Wednesday, April 22nd, 2020

Life. Life is a wondrous thing. We are so used to it we are rarely ever surprised by it. Yet the gift of life is something so unexpected, such an interruption of our existence with something, someone new - suddenly there is this person where there once was nobody. Out of the drought-dried, brown, hard, dead grass next to our parish - with only the addition of water through a rainfall, suddenly it is green and new and thriving and bigger than it was. The gift of life is something truly amazing, which we don’t take enough time to appreciate. To breathe. To stop in the day and say: I am alive.

And it is in this sense that what Jesus speaks to us about today is so, pardon the pun, vital. ‘God loved the world so much that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not be lost but may have eternal life. This is what Jesus is trying to communicate to Nicodemus: humanity is killing itself, struggling in the sticky morass of sin and unfreedom. Jesus came to burst this open: to give us free and thriving life now, today, where I am on the earth. The Church has the same mission: this is why she does not busy herself primarily with what all the other groups are doing, but is always called to renew her radical commitment to proclaim belief in the risen Christ: ‘Go and stand in the Temple, and tell the people all about this new Life.’ How are we going with that?

Let us pray:

As we recall year by year the mysteries

by which, through the restoration of its original dignity,

human nature has received the hope of rising again,

we earnestly beseech your mercy, Lord,

that what we celebrate in faith

we may possess in unending love.

Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,

who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,

one God, for ever and ever.