Joh 3:14-21
2 Chr 36:14-17.19-23
Eph 2:4-10
focus: We, too, like Nicodemus, are called upon to look to Jesus, and to put our trust in him who is also for us the source of life, yes, of life to the full.
I am always impressed when I visit the campus of Boys Town in Omaha. “There is no such thing as a bad boy; there is only bad environment, bad training, bad example, bad thinking.” This was, as we know, the conviction of the Servant of God, Fr. Edward Flanagan, the founder of Boys Town. He lived according to this conviction. Thousands of boys, homeless or delinquent or both, found a father in him, somebody who cares, somebody who gave them love, education and good training.
Fr. Flanagan’s work with troubled and abandoned youths, began in 1917 in a rented house in Omaha with five boys who needed a home. Now Boys Town helps more than 1.6 million people each year through its main campus,it’s national research hospital in Omaha, its national hotline
and at various locations around the country.
It made no difference to Fr. Flanagan whether a boy was Catholic, Protestant, Jewish or had no religion at all. He taught all of them to pray, but gave each one the freedom to pray in his own way. The color of a person’s skin didn’t matter to Fr. Flanagan, either. One African American commentator wrote after his death in 1948, “America was founded upon the philosophy that everyone deserved his chance to contribute his talents to make this country great. But America has yet to learn by the example of this humble disciple of Christ [Fr Flanagan,] that the phrase ‘all people’ truly includes the white, the brown and the black.” Fr. Flanagan made visible in an eminent way, as did Jesus himself, the love of God for every human being.
God’s love and mercy shine through all the Scripture texts of this Sunday. The situation of the Israelites in the Babylonian exile seemed hopeless. They couldn’t be joyous, as our responsorial psalm says. However, God took the initiative and inspired the Persian King Cyrus to give them their freedom. They were able to return to their land; and Cyrus even supported the rebuilding of their temple in Jerusalem.
John’s Gospel proclaims the good news of God’s love who even gave up his only begotten Son in order for us to be saved.
By grace and by God, who is rich in mercy, we have been saved through faith, the Letter to the Ephesians tells us. We have a share in Christ’s resurrection and, even now, in his heavenly glory. That’s why the Laetare Sunday has this joyful quality.
On today’s Sunday, we have moved into the second part of Lent. During the first weeks of Lent, the readings at Mass called us to penance and conversion, to forgiveness and love of enemies,
to prayer, fasting and almsgiving. The emphasis was on our doing.
Now, starting today, the readings of the Lectionary are about Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the healer and life-giver, the one who gives life through his confrontation with death. The emphasis is on the work of God, who guides his people, who is rich in mercy, and who sent his son into the world, not to condemn it, but that it might be saved though him. The focus is on our salvation and our redemption.
God loves each one of us as if you, and you, and I were the only persons in the universe. In Jesus Christ, this love has reached into the deepest depths of earthly sickness and desolation.
My brothers and sisters, we, too, like Nicodemus, whom we meet in today’s gospel, are called upon to actively convert to Jesus, to gradually conform the ways of our lives to his. And, even more fundamentally, we are called upon to look to Jesus, and to receive from him God’s mercy, and life, life to the full.
An expression of our active conversion, of our coming toward the light this Lent could be, if we haven’t made it yet, a good confession. The examination of our conscience helps us to become aware of those areas in our lives that need improvement and a new beginning. The celebration of the sacrament itself assures us of God’s forgiveness and of God’s continued and never ending love for us.
And we can ask ourselves: What would be a way for us to show something of God’s love and mercy, that we have received to others? Is it time for us to reach out to a person with whom we are not reconciled? Is there something special we can do, inspired by Fr. Flanagan’s ideals, for our children or grandchildren in order to show them our love and care?
A spiritual exercise that leads us well into Lent’s second part could be to sit in front of a crucifix today or this week in our room, in our house, or in church and to look at it with great trust and with hope. What the apostle Paul says is true: Because of his great love for us [God] brought us to life with Christ when we were dead in sin. By his grace we have been saved.
~Fr. Thomas Leitner, OSB