A Lectio Divina Approach to the Sunday Liturgy
BREAKING THE BREAD OF THE WORD (Series 4, n. 18)
4th Sunday of Lent, Year B – March 26, 2006
“The Mercy of God Revealed …”
BIBLE READINGS
2 Chr 36:14-16, 19-23 // Eph 2:4-10 // Jn 3:14-21
N.B. This new series of BREAKING THE BREAD OF THE WORD: A LECTIO DIVINA APPROACH TO THE SUNDAY LITURGY presents a biblico-liturgical study of the Old Testament reading of each Sunday Mass to serve as background for a better understanding of the Gospel proclaimed in the liturgy. For a biblico-liturgical study of the Gospel for each Sunday, please go to the PDDM Web Archives: WWW.PDDM.US.
I. BIBLICO-LITURGICAL REFLECTIONS
Nicholas Sparks’ novel “The Rescue” (cf. Reader’s Digest Select Editions, Large Type, p.275-277) contains the poignant past of a firefighter, Taylor McAden. He was nine years old when it happened. One night, when he was unable to sleep, he went to the attic to play with his set of plastic soldiers. He did not realize that the house was on fire and did not answer when his parents frantically searched and yelled for him. The fire trapped him in the attic. He scrambled to the window crying for help. Taylor narrated: “My dad … my big strong dad came running across the lawn to the spot right beneath the window. By then most of the house was on fire. I remember him reaching up his arms, yelling, ‘Jump, Taylor! I’ll catch you! I’ll catch you, I promise!’ But instead of jumping, I just started to cry all the harder … The more my dad called for me to jump, the more paralyzed I became. I can still see my father’s face when he realized I wasn’t going to jump … Then my father nodded ever so slightly, and we both knew what was he going to do … He finally turned and started running for the front door … By then the house was completely in flames … I remember seeing him rushing toward me. He was on fire. His skin, his arms, his face, his hair – just this human fireball rushing at me. He pushed me toward the window, saying, ‘Go, son.’ He forced me out, holding on to my wrist until I was dangling above the ground. He finally let go … I watched my father pull his flaming arm inside … He never came back out … I didn’t mean to kill him.”
The failure of young Taylor to trust and to throw himself into his father’s waiting, rescuing arms proved disastrous. For many years, he would carry the specter of the dreadful accident. He was burdened with guilt for having refused his father’s saving hands. In a way, this is what happened to the people of Judah and Jerusalem when they negated Yahweh’s covenantal love – when they refused to trust and surrender themselves to his compassionate design, but instead “added infidelity to infidelity, practicing all the abominations of the nations and polluting the Lord’s temple which he had consecrated in Jerusalem” (2 Chr 36:14).
This Sunday’s first reading (2Chr 36:14-16, 19-23) etches the disastrous consequences that resulted from not listening to the voice of God, echoed by the prophets he sent, and from the malice with which God’s chosen people treated his messengers: “Their enemies burnt the house of God, tore down the walls of Jerusalem, set all its palaces afire, and destroyed all its precious objects. Those who escaped the sword were carried captive to Babylon, where they became servants of the king of the Chaldeans and his sons until the kingdom of the Persians came to power” (verses 17-19).
The Chronicler narrates in sweeping words the events that led to the violent capture of Jerusalem and the ignominious Babylonian Exile. Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon and his troops destroyed Judah and Jerusalem in 587 B.C., sparing neither walls nor Yahweh’s temple, slaughtering the inhabitants and bringing the survivors as slaves into a hostile land. Their willful violation of God’s covenantal relationship and alienation from his guiding hand became an experience of hell - a physical, moral and spiritual experience of intense destruction and desolation as a nation. Wallowing in the wreckage of sin and humiliation, the deeply chastised Jewish people wept in a foreign land, aching for God and their true home: “By the streams of Babylon we sat and wept when we remembered Zion. On the poplars of that land we hung up our harps” (Psalm 137:1-2).
The compassionate and merciful God, however, did not abandon his people in their self-inflicted misery. In his unmitigated love for his people, Yahweh used King Cyrus of Persia to promote his healing design for them. In 538 B.C. after having conquered the Babylonian empire, Cyrus allowed the Jewish exiles to return to Jerusalem and rebuild their temple. With exhortation and blessing, the great Persian ruler, Cyrus, thus proclaimed in his edict: “All the kingdoms of the earth the Lord, the God of heaven, has given to me, and he has also charged me to build him a house in Jerusalem, which is in Judah. Whoever, therefore, among you belongs to any part of his people, let him go up, and may his God be with him!” (verses 22-23). The edict of Cyrus, as cited by the Chronicler, ends in an exclamation of hope and blessing – in a note of triumph and liberation. As an instrument of God’s saving plan for his people, King Cyrus was a figure of the “messiah” – the anointed one - that God the Father would send in the fullness of time.
This Sunday’s Old Testament reading is a beautiful backdrop for the ultimate loving design that God offers to his distressed people. Jesus – the Servant Son - the one whom the Father has sent for our total liberation and redemption, avows: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only 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” (Jn 3:14-16).
