Fourth Sunday of Lent (March 18^th 2012)  

John 3:14-21

Translated from a homily by Don Fabio Rosini, broadcast on Vatican Radio

Questions raised by this passage from the Gospel

1 How difficult is it for me to believe in God's unconditional love for me?

2. Are there aspects of my life that I think God would condemn me for?

3. When I place myself before God, are there areas of my life that I wish to keep in darkness? Places where I would prefer the Lord didn't enter?

4. Am I inclined to believe that God wants things for me that do not coincide with what I truly want? Do I hide aspects of myself from God because I fear that God will have a devastating effect on these aspects if I allow him to?

5. If I believe in God's unconditional love for me, despite my faults, then can this help me to uncover my malice, confront it, and allow the light of God's love to transform it?

"The primary challenge of the Christian life is to believe in the love of God. This challenge involves the purification of our hearts and the banishment of darkness. Let us stop looking to ourselves in our efforts to understand God! Let us stop looking at the chaos within us, and at the guilt complexes that we have! The psychological mechanisms that go round in circles and take us nowhere! Let us look only to Jesus! Let us lift our gaze to the "serpent raised up in the desert", the man who became sin out of love for us. Let us lift our gaze to his mercy, and believe in his unconditional acceptance of us".

Jesus wants Nicodemus to know that the most essential thing in life is to trust in God's unconditional love for us

Jesus is talking to Nicodemus and refers to this strange event from the Old Testament in which Moses lifted up a snake in the desert so that the people might be saved from the attack of a serpent. Here the Israelites are asked to trust in God's word and perform this weird act in order to be saved. In reality, the problem that is being addressed in the passage from the Book of Numbers is the issue of their lack of faith in God, the difficulty of believing in his love for them, and the prevalent notion that the Lord was setting snares for them that would lead to their destruction. Jesus addresses the same point in his conversation with Nicodemus, and wants to emphasize how vital it is that we believe in the love of God for us. "God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not be lost but have eternal life".

We wish to keep the evil side of us in darkness, away from God's sight

Believing in the love of God for us is the most difficult thing for us to do. We continue to believe that the Lord wishes to judge, condemn and punish, but Jesus has only one desire for us, and that is our happiness.  We, however, close the door in our hearts and keep the Lord out because we doubt that he really wants what is good for us. To really believe in his love for us would involve the destruction of the structure of self-defence that we have erected within us. The tempter encourages us to doubt God's benevolent attitude towards us, and to make us think of ourselves as being defective in God's sight, something that the Lord wishes to destroy or punish. When we present ourselves before God, we do so in a tense and defensive way, thinking that if God could see us as we truly are then it would be devastating for aspects of our life that we wish to retain. Just as Adam and Eve hid themselves from God after the Fall, we try to hide the side of ourselves that we consider to be unacceptable in God's sight. We don't want the Lord to know us fully, or to relate to those aspects of us that we consider shameful. The Gospel passage, in fact, goes on to describe the actions of those who prefer to remain in darkness "The light has come into the world, but people prefer darkness to light, because their actions were evil".

           

We have a decision to make: remain in the darkness of our malicious ways, or place our entire selves before the illuminating light of God's love for us

Everyone's actions are evil. None of us can place ourselves before God thinking that we are unblemished or perfect. All of us are poor in God's sight. But the decision we have to make is this: Can we place ourselves, poor as we are, in the presence of God? Or will we remain separated from God in the shadows of our malicious ways? We are all fragile and tend towards malicious acts. We all have dark areas in our lives. But these dark areas can be illuminated and pardoned. This does not entail becoming perfect overnight. What is essential is that we accept the truth of God's love for us and enter into the truth, seeing ourselves and our faults in the light of that truth. To be in the truth is to know one's humble state.

            We run from the tender, merciful light of God's love because we don't see it for what it is, and believe instead that God's gaze towards us is antagonistic and judgemental. The judgemental and condemnatory gaze towards the dark areas in our hearts comes not from God, but from the accuser, Satan, who always strives to attach his own evil to God. The first temptation - that of Eve - was to look in a negative way on God, and to believe that God wished to deny humanity something that was good in itself. From that moment on, life became a process of defending ourselves, protecting ourselves from the God that we suspect does not want what we want.

The primary challenge of the Christian life is to believe in the unconditional love of God.

This Sunday let us proclaim and accept the unconditional love of God for each one of us. Jesus comes to us for one reason only, to love us, comfort us, liberate us, break our chains, make us appreciate his tenderness towards us. Judgement, curiously enough, is placed in our hands. This is perhaps the most disturbing, yet liberating, aspect of Sunday's Gospel. Jesus has freed us. Anyone who refuses to accept this liberation has condemned himself. The Lord will strive until the last moment of our lives to save us, to snatch our hearts away from the influence of evil. But the heart of the human being remains free. We can say no the love of God. Even those among us who are very involved in the life of the Church can still have hearts that are not completely open to the unconditional love of God. We can resist that love and remain attached to darkness. Even if our hearts refuse to abandon themselves to God, the Lord keeps on striving to conquer us, through Divine Providence, through moments of difficulty in life that challenge us, like a Father who is tender yet strong.

            The challenge of the Christian life is to believe in the love of God. This challenge involves the purification of our hearts and the banishment of darkness. It does not require violence, but demands that we open ourselves to the light. We may be poor and miserable, but we are destined for a loving relationship that is simply extraordinary. Let us stop looking at ourselves in our efforts to understand God! Let us stop looking at the chaos within us, and at the guilt complexes that we have! The psychological mechanisms that bring us round in circles and take us nowhere! Let us look only to Jesus! Let us lift our gaze to the "serpent raised up in the desert", the man who became sin out of love for us. Let us lift our gaze to his mercy and believe in his unconditional acceptance of us.