God so loved the world that He gave us His only Son so that we might have eternal life.

 

Fourth Sunday of Lent  B  2024

 

For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.  For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.

This is a Gospel within the Gospel…. the famous John 3/16.  The core of the Gospel’s Good News is that God so loved the world that he gave his only Son to this real and very imperfect world…so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.  God’s plan for us is not eternal death but eternal life.  It is time to unleash the power of the Good News that is contained in this simple passage and allow it change people’s lives.  The image of God that today’s Scripture reveal is a God who is relentless in reaching out to lost humanity.  God never gives up on us.

On this Laetare Sunday, halfway through the Lenten season, the Church invites us to reflect on God’s love for the world, and to be joyful because of it.  The Church invites us in the middle of this penitential season to rejoice?  Why?  Because God loves each and every one so much that he gave his only Son.

Even though all of us know the weakness of sin in our lives, God’s love for us is without end. 

Today in the first Scripture reading we see the effects of the weakness of sin very dramatically with the Israelites.  The situation depicted is one of the darkest chapter in the history of God’s chosen people.  The Jews fell away from their attachment to the Temple worship and practices, the nation suffered; the Temple was destroyed and many were exiled into Babylon as servants and slaves in what is called the Babylonian Exile.

How could lax religious practices lead to the fall of a mighty nation?  Simply put, without meaningful prayer the Jews lost a sense of who they were.  In their behavior they compromised their way toward defeat and destruction by letting themselves believe that their spirituality did not matter.

Thankfully, thankfully God did not give up on the Israelites.  At the end of the sacred book of the Chronicles, we hear God calling His people to put their Temple back as central to their lives.

Through the Old Testament Book of the Chronicles we can visit our own faith history and thus are challenged to examine our own “Temple practices,” our own attachment to the center of our Faith -- The Table of the Lord.  The Altar is the Christian Temple.

We are challenged in this Lenten season to ask ourselves if we have been faithful to discipleship of the Lord Jesus or if we have fallen into a malaise of half-hearted spiritual practices?  Have we polluted our Temple – our Church – by having forgotten reverence?  Do we remember who we are, or do our spiritual practices suggest we have forgotten?

At this halfway point of the Lenten season, may we do a spiritual inventory of our Lenten spiritual disciplines.  We do this inventory in the light of God’s unending love for us.  Yes, the Lenten season invites to reflect on who we are as the disciples of Jesus and the priority we place on who God is in our lives.  Pope Francis calls us out of a life of spiritual indifference and seeks to immerse ourselves in the joy of the Gospel.  Why?  God so loved the world that He sent His only-begotten Son for our salvation.

What is going to catch our attention? What is going to shake us out of the busyness of life that keeps us from focusing on our relationship with God? 

I can be very successful in my career, in my business, but have I lost touch with my soul in the process?  My family may have accomplished much in the way of achievements, but do we have time as a family to pray together, simply to be with one another.  The psalmist tells us:  “Be still and know that I am God.”  Are we too busy for any stillness in our lives?

As St. Paul tells us in his Letter to the Ephesians, “God, who is rich in mercy, because of his 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….For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus for the good works God has prepared in advance, that we should live in them.”

St Paul was vividly aware of grace in his own life.  He was in touch with his own conversion story.  He wanted the Ephesians to also know in the depths of their hearts that they were God’s handiwork.

In one way or another, we all need to have the conversion experience of the apostle Paul.  Our experience probably won’t be as dramatic as Paul’s, but we need to experience the love of God in our hearts.

As always, Jesus, in the Gospel offers both comfort and challenge.  Jesus said to Nicodemus:  “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.”  The lifting up signified not only crucifixion but also exaltation, more precisely, the exaltation of us all to eternal life through Jesus’ death by crucifixion.  Jesus transforms a sign of condemnation for sin into an instrument of healing.  The cross is both a symbol of the suffering that is part of our spiritual journey, but it is also the symbol of the love of Jesus that brings us eternal life.

What is the cross but the revelation of a God loving enough to suffer death without revenge, powerful enough to overcome death.

Jesus has come into the world to reveal our sins so that they may be forgiven.  As we live in the light of Christ Jesus, we become more aware of what is not of God.  In the light of God’s love, we all humbly, as we do in the penitential rite and as we did in being marked with ashes at the beginning of Lent, acknowledge that we are all sinners.  There is no place for pride or arrogance or judgmentalism in the spiritual life – we are all sinners.

