Catholic Doctrine and the Sunday Readings for March 2023

The meaning of the Sunday Mass Readings for March 2023 is made clearest by Catholic Doctrine. It is Catholic Doctrine more than anything else that we should get out of the Sunday Readings because Catholic Doctrine more than anything else lets us know who God is, what He wants, and who we are. Let’s better understand verses from March’s Readings by learning doctrines in the Catechism of the Catholic Church that clarify them. Doctrines are those truths with which we must agree in order to be Catholic.

March 5, The Second Sunday of Lent

The Catechism cites the entire First Reading (CCC 145[1]) to teach that Abraham is the “father of all who believe” (CCC 146). God called Abraham “from the land of [his] kinsfolk and [his] father’s house” (Genesis 12:1) in order to “gather together scattered humanity” (CCC 59). “The people descended from Abraham [became] the trustees of the promise made to the patriarchs, the chosen people, called to prepare for that day when God would gather all his children into the unity of the Church” (CCC 60). “[O]nly . . . at the time of Christ’s glorious return . . . will all the just from the time of Adam . . . be gathered together in the universal Church” (CCC 769).

From today’s Second Reading we should realize that the “design and grace bestowed on us in Christ Jesus” (2 Timothy 1:9) stems from “Trinitarian love” (CCC 257). It was the superabundant love among the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit that sent the Son to save us. The purpose for which God creates every person is “entry . . . into the perfect unity of the Blessed Trinity” (CCC 260). Those who enter the Kingdom of God, completed by Christ on the Last Day, will share in the Divine Persons’ perfect community of love.

A closely related doctrine is: “Death puts an end to human life as the time open to either accepting or rejecting the divine grace manifested in Christ” (CCC 1021). “Each man receives his eternal retribution in his immortal soul at the very moment of his death, in a particular judgment . . . : either entrance into the blessedness of heaven—through a purification or immediately—or immediate and everlasting damnation” (CCC 1022).

The Transfiguration of Jesus described in today’s Gospel is a preview or “foretaste of the Kingdom” (CCC 554). “The Transfiguration gives us a foretaste of Christ’s glorious coming [on the Last Day], when he will change our lowly body to be like his glorious [Risen] body” (CCC 556).

• From the First Reading[2] (Genesis 12:1-4a): Gn 12:1-4 is cited in CCC 145; Gn 12:1 in CCC 59; Gn 12:2 in CCC 762 and 1669; Gn 12:3 in CCC 706 and 2676; and Gn 12:4 in CCC
• From the Second Reading (2 Timothy 1:8b-10): 2 Tm 1:9-10 is cited in CCC 257 and 1021.
• From the Gospel (Matthew 17:1-9): Mt 17:1-8 is cited in CCC 554 and Mt 17:5 in CCC

March 12, The Third Sunday of Lent

A citation in the Catechism includes verses from two of today’s Readings. The water that quenches the Chosen People’s thirst during the Exodus and the water offered by Jesus to the Samaritan woman signify “the Holy Spirit’s action in Baptism . . . the water of Baptism truly signifies that our birth into the divine life is given to us in the Holy Spirit” (CCC 694).

When did God reveal that He is a Holy Trinity of Three Divine Persons? In today’s Gospel, Jesus mentions the Spirit. The Catechism cites four verses from today’s Gospel (John 4:10, 14, 23-24) to teach that Jesus “little by little alludes” to the Spirit during His public ministry, as when speaking with the Samaritan woman, but He “does not reveal the Holy Spirit fully, until he himself has been glorified through his Death and Resurrection” (CCC 728). “On that day [of Pentecost], the Holy Trinity is fully revealed” (CCC 732).

We should get from verses in the Responsorial Psalm the importance of adoration. “Come, let us sing joyfully to the Lord . . . let us bow down in worship; let us kneel before the Lord who made us” means that the first attitude we should have when we acknowledge that God created us is adoration which “exalts the greatness of the Lord who made us” and is “homage to the King of Glory” (CCC 2628).

• From the First Reading (Exodus 17:3-7): Ex 17:1-6 is cited in CCC 694; and Ex 17:2-7 in CCC
• From the Responsorial Psalm (Psalms 95:1-2, 6-7, 8-9): Ps 95:1-6 is cited in CCC
• From the Second Reading (Romans 5:1-2, 5-8): Rom 5:5 is cited in CCC 368, 733, 1820, 1964, and 2658; and Rom 5:8 in CCC
• From the shorter form of the Gospel (John 4:5-15, 19b-26, 39a, 40-42): Jn 4:6-7 is cited in CCC 544; Jn 4:10-14 in CCC 694 and 1137; Jn 4:14 in CCC 728, 1999, 2557, and 2652; Jn 4:21 in CCC 586; Jn 4:22 in CCC 528 and 586; and Jn 4:23-24 in CCC 586 and 728.
• From the longer form of the Gospel (John 4:5-42): there are no additional verses cited in the CCC.

March 19, The Fourth Sunday of Lent

Jesus heals the blind man by smearing on his eyes mud He made from His saliva and the ground and then having the blind man wash off the mud. This means that Jesus “makes use of signs to heal” (CCC 1504) here and other times. The mud and water are the signs He uses in this case. Jesus does not only use His words to heal. This is one of the ways we know that Christ Himself instituted the Sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick (CCC 1503-1513).

