FOURTH SUNDAY OF LENT, YEAR B
10th March 2024.
2 Chronicles 36:14-16,19-23; Ephesians 2:4-10; John 3:14-21.
On this fourth Sunday of lent, Laetare Sunday, the church wants us to reflect on the reality of salvation and condemnation. In today’s gospel Jesus said: For God sent his Son into the world not to condemn the world, but so that through him the world might be saved. Believing in God is the difference between salvation and condemnation. Salvation is an unmerited gift from God which restores us to his original intention at creation. According to the second reading: We are God’s work of art, created in Christ Jesus to live the good life as from the beginning he had meant us to live it. Condemnation is a wilful rejection of this gift, exposing one to evil as the first reading reveals: they ridiculed the messengers of God, they despised his words, they laughed at his prophets.
God’s intention is for us to be saved: God loved the world so much that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not be lost but may have eternal life. Believing is the only response he wants from us. Believing is a choice and a love response to the infinite love of God. It is the only means to the unmerited gift of God’s salvation: Because it is by grace that you have been saved, through faith; not by anything of your own, but by a gift from God; not by anything that you have done. As Pope Francis pointed out in his message for lent 2024: Lent is a season of conversion, a time of freedom. Believing is the choice that will bring us out in the light so that it may be plainly seen that what we do is done in God.
Fr. Anthony Ekpunobi, CM.