Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint John 3, 3- 17

Jesus said to Nicodemus:
“No one has gone up to heaven
except the one who has come down from heaven, the Son of Man.
And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert,
so must the Son of Man be lifted up,
so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.”

For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son,
so that everyone who believes in him might not perish
but might have eternal life.
For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world,
but that the world might be saved through him.

The cross of life

1. Come down from heaven. In this life those of us who’ve endured crosses and pains can understand those who are down and dirty. That’s why what led you to fall and feel pain will lead you to help those who have fallen and are beaten. Some time ago, it was my turn to help a priest. To see how best I could help him, I called another priest who I knew was a closer friend of his. He explained, “look Luis, don’t be shocked, but he had a drinking problem and was involved in an affair”. I replied, “Look, Father, I love my brother priest, with his miseries and pains, so let’s go ahead and help him”. Only those who have fallen and been beaten in life can understand this. You will only be able to offer your sincere and unconditional company when you have experienced loneliness. That’s why, my friend, the cross of your life marks a before and an after, and that cross which marked the death of something in you can help others to overcome theirs and live. Because your crosses will change you. When there are people who think they know everything, it’s because they haven’t assumed their crosses or haven’t learned from them. When you go through a cross you either resurrect with humility or you survive with vanity, either one or the other, but there’s a before and an after a cross.

2.  Must be lifted up.  I don’t know how many traumas you’ve survived, but what I do know is that we’ve all gone through difficulties. The key to overcome those hard times is to keep going, to keep looking up at the goal and not looking back. It’s vital to be aware that your life has a meaning, even if there are moments of emptiness that you must learn to live with. It’s one thing to have moments of emptiness in your life and it’s quite another thing to feel that your whole life is emptiness. Look up, look toward the cross. Remember if you want achieve God’s glory, you must go through the cross; if you want to live forever, you must first die; if you want to win, you must learn to lose. Today, think if you’re willing to pay the price to reach heaven.

3.  So loved the world.  In our paranoia of “not sinning” there’s something ironic: not only does it serve to make us aware of our sinfulness, but it makes us more attentive to sin. I would venture to say that some people get kind of obsessive about sin, everything is sin.  A good example comes to mind now that I’ve started dieting. It’s as if looking at a delicious slice of pizza, I expect it to motivate me to lose weight. If, looking at something delicious, I say to myself: “I have to lose weight”, will I actually lose weight? Well, looking at food does not prevent you from eating it. The same thing happens with reference to sin. Constantly observing sin does not prevent us from sinning; even if we talk about sin all the time, that doesn’t help us avoid it. The gospel today talks about the grace of God that comes to save us. God loves us unconditionally. Get out of this vision of sin all the time and start looking at grace. There are people who constantly keep saying, “I have to be holy”, instead of accepting the gift that Jesus has given us on the cross. We leave Jesus out of the equation and we end up clinging to our attempts of holiness, and our wilful striving for perfection as if everything depended on us. It’s as if being a good or bad Christian depended entirely on our behaviour. The thing is that some of us feel so overwhelmed by our failures and mistakes that we fall into not believing that Jesus can forgive us. Stop thinking about yourself all the time and start thinking more and more about Jesus. Become more conscious of Jesus and his grace. If you want to fight against your sin you don’t need more willpower, but rather more Jesus in your life.

Remember that something good is on the way! 

God bless you and be with you in the name of the Father, of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.