On this Laetare Sunday, we make bold to rejoice that we are loved and forgiven sinners.  I leave with a suggested mantra for the day:  WE ARE FORGIVEN.  WE ARE NOT LUCKY. WE ARE LOVED.

Have a blessed day.

 

 

Who or what are the money changers in the temple of your heart?

 

Third Sunday of Lent  B  2024

In today’s Gospel, Jesus throws the money changers out of the Temple.  Jesus literally upsets the temple customs of his day and then invites the people around Him to change their idea of where God’s true dwelling is soon to be found.  Rather than a holy place of prayerful encounter with God, the temple precincts had begun to resemble a marketplace, and Jesus’ actions registered loudly and clearly as a prophetic protest against the exploitation of the temple and the people of Israel.  Jesus is clear about “His Father’s house” being a place of prayer and covenant, a place where God dwells.

 

As this Gospel is proclaimed in our hearing, we are prompted to wonder what the returning Jesus may find needs cleansing or replacing both in our personal spirituality and in our celebration of Sunday Eucharist.

 

First, in our personal spirituality, what attitudes, preoccupations, or desires do you bring to your prayer and life that Christ would “drive out” if you would let him?

 

In other words, what needs to be driven out of your inner temple for you to have zeal for God?  From what do you need to repent in this Lenten season?  As we pray over the Gospel, can we listen to the echo of the confrontation of Jesus that addresses the temples of our present day lives?   Who or what are the moneychangers in your Temple?  Is it greed, an excessive preoccupation with our possessions, is it the way we deal with the setbacks in our life, can we let go of an anger we feel toward a particular person, or is it our inability to focus on what is really important in our life?  

 

This gospel passage illustrates the anger of Jesus.  Most of us were taught that anger is a negative emotion and therefore wrong.  At our best, we are to count to ten and hope the anger in us subsides a bit.

Jesus is raising the question of justifiable anger.  When is it ok to say enough is enough, and we need to stand up for what is right.

What do we do with our own anger?  Is it part of our spirituality or is the result of a lack of spirituality?  The saying:  he is an angry young man.  This usually the person is a bit off-center.

Now mind you many times our anger throws us off center and there is nothing virtuous about that, but on the other hand there is appropriate and justifiable anger that should not be swept under the rug.    

  

Jesus purified the Temple.  During Lent He invites us to purify the temples of our hearts.

In our Lenten journey, we seek to repent and be faithful to the gospel.  We pray that our spiritual disciplines lead us to the conversion of knowing Jesus more deeply in our hearts and to glorify the Lord in the way we live our lives.

Secondly, what kind of cleansing does Jesus wish in do in the celebration of our Sunday Eucharist?

Perhaps Jesus would suggest there is room for improvement in having more lector training, would he suggest that the homilists are a bit long winded at times, or the choir music could be reviewed and improved?

 

Or would Jesus be convicted that there are bigger fish to fry in evaluating our liturgies?

 

Would he point out the discrepancies between the prayers we say and the way we live our life?   Do we walk our talk in witnessing to the love of the compassionate Jesus?  He might ask if we come together to be entertained or to be edified.  I sometimes hear the comment:  “Father I don’t get anything out of Mass.”  Do we gather at Sunday Eucharist to get or to give?  Should our focus be on our desire to give praise and thanks to our God?   I wonder if there is a direct connection between God’s predilection for the poor and our own?  Would he see us translating this concern for the poor into generous giving and authentic service toward God’s least ones?   This needs to be the defining characteristic of ourselves as a Eucharistic community.

 

But the dramatic action of Jesus – driving out the merchants and moneychangers – is not the most shocking feature of this Sunday’s Gospel.  Not only does Jesus cleanse the Temple, he declares that he himself replaces it.  The place of God’s presence among His people is not a building but ‘the temple of his body.’  In Jesus, in the Sacrament of the Eucharist,  we encounter the living God.  The real priority of our lives is our covenant relationship with God.  Our relationship with God is measured by how well we pattern our lives after Jesus in dying to ourselves for the good of others so that we might rise with the Risen Lord.  As believers and followers of Jesus our own bodies are also temples of the Holy Spirit.  God dwells not only in this building, but also in us who are the living Temples of the Spirit of Jesus.  May we always reverence the presence of Christ that we experience in our sharing with one another.

 

Have a Blessed Day.