Fourth Sunday of Lent
God so loved the world that he sent his only-begotten Son so that those
who believe in him might not perish, but might have eternal life. For
God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world but that
the world might be saved through him.
John 3, 12-21
The distinguished Dominican scholar and theologian, Edward Schillebeecks,
who made a name for himself during the Second Vatican Council, tells the
following story against himself: “When I first went to the seminary as a
teenager, I was impressed at the fact that we used rise in the small hours of
the morning and go to the chapel to chant the Divine Office at 2.00 a.m. In
my enthusiasm, I wrote home to tell my parents of how I felt: ‘How wonderful
it feels to be praising God when all the world around me is asleep, and I and
my fellow seminarians are giving praise and glory to God.’”
His father wrote in reply: “I’m glad to hear that you are enjoying your new
monastic life. However, I should remind you that when you were a baby
(Edward was one of thirteen children), your mother and I were often up at
2.00 a.m., walking the hallway, trying to pacify one or other of you kids. We,
too, were giving glory to God, though we were not exactly singing the psalms.”
Christian tradition has been inclined to suggest that the best place to find God
is in a quiet retreat or in the seclusion of a monastery. Edward’s wise father
says: “God is to be found just as much in the everydayness of life, even
though we may not realize it at the time.”
The criteria that Jesus set out for finding our way to the fullness of life with
God are what we used to call “the spiritual and corporal works of mercy” living the Gospel in practical action, in very ordinary ways that are woven into
the tapestry of our living and are born of grateful necessity. God is there in a
parent assisting with homework, in tables being cleared and dishes washed
and wiped, in hungry mouths being fed, in comfort and encouragement
offered, in business conducted honestly and ethically. The “monastery” and
what we refer to as reflective and retreat time are essential, but not as an
escape from a godless world but as a time and place to refocus and to remind
ourselves that God is very much alive and active in the world around us, in the
activities in which we engage, in the people we encounter, in the thoughts we
think and in the feelings we feel. These are all the bits and pieces that make
up the world that God loves so intensely.
When we look at the mayhem, the violence, the terrorism and the barbarity
being pursued in many parts of our world, we might be tempted to think that
God must hate the world, and that the best thing we can do is run away to the
seclusion of a monastery or some similar place where, undisturbed, we can
concentrate on finding God.
Yet the good news of today’s readings is that God loves the world and freely
gave it the most precious gift possible in the person of Jesus. Remember,
this is a God who was well familiar with the evil visited upon the world of the
Old Testament by the likes of Cain, the people of Sodom and Gomorrah, the
Pharaoh of Egypt, the butchering Assyrians, the lustful King David who sent
Uriah to his death in order to steal Uriah’s wife, Bathsheba. Yet all this was
part of a world which Jesus is adamant God loves.
What, then, was it about Jesus that led him to insist that God loves this world
with a love that is so intense? I want to suggest that Jesus was possessed of
a hope, developed over time from his relationship with God, that refused to
give up on us; a hope that humanity, at its best, has the ability to transform
the world by loving it into life. Contemporary Latin American theologians refer
to this as la esperanza transformadora - ‘transforming hope’. In an article
entitled A Feathered Thing: On the resiliency of hope, (to which I have
referred previously), Vincentian, Robert Maloney, himself quoting Augustine,
writes:
“Hope has two beautiful daughters. Their names are Anger and Courage:
anger at the way things are, and courage to work to change them.” Anger,
Hope’s first daughter, reacts spontaneously in the face of evil, refusing to
accept unjust social and economic structures that deprive the poor of life:
unjust laws, power-based economic relationships, inequitable treaties,
artificial boundaries, oppressive or corrupt governments and numerous other
subtle obstacles to harmonious societal relationships. Then Hope’s second
daughter, Courage, standing at Anger’s side and singing out persistently,
searches for ways “to strive, to seek, to find and not to yield,” as Tennyson put
it.
In last Sunday’s reading about Jesus overturning the tables in the temple, we
saw both Anger and Courage at work. Today’s gospel reading puts the focus
squarely on Hope herself.
As sparks of the Divine, created in God’s image, we are being nudged to
examine ourselves on the extent to which we mirror in our living the hope that
God and Jesus hold out for the world of which we are part.
In the article referenced above, Robert Maloney gives several examples of
hope in operation. This is one of them:
About eight years ago, my niece lost her 2-year-old baby, Maeve. Hundreds
of people came to the wake. After Maeve’s coffin was closed, someone
overheard her brothers and sisters talking. Her littlest brother said, “Is she
playing inside that box?” His older sister replied, “No; Mama says she’s
playing in heaven.”
Maeve never learned to walk, nor did she ever speak. The handicap with
which she was born impeded her growth from the start and then abruptly stole
her life away. But she lived and died evoking love and radiating it back. Her
father said at her funeral, “Every time you saw her, you wanted to kiss her.”
When we witness death, we often ask why; all the more so with a child. Why
was Maeve born with disabilities? Why did she die long before those who
loved her and nourished her? Sometimes in anger we blame God and ask,
How can a good God let a child like Maeve die? Questions like this are
perennial. Thomas Gray lamented:
Full many a gem of purest ray serene the dark unfathomed caves of ocean
bear. Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, and waste its sweetness on
the desert air.
(Elegy Written In A Country Church-Yard)
We have no ready answers to such complaints, only a persistent hope that
points us beyond our grief. A feathered thing perches in our souls, singing out.
Hope moves us to ask not just why Maeve died, but why she was born in the
first place. Had she not been born, would her mother and father and brothers
and sisters have ever loved as they learned to love during the two years of
Maeve’s life? Would they ever have learned to give as they gave and to pray
as they prayed? If heaven is union with those whom we love, then was
Maeve’s presence in her family its foretaste? Maeve reminded us that the
communion of saints is a communion of human imperfection; one of its
building blocks is what we make of our own weakness and the weakness of
those who surround us. A grieving woman, who had just lost a child, once
wrote: “Some may wonder why, after my experience, I still make the painful
effort to believe. I can only respond that, despite my doubts, having seen the
breathtaking perfection of my daughter’s peaceful face, I find it impossible to
believe that God was not there.”
As disciples of Jesus and believers in God, is it not up to us to reflect some of
their boundless love to the part of the world that we know and which, despite
its flaws, God loves so intensely?