20150315 SALVATION AS A FREE GIFT THROUGH FAITH IN CHRIST AS THE
UNIMAGINABLE LOVE OF THE FATHER
Readings at Mass
|
First reading
|
|
2 Chronicles
36:14-16,19-23 ©
|
All the heads of the
priesthood, and the people too, added infidelity to infidelity, copying all the
shameful practices of the nations and defiling the Temple that the Lord had
consecrated for himself in Jerusalem. The Lord, the God of their ancestors, tirelessly
sent them messenger after messenger, since he wished to spare his people and
his house. But they ridiculed the messengers of God, they despised his words,
they laughed at his prophets, until at last the wrath of the Lord rose so high
against his people that there was no further remedy.
They
burned down the Temple of God, demolished the walls of Jerusalem, set fire to
all its palaces, and destroyed everything of value in it. The survivors were
deported by Nebuchadnezzar to Babylon; they were to serve him and his sons
until the kingdom of Persia came to power. This is how the word of the Lord was
fulfilled that he spoke through Jeremiah, ‘Until this land has enjoyed its
sabbath rest, until seventy years have gone by, it will keep sabbath throughout
the days of its desolation.’
And in
the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, to fulfil the word of the Lord that was
spoken through Jeremiah, the Lord roused the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia to
issue a proclamation and to have it publicly displayed throughout his kingdom:
‘Thus speaks Cyrus king of Persia, “the Lord, the God of heaven, has given me
all the kingdoms of the earth; he has ordered me to build him a Temple in
Jerusalem, in Judah. Whoever there is among you of all his people, may his God
be with him! Let him go up.”’
|
Psalm
|
Psalm 136:1-6 ©
|
O let my tongue
cleave to my mouth if I remember you not!
By the rivers of
Babylon
there we
sat and wept,
remembering
Zion;
on the poplars that
grew there
we hung
up our harps.
O let my tongue
cleave to my mouth if I remember you not!
For it was there that
they asked us,
our
captors, for songs,
our
oppressors, for joy.
‘Sing to us,’ they
said,
‘one of
Zion’s songs.’
O let my tongue
cleave to my mouth if I remember you not!
O how could we sing
the song
of the Lord
on alien
soil?
If I forget you,
Jerusalem,
let my
right hand wither!
O let my tongue
cleave to my mouth if I remember you not!
O let my tongue
cleave to
my mouth
if I
remember you not,
if I prize not Jerusalem
above all
my joys!
O let my tongue
cleave to my mouth if I remember you not!
|
Second reading
|
|
Ephesians 2:4-10
©
|
God loved us with so
much love that he was generous with his mercy: when we were dead through our
sins, he brought us to life with Christ – it is through grace that you
have been saved – and raised us up with him and gave us a place with him
in heaven, in Christ Jesus.
This was
to show for all ages to come, through his goodness towards us in Christ Jesus,
how infinitely rich he is in grace. Because it is by grace that you have been
saved, through faith; not by anything of your own, but by a gift from God; not
by anything that you have done, so that nobody can claim the credit. We are
God’s work of art, created in Christ Jesus to live the good life as from the
beginning he had meant us to live it.
|
Gospel
Acclamation
|
Jn3:16
|
Glory and praise to
you, O Christ!
God loved the world
so much that he gave his only Son:
everyone who believes
in him has eternal life.
Glory and praise to
you, O Christ!
|
Gospel
|
John 3:14-21 ©
|
Jesus said to
Nicodemus:
‘The Son of Man must
be lifted up
as Moses lifted up
the serpent in the desert,
so that everyone who
believes may have eternal life in him.
Yes, God loved the
world so much that he gave his only Son,
so that everyone who
believes in him may not be lost
but may have eternal
life.
For God sent his Son
into the world
not to condemn the
world,
but so that through
him the world might be saved.
No one who believes
in him will be condemned;
but whoever refuses
to believe is condemned already,
because he has
refused to believe in the name of God’s only Son.
On these grounds is
sentence pronounced:
that though the light
has come into the world
men have shown they
prefer darkness to the light
because their deeds
were evil.
And indeed, everybody
who does wrong
hates the light and
avoids it,
for fear his actions
should be exposed;
but the man who lives
by the truth comes out into the light,
so
that it may be plainly seen that what he does is done in God.’
SALVATION
AS A FREE GIFT THROUGH FAITH IN CHRIST AS THE UNIMAGINABLE LOVE OF THE FATHER
SCRIPTURE
READINGS: 2 CHR 36:14-16, 19-23; EPH 2:4-10; JN 3:14-21
Regrets!
Missed opportunities! If only! When we review our lives we cannot
but somehow feel that we have made a mess of it. Just like the
Israelites in today’s first reading, we have disobeyed the laws of the Lord and
His will. We were foolish not to pay heed to the wisdom of God as
expressed in the Laws and the Ten Commandments.
As a
result, we have brought disasters upon ourselves. Like the kings,
the priests and the people of Israel, because they were unfaithful to Yahweh,
their kingdom and ours have collapsed. Just as the worship of false gods,
especially of self, led to moral decadence and internal division and which
eventually brought about their downfall, we too are in that situation. The
greed for money has led us to bankruptcy, dishonesty and even
imprisonment. The thirst for revenge has destroyed our own
happiness. The lack of self-control has led us to give in to lust and
resulted in broken relationships, divorce and a broken family. The obsession
with power has made us vindictive, manipulative and destructive of others.
Yes,
like the Israelites, we are devastated today. Like them, we are in
exile in Babylon. If we find ourselves in such situations today, we have
only ourselves to blame. We reap what we have sowed. We have only
ourselves to blame. We have exercised our freedom wrongly.
