God loves the world
This is not just another phrase. These are not words that could be cut out of the Gospel without anything important changing. It is the affirmation that compiles the essential nucleus of the Christian faith. “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son.” This love of God is the origin and the foundation of our hope.
“God loves the world.” God loves it as it is, incomplete and uncertain, full of conflicts and contradictions, capable of the best and the worst. This world does not travel its road alone, lost and abandoned. God envelops it on all four sides with his love. This has consequences of the utmost importance.
- Jesus is, first and foremost, God’s “gift” to the world, not just to Christians. Researchers can endlessly debate many aspects of his historic figure. Theologians can go on developing their most ingenious theories. Only the person who approaches Jesus as God’s great gift can, with excitement and joy, keep on discovering in all his gestures the closeness of God to every human being .
- The Church’s reason for being, the only thing that justifies its presence in the world, is to remember God’s love. Vatican II has underscored this many times: The Church is “sent by Christ to reveal and to communicate the love of God to all human beings.” There is nothing more important. What is primary is to communicate this love of God to every human being.
- According to the evangelist, God gives this great gift that is Jesus to the world, “not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.” It is very dangerous to make a pastoral program wholly out of the denunciation and condemnation of the modern world. Only with a heart full of love for all can we call one another to repentance. If people feel they are condemned by God, we are not transmitting to them Jesus’ message, but something else, our own resentment and anger perhaps.
- In these times when everything seems confusing, uncertain and discouraging, nothing stops any one of us from introducing a little bit of love in the world. This is what Jesus did. We do not have to wait for anyone. Why are there not going to be right now good men and women who will introduce among us love, friendship, compassion, justice, sensitivity and help for those who suffer? These men and women build Jesus’ Church, the Church of love.
March 15, 2015
4 Lent (B)
John 3, 14-21