GOD SO LOVED THE WORLD

GOD SO LOVED THE WORLD THAT HE GAVE HIS ONLY SON,

SO EVERYONE WHO BELIEVES IN HIM MIGHT HAVE ETERNAL LIFE

Catherine of Siena speaking to the Father told him: “It seems, oh, Abyss of Charity, as if you were MAD WITH LOVE OF YOUR CREATURE, as if You could not live without him, and yet You are our God who have no need of us” and she also called him “LOVING MADMAN”. She understood what Jesus told Nicodemus: “God so loved the world that he gave his only son, so everyone might have eternal life”. It is only the madness of love that can do this. Let me say this: All of you are mad. This is how people see you who leave the comfort of your homes and give your time and your abilities to do everything possible to try to stop human trafficking. Indeed you are mad with love of God and of your fellow human beings. Otherwise how can you explain your dedication to this risky service to God and to man?

A few weeks ago somebody asked me why would God want the cruel death of his Son in order to pay for our sins and satisfy his justice. He must be a cruel God, then! He is not! I answered that, notwithstanding our frequent sins, he still wanted our salvation and that we obtain eternal life. So he took the risk inherent to the mystery of the Incarnation. He asked his only Son to take on him our human condition with everything that comes with it, such as death and human wickedness.

IT IS LOVE THAT I DESIRE, NOT SACRIFICE

IT IS LOVE THAT I DESIRE, NOT SACRIFICE,

AND KNOWLEDGE OF GOD RATHER THAN BURNT OFFERINGS

This is today’s message the prophet Hosea (Hos 6, 1-6).

When Matthew wrote about his call to discipleship and about the feast in which many tax-collectors and sinners were sitting at table with Jesus and his disciples, the evangelist remembers the reproach with which Jesus faced the ever present Pharisees: “Go and learn what this means” he said, “ ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.” (Mt 9:13) Matthew remembers also the day when the disciples were hungry and started to pluck heads of grain to eat. The Pharisees interfered and told the Lord: “Look, your disciples are doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath”. Jesus answered them:  “If you had known what this means, ‘I desire mercy and not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the guiltless”. (Mt 12, 7) Wasn’t Jesus right to call them whitewashed tombs? (Mt 23, 27).

Luke, today, tells us the story of the Pharisee and the tax-collector. The Pharisee spoke this prayer to himself: “‘O God, I thank you that I am not like the rest of humanity — greedy, dishonest, adulterous — or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week, and I pay tithes on my whole income.’” Was he praying? He was advertising himself!  Without realizing it he was saying that God was indebted to him!

I AM THE LORD YOUR GOD: LISTEN TO MY WARNING (Ps 81, 11 and 9)

          We have just repeated these words as a response to the first reading. It is made up of the first part of verse 11 (I am the Lord your God) and the first part of verse 9 (Listen to my warning).

To tell you the truth, I got stuck when reflecting on this response, for I had two different versions of it, the one we repeated and another which I have in my text which says: “I am the Lord your God: hear my voice”. I started searching the different translations of the Psalms and I found a third version which says: “Hear, O my people, while I admonish you; O Israel, if you would but listen to me!” (NRSVCE)

Does it matter that much which translation we use? Maybe, but as we are not in a Bible class, I will only say that to me the version I have is somewhat soft: it says “hear my voice”. The one we used today seems harsh for it points to a warning. Is God angry? And what is the warning? A dictionary tells me that to warn is “To make aware in advance of some actual or potential harm, danger, or evil”. So, what is the warning? “I am God and there is no other!” Why does He say this? Because God knows how easy it is for us to turn our back on Him and fabricate gods in our image and likeness. So he tries to make us aware that, all through human history, when people create gods for themselves or make themselves gods, they cause so much trouble, suffering and death. And humans do not learn and they keep abandoning God in their desire “to be like god”, not the true living God but what they imagine to be god is like! Old Adam and Eve are still among us as many still follow their dream!

THE WORDS THAT I HAVE SPOKEN TO YOU ARE SPIRIT AND LIFE (Jn 6, 63)

I have to confess that I am a little bit deaf. I do not hear as well as I used to, and I have to pay greater attention when people are talking. Not that I bother that much about this for, as my brothers tell me, I am able to listen clearly what interests me! My mother use to tell me that my grandfather used to pray God to make him deaf for he was very sad at hearing God being offended. He couldn’t stand blaspheming!

I am not really preoccupied with my little impairment as I can hear well enough. I won’t ask God to make me deaf, though, like my grandfather did! I would rather ask Him the grace to be able to hear and listen carefully to His Word (with a capital W), and to His words and inspirations. Why am I saying all this? Because today’s Bible readings speak about listening, about being obedient to God’s commands.

DO NOT TAKE AWAY YOUR MERCY FROM US

If you ask for it, you will get it! If you don’t, you won’t! I am speaking of God’s mercy.  “Ask and you will receive, so that your joy may be complete”, Jesus said (Jo 16, 24). True, Jesus was not speaking about mercy here, but about anything we might want to ask of the Father in Christ’s name”.

“Why do we ask for God’s mercy so often and in every Mass?” God never gets tired of offering us his mercy; we easily get tired of asking for it. What we ask for, we are better prepared to accept!

In today’s first reading we read part of Azariah’s prayer while standing in the furnace into which he and two other young persons were thrown because they did not want to sacrifice to a golden statue king Nebuchadnezzar had set up. In his prayer Azariah asked God “Do not take away your mercy from us”.

Can God ever deprive us of His mercy? No, because if He did, we would cease to exist! And then, God’s mercy is an expression of His boundless love. Who can deprive us of God’s mercy? We can! Each one of us can! How?

MY THOUGHTS ARE NOT YOUR THOUGHTS, NOR ARE YOUR WAYS MY WAYS

My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord. I chose this quote from Isaiah 55, 8 because it sheds a light on today’s bible readings (2 Kgs 5:1-15 and Lk 4:24-30)  and will help me in my reflection. 

There is this Naaman, a Syrian and an army commander. He was highly esteemed and he was valiant, but he was a leper. A little girl, a servant of the leper’s wife, spoke about a prophet who could cure her master. Naaman obtained permission to seek the prophet, but when he reached Elisha’s house, the prophet did not come out to meet him, but sent a message to the leper and told him to go and wash himself seven times in the River Jordan. Naaman was angry and went away saying: “I thought that he would surely come out and stand there to invoke the Lord his God, and would move his hand over the spot, and thus cure the leprosy.” His servants convinced him that if the prophet had asked him to do something extraordinary he would have done it and he went to the river, washed and he was cured.

Jesus mentioned this healing in today’s gospel as one of two examples of how “no prophet is accepted in his own native place”.  The people in the synagogue of Nazareth were angry at Christ’s words and drove him out of town in order to kill him. “But he passed through the midst of them and went away”.

Let’s walk with Christ

Palm Sunday

A reading from St. Paul’s Letter to the Philipians (2, 5-11)

Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,

who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God

as something to be exploited,

but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave,

being born in human likeness.

And being found in human form, he humbled himself

and became obedient to the point of death— even death on a cross.

Therefore God also highly exalted him

and gave him the name that is above every name,

so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend,

in heaven and on earth and under the earth,

and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,

to the glory of God the Father.

This is the Word of the Lord

Today the Church celebrates Palm Sunday, and today’s liturgy points to the mystery we will be celebrating throughout the following week and which finds its highest point in the Celebration of Easter. Today, palms which were used by all nations as a sign of joy and victory, and which the Church has also adapted as a symbol for martyrs, are blessed and carried in procession as a sort of re-enactment of Christ’s triumphant entry into Jerusalem.