4th Sunday of Lent – Jesus and Nicodemus (Jn 3:14-21)

Jesus, the Light of Love

Introduction

- John’s gospel is known as the Gospel of Light. He portrays Jesus as the Light of the world.

- Jn 8:12 – “I am the light of the world, whoever follows me never walk in darkness”. Jn 1:4 – ‘Word is the light of men’. (v.9) – ‘true light was coming into the world’.

- Darkness here is considered as evil, unbelief or ignorance.

Content

- Darkness as absence of Divine

o In the background of today’s gospel passage it is said, Nicodemus came to Jesus at night. It shows that he was in ignorance who wanted to be enlightened by Jesus.

o In John 13:30 it is written, “As soon as Judas had taken the bread, he went out. And it was night”. The word ‘night’ shows his evil intentions.

- Evil takes place in dark. But sometimes people love dark rather than light.

o There is a story of a man who woke up hungry in the middle of the night. He lit a candle and began eating grapes from a bowl beside his bed. He took a bite from one and saw a worm in it; so he threw it out of through the window. He bit into the second grape, found another worm, and threw it away also. Reasoning that he wouldn't have any grape left to eat if he continued to look at it in the light, he blew out the candle and quickly ate the rest of the grapes.

- Come to the light, is our call as disciples of Jesus.

o To come to the light (to escape from the poison of the snake that was an evil) what Israelites did is explained in the gospel. They made a bronze serpent and raised it up on a pole. Those who looked at that bronze serpent were saved and delivered from the darkness (of poison or death).

o To escape from the evil that surrounds us is our wish and the only way is to look up to Jesus who is raised from the ground on the cross.

o What are the evils that engulf us? It can be our bad habits, evil thoughts, braking of commandments, unwanted worries and tensions, sufferings, etc.

o In order to come to the light, we have to look at Jesus who is crucified.

- When we look at the cross we see the love of our Heavenly Father.

o He loves us so much that He gave His only Son for our salvation.

o God’s love is entirely different from what we practice. Our love is possessive, limited and conditional. God’s love is self-giving, limitless and unconditional. These qualities make the Father’s love unique.

o We are called to enjoy and share His love.

Conclusion

- By enjoying God’s love we are called to come to the

o Light of Conviction,

o Light of Conversion,

o Light of Communion and

o Light of Consecration

- During this Lenten season let us come to Jesus the light of the world and purify ourselves by that Light.

30th Sunday of Orinary times - Love God and Love Neighbor (Mt 22:34-40)

Love God and Love Neighbor

Introduction

- We have in today’s gospel two most important commandments. Which of these is easy to follow? I thought in my childhood days that it is “Love God”, since it is a personal matter without any external signs. There is no external proof whether a person loves God or not. But later I understood that it is the most difficult commandment after reading 1Jn 4:20, (“if anyone says ‘I love God’ yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen cannot love God, whom he has not seen”), and 1Jn 2:4 (“the man who says ‘I know him’ but does not do what he commands is a liar, and the truth is not in him”).

Content

- Three dimensions of Love

o Love God

§ "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind." Quoted from Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18, this is the first and most important Commandment.

§ Giving first preference to God in our life always. “with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind”.

§ When we obey this commandment by giving first preference to God, everything else would fall in its exact place in our lives.

o Love Neighbor

§ In the first reading (Ex 22:20) “you shall not oppress an alien, for you were once aliens yourselves in the land of Egypt”. Who is this “alien”? They are the nameless and faceless people in our society. It can be my aged mother…. Father…. Daughter or son…. Or anybody who feels alienation in our houses.

§ When we love God as our father we have to accept all others as our brothers and sisters.

§ (1Jn 4:20) “if anyone says ‘I love God’ yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen cannot love God, whom he has not seen”, and (1Jn 2:4) “the man who says ‘I know him’ but does not do what he commands is a liar, and the truth is not in him”.

o Love Self

§ We begin the lessons of love by loving ourselves. For eg; the baby love itself very much. The baby cries and gets the things that are necessary for him/her. Whenever there is a pain in the body the baby cries – love of the physical body. When the baby feels that nobody is paying attention to him/her the baby cries – meeting the psychological needs.

§ Later when grown up, we attribute all the above said traits to our fellow brethren, that they are the people with material and psychological needs, and self respect.

Conclusion

- True love of God and true love of self would guide us to the “love of our neighbor”.

- Let us measure our love of God by looking at our approach towards others.

7th Sunday in Ordinary Time – Be Perfect (Mt:38-48)

Be Perfect (Mt:38-48)

Introduction

- Is there a word “impossible” in the dictionary of God?

- “Impossible” is an impossibility in the dictionary of God. But today Jesus shows us that there are some things impossible to God. For example it is impossible to God not love His creature. It is impossible to God not to forgive a repentant sinner.

