Homily for April 15th: John 3:16-21.
“God so loved he
world …” we just heard. Perhaps someone is thinking: “But of course. Isn’t that
obvious?” To many people it is not obvious. Christians who in past centuries
used to be called Puritans consider the world an evil place, from which Jesus’
disciples must flee. This view is still alive and well today in certain
quarters. It has a kernel of truth. The world organized apart from God, and
against God is evil. Jesus refers to
that world when he says, later in John’s gospel: “In the world you will have
tribulation. But be of good cheer; I have overcome the world” (16:33). In
today’s gospel, however, Jesus is speaking of the world in a good sense: not
the world of human marring, but the good world of God’s making. That world must
be lovable, for God does not making anything that is not good.
“God so loved
the world,” Jesus goes on, “that he gave his only begotten Son.” He was the
most that God had to give or could give. And God’s Son came into our world, and
continues with us through the power of his Holy Spirit, not as some kind of
great policeman or scold to frighten us into measuring up to his
unrealistically high standards. No. Jesus came, and remains with us, “so that
the world might be saved through him.” How?
As we read on
in today’s gospel we discover the answer. We are saved “by believing in him,”
Jesus Christ. To believe in someone
is to trust that person -- more, to entrust
ourselves to him or her. Whoever does that, our gospel tells us, lives not in
darkness, but in light – the light that shines from the face of Jesus Christ.
How dark our world would be had he never come to us!
We pray in
this Mass, therefore, that we may entrust ourselves ever more completely to
Jesus, himself the light of the world; and that we ourselves may be lenses or
prisms of his light in a dark and often fearful world.
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