5LB21. Jeremiah 31:31-34. God’s Chosen People had chosen not to keep their covenant with their God. Because of their disobedience they were punished by being taken off as captives to Babylonia. However, God promises a new covenant that is no longer written on stone or scrolls as it was with their ancestors but now written “upon their hearts.” “I will be their God, and they shall be my people.” He shall be and is Lord and Master over us as a loving Father; and we, His obedient and devoted sons and daughters.

John 12:20-33. Greeks come to speak to Jesus. Without listening to what they have to say, Jesus speaks to them as though they were people who represented the entire world throughout all the ages to come. Jesus says to them and us: “Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there also will my servant be. The Father will honor whoever serves me.” To follow Jesus means to be obedient to the Father’s Will, as Jesus was obedient to the Father’s will. We are to no longer possess our lives as something that belongs to us as but rather as lives that belong to God because by the Holy Spirit’s grace within us we daily give our lives over to God.

Jesus was both truly divine and truly human. His divinity stood aside to the extent that it allowed his humanity to be truly human. Jesus, realizing the horrific suffering that he was going to have to endure, was deeply troubled and upset. God spoke to Jesus, as though in thunder, as a way of saying to all that, despite all that his Son must go through, God would be glorified. Remain faithful to Jesus in spite of his death on the cross. Jesus declares that “the ruler of this world” will be overwhelmed, since by his death on the cross, he says, “I will draw everyone to myself,” not just the Jews but all the people of the world.

Hebrew 5:7-9. “In the days when Christ Jesus was in the flesh, he offered prayers and supplications with loud cries and tears to the one who was able to save him from death.” In spite of his immense anguish at what he was to suffer, he was obedient to the Father. “He learned obedience from what he suffered; and when he was made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him.” Jesus surrendered himself to God’s will in spite of the fact that his human body and spirit was horrified by what it had to go through. By his total acceptance of his Father’s will, “he was made perfect” in holiness. That perfect holiness in his humanity enabled him to become “the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him.”