WEDNESDAY, FOURTH WEEK OF LENT
Is 49: 8-15 Ps 145: 8-9, 13-14, 17-18 Jn 5: 17-30
HIS LOVE COMFORTS!
The first reading of today is a prophecy of the restoration of Israel, presented in a poetic form. It offers us many words to capture their plight in exile. They are “prisoners, living in darkness and in a desolate land, hungry and thirsty.” To such dispirited people living with bleak hope, God speaks words of consolation and restoration. What sort of barrenness and emptiness do I suffer today? Can today’s reading be of any comfort to me? What is the imprisonment or bondage of sin from which the Lord wants me to come out? This passage also contains one of the most beautiful metaphors of God’s affectionate and caring love, “Does a woman forget her baby at the breast, or fail to cherish the son of her womb? Yet even if these forget, I will never forget you.”
In the Gospel today, Jesus uses the word “Father” nearly ten times! Thus, the readings remind us: God loves and cares for us like a mother and father! This is the good news! God does not demonstrate his love with mere words of sentimentalism. His is an active love, i.e., a love that suffers. Behind the comforting words of God in today’s first reading, we can sense the bleeding heart of a father at the disobedience of His children. Likewise, as we see in today’s Gospel, Jesus is often subjected to disobedience and disrespect by his enemies. He suffers the frequent interrogation, rejection, accusation and objectification. Yet, as Scripture teaches, by His wounds, we have been healed; by His suffering, we have been saved. The responsorial psalm contains a beautiful, litany-like presentation of the boundless love of God. In imitation of this love, which Jesus embodied in His life, can I also be a kind and compassionate person, not an ill-tempered but graceful person, a person who is faithful to his words and promises, someone who supports those who are weak and fallen, a just person who gives what is the other’s due?
Response: The Lord is kind and full of compassion.
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