5th Sunday of Lent Year A
With the Lord there is Mercy and Redemption
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.
Act of Spiritual Communion
My Jesus,
I believe that you are present in this Holy Sacrament of the altar.
I love you above all things
and I passionately desire to receive you into my soul.
Since I cannot now receive you sacramentally,
come spiritually into my soul
so that I may unite myself wholly to you now and forever.
Amen.
Although our liturgy brings us nearer this week to the climax of Passiontide, our readings are full of hope and life.
In our First Reading, the people of Israel are exiled in Babylon. The prophet tells them that God will put a new spirit in them and raise them from their graves.
The Psalm is a prayer of trust in God, who is full of mercy and compassion. He will redeem Israel.
In the Second Reading, St Paul tells us that because we have received the Spirit of Christ, then ‘he who raised Jesus from the dead will give life to your own mortal bodies.’
The Gospel unites all these themes of mercy and trust, of death and life, of redemption and resurrection, in the miracle of the raising of Lazarus from the dead. This great sign of Jesus being ‘the resurrection and the life’ leads us into the coming weeks.
As we contemplate these readings this week, may we draw closer to our Lord and accompany him as he sets his face towards Jerusalem.
