Daily Mass Gospel Reflection- Searching Us

Word on Fire Ministry ^ | 4.27.22 | Aux. Bishop R. Barron

[MurphsLaw]

John 3:16-21

Friends, today in the Gospel, Jesus delineates the nature of his mission:
“God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish
but might have eternal life.”

In his passion to set right a disjointed universe, God broke open his own heart in love.
The Father sent not simply a representative but his own Son into the dysfunction of the world,
so that he might gather that world into the bliss of the divine life.
God’s center—the love between the Father and the Son—is now offered as our center;
God’s heart breaks open so as to include even the worst and most hopeless among us.

In so many spiritual traditions, the emphasis is placed on the human quest for God.
But this is reversed in Christianity.
Christians do not believe that God is dumbly “out there,” like a mountain waiting to be climbed by various religious searchers.
On the contrary, God, like the hound of heaven in Francis Thompson’s poem,
comes relentlessly searching after us.

Because of this questing and self-emptying divine love,
we become friends of God,
sharers in the communion of the Trinity.

[MurphsLaw]

+++God so loved the world that he
gave his only-begotten Son,
so that everyone who believes in him
might not perish
but might have eternal life.
For God did not send his Son into
the world to condemn the world,
but that the world might be saved through him.
Whoever believes in him will not be condemned,
but whoever does not believe has
already been condemned,
because he has not believed in the
name of the only-begotten Son of God.
And this is the verdict,
that the light came into the world,
but people preferred darkness to light,
because their works were evil.
For everyone who does wicked things
hates the light
and does not come toward the light,
so that his works might not be exposed.
But whoever lives the truth comes to
the light,
so that his works may be clearly
seen as done in God.