to come to believe. These words are the request of every seeker, and of every congregation before a preacher.
“Jesus answered them, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.” (12:23)
They ask to see him, and he says, in effect: you will see me on the Cross. Whoever wants to know Jesus has to look there.
“Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” (12:24)
A law of nature serves as a parable of Jesus' own death. In the granary a seed is safe, but it stays alone. St Augustine says that Christ himself was the grain that had to die and be multiplied (Tractates on John 51, in substance). St Ignatius of Antioch, on his way to the beasts in Rome, called himself God's wheat, to become the pure bread of Christ (To the Romans 4).
“Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.” (12:25)
The same law now applies to us. It is not contempt for God's gift of life, which is good; it means refusing to make our own life the highest thing. See the question below.
““Now my soul is troubled. And what should I say … ‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour.” (12:27)
John does not describe the agony in the garden; it is here. The fear is real: the Greek verb speaks of deep inner disturbance, and the words recall the Greek form of Psalms 6:3 and 42:6. His decision is not an absence of fear, but obedience in the midst of it, which is just what Hebrews describes.
“Father, glorify your name.” Then a voice came from heaven, “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.”” (12:28)
This is the only voice from heaven in John's Gospel. This prayer takes the place of “save me”, and it is John's counterpart to the first petition of the Our Father.
“now the ruler of this world will be driven out.” (12:31)
At the moment when the world seems to be judging Jesus, the true judgment is taking place. Victory over the devil is won once for all at this hour (CCC 2853).
“And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.”” (12:32)
A note on the text. Most copies read “all people”, as the NRSV and the POC do. Some early manuscripts and the Latin Vulgate read “all things”. The coming of the Greeks is the first fruit of this promise: the pull of the Cross has no borders.
How the Church reads it.
The Catechism says that Christ's being lifted up on the Cross signifies and begins his lifting up in the Ascension (CCC 662), and that the gathering of all people into the Kingdom is accomplished through it (CCC 542). St Leo the Great exclaims in a Passion sermon: you drew all things to yourself, Lord, when you were lifted up; the Cross is the source of all blessing (in substance). The grain of wheat also speaks of the Eucharist: the grain that dies becomes the bread of the altar and feeds the whole Church.
How could the Son of God “learn obedience”? Was he ever disobedient?
No. Hebrews itself says that he was “without sin” (4:15). As God the Son he always shared the Father's will. As man he had a real human life, with a human will and a human way of learning (CCC 472, 475). Learning here does not mean moving from disobedience to obedience. It means living out obedience in a human life, in the conditions of suffering, all the way to death. So he knows from within what obedience costs us.
Does Jesus really tell us to hate our lives?
“Hate” is a Semitic way of saying “love less”, as Luke 14:26 and Matthew 10:37 show when placed together. Jesus does not teach contempt for life, for the body or for ourselves, since God made these good, and the Church defends every human life. He teaches that when our own survival or comfort becomes the highest good, we lose what we are trying to keep. Those who give themselves find life, and martyrs, parents and quiet servants of the poor all know this.
Does the “new covenant” mean that God has replaced Israel?
No. The Second Vatican Council said that the Jews remain very dear to God, who does not take back his gifts and his call (Nostra Aetate 4; compare Romans 11:29), and the Catechism says that the Old Covenant has never been revoked (CCC 121). Jeremiah speaks of a new covenant with “the house of Israel and the house of Judah”, and Christians believe that in Jesus this promise is fulfilled and opened to the nations. So Christians confess Jesus as the Messiah of Israel and the mediator of the new covenant, and do so without contempt, gratefully and with hope.
In the Latin Church this is the Sunday of the Third Scrutiny for adults preparing for Baptism at the Easter Vigil. In those parishes the Year A readings, with the raising of Lazarus, may be used, and the Church prays that the elect be delivered from the power of sin and death. Where the custom is kept, crosses and images in the church may be veiled from this Sunday, and on the weekdays of this week the Preface at Mass is of the Passion of the Lord. In the last days before Palm Sunday, a good Confession is the plainest way of asking for Jeremiah's new heart.