Yet, our
days in exile are not meant to punish us. They are meant to reawaken
our hope for true love and life. Just like the Israelites in Babylon who
were given a long sabbatical of seventy years to come to self-realization and
awareness of what they had missed out and what went wrong, so too, if we are in
this period of bereavement and introspection, it is to prepare us for greater
things to come.
I
believe that in us, we are saying, “Could we start again, please?”
And the Good News of today’s liturgy is, as St Paul says, “We are God’s work of
art, created in Christ Jesus to live the good life as from the beginning he had
meant us to live it.” So there is no need to give up. In
fact, there is a future for us, the future as it was meant for us from the very
beginning. We are not finished but we are just starting.
What is
the basis of our hope in our hopelessness? It is the fidelity
of God’s love for us. Of course, if only we knew the depth of God’s
love for us, we would have been healed since love is always healing.
Indeed, the scripture readings want to remind us that God has never given up
hope on us. God is faithful in love. How do we know that He loves
us unconditionally and always?
In the
first reading, we read of God’s patience with us in our foolishness.
In spite of their infidelity and ingratitude to God’s blessings, God sent
prophet after prophet, urging the kings, the priests and the people who forsook
Him for false gods to repentance. The prophets untiringly sensitized the
conscience of the people whilst speaking of God’s faithfulness and compassion
towards those who would repent. This continued even when the prophets of
God were persecuted and killed by them. Because God loves us so much, He
allows us to exercise our freedom even though it pains Him to know that we are
destroying ourselves because we abuse that freedom.
However,
God’s love does not even stop here. The Liturgy further reveals the
incomprehensible love of God. St John in today gospel’s summarizes
the permanent love of God for us when he said, “Yes, God loved the world so
much that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not be
lost but may have eternal life.” With the coming of Christ, we now
know beyond any doubt that God truly loves us even if we are sinners.
Clearly, God desires that all of us should not perish but have eternal
life. God has no desire to destroy us but only to save us.
That God
suffers for us in humiliation on the cross is something simply beyond all
expectations. Indeed, Jesus’ death on the cross has challenged humanity’s
way of thinking about God. God who is supposed to be immutable, perfect,
and all powerful and transcendent, now made man and suffers and dies on the
cross for us, forces us to rethink our whole concept of who God is!
Christ lifted up on the
cross is the ultimate revelation of God’s love and mercy. God’s ultimate gift to us is
the gift of His only Son. In other words, God gives the world nothing
less than Himself. The gift of Jesus is but the expression of God’s total
self-giving love. By giving up His only Son for the world as a
living sacrifice, God heals the world of sin. Such is the breath and
width, height and depth of God’s love, a love that extends to all, regardless
of race, language or nation, saint or sinner. God, the loving Father,
will not rest till we share in His love and His kingdom.
What must we do after
recalling God’s incomprehensible love? We only have to believe in God’s love and accept
it. This is reiterated by St Paul when he repeated twice, “it is
through grace that you have been saved – and raised us up with him and gave us
a place with him in heaven, in Christ Jesus.” In a further text he said,
“Because it is by grace that you have been saved, through faith; not by
anything of your own, but by a gift from God; not by anything that you have
done, so that nobody can claim the credit.” In other words, salvation is
the free gift of God. God the Father does all this for us in Christ. We
cannot earn it or merit it. God’s gift is there for the taking. He
gives it to us without our asking. It is whether we want to respond or
not.
If salvation is the free
gift of God, then it means that the exaltation of Jesus should remind us that we
can no longer rely on our own strength for salvation. For salvation
to be ours, we only have to accept the grace of God and allow the love and
light of Christ to transform our hearts. New life is ours if we enter
into the paschal mystery of Jesus, sharing in His death and resurrection.
For this, faith in Jesus
is absolutely necessary. Indeed, St John says, “No one who
believes in him will be condemned; but whoever refuses to believe is condemned
already, because he has refused to believe in the name of God’s only
Son.” Like Mary, as we walk through darkness, we must surrender ourselves
to God and confess our faith in Him.
Faith in Jesus of course is
not simply a verbal faith. Faith, if it is truly personal, that
is, involving our mind and heart, will empower us to walk in the light and
the truth! Faith means to believe that Jesus has shown us the way by
His cross and so we must now walk the same path.
Consequently, the objective
of the Fourth Sunday of Lent is to cheer us on in our Lenten
observances. We rejoice because convinced of God’s love for us in Jesus,
we want all the more to be resolute and determined in sharing Jesus’ paschal
mystery by dying to our sins, selfishness and pride through the penitential
works of fasting, prayer and almsgiving or mercy. We do all these because
we want to grow in a more complete and selfless love of God and neighbour so
that we can return the love of God given to us. Through these good works
too, we are brought even nearer to recognizing the truth of the mystery of
grace brought by the cross of Jesus and most of all, His resurrection as
well. Of course, all these are in full consciousness that we cannot
depend on ourselves and our own efforts but by the grace given to us in the
Holy Spirit.
Let us on this second
part of the Lenten season, whilst contemplating on the passion of Christ
and inspired by His example and strengthened by His grace and love, strive to
deepen our spiritual life and reinforce the spiritual exercises which we have
begun so that when we arrive at the Easter Triduum, we will be ready to
completely die with Christ and enjoy the new Life given to us at Easter.
It is with this confidence and hope that we should continue this Lenten
journey, never giving up on ourselves, especially when we fail and at the same
time, never complacent as we configure ourselves in Christ.
WRITTEN BY THE MOST REV
WILLIAM GOH
ARCHBISHOP
OF SINGAPORE
© ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
No comments:
Post a Comment