4th SUNDAY IN LENT B

                                                       
                                                  GOD  SO  LOVED THE  WORLD

'He's got the whole world in His hands’.  

So I sing as I prepare my sermon!. On my desk is a small rubber ball. I take it in my hands and gaze at it intensely. In my imagination I see God’s world  with  oceans and land masses painted upon it.

 I see  God affectionately admiring this work of art, the world He has created. It is beautiful, is lovely…and so is everyone, everything within it.  He made every human being in His own image and likeness. Like Him we are capable of person-to-person relationships – with Him first of all, most of all, with us joining Him in loving  other persons. 

ALL OTHER PERSONS, precisely because God is love and all of us  are His god-like beloved children.  God’s human family  all of us are siblings to one another...inescapably. God, not we, did made it so. God made as lovable to Himself and to one another. He made us to enjoy loving Him and to enjoy loving one another. God does not hate. He loves. When talking about God’s creation, hatred should be unmentionable, so should, spite, and jealousy. These ugly sentiments lead to retaliation and revenge.

God will never cease to love His world together with each of the seven and a half billion people on the face of the earth being uniquely precious to God, each loved by God...so much that  He sent His Son to join us. By becoming Man, Jesus, became Brother Jesus to each of today’s tremendous crowd and to the billions upon billions now deceased and to those yet to be born. All made to be loved by Jesus, to love Jesus, and in so doing all to  love one another.

The bond of love between God and mankind was first broken by the original sin of the original couple, Adam and Eve. The love bond within the human family was first broken when Cain murdered his brother, Abel. Since then, even to this very moment the bonds within the human family have been, and are still being, fractured and fragmented, within the home, the neighbourhood, the nation, between nations.

The differences within the human family which are and always will be the glory of God’s creation, have been become grounds for division - , gender, race, complexion, culture, nationality, social class, political allegiance and, not least, religion. The friction expresses itself through aggression, exploitation, anger, jealousy, greed, violence and lust. Every violation of humanity is an offence against God, the Lord of all creation. 

The ties of love that bind us to God are stretched, ruptured, by the sinful decisions by mankind. And yet God never has decided to cease loving each one of His beloved children, the massive crowd of human beings, and never will. "I shall not forget you. Look, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands,” (Isaiah 49.15).

 As proof positive of God’s total sincerity today’s Gospel tells us, “This is how God loved the world: he gave His only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him may not perish but may have eternal life,” (Jn.3.6). In Jesus there is the  sublime bonding between the divine nature and the human. Jesus claims for Himself  unsurpassable  love, “No one can have greater love than to lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends, if you do what I command you,” (Jn.15.i3).

 "God our Saviour "wants everyone to be saved and reach full  knowledge of the truth.⁵ For there is only one God, and there is only one mediator between  God and humanity, himself a human being, Christ Jesus,  who offered himself as a ransom for all". (1 Tim.2.4).

Calvary spells love; Calvary love spells love everyone – the only possible healing of a vicious, fragmented, broken world such as we have today

Peter Clarke, O.P.