- These impossibilities may be called as the “weakness of God” - weakness to love and forgive.

Content

- Let us look at the two impossibilities / weakness of God.

- It is impossible for him not to love his creatures especially the human being.

o Gives rain to just and unjust

o Gives sunshine to good and bad

o Out of Love he gave His only son

o Even though we are sinners he comes in the form of Eucharist in to our hearts.

o Even if we go away from him, he comes behind searching us. He cannot forsake his creatures.

o Even those who do the corruption get the blessings of God.

- It is impossible for him to avoid a repentant sinner.

o The example of prodigal son

o The good thief on the right side of the cross

- Jesus ends today’s gospel with these words – “be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect”. He gives all his believers a call to be perfect – or – to have the same weakness of heavenly Father.

Conclusion

- Is it possible to walk towards perfection in love and forgiveness? Yes, it is possible.

- Love as God loves

o We often love with conditions – if you are a good wife I will be a good husband.

o We often love with selfishness – what will get back if I love him/her?

o Can we love others since they are the gift of God for me? – Husband has to love his wife only because she is a gift of God for him.

- Forgive as God forgives

o Story of bomb blast in front of De La Salle University on Sept 26 – so many students got injured - a girl who lost her legs in the blast told in an interview – I forgive the people who is the cause for losing my legs.

o Jesus forgave on the cross. By saying that the centurion cried out, “he is truly son of God”.

o Forgive is the most powerful weapon to destroy the enemies permanently.

- Eucharist is the sacrament of Love and Forgiveness.

- Let us be perfect as our Heavenly Father is perfect by practicing Love and Forgiveness.

Samaritan Inhospitality (Lk 9:51-56)

In today’s gospel we see the difference between the mind of ordinary Jew and of Jesus. The disciples (ordinary Jewish mind) suggest Jesus to curse the villages of Samaritans for not welcoming them in their journey to Jerusalem. But Jesus did not curse that village instead rebuked the disciples.

There were enough reasons for Jesus to curse those villages. At first, Samaritans were considered as the second class Jews and enemies. They were second class because they were adulterated during the exile and became impure by mixing themselves with the Gentiles. The second reason was; Jesus was in a disturbed state of mind since he was going for his passion and death in Jerusalem. A person who is disturbed in mind might get agitated very fast.

The disciples got angry because of these two reasons; their enmity with Samaritans and the disturbed state of mind in the journey to Jerusalem (for their master to suffer and die). In spite of these reasons Jesus showed them the model of forgiveness and love.

We may have enemies in our life. We also may have sufficient reason to keep them enemies. But the important question is; do we follow the disciples who tried to curse their enemies or Jesus who forgives the villagers?

Love of Enemies (Lk 6:27-38)

To understand this gospel passage we may classify all the people into three groups – Friends, Strangers and Enemies. Friends have a wider meaning today since the people have so many unseen friends through social networking systems such as face book and twitter. Strangers are those who do have any contact with us. Enemies can be those whom we know, may be our old friends, but did something harm to us and we do not like them anymore.

During the time of Jesus they had friends and neighbors, who belong to the same clan or family and were Jews. The strangers and enemies were the foreigners, outcast people whom they had hatred in their mind. Jesus tells them to love these strangers and enemies more than their friends.

The purpose of Jesus’ love for enemy is to eliminate them. The way of the world to eliminate enemies are to destroy them or conquer them by force. But the way of Jesus to eliminate our enemies is to love them and convert them into our friends. The way of Jesus gives us a lasting solution to our problem of enemies.

Let us conquer our enemies through forgiveness, patience and love.

The Greatest Commandment (Mt 22: 34-40)

The question of the greatest commandment is asked by a Pharisee, the doctor of the law. For them there were 613 commands in Torah in which 248 were positive (you shall do) and 365 were negative (you shall not do). The commandments are again classified into light and heavy. The Ten Commandments was considered as heavy that should not be broken. This is the context of the question.

Jesus answers with the Shemah-prayer (Dt 6:5), the basic principle of the whole Torah, love of God and love of neighbor, the vertical and horizontal dimensions of our relationship. This is the core of all the commandments. In other words all the commands are the expansion of these two commandments.

We love God because He is the creator and the most powerful. In the first reading from the book of Ezekiel (Ez 37:1-14) God shows the prophet the valley of bones and how powerful is the Word of God that gave live to all the lifeless bones. He is the maker of everything. He loves and protects us and so it is our duty as creatures to love God with all our heart, soul and mind.

We have to love our neighbor because we see the presence of God in them. Again, in the first reading from book of Ezekiel the bodies of human being were lifeless. They got life when the spirit of God entered into them. The Breath of God is the life giving principle. Therefore God is living in each and every individual. So it is our duty to love and respect them because they are the living temples of the Holy Spirit.

Let us love God the Supreme and respect the presence of God in our brothers and sisters.