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March 19, 2021Abu Dhabi.
Below is the full text of the homily delivered by Bishop Paul Hinder at St. Joseph's Cathedral Abu Dhabi for the Fourth Sunday of Lent.
Reading of the Day: Chronicles 36:14-16.19-23; Ephesians 2:4-10; John 3:14-21
Psalm 123 starts with the words: “ To you, I lift up my eyes, O you who are enthroned in the heavens! As the eyes of servants look to the hand of their master, as the eyes of a maid to the hand of her mistress, so our eyes look to the LORD our God, until he has mercy upon us” (Ps 123:1-2).
We all look up to someone. It can be our parents, a friend, the employer on whom we depend, outstanding people in the world of sports, culture, politics or religion. It can be someone