Message of Abbot Paul - Wednesday 27th April
Message from Fr Paul for Wednesday, 27th April 2022
Having celebrated two feast days in a row, it’s good today simply to return our focus on Easter and the Resurrection of Jesus. During Eastertide we read John’s Gospel at our weekday Masses and today we pick up the story of the encounter between Jesus and Nicodemus, a leading Jew who came to see Jesus by night. Not only is it night, but Nicodemus is in the dark spiritually and he knows it, which is why he has come to see Jesus. He is hoping that Jesus will show him the way and lead him into the light. He appears here at the beginning of the ministry of Jesus and we will meet him again after the crucifixion when he comes together with Joseph of Arimathea to ask Pilate permission to bury the body of Jesus. In Jesus he finds both light and life. In today’s passage, (Jn 3: 16-21), Jesus says to him:
“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.
For God sent his Son into the world
not to condemn the world,
but so that through him the world might be saved.
No one who believes in him will be condemned;
but whoever refuses to believe is condemned already,
because he has refused to believe in the name of God’s only Son.”
These well-known words of Jesus fill our hearts with consolation and hope, to know that God so loves the world as to give his only Son, that we who believe might not be lost but have eternal life. What more could we desire or hope for? God’s love for us is so deep and unconditional that Jesus his Son has given his life for us and for our salvation. Not only that, his love goes further, for he does not condemn the world of sin, but redeems and saves it. All we need do is believe in Jesus as Lord and Saviour and we are saved. God knows how far from perfection we are, but he’s not looking for perfect Christians, rather he is looking for humble men and women, who can acknowledge their need for God.
Jesus then goes on to say:
“On these grounds is sentence pronounced:
that though the light has come into the world
men have shown they prefer darkness to the light
because their deeds were evil.
And indeed, everybody who does wrong
hates the light and avoids it,
for fear his actions should be exposed;
but the man who lives by the truth comes out into the light,
so that it may be plainly seen that what he does is done in God.”
If Jesus does not condemn us, we can, of course, condemn ourselves through our lack of faith. We can prefer darkness to light, if not all the time, at least part of the time and it is our deeds that show this. We all fail from time to time, but if we humbly acknowledge and confess our sin, then the Lord, in his infinite love, will forgive us. We pray that we might be that person, “who lives by the truth comes out into the light, so that it may be plainly seen that what he does is done in God.” That is our deepest longing and only hope, as it was with Nicodemus, to live by the truth who is Jesus and come out into the light who is Jesus, for he is our way, our truth and our life.
