The readings for today tell
us about how much God loves us. Do you
remember when you were very little and learned the song, “Jesus Loves Me”:
Jesus loves me this I know,
For the Bible tells me
so.
Little ones to Him belong,
They are weak and He is
strong.
Yes, Jesus loves me,
Yes, Jesus loves me,
Yes, Jesus loves me,
The Bible tells me so.
Our God has known us since
the moment that we were conceived in our mothers’ wombs. And as we grew up we learned right from
wrong. We also grew in faith by
receiving the sacraments. We became a
member of the faith community when we were baptized. Next came Holy Communion or Holy Eucharist,
Confirmation. Many of us received the
sacrament of Matrimony and a few Holy Orders.
We were brought up in our faith by our parents, priests, CCD teachers,
teachers at school, and they all kept telling us about how much God loves
us. We were taught that our faith is a
gift from God that can never be taken away from us. We were also told to listen to God when He
talks to us.
We also looked up to some
people like our parents, our grandparents, our teachers, our priests, song
writers and people who sang songs that we liked, and people that played sports,
people that acted in plays and movies.
We didn’t know it at that time, but these people were all gifts from God
too. Yes, gifts from a God who loves you
and forgives you when you do wrong.
Do you still love God? Always remember that God still loves
you.
And this is where today’s
readings come in. Way back in the time
of Jeremiah the prophet, he’d been labeled a prophet of doom. Jeremiah preached and preached about terrible
consequences in the future if the people didn’t return to the practice of their
faith. Even though these people brought
idols into the temple God still loved them.
And God said, “I will forgive their evil doing and remember their sin no
more.”
We’re kind of the same
today. We have the same relationship
with God. God has promised us His
faithfulness, we have not returned the same love. Jeremiah also told us in his writings that
God is passionately in love with us and we should try to love God as He loves
us. We can start doing that by keeping
that First Commandment, “I Am the Lord thy God, thou shall have no other god
before Me.”
We need to keep God on the
top of our loves. Instead of worldly
goods, cars, money, or high living.
Today’s responsorial psalm does more than just connect the readings. This psalm is a prayer asking God for
guidance. “Create a clean heart in me Oh
God. Have mercy on me Oh God, and in the
greatness of Your love, cleanse me from my sins. Wash me.
Stay close to me. Oh, God in Your
presence keep me safe. Fill me with Your
spirit. Renew me. Your salvation is joy to me. In Your wisdom show me the way. Lead me back to You. Teach me.”
And from Hebrews we are told
that Christ Jesus offered prayer and supplications with loud cries and tears to
His heavenly Father.
Remember that Jesus became
the source of all salvation when he died on the cross and rose from the dead on
that first Easter morning. Only a loving
God would let His only Son die on a cross for our sins.
And John writes, we read
that some Greeks who were at the Passover feast came to Philip and asked him to
see Jesus. The expression, “to see”
meant that they wanted to have a talk with Jesus. To see, at this time meant that they wanted
to see inside Jesus. They wanted to see
who they believed in. They wanted to
check out Jesus for themselves. Jesus did
grant their request. He allowed them to
see the depth of God’s love.
Just like these Greeks, we
too need to look to the love of God, found in the passion and become passionate
about God. John gave us several examples
of God’s love for us. A grain of
wheat. Whoever loves his life looses
it. Whoever hates his life in this world
with preserve it for eternal life.
Whoever serves Me, must follow me and where I am there also will My
servant be. The Father will honor
whoever serves me.
Let’s take a look at a few
of these examples. A grain of
wheat. If a grain of wheat falls into
good soil, is watered, sunshine, it grows.
It produces many more grains of wheat.
“Whoever serves Me must
follow me.” We need to be open to God,
read His word and live a life patterned after Jesus. And probably the hardest thing we do as
children of God is to listen to God as He speaks to us. As children of God we also need to take up
the cross and die for God. No, I don’t
mean a physical death. I mean that we
need to give our lives in service to God and our church. This would be a good way of sharing and
showing God that we love Him.
Always remember that our
faith is a gift from God and what we do with this gift is shown in the way we
live our lives. Will this be easy? No, I think it will be very hard. And during this Lenten season we’ve taken a
lot of time to look at our faith and ourselves.
And in that Adult Education series, Right or Wrong, how can you
decide. We learned about how our
consciences worked in our faith life.
And above everything that I
have talked about today is prayer. We
need to pray often and thank God for all the things in life that He has given
us. It is through prayer that we need to
thank God for the gift of grace that guides us in our daily living. Ask God through prayer how you can help Him
in His work in this parish of St. Alphonsus, in the state, in the country, and
in the world.
I believe that our prayer
after Communion sums up our love for God.
The prayer is this: Almighty
Father, by this sacrifice may we always remain one with Your Son Jesus Christ,
whose body and blood we shared for He is Lord forever and ever.
I would like to close with a
few thoughts. Ask yourself, “How can I
love God more in my everyday life? What
kind of example am I? Do I give other
people a good example by the way I live my life? What special gift has God give me to share
with my family, my church and my community?
My dear friends in Christ
let’s take these last few days of Lent to prepare ourselves for Easter that is
full of faith, hope and love. And may
Easter joy be yours in abundance.
Amen.