Fourth Sunday of Lent, Year B 

2 Chronicles 36:14–16, 19–23

Psalm 137:1–2, 3, 4–5, 6

Ephesians 2:4–10

John 3:14–21

God is faithful, even when we are not. For every happening of our earthly existence, God has a greater plan. We cannot generally see this while we are in it. But when we look back with an attitude of openness, we see that God is trustworthy. He does not fail us. Even in times of great distress, when it seems that God has forgotten us, He is with us. The pain we experience is not the end of the story.

St. John of the Cross, the great Discalced Carmelite saint, reminds us that “pain is in proportion to the need for purification.” When we experience suffering, the problem is not the suffering itself. Rather, it is how we choose to respond to it. The Servant of God, Archbishop Fulton Sheen, once commented that the problem with the world is not that there is so much suffering, but that so few people know how to use it. When God allows us to experience loss, grief, failure, and a host of other disappointments in this life, we ought not to despair. God is still God and He always takes the long view.

God’s people as it is made known to us in the Scriptures does not experience a glorious history of growth and development. Rather, it is a cycle of promise and failure, faithful response and infidelity to the call. The Chosen People are not without troubles. Their foibles continue to be evident. Yet, God is ever faithful. He makes use of all that happens in their relationship with Him to educate them and us in His ways, always inviting us to grow in our understanding of what is promised.

Jesus uses the example of the lifting up of the bronze serpent in the desert to reveal to Nicodemus that He Himself would be lifted up as the way to receive salvation and eternal life. Jesus speaks to Nicodemus, who comes to Him by night, what have become the most quoted words of the Gospel: “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.” The gift of the Son is the fulfillment of the promise offered to the people of God through the ages.

In our time, these words are so often used to proclaim the Gospel, but unfortunately, they are followed immediately by a condemnation of the world and of those who are being told about God’s love for the world. It is incredibly important never to take any words of the Scripture out of their context; otherwise, we misunderstand and misrepresent them.

The very next verse shows the real contrast between what is offered and how we should respond: “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.” We fail to accept the real promise of salvation if we give in to the temptation to judge the world and condemn it right away. God wants all of us to see, to behold for ourselves the depth of His Love and to open our eyes and our hearts to the realization that salvation is truly offered to us.

The exiles in Babylon pray, remembering that God was with them in Jerusalem. “Let my tongue be silenced, if I ever forget you!” Cyrus the Persian is himself called by name as the “messiah” who offers the Chosen People the opportunity to return from exile and to rebuild their Temple: “Thus says Cyrus, king of Persia: All the kingdoms of the earth the Lord, the God of heaven, has given to me, and he has also charged me to build him a house in Jerusalem, which is in Judah. Whoever, therefore, among you belongs to any part of his people, let him go up, and may his God be with him!” 

There is a contrast between the world’s way of thinking and God’s way of thinking. Because it is so loved, the world receives the offer of salvation and eternal life through us. May we have eyes that see, and beholding God, may we share His love with the world.