Wednesday of the Fourth Week of Lent 2023
“Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever hears my word
and believes in the one who sent me
has eternal life and will not come to condemnation,
but has passed from death to life.
Amen, amen, I say to you, the hour is coming and is now here
when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God,
and those who hear will live.
For just as the Father has life in himself,
so also he gave to the Son the possession of life in himself.”
-John 5:24-26
When we reflect on the Mystery of God and try to begin to put what we believe into words, we are moved with reverence. At the same time, we also find that we quickly reach the limits of human language. Reflecting on this truth, Cardinal Buse Hume wrote,
“Whenever we try to speak about God we always have to do so with great reverence, remembering that we understand very little about him. He is far too great for our small minds to have anything but the beginning of an idea. We know so little about him, other than what he has told us himself.”—from A Turning to God
The consolation in all of this is that God has spoken to us. In fact, God’s revelation to us (in Sacred Scripture, in the Tradition of the lived Faith, and in the liturgy) is a wondrous expression of God’s desire to be in relationship with us. God wants to know him (see Dei Verbum, no 2). This revelation is at the heart of the Readings for this Wednesday of the Fourth Week of Lent.
First, we hear the voice of God echoing in the words of the Prophets as Isaiah offers us a moving passage in which God reminds his wandering people of the ways that they were blessed in ages past—and of how they will be blessed again. Why? Because God’s mother-love knows no limits: “Can a mother forget her infant, / be without tenderness for the child of her womb? Even should she forget, I will never forget you” (Isaiah 49:15).
“Christ Teaching in the Synagogue” from the Visoki Dečani Monastery, Deçan, Kosovo (14th century)
We find the revelation contained in the words of the Prophets perfected in the One who is the Incarnate Word: Jesus of Nazareth. It is in and through the life and mission of Jesus that we enter more deeply into the Divine Mystery.
The passage from the Gospel of John proclaimed today speaks to the unity of the Father and Son (the Eternal Speaker and the Word-Made-Flesh), as Jesus teaches us: “Just as the Father raises the dead and gives life, so also does the Son give life to whomever he wishes… For just as the Father has life in himself, so also he gave to the Son the possession of life in himself. And he gave him power to exercise judgment, because he is the Son of Man” (5:21, 26-27).
In a sense, the Readings today are calling us to a deeper knowledge and love of the One in whom and through whom we discover the fullest expressions of the Father’s mercy and love. Here, we can think of Pope Benedict XVI’s beautiful reflection in Deus Caritas Est (no. 1):
We have come to believe in God's love: in these words the Christian can express the fundamental decision of his life. Being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction. Saint John's Gospel describes that event in these words: “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should ... have eternal life” (3:16).
As we come to a deeper understanding of what it is that God is calling us to in these Lenten days, we are also being given an opportunity to reflect on how we respond to what God has revealed to us in and through the Son. As a way of offering a prayer of thanks for the gift of God’s revelation, take time today to slowly pray on these words from Psalm 145 proclaimed in today’s Mass:
The Lord is gracious and merciful.
The LORD is gracious and merciful,
slow to anger and of great kindness.
The LORD is good to all
and compassionate toward all his works.R. The Lord is gracious and merciful.
The LORD is faithful in all his words
and holy in all his works.
The LORD lifts up all who are falling
and raises up all who are bowed down.R. The Lord is gracious and merciful.
The LORD is just in all his ways
and holy in all his works.
The LORD is near to all who call upon him,
to all who call upon him in truth.R. The Lord is gracious and merciful.
