For God so loved the world

The final weeks of Lent are upon us. As we approach Holy Week we see many opportunities to realize the riches of God’s kindness and mercy. Hopefully by now you have received or made plans to receive the sacrament of reconciliation, where the grace of God flows as our tears fall in what St. Ambrose describes as “a conversion of repentance” (Catechism of The Catholic Church 1429).

The 4th and 5th Sundays of Lent Mass readings invigorate our call to be rid of sin and receive God’s greatest promise of salvation: a promise of love for the entire world. This love is not an emotion. God’s love for his creation is made known through a person, the person of Jesus Christ who, by the power of the Holy Spirit, opens the gates to eternal life with mercy and love.

A chance to come home (2 Chr 36:14-23)

We read in the Second Book of Chronicles of the invitation to the exiled nation of Israel to come home. Before their expulsion, the Israelites ignored the call of the prophets to turn away from wickedness and return to God. Their offenses were so great that God allowed external nations to conquer his people and send them away from their home, their temple, their community, their way of life. Yet, God never abandoned his people, for during the time of exile prophets arose with messages of hope, renewal, conversion and restoration. This time the people listened. 

The prophet Jeremiah foretold of a New Covenant between God and the chosen people. The restoration would be centered on the human heart, that place of restlessness and peace, of joy and suffering, of fullness and loss. Yes, God’s law is placed in the human heart whereby they shall know God, and they will be his forever, even to the point where they will not have to teach it for all will know it by their life. Hence the psalmist writes, “Create a clean heart in me, O God” (Ps 57).

Restoration also came through the decree of the Persian king, Cyrus, who conquered the land, reinstated religious freedom and gave the exiled a chance to come home. Those once suffering can now renew. They can rebuild and rededicate themselves as a community to God, remnants of their ancestors, yet grateful to God’s abundant kindness and mercy. From suffering came new hope, new awareness, new life.

Mercy for all (Eph 2:4-10)

The fulfillment of the New Covenant once promised is Jesus Christ. In him, St. Paul writes, God’s great love and mercy brings us new life. Jesus calls us away from our transgressions and raises us to new ways, new hope, new demands, new love, new life. Our ways are Jesus’ ways. Our hope is received in the graces that pour forth from the cross, as his blood and water wash away the sins of the world and not only restore our mortal bodies but also our souls. This is the heart of our faith. This is a gift from God.

A gift from God (Jn 3:14-21)

St. John eloquently writes of the profound love of God for the world, so much so that in order for us to be free from the bondages of sin, he sent his son, Jesus, to not only show us the way but to be the way of salvation, so that we may not die but rather have eternal life. He came not to condemn but to save us from ourselves, from death, from darkness, from evil. We, on our part, are called to believe in the hope that Jesus gives us so that, like the Israelites, we can repent, ask for mercy and return to the Lord with clean hearts. As sin wraps us in a mantle of darkness, the love of God poured out from Jesus Christ wraps us in a mantle of light, a light so bright that we are transformed to radiate the same light to others. “But whoever lives the truth comes to the light, so that his works may be clearly seen as done in God” (Jn 3:21).

Most importantly we are to remember, GOD LOVES US FIRST.  We read in St. John’s First Letter, “In this way the love of God was revealed to us: God sent his only son into the world so that we might have life through him. In this is love: not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his son as expiation for our sins”  (1 Jn 9-10).

So great a love

In his book “The Life of Christ” Archbishop Fulton Sheen writes, “History shows a number of people who claim to be from  God. There is uniqueness which sets Christ apart from all others.” 

Archbishop Sheen goes on to describe one of the several distinctions being, “… every other person whoever came into this world came to live. Jesus came into it to die.” Further, he writes, “In the person of Christ, it was his death that was first and his life that was last.” 

Life being the resurrection.

Death entered the world through sin. We experience death when we sin, as our relationship with God and others is broken. Yet, Jesus knew his purpose was to destroy death and restore our life. Since only God can destroy sin, he sent his son, Jesus, whom we know as Emmanuel, the word made flesh, the second person of the Trinity, the Lamb of God, a man like us in all ways except sin, to accomplish such an act of great love. The one without sin, one who offered himself as a sacrifice for our sins, died to self for us whom he loved FIRST so that we would have new and everlasting life. 

As St. Paul writes, “God, who is rich in mercy, because of the great love he had for us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, brought us to life with Christ – by grace you have been saved – raised us up with him  and seated us with him in the heavens in Christ Jesus,  that in the ages to come He might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus” (Eph 2:4-7).

The Year of St. Joseph

We ask for the intercession of St. Joseph, whom God entrusted his son, Jesus Christ, under his care and protection, to protect us from all evil and strengthen our path towards holiness. Amen.

Dow is the director of the Office of Evangelization and Catechesis for the Diocese of Baton Rouge.