A reflection on the Scriptures based on the readings for the Second Sunday of Lent according to the Latin Liturgy. Gospel passage – John 3, 14-21
Find Salvation in the Cross of Christ – Soundtrack
Fr. Peter Tajish O de M.
Today the Word proclaims a paradoxical truth that glory belongs to the one lifted up on the cross. The cross was a punishment and a humiliation until then. Even St. Paul preached the cross as an insult to the Gentiles and a stumbling block to the Jews. To see the glory of the cross in such a culture is also a great revolution.
If you ask why God had a cross, there is only one answer, love. His cross was a sign that God loved the world. The impossible reality of God dying on the cross was made possible in the color of love. Love makes everything possible.
The cross is a sign of salvation, but when the cross is lifted up, the one who is crucified on it becomes full of love. That is how the cross is glorified. When we enter into the depth of the Word we get a fuller meaning.
Nicodemus was one who believed because he saw signs (John 3.2). The conviction formed in him is that Jesus came from God. His mastery of the law is revealed in the very word Jewish law. He is a member of the Sanhedrin, the learned body of Judaism. The verse also indicates that night is the time of scripture study and he is walking out of darkness into light.
It is to such a man that Christ speaks of the serpent lifted up in the wilderness. The allusion to this serpent is the Old Testament. Numbers 21,4-9 and Wisdom 6,6 The serpent is a symbol or image of salvation. It is God who saves, and the symbol of God is the serpent.
In the New Testament, Christ is the sacrament of God, the symbol of salvation. God’s love is what Christ incarnated as a man brought to earth. God’s love is revealed in its fullest form in Christ, and that love is self-giving in self-giving on the cross.
Henceforth love is about letting go, giving up, and making yourself small. Surrender yourself unconditionally and leave everything in God’s hands.
The revelation of love takes place on the cross. It is a beautiful place where obedience to God becomes submission to the cross of Christ. A place where the impossibility of God dying becomes possible before love. In a sense the cross becomes revelation.
This fourth Sunday of Lent is Revelation Sunday of God’s love. Revelation of God’s unconditional love. We are called to be baptized into that love. When love appears before us in its fullness, it will henceforth be a great crime to live without seeing it.
Why was this God, the question of love ends with the answer of eternal life. Why did God become man, suffer and die? Every human soul is for salvation.
There is a short poem by Satchidanathan. “Still on this earth I will drink poison till the last manthari becomes God”. We are called to the love of the Father who gave even His own Son so that every man may have eternal life. We should be baptized in that river of love. To lie still on the shores of His mercy, that is our salvation.
But to enter into it the light must arise in us. What is light? It is a transparency. A place where you shine yourself under the light of God. In those places there is no blemish in you, but a place where one sees God face to face, full of God’s grace and transparent. A place where you surrender yourself like Christ and become a child of God.
That one light, that is the baptism of love. It is the birth of an unadulterated man. A beautiful reality where the inside and the outside are the same.
You should know that it is also a challenge. Like light, darkness is another reality of the earth. One of the things the gospel tells beautifully is about man’s temptation to love darkness. Darkness keeps one enveloped in darkness while light fills with transparency. It is that darkness envelops one in such a way that one cannot reveal and reveal oneself.
This temptation is the biggest problem today. Men who walk themselves into darkness. Darkness can be anything, one’s sinful impulses, addictions, evil, selfishness, and vices. From telling lies to hiding on social media, there are many dark deeds. It is all darkness that separates one from God’s love and prevents one from being baptized into that grace.
Only one person can come out of it. Because the darkness is so great that one day it will swallow you up. There is a comfort zone that darkness provides, and one has probably fallen into it. Great caution is required. When the darkness comes to swallow you up, step into God’s light. Then the darkness will disappear.
The fourth Sunday of Lent is a day to proclaim God’s love. A place where we realize that there is a God who loves us, that love is an invitation, and that we are called to fall in love with it. Let us not feel the darkness when God appears before us empty of Himself. Let us descend into that stream of love with a grateful heart. That baptism will make us transparent, and it will become our salvation.
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2024-03-08 16:48:28
