Walking with Jesus: Fourth Sunday of Lent B

For Sunday, March 10, 2024

2 Chronicles 36:14-16, 19-23; Ephesians 2:4-10; John 3:14-21

As we continue in Lent, our readings today ask us to focus on ourselves and how we are living our lives. Are we living each day with our eyes on heaven, our eternal home? Or are we waiting for the ultimate last moment, or close to it, when we have to prepare actively for heaven? Do I feel that God is a God of love, so I don’t have to worry about heaven as my goal? Do I feel that since God is a God of mercy, He will always forgive all of my transgressions and I don’t have to do anything to “prepare” myself for entrance into heaven?

As I continue in the above reflection, do I feel that I have been held captive in my life? So many might immediately respond, “No, I can do what I want … I’m my own person.” Yet our lives can hold us captive in so many ways. If tried to give a descriptive definition of Satan, Lucifer, the Devil (they are all one and the same), it would definitely include keeping us “enslaved” to our feelings and emotions, doing what I want when I want, with no concern for how this will affect others — even if it brings harm or hurt either in physical, emotional or psychological ways.

Connections is a newsletter that suggests ideas and images on the Sunday Gospel. For this week, it states:

There are things we just don’t want to see. We don’t want to see how our self-centeredness and sense of entitlement hurts or injures another. We don’t want to see how our actions — and inactions — contribute to the violence and greed that is tearing apart our world. We don’t want to see the connections between how we vote and the state of our nation, between what and where we buy and the struggle of poor workers around the world to make a living, between the lifestyles we thoughtlessly work to keep up and the harm some of our choices do to the earth and environment.

Light can be dangerous. Light illuminates things we don’t want to see. Light reveals our ignorance, our hypocrisies, our betrayals. Such transparency can make our lives very difficult and complicated. The dark can be a very safe and comfortable place. Thank you, God, but we’ll just stay in the dark — the darkness of ignorance, the safe myopia of “me first.”

Today’s readings are giving deeper insight into God and our relationship with God. We might and should ask: “Am I on the same page as God? I too often wish I could listen to and obey God’s voice always. Unfortunately I’m my own worst enemy.” Today’s first reading contains the concluding words of Second Chronicles which represent a kind of summary — not only of Jewish history but even of the human condition depicting God’s graciousness and of the messengers God has sent “early and often.” It is hopeful.

On the human condition, Paul writes that “we were dead in our transgressions” and, through this, God’s great love and mercy turns us to God’s purpose for us in Christ Jesus. This invites gratitude — not boasting, but thankfulness for God’s love.

In the Gospel we reflect on Nicodemus, a scholar and leader who wanted to know more about God from Jesus but discovered how little he knew. It concludes with the enormous discovery that the way God loves the world is through relationships: He consistently opens Himself to each of us. Shortly after Vatican Council II, Pope Paul VI put it this way: “What is pleasing to God is for us to grow and become mature human beings, after the model of Jesus. We are to feel responsible for our world, seek to direct it, give meaning to it and work to develop it.” This means that our family, home, job, free time, spiritual activities, sexual life, and relationship to others are all essential to holiness.

Jesus says it all today: “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.” So: Am I using Lent as a time to let God grow closer to me and lead me closer to Him and my eternal home? Or do I have plenty of time to address this when some serious illness comes upon me?

So I reflect on:

• To follow Jesus really comes down to committing our whole lives to His cause. We do this not by abandoning the world but by living our life with God’s grace, helping to show others our love, His love.
• In our own lives, no matter who or what has made us captives, we always have the option to respond with God’s love … which is forgiveness, caring, helping, and making others know they are loved.

Sacred Space 2024 states:

“Jesus was sent into the world to bring salvation. The world is ambivalent to Jesus, though God’s desire is clear — for us to have eternal life through Jesus. We pray to recognize the gift and the desire of God so that we are not captivated and drawn off course by the attractions of the world.

“The lifting up of the serpent brought liberation to the Israelites from its poisonous effects (Numbers 21:9). Jesus was to be lifted up on the cross, offering His life for our salvation. As children of light may we have hearts that believe in Jesus and respond in love, raising up people who are caught in the darkness.”