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Let There Again Be Light

Let There Again Be Light

Last updated on: March 14, 2021 at 8:00 pm by Fr. Stephanos Pedrano, O.S.B.

Let There Again Be Light 2021-03-14T20:00:26-08:00 Fr. Stephanos Pedrano, O.S.B.

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Light from Light came down from heaven and became as one of us.

Midnight Sun, Advent Bay, Spitzbergen, Norway. Picryl / Public Domain.

For the Fourth Sunday of Lent

2 Chronicles 36:14-16,19-23
Ephesians 2:4-10
John 3:14-21

In today’s Gospel reading it is night, and a man, Nicodemus, has come from the darkness of the world to visit Christ, the Light who came into the world.

God from God, Light from Light, True God from True God … came down from heaven … and became man.

Christ has already told Nicodemus of a new kind of birth of water and the Spirit giving us eternal life in the Kingdom of God.

In that baptismal water, the Spirit sinks us into the truth of all that began with the coming of Christ into the world.

As we heard in the Gospel reading, Christ spoke of his being lifted up as on a cross so his believers may have everlasting life.

And then the Gospel-writer matched that with his own well-known oath, John 3:16.

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 first words there are an embrace of creation: God so loved the world.

The world, creation— God gave up his Son to the created world, for it and in it.

In Christ, God the Creator became a member of the world, personally taking on created human nature, body, soul and life.

Today’s Gospel is mindful that the Creator entered full spiritual and bodily communion with creation and humankind, even unto suffering and death.

Out of love for the human world, God has joined the human world in living, suffering and dying.

So, before all other meanings and outcomes, Christ’s human life, suffering and death are first of all the truth of God the Creator loving and joining humankind in life, suffering and death.

The Creator’s life and the Creator’s death have authority over creation.

After the cross and death of Christ who is God the Creator, sin and death can do nothing greater or new in creation.

But God could, and God did.

In Christ, the resurrection of the Creator has authority over creation.

His resurrection began the New Creation in the world and in humankind, but beyond all the power of sin and death.

God gave all of that when he gave his only Son.

God gave, but we need to open ourselves, receive, walk, work and live in the truth of the New Creation, the Resurrection.

And just so, today’s Gospel told us: whoever lives the truth comes to the light, so that his works may be clearly seen as done in God.

Today’s first reading showed how of old God sent his people out of the darkness of their Babylonian Captivity and back into the light of the Promised Land.

There, they were to build their lives around God again, living and working with full awareness that God lived in their midst.

They were to build again God’s temple, God’s house.

But it was to be a sign that they, his people, were his temple and house.

In today’s second reading, the word of the Lord said we should live in a kind of house called good works.

It said we are … created in Christ Jesus for the good works that God has prepared in advance, that we should live in them.

The good works, the New Creation, the Resurrection are what God has prepared in advance, that we should live in them.

We can choose freely or reject freely to live inside the New Creation and resurrection that god has prepared in advance for us.

God opens to us the strength to live inside the home of grace and good works he built for us.

But he leaves us free to choose that life or not.

That life, home, world and new creation is Christ.

In Christ, God and humankind are alive and at home with each other.

In Christ, God and humankind are faithful to each other even unto the sharing of death.

The resurrection of Christ from the dead is God and humankind joined to each other in a faithfulness that overcomes death and can never die again.

The oneness of God and humankind has authority over creation.

And the faithfulness of God and humankind to each other has authority over creation.

This authority of God’s and humankind’s faithfulness to each other is really present in creation with the Creator saying over created bread and wine: This is my Body, this is my Blood.

God so loves the world that in this earthly and heavenly Body and Blood of Christ he gives us to enter eternal life in his Kingdom.

That truth is the gift of God, but we need to choose to live it.

And so, today’s Gospel closes saying: whoever lives the truth comes to the light, so that his works may be clearly seen as done in God.

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