Christ not only used signs to heal; but, more broadly, “His healings [themselves] were signs of the coming of the Kingdom of God” (CCC 1505). One way to think of what existence in the Kingdom will be like is to imagine all of Jesus’ miracles of healing happening to the same person—perfect sight, perfect hearing, perfect health from illness and injury, freedom from death, and freedom from sin.

• From the First Reading (1 Samuel 16:1b, 6-7, 10-13a): 1 Sm 16:1 is cited in CCC 436; 1 Sm 16:12-13 in CCC 436; and 1 Sm 16:13 in CCC
• From the Responsorial Psalm (Psalm 23:1-3a, 3b-4, 5, 6): Ps 23:5 is cited in CCC
• From the Second Reading (Ephesians 5:8-14): Eph 5:8 is cited in CCC 1216; Eph 5:9 in CCC 1695; and Eph 5:14 in CCC
• From the Verse before the Gospel (John 8:12): Jn 8:12 is cited in CCC
• From the shorter form of the Gospel (John 9:1, 6-9, 13-17, 34-38): Jn 9:6 is cited in CCC 1151; Jn 9:6-7 in CCC 1504; Jn 9:16-17 in CCC 595; Jn 9:16 in CCC 596 and 2173; and Jn 9:34 in CCC
• From the longer form of the Gospel (John 9:1-41): Jn 9:22 is cited in CCC 575 and 596; Jn 9:31 in CCC 2827; and Jn 9:40-41 in CCC

March 26, The Fifth Sunday of Lent

“If the Spirit of the one who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, the one who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also, through his Spirit dwelling in you” (Romans 8:11), from today’s Second Reading, has several important meanings. First, “Jesus, like all men, experienced death and in his soul joined the others in the realm of the dead” (CCC 632). Jesus experienced death, which is “the separation of the soul from the body” (CCC 997).

This verse also means the same thing as the Apostles Creed (“I believe in . . . the resurrection of the body”) and the Nicene Creed (“We look for the resurrection of the dead”): “not only that the immortal soul will live on after death, but that even our ‘mortal body’ will come to life again” (CCC 990). “God, in his almighty power, will definitively grant incorruptible life to our bodies by reuniting them with our souls, through the power of Jesus’ Resurrection” (CCC 997).

So eternity for all persons will include not just their souls, but also their transformed bodies. “All the dead will rise, ‘those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of judgment’” (CCC 998) at Christ’s Second Coming (CCC 1001). The “resurrection of life” places them in the Kingdom of God. The “resurrection of judgment” places them in Hell. This will also be the case for those who are living when Christ comes again. Everyone will have eternal bodies and souls whether they are in the Kingdom or Hell.

A wrong interpretation of this verse is that only the Holy Spirit rose Jesus from the dead. “Our resurrection, like [Jesus’] own, will be the work of the Most Holy Trinity” (CCC 989). We can attribute Jesus’ Resurrection to the Father, or to Jesus Himself, or to the Holy Spirit (as the New Testament attributes it to different Divine Persons in different places), as long as we realize that in the Resurrection “the three divine persons act together as one, and manifest their own proper characteristics” (CCC 648).

Today’s Gospel has the magnificent and moving account of Jesus raising Lazarus from death. Jesus raised Lazarus, as he raised others, as “a sign and a pledge” of His Resurrection and the resurrection of all the dead on the Last Day. However, it is crucial to know that when Jesus rose from the dead, He “had not simply returned to earthly life as had been the case with Lazarus” (CCC 640). Whereas Lazarus would once again grow older, get sick, be prone to injury, get tired, need food and water, need clothing and shelter, and eventually die, Jesus’ Resurrection is “of another order” (CCC 994) and so will be the resurrection of the dead on the Last Day. Next month’s column will elaborate on this other order.

There is another difference between the experience of Lazarus and the experience of Jesus. Although Jesus really died, His body did not corrupt, as Lazarus’ body had begun to corrupt. “Jesus said, ‘Take away the stone.’ Martha, the dead man’s sister, said to him, ‘Lord, by now there will be a stench; he has been dead for four days’” (John 11:39). “Jesus’ Resurrection ‘on the third day’ was a sign” that Jesus’ body was preserved from corruption “because bodily decay was held to begin on the fourth day after death” (CCC 627). “But because of the union which the person of the Son retained with his body, his was not a mortal corpse like others” (CCC 627).

• From the First Reading (Ezekiel 37:12-14): Ez 37:1-14 is cited in CCC
• From the Second Reading (Romans 8:8-11): Rom 8:9 is cited in CCC 693; and Rom 8:11 in CCC 632, 658, 695, 989, and 990.
• From the Verse before the Gospel (John 11:25a, 26): Jn 11:25 is cited in CCC
• From the shorter form of the Gospel (John 11:3-7, 17, 20-27, 33b-45): Jn 11:24 is cited in CCC 993 and 1001; Jn in CCC 11:25 994; Jn in CCC 11:27 439; Jn 11:28 in CCC 581; Jn 11:34 in CCC 472; Jn 11:39 in CCC 627; Jn 11:41-42 in CCC 2604; and Jn 11:44 in CCC
• From the longer form of the Gospel (John 11:1-45): Jn 11 is cited in CCC 994; and Jn 11:28 in CCC

[1] CCC abbreviates Catechism of the Catholic Church. Any number after it is the number of a paragraph in the Catechism. For example, “CCC 145-146” means paragraphs 145 through 146 of the Catechism.

[2] If a Reading is not listed, then none of its verses is cited by the Catechism.