March 14, 2021: Fifth Sunday of Lent

Today's Readings: https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/031421-YearB.cfm

Our God may be called “A Divine Surpriser!” -- one who acts in ways none of us could ever imagine!

Cyrus, a pagan – a king of their enemies’ people saves the Israelites from slavery and exile and sends them home.  He even gives them the resources they need to rebuild the Temple.  YIKES!!!!  Who could believe that?

St. Thomas Aquinas reminds us that equality, reciprocity, and mutual self-revelations form the hearts of those who would be friends.  God wants us to be friends, but that could NEVER be since we are far from God’s equals! That we creatures could be friends of God? IMPOSSIBLE!   But, SURPRISE!! Our creative God sent the Word made flesh into our world.  Jesus, the Divine One, but also fully human, is like us in everything except sin. So he can be our friend and we his!  St. Thomas says God’s Fierce Love motivated this incredible gift!  Paul understood this.  Do we?  Do I?

John 3:16 may be the most popular verse in Scripture!!  All sports fans recognize it! It proclaims in those few words God’s Fierce Love for us.  God found a creative way to be “equal” to us – so we could be friends.  Later in John’s Gospel we hear Jesus say “I call you friends!”  AMAZING!  Can we reciprocate with a fierce love that reflects that Fierce Love of God?  John challenges our love saying in one of the letters attributed to him, how can we say we love God if we don’t demonstrate this by the fierce love we bear to others, to our world, to all of Creation.   

As Lent reaches its mid-point, we do a self-check to see if we are living our resolves.  Perhaps it’s time for recharging our energy by ramping up our love so it is more reflective of God’s Fierce Love for all of Creation!  Political ideas divide us and our communities.  Religious affiliation can find us standing above others (or trying to).  Even national or ethnic identity can pull us away from others who do not share ours.  Yet all of Creation demonstrates the beauty and necessity of diversity, of variety!  Wearing the lenses of fierce love may correct our myopic vision.  Look and See!  Then at Easter our Alleluias will ring out with ever more integrity and strength.

- Sr. Honora Werner, OP

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