God's Abounding Love

"God so loved the world that He gave His only Son so that everyone who believes in Him will not be lost but will have eternal life" (Jn 3:16).  Paul tells us in Galatians 4: 4-5 that "[w]hen the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, in order to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as children." God knows that people would use the law to justify their condemnation of others. God also knew jealous rage would lead to His son's death, and yet, out of love for us, to save us from death,  He sent His only begotten Son to become a human being. That Jesus would end up a victim of humanity's cruelty to another human being, the cruelty we have recently seen carried out by ISIS, was inevitable. Sin is vicious. Evil is a powerful force in our world, But God's love for the world is infinite and He would go to any extreme to save us. God Himself would walk the talk. He would experience everything about being human, including our suffering, our heartaches, our fears--"My soul is sorrowful unto death," He says to the three apostles whom He took with Him into the Garden of Gethsemane. "Stay awake" with Me, He begs. They don't. In fact when their lives, too, were in danger, they fled the scene!   His only Son went through what the journalists and so many other other human beings have gone through when tortured, imprisoned and ultimately executed. God, too, in Jesus' humanity, likewise suffered at the hands of evil men and women. Truly, God walks the talk with us.

And Mary, stood with Jesus beneath the cross. She stands with each one of us beneath our crosses too and leads us into eternal life with her Son Jesus, where there will be no more tears, no more sufferings, no more evil.

Today we celebrate the feast of the Exaltation of the Cross.  Our first reading, Num 21: 4b-9, is the story of the bronze serpent which Moses erected in the desert.  The Israelites had been complaining bitterly against God and Moses. In anger, God sent seraph serpents. Anyone bitten by these serpents died. The Israelites realized their sinfulness and acknowledged it before Moses.  Moses then interceded for them, molded a bronze statue of a seraph serpent. Anyone who gazed upon this serpent--a reminder of the sin of deceit and sensuality--and repented of their sin was saved. 

We, too, are saved. God sent His only begotten Son into the world, not to condemn it, but to save it.  Jesus was raised upon the cross, becoming sin for us, uniting our sinfulness with His sinlessness, reconciling us to God, making peace through the Cross.  All who look upon Jesus on the Cross, acknowledge and repent of their sinfulness are saved and are given the inheritance of eternal life with God in heaven. 

Am I willing to face the evil in my life? Am I willing to acknowledge my sinful behaviors and attitudes? Am I repentant?  Do I look upon Christ and believe in God's desire to save me, that is, to make me into the very holiness of God (cf 2 Cor 5: 21)?