HOMILY EASTER SEASON WEEK 02 03 – Year II
Jesus Christ: Love, Light and Life
(Acts 5:17-26; Ps 34; Jn 3:16-21)
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“God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”
Today’s liturgy for Wednesday of the second week of the Easter season, invites us into deeper faith in Jesus as the Incarnate love of God, light to the world, and source of eternal life – good news we are to share with the whole world.
That first sentence of today’s gospel, spoken by Jesus to Nicodemus, is almost another prediction of his passion. The Son that God the Father was giving to the world out of love, was right there, speaking to Nicodemus who represents the world’s resistance to believe.
As Bishop Robert Barron puts it, in his passion to set right a disjointed universe, God broke open his own heart in love. The Father sent not simply a representative but his own Son into the dysfunction of the world, so that he might gather that world into the bliss of the divine life. God’s center—the love between the Father and the Son—is now offered as our center; God’s heart breaks open so as to include even the worst and most hopeless among us.
In so many spiritual traditions, the emphasis is placed on the human quest for God. But this is reversed in Christianity. Christians do not believe that God is dumbly “out there,” like a mountain waiting to be climbed by various religious searchers. On the contrary, God, like the hound of heaven in Francis Thompson’s poem, comes relentlessly searching after us. Because of this questing and self-emptying divine love, we become friends of God, sharers in the communion of the Trinity.
Our greatest need as human beings, is to be loved. That need is fully met in Jesus, who is God’s love poured out into the world. That love is the source of eternal life, and that eternal life is an intimate loving relationship with our Trinitarian God. What more could we ask for? This “way of life” is nothing else but the eternal life Jesus was instructing Nicodemus about – a sharing in the divine life of the Trinity here and now through faith in Jesus and love for one another, a life of freedom from oppression and courage to speak truth to power.
The word Jesus used to describe this new life is “light.” It is interesting that we cannot see light itself – we can only see by light. The only way we can see light in a limited way, is when a prism or a rainbow breaks light into the colors that make up light. Jesus is truly that prism, that light, helping us to see the truth about life, to see reality for what it is, and to see that eternal life is what we are called to experience.
In the first reading, we hear how the apostles were imprisoned for teaching and healing in the name of Jesus. Here we see the darkness of the religious leaders who should have been the first to recognize, welcome and worship Jesus. Instead, their lack of faith led them to sell out to the false gods of possessions, prestige and power. Their greatest sin, basically, was idolatry, unbelief in the God of Jesus Christ – they were really worshipping their false gods, and that manifested itself in their lives through jealousy, first of all of Jesus, and now even of the apostles’ success and popularity among the people. How sad they would choose this darkness rather than the light of Christ. And how interesting that the gentle power of love shows itself in the fact the apostles were freed from the bars and dungeons of the prison without anyone being aware of it!
The apostles were in jail because they had been proclaiming this new life in Christ. Their faith in the Word of God that instructed them to “tell all the people about this life” was so strong they went out and carried on doing what put them in jail in the first place. That is what we must also do – having been totally and fully loved by God our Father in Jesus Christ, we must now live out those words of the angel to the apostles, “Go and tell the people the whole message about this life.”
Maureen is a young woman who has struggled through a very difficult childbirth and pregnancy while going through a very abusive relationship. That whole period of suffering brought her back to the Lord and to the Church, and to a very positive attitude towards life, trying to make sense of her suffering. Her inner strength is obvious to other older members of her community, who are actually turning to her now to start a woman’s group, which surprises her, but not her pastor. She has become a bearer of light to her community.
The Eucharist is a sharing in that eternal life Jesus came to share with us. It is our best way to praise the Lord at all times. May our pondering the Word of God today deepen our faith in Jesus, help us experience his eternal life more fully, and empower us to be light to the world as we share that good news with others.
