4th Sunday of Lent (30/03/2025): O God, who through your Word reconcile the human race to yourself in a wonderful way, grant, we pray, that with prompt devotion and eager faith the Christian people may hasten toward the solemn celebrations to come. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever.
Commentary on the 4th Sunday of Lent Mass Readings, (30/03/2025), Cycle C:
The First Reading is taken from the book of Joshua, 5:9, 10-12. Today’s reading recounts the celebration of the Passover in the Promised Land by Joshua and those who had sojourned with him in the desert for 40 years.
The Second Reading is from the second letter of Paul to the Corinthians, 5:17-21. The reconciliation of mankind with God has been brought about by Christ’s death on the cross. Jesus, who is like men in all things “yet without sinning” bore the sins of men and offered himself on the cross as an atoning sacrifice for all those sins, thereby reconciling men to God; through this sacrifice we became the righteousness of God.
The Gospel is from St. Luke 15:1-3, 11-32. This reading recounts the parable of the Prodigal Son, one of Jesus’ most beautiful parables. It teaches us once more that God is a kind and understanding Father. The son who asks for his part of the inheritance is a symbol of the person who cuts himself off from God through sin. “Although the word ‘mercy’ does not appear, [this parable] nevertheless expresses the essence of the divine mercy in a particularly clear way” (John Paul II, Dives in misericordia, 5).
Mercy — as Christ has presented it in the parable of the prodigal son — has the interior form of the love that in the New Testament is called agape. This love is able to reach down to every prodigal son, to every human misery, and above all to every form of moral misery, to sin. When this happens, the person who is the object of mercy does not feel humiliated, but rather found again and ‘restored to value’. The father first and foremost expresses to him his joy, that he has been ‘found again’ and that he has ‘returned to life’. This joy indicates a good that has remained intact: even if he is a prodigal, a son does not cease to be truly his father’s son; it also indicates a good that has been found again, which in the case of the prodigal son was his return to the truth about himself” (Dives in misericordia, 6).
Laetare Sunday: Jerusalem, Our Mother
Easter is coming! With childlike joy the Church begins to count the days. Just as on the third Sunday of Advent we felt the thrill and happiness of Christmas, so now we anticipate the joy of Easter. Herein lies the whole significance of Laetare Sunday. It brings to the catechumens a foretaste of the good things they will receive at Easter: e.g., the grace of divine worship, a new spiritual mother in holy Church, the Eucharist as the true manna. And we, the faithful, awaken in our breasts a new consciousness of these tremendous blessings.
Easter will soon be here! That is the new theme which permeates and dominates this Sunday’s liturgy. From it all other motifs and topics take their inspiration. Christ, the new Moses, provides heavenly manna, the Eucharist, for His disciples. He leads them to the heavenly Jerusalem, the Church, and makes them God’s free children.
1. A Day of Joy. This Sunday has a unique distinction in the Church year — a day of joy in the season of penance and sorrow! The priest may wear a rose coloured chasuble, the organ may play, deacon and subdeacon are clothed in festive vestments. All the Mass texts ring with joy; the entrance song is a joyous shout, “Laetare — rejoice!” The Church has the following reasons for the happiness in her soul.
a) In the oldest period the Lenten fast at Rome did not begin until Monday of the third week preceding Easter; today then was a kind of Mardi Gras. Later, when the observance was extended to forty days, this Sunday became Mid-Lent — again reason for a pause and relaxation.
b) The ancient Church rejoiced in her catechumens, whose rebirth was close at hand. She was filled with maternal joy at the prospect of a large family. It is this spirit which gives a joyful colouring to all the older liturgy of Lent.
c) Today’s celebration is a preview of Easter, we can not quell our joyous expectation as we anticipate the sacred feast. The Gospel says emphatically: “Easter is near!”
d) This Sunday has also a Eucharistic character—an ancient Corpus Christi. Christ is about to establish His family; through blood and sweat He obtains our daily Bread, the fruit of HIs suffering. The Gospel makes this clear. Christ is the new Moses who in the desert of life gives us heavenly manna.
e) Finally, this Sunday is a nature feast. It is springtime and we are happy over the resurrection of nature. The heavenly Father is about to effect the multiplication of bread upon our fields. In the liturgy, however, springtime in nature is merely a figure of the holy spring that with Easter comes into the land of the baptised. The sign of the Church’s ver sacrum is the rose, the golden rose blessed today by the Holy Father. Surely there are many and good reasons for the joy surging through Christendom today.
The Golden Rose. It may perhaps seem strange to find the Church in a mood so devoid of sadness and penance during this season of austerity and mortification. Nevertheless today, the fourth Sunday of Lent, the last before Passiontide, she is ringingly jubilant, “Laetare,” as the Sunday is called, means “rejoice.” Nor is this in any way unnatural because joy and sorrow so often are very close together in the human heart! How frequently joy is born of suffering, how frequently bitter grief crashes our joy! Think, for example, of a mother’s pain and happiness, of her joys and worries.
This intricate rhythm of suffering and joy is pointed out for us today by the symbol of the rose. In ancient times Christians brought roses for each other as gifts. Today the Pope blesses the golden rose and delivers a discourse on its symbolism.
a) First of all, I see in the rose a beautiful indication of the closeness between joy and suffering; for with roses come thorns. Should it not fill us with wonder that nature adds thorns to the most beautiful flower of all, the queen of flowers? Do not overlook the great lesson God is hereby teaching.
b) The rosebush is a beautiful representation for the Easter cycle with its two extremes, sorrow over sin and fervent paschal joy. First the thorns grow, then the roses bloom. First we must pass through the thorny period of Lent, first we must hear that sin has banished us to a thorny earth; then, at Easter, the Church opens for us the door of paradise, lush with roses.
c) It was the same for our blessed Saviour whose life was very much like the rose. His public career was a thorny bush; yes, in His passion a pricking, piercing wreath was entwined about His sacred head. Along the trunk of the Cross this thornbush grew and its buds did not break open before the stone was rolled back. But suffering was not an end in itself; for Jesus it was only the means of redemption, the sharp point to lance the swell of mankind’s guilt, the dark gate to resurrection — His own and that of all God’s children. The rose-bush, then, tells us of our Saviour’s passion and glory.
d) Christ leads, we follow. Christ first, Christians immediately after. Human life is a thorny bush climbing up the tree of the Cross. Self-denial is one sharp thorn, taking up your cross, i.e., embracing all the sorrows and duties and burdens of life, is another. But God promises you roses in return, “Whoever loses his life on earth, will find true, divine life.” The rose is the harbinger of holy spring which now has come to our souls. As springtime in nature awakens life, so the Church’s spring awakens a God-filled life of grace in all Christ’s members. Catechumens, penitents, and faithful are desiring “life in abundance.” And its realization brings unspeakable joy!
Dr. Pius Parsch, The Church’s Year of Grace: Septuagesima to Holy Saturday