Christ Jesus “lifted up” on the cross and raised in glory is the ultimate sacrament of God’s saving love. His crucifixion and dying on the cross is the climactic phase of the Father’s passionate pursuit of his people. In the oblation of God on the cross, the fullness of his loving mercy is radically revealed. Indeed, as we contemplate the sacrificial death of the Son of God on the cross, which led to glorification and our total salvation, we can not help but exclaim: “God loved us with so much love that he was generous with his mercy” (Eph 2:4).
PERSONAL REFLECTION
By Sr. Mary Marta Soza PDDM
PDDM Community, Monrovia, California, U.S.A.
“For God so loved the world that he gave his only 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” (Jn 3:14-16).
I find Jn 3:14-16 charged with Eucharistic meaning. Personally, it has been through my daily receiving and adoring Jesus in the Eucharist – through “gazing” at Jesus made Bread – broken and given for the world – that I have come to dimly grasp the unimaginable depth of the love of God for his creation, for the world, for each and every one of us. He not only suffered and died for us, but He also wanted to remain with us materially in the form of Bread to nourish and to heal us from the sting of sin during our earthly pilgrimage. It is, indeed, in Jesus Christ, the Word made Flesh, made Bread that we all can recover again our “connection” with our divine Source who is Love Himself.
During this season of Lent, let us meditate on the love of Christ, who, being God, accepted to become man and to suffer and die on Calvary just to save us and make us sharers of Divine Life, of Divine Love. And that is absolutely what love is: “not that we have loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as expiation for our sins” (1Jn 4:10).
Are we willing to follow Christ to Calvary? Are we willing to empty ourselves of our egoism and become channels of His love? He is here lifted up not only on the Cross, but risen and victorious in the Monstrance upon the Altar, in every tabernacle, in the very center of our own hearts, silently loving and accepting us just as we are: “If God so loves us, we must also love one another” (1Jn 4:11). Come then, let the Blessed Sacrament heal and transform us. The world needs LOVE; the world needs JESUS CHRIST!
II. POINTS FOR THE EXAMINATION OF THE HEART
A. What are our experiences of alienation and desolation? What are the pain and desolation we undergo when God seems far away? What are the self-inflicted miseries that trouble us today?
B. How convinced are we that God really cares for us and that he merits our trust and surrender? Are we ready to let go and plunge into his loving arms? Do we believe that he is an all-loving, all-powerful, all-caring God and that he is absolutely in control?
C. Do we believe and live by the Gospel truth that God sent his Son so that the world might be saved through him? Do we make it an essential part of our spirituality and mission to contemplate Jesus Christ, the Son of God, “lifted up” for our healing and salvation? Do we offer a true sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving for Jesus, the primordial sacrament of salvation and the ultimate revelation of the Father’s mercy and unmitigated love for us?
III. PRAYING WITH THE WORD
(Adapted from Henri Nouwen)
Leader: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only 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” (Jn 3:17-18).
Assembly: Dear Lord, help me keep my eyes on you. You are the incarnation of Divine Love; you are the expression of God’s infinite compassion; you are the visible manifestation of the Father’s holiness. You are beauty, goodness, gentleness, forgiveness, and mercy. In you all can be found. Outside of you nothing can be found. Why should I look elsewhere or go elsewhere? You have the words of eternal life; you are food and drink; you are the Way, the Truth, and the Life. You are the light that shines in the darkness, the lamp on the lamp stand, the house on the hilltop. You are the perfect Icon of God. In and through you I can see the Heavenly Father, and with you I can find my way to him. O Holy One, be my Lord, my Savior, my Redeemer, my Guide, my Counselor, my Comforter, my Hope, my Joy and my Peace. To you I want to give all that I am. Let me be generous. Let me give you all – all I have, think, do and feel. Please accept it and make it your own.
Leader: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only 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” (Jn 3:17-18).
IV. INTERIORIZATION OF THE WORD
The following is the bread of the living Word that will nourish us throughout the week. Please memorize it.
“For God so loved the world that he gave his only 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” (Jn 3:17-18).
V. TOWARDS LIFE TRANSFORMATION
A. ACTION PLAN: Pray for those who are experiencing the disastrous effects of sin and the willful negation of God’s love. Pray for their healing and conversion. Pray for all the victims of violence, hatred and war and for all the people of good will who try to remedy these sinful situations. In this Lenten season, be an instrument of God’s merciful love to one who is in terrible distress and intense loneliness.
B. ACTION PLAN: To contemplate more intensely the tremendous mercy of God revealed in Jesus Christ, make an effort to spend an hour in Eucharistic Adoration. Visit the PDDM WEB site (www.pddm.us) for the EUCHARISTIC ADORATION THROUGH THE LITURGICAL YEAR (Vol. 2, n. 18): A Weekly Pastoral Tool.
Prepared by Sr. Mary Margaret Tapang PDDM
PIAE DISCIPULAE DIVINI MAGISTRI
SISTER DISCIPLES OF THE DIVINE MASTER
60 Sunset Ave., Staten Island, NY 10314
Tel. (718) 494-8597 // (718) 761-2323
Website: WWW.PDDM.US