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Fifth Sunday in Lent Jn 12/20-33 |
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| Background: It is characteristic of John’s style that he uses the incident of Philip and the Greeks as an occasion for mystical and theological reflection and neglects to tell us whether Jesus talked to the Greeks and what they said to one another. John is less interested in history as we understand it than he is in meaning. The meaning her is patent: Jesus is facing his own death and telling us how to face our own death. We must give up life, not cling to it, so that we will find life. Only those who do not clutch life desperately will live – whether at the end of life or during every day of their life. |
read the padre |
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Story: Stephen Spielberg’s Always (1989), a remake of a 1943 film A Guy Named Joe (featuring Spencer Tracy, Irene Dunne and Van Johnson) is perhaps the worst film ever made about God but with (for this sociologist) one of the more wondrous images of God -- Audrey Hepburn. The hot shot fire-fighter pilot(Richard Dreyfus) is killed and his wife (Holly Hunter) finds a new lover (Brad Johnson). But Dreyfus refuses to accept his death and keeps coming back from the dead to interfere with the relationship, although a being-in-white with whom he is in dialogue in another world begs him not to do so. Rather she says, with infinite gentleness and affection, he should give up the past and go on to what is yet to come. The W(w)oman finally wins his surrender. His wife has her new love and he goes on to whatever is next. Audrey Hepburn (even if she is only an angel working for God) is an appealing metaphor for the womanly love of God, a God who cares deeply, patiently, tenderly and with that gentle amusement which women usually display towards the other and child-like gender of the species. |
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