Light or Darkness?

The Good News of Mercy

Nicodemus is You and Me

Halfway through Lent, the Church calls this “rejoice” Sunday. Our scripture readings barely talk about that beautiful word, rejoice. Instead, scripture gives us a picture of a man who is now my new hero. I knew his name but only thought of him as a gateway to something Jesus wanted us to hear centuries later. His behavior is like ours. His name? Nicodemus.

He’s everything we’re taught not to be, and he becomes everything we want to be. (Repeat that sentence?) He asks the Master late at night (darkness, anyone!?), “How can I get to heaven?” Jesus replies, “Be born again.” “Go back inside my mom and come out again?” asked the baffled Nicky. (I nicked name him that, shorthand.) “No, you crazy guy,” replies Jesus. Rebirth resides in your soul, the heart of God living within you. Renew, reborn, remember…all of it is a gift from God, grace-filled, not of our doing, which makes it a gift.

The World God Loves

Catholics are often lacking in their understanding of the scriptures. Whereas other Christians can quote chapter and verse, Catholics often struggle to keep the characters and the stories straight. Therefore, it is likely than when a Catholic sees a reference to Scripture such as John 3:16 (on a bumper sticker or held up in the end zone of a football game), it might not be apparent to which verse that reference points. The reason I bring up John 3:16 today is because this verse is in today’s Gospel. “God so loved the world that God gave His only Son, that all who believe in Him might not perish but might find eternal life.”

Leaving the Darkness

We all have areas of darkness. Yet we keep clinging to what hurts us. What can we do to break this negative cycle? Jesus shows us the way. In the Gospel he tells Nicodemus, “Those who walk in the truth, come to the light.” The way to the light is to acknowledge the truth about ourselves and about our relationship to God. We leave the darkness, not by focusing on the darkness but by focusing on a truth. The truth on which we focus depends upon the darkness in which we find ourselves.

Goodbye Fear, Hello Joy

This Sunday is called Laetare Sunday. The word Laetare is Latin for joy. This celebration is actually different from the celebration we have we have the Third Sunday of Advent. That is Gaudete Sunday. Gaudete means rejoice, prepare to rejoice in the glory of the Lord coming on Christmas. The word Laetare that we use for this Sunday refers to the type of joy that is light hearted. Think of floating for joy. Think of the feeling you experienced when you first held your first child. You were floating for joy. This floating with the joy of the Lord is in stark contrast to the deep, heavy, grief we feel at on Good Friday. When the disciples learned that Jesus had risen f rom the dead, they were so full of joy that they proclaimed Alleluia in such a way that they were almost hyperventilating.

The readings from today’s Mass speak to us of our desperate condition and how God’s abiding love has not only set us free but also lifted us higher. God was not content to restore us to some earthly garden, paradise though it was. No, He so loved the world that He sent His Son, who opened Heaven itself for us and has given us a new, transformed, and eternal life.

Let’s look at some of the themes and ponder how God  demonstrates His ardent love for us and persistently works to lift us higher. If there is any problem it is from us, not God.

Clergy E-Notes

“…if the family is the sanctuary of life, the place where life is conceived and cared for, it is a horrendous contradiction when it becomes a place where life is rejected and destroyed. So great is the value of a human life, and so inalienable the right to life of an innocent child growing in the mother’s womb, that no alleged right to one’s own body can justify a decision to terminate that life, which is an end in itself and which can never be considered the “property” of another human being.”

— Pope Francis

Time to Rebuild

Bottom line: Jesus wants to bring us back to Jerusalem, our true home. It’s time to rebuild.

From the Archives (Fourth Sunday of Lent, Year B)
2018: Finding Hope When Life Hurts Week 4: Believe
2015: New Mind and Heart Week 4
2012: Everthing Matters – Except Everything
2009: The Beauty of Humility
2006: A Passion Which Transforms
2003: No Refuge from the Love of God
2000: The Memory of God

Jesus Lifted up on the Cross for our Salvation

In some parts of the world, if you pass by the emergency department of a hospital you will see something you do not see here. At the entrance to the emergency department, you see large posters with photographs or pictures of the venomous snakes in that locality. If one gets bitten by a snake, one has to go immediately to the emergency department and, if possible, identify the type of snake in order to get the antivenom. Anyone who has ever lived in such an area knows people who were bitten, for example, when they startled a snake hiding in their back yard or when out walking in a secluded area.

Being Saved by God’s Kind Favor

When I was a preteen, I used to be embarrassed by those signs, some of them in garish neon, which sported the phrase, “Jesus Saves.” It seemed so primitive. I also remember those Sunday morning television programs that piously ended with, “I have come that they may have life and have it more abundantly.” Who on earth would be so arrogant as to make such a claim? And I also thought for the longest time that the “IHS” over graves stood for “I have suffered,” a somewhat self-indulgent epitaph. Little did I know that “IHS” means Jesus.

Called to Evangelize

The Church believes that Christ the Light shines on all peoples. The work of missionaries then isn’t to, quote unquote, “bring Jesus to nonbelievers”. The work of missionaries is to help nonbelievers see how the light of Christ is already there, even if that light is dim. Through the help of Scripture and Tradition, missionaries can help new converts to see the light more clearly and to embrace the light in their love of God and neighbor through the reception of the fullness of revelation given to us in Jesus Christ, aided by the Sacraments of the Church.

Christ “lifted up”

The Greek word for “lifted up” also means “exaltation”. For the Christian to be authentic in his or her life that means that Christ/God must be exalted. Simply put, Christ/God must be the center of the Christian’s life and anything or anyone else that would vie with God for this center must be put in their proper place.

Our lives must be centered on God. If this is done then everything we do and all we are derive from God. We will be moral, honest and honorable. We will seek to tell the truth and not distort the news. We will not spread falsehoods. We will not gossip. We will pursue righteousness, devotion, love, faith, patience and gentleness. God must be exalted in the life of every Christian and this means that God alone is the center.