God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son,. . .
These few words speak volumes about God. God is so unselfish that he sends his most precious Son in order to restore the world and its inhabitants to loving friendship and intimacy with him. So not only does this statement tell us about God, it says a great deal about us as well, about our worth in God’s eyes.
We tend to be somewhat negative about ourselves, perhaps because no one is better acquainted with our personal shortcomings than we are. Each of us knows how much and how often we fail to be what we profess to be. Consequently, it is difficult to believe that we are so loved that God wants to be in relationship with us.
With the gospel statement of God’s personal love for us as our common Christian possession, it is difficult to understand how the concept of a “policeman God,” forever trying to catch his children in wrongdoing so as to punish them could ever have taken hold on so many Christians. With Jesus himself as the greatest sacrament of divine love, how was it possible for people to believe more in their often petty sins than in God’s loving-kindness? It is tragic for any of us to refuse to believe that we are unworthy of being loved into forgiveness.
This is the message that John and Peter are preaching to the people in Jerusalem when they are arrested. They have known Jesus personally and are so convinced of God’s love for us that they think nothing of walking right back to the Temple precincts to preach even after they have been imprisoned for this very reason. The Holy Spirit has so emboldened them that no one can stop them for preaching this message.
Realizing how much we have been loved should help us to make our own the words of today’s entrance antiphon: “I will be a witness to you in the world, O Lord. I will spread the knowledge of your name among my brothers and sisters.”
Fr. Lawrence Jagdfeld, O.F.M., Administrator