Sermon/Homily for the Fourth Sunday of Lent Year B 10TH MARCH 2024

Sermon/Homily for the Fourth Sunday of Lent Year B 10TH MARCH 2024

2 Chronicles 36:14-16,19-23. Psalm 137:1-2,3,4-5,6. Ephesians 2:4-10. John 3:14-21.

Theme: The Love of God for Humanity.

What would have become of our world if not for the love of God? St. Paul tells us in the second reading, "God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead through our trespasses" (Eph.2:4-5). God loved us when we were most unlovable. We are the ones God loved "when we were dead through our trespasses." St. Paul also said that the proof of God's love for us is that "Christ died for us while we still sinners" (Rom.5:8).

The supreme expression of God's love us, is that He sent his only Son into the world. Today's Gospel puts God's love for us in this popular verse of the Bible when our Lord said to Nicodemus, "For God so loved the world that He gave his only-begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life" (John 3:16). He also said that "God sent his Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world might might be saved through him" (John 3:17). Our Lord Jesus Christ is the only way to salvation. Nobody can achieve salvation through other means except through him and in him alone. That is the whole meaning of his statement to Nicodemus today, the man who came to see him in the night. He told him, "As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life" (John 3:14).

His lifting up in this context has a twofold meaning: lifting up on the cross and lifting up to glory by his resurrection and ascension. The suffering and joy signified by these two images are essentially connected: no cross, no crown; no pain, no gain. Simply put, is that if we look up at Christ and believe in him, He will give us eternal life.

The first reading insists that it is our own fault when we refuse to follow God. We condemn ourselves to unhappiness. This is the case of the Jews in the first reading. The last three kings of Judah were unfaithful to God and his law. The priests were not better. Pagan practices were allowed in Jerusalem and even in the temple of the true God.

In his mercy, God kept sending his messengers, his prophets, pleading with them to mend their ways, but they ignored and even scoffed at his interventions "till there was no remedy."

King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylonia invaded Palestine, captured Jerusalem, destroyed the temple, and took the king and most of the citizens off to Babylon as prisoners of war. The Jews remained in Babylon for almost seventy years.

God, in his mercy, raised up a pagan king, Cyrus, to set all foreign prisoners free, including the Jews. The Jewish prisoners were now free to return to their homeland and encouraged to rebuild their temple in Jerusalem. Now that they had no king and no intention of having one, the temple would be their goal point round, which the nation would gather; in it their faith and their hopes for a glorious future would be centred.

This fourth Sunday of Lent is known as Laetare Sunday as the Church invites us to rejoice with her (Laetare in Latin means to "rejoice"), reminding us that the Lenten season is not a time of grief. We see the love and mercy of God displayed in our three readings today.

Even despite the sin and rebellion of the people of Israel explained in the first reading, God does not withdraw his love from them. The lesson for us here is that we should not see calamities in our lives as if God has abandoned us. Instead, the calamities could serve as a temporary time of cleansing before God could reinstate us.

St. Paul tells us in the second reading that God sent our Lord even when we were dead in sin. Christ Jesus becomes our liberator and the expiation for our sins. He becomes that name that calls down God's mercy on his people. He offers humanity a new hope and cancels our sins. He remains the point on which judgment is pronounced on all those who reject him. But for those who accept him, He becomes their salvation, and they become heirs to God's eternal kingdom.

Let us accept him not by words but also by our good deeds so as to inherit God's eternal kingdom.

May God be merciful to us and give us the grace to always turn to him for solutions to our problems through Christ our Lord. Amen.