A Homily for the 4th Sunday of Lent (B)
You know that you have seen it. May be it was at a Thunder or Titans game. Maybe you were just watching a baseball, football, basketball, soccer or hockey game on TV, but you saw it. I do not go to many Rock concerts any more, but I am told that it shows up there as well. What I am talking about? You know, if you scan the crowd at a major sporting event or something like that you will see that one person holding a sign, just like this [HOLD UP SIGN WITH “John 3:16”]. Here, I even made one for the deacon to hold.
John 3:16. Why a sign with this passage, from all the passages from Sacred Scripture? In today’s Gospel reading we hear this famous passage from St. John’s Gospel, “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.” This is one of the most beautiful and most consoling phrases in the Bible. This, in a nutshell, IS the Good News: “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.”
This is the proof of just how much God loves us; he gave us the very best that he had to offer – his only begotten Son who freely gave himself as an atoning sacrifice to God for our sake so that our sins, and the sins of the whole world, would be forgiven so that we can share the divine life as adopted sons and daughters in the Son of God. God did not give us something that was just “good enough,” rather he gave us the best for he gave us himself by giving us Jesus.
God’s love for us is limitless, so much so that it can be difficult to truly appreciate God’s love in our lives. However we can get hints of it in looking at the other loves that we experience in our lives.
Look at the love of a man and a woman. At first in the courtship there are exchange of gifts. Maybe it is a gift of flowers, candy, or jewelry. As the couple get to know each other better the gifts become more personal; maybe a home cooked meal, a love poem compose just for one’s beloved, a photograph with something special written on the back. Of course when the couple realizes that their love is true and lasting, they make that special, life-long commitment to each other that we call marriage. In marriage man and woman no longer merely exchange gifts which are “things,” rather now they make a total, loving gift of their very selves to each other, they give to their beloved the gift of their lives, so that “the two become one flesh.” It is this mutual gift of themselves that is the ultimate, and holiest, sign of their love for each other.
Often God blesses this union of love, the gift of husband and wife, with the fruitfulness of children. Now I know there are parents here; don’t you give many things to your children? Of course you give them food, shelter, clothing – all the basic essentials – but as any parent will tell you, that is just scratching the surface of what parents give their children. There are the gifts of toys, Nintendos or Playstations or Gameboys. There is the new bike, the swing set. Maybe it is that special vacation to Disney World. Of course the really special gift that parents give their children is their attention, their time, and their affection.
Some would say that the most basic gift that parents give their children is the gift of life. This is most certainly true, but too many people do not fully appreciate all that is part of this gift of life. Too often we focus just on the physical, but God made us both body and soul. There is a spiritual dimension to human life that parents are also called give to their children. When parents bring their children to the Church to have them baptized they are completing the gift of life that they began when the child was conceived in the womb. In baptism the stain of Original Sin is washed way, but just as important – really it is even more important – the child is made a Child of God and given a share in the Divine life by the gift of the Holy Spirit. Just as parents’ giving to their children does not end with their conception and birth, because they will continue to have physical and affective needs, so too parents must not neglect their children’s spiritual needs for ongoing gifts of love. Children must be given the gift of learning how to pray, so that they learn to “love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.” This means bringing your children to Mass each week, so that they can be nourished with the Word of God, and when your children are old enough they are also nourished with the Bread of Life, the Body and Blood of Jesus. I know young children can be a handful; I have nieces and nephews, and each week I see parents doing their best to get their children to “be quiet” and listen, but in the struggle is the evidence of just how important faith in God is. Of course, just as parents give their children the gift of education in reading, writing and math, parents need to give their children the gift of religious education so that they can learn more about Jesus who loves them so deeply, and how he wants them to live so that may have “life, life to the full.”
God’s love for us is also conjugal and parental. God, as Father, also gives us paternal love. Paternal love is encouraging, wanting his children to grow, and pushing them to give their very best. However paternal love is also correction. After the famous passage, John 3:16, we hear in today’s Gospel reading, “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.” Do not understand this as meaning that God does not intend to judge the world and us. Too often we think that to judge is to condemn, but very often we need to judge something in order to see what needs to be done to make things right. “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.” Through our sin we lost the gift of eternal life that God wants to share with us. In his incarnation, Jesus not only reveals perfectly God to us, but he also, as the Second Vatican Council teaches, “Reveals Man to Himself.” In other words, Jesus, by his life, death and resurrection, reveals to us how we are to live as the children of God. Jesus is the Light of the World, but as he notes in today’s Gospel reading, “people preferred darkness to light, because their works were evil.”
When we encounter Jesus, the Light of the World, when we enter into a personal relationship with him, we become aware of our sins. However our response to this awareness of our sins should not be despair and fear, wanting to hide from them by staying in the dark. Rather, “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.” Our encounter with God’s love should lead us to conversion, to repentance from our sins, so that we can experience God’s love poured out in mercy. When we do just this, then we can truly live out the theme of the Fourth Sunday of Lent – Laetare, which means, REJOICE!
