The Hour of the Lord

 

  The Hour of the Lord

    Jer 31:31-34; Heb 5:7-9; Jn 12:20-33 (B Lent 5)

   “Now the hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified”

 
The “hour” is prominent theme in the Gospel of John. Although the word “hour” (hōra), refers simply a chronological time of 60 minute period of time but Jesus “hour” refers to the metaphorically to the climactic event of his death and glorification.
 
When Mother Mary asked Jesus to help the wedding at Cana, he said, “My hour has not yet come” (Jn 2:4). He acknowledged his hour would come. It shaped him from the beginning. When he went up to Jerusalem privately for the Feast of Booths, he said, “My time has not yet come” (Jn 7:6). Once he began to teach publicly, it wasn’t long before “They were seeking to arrest him, but no one laid a hand on him.” Why was he spared? John explains: “Because his hour had not yet come” (Jn 7:30). Again when he was in the holy city and “taught in the temple; but no one arrested him.” The evangelist John explains his invincibility: “Because his hour had not yet come” (Jn 8:20).
 
But when Jesus finally came to this prescient Passover week, he knew it and said, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” (Jn 12:23–24). When Jesus reclined with his disciples in the upper room to prepare them for his departure, he knew this was the hour (Jn 13:1). As he began his magnificent, high-priestly prayer that Thursday night, he prayed, “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you” (Jn 17:1).
 
He did not run from it. He embraced it. This was His Time. It was what He was put on earth to do. He would stand against evil. We all have hours, and we have our hour. We have many times in our lives when we have to stand up for God and be whom we are. During Lent we have been asking ourselves, “Am I the person that God wants me to be? Do I try to reflect the image of God within me, or am I untrue to my very self. There are many temptations, many ways that we are tempted to hedge on our commitment to Christ.
 
St. Agnes was probably only 12 when she refused to embrace paganism and was tortured to death. Old St. Ignatius of Antioch was probably in his 70's or 80's when he would not let his friends bribe the Romans to save him from being thrown to the wild animals in the Roman Colosseum. How did she get to that point of her life that she was ready for her hour? She did it by choosing Christ at the various moments, the various hours of her life. She was prepared. Perhaps our hour will only be the sum total of the choices we have made in our lives which we present to the Lord when this life is over. The big question is: Are we ready? We are called to live and die for Christ. This is our time. This is our hour.
 
                    “The cross of the Lord is become the tree of life for us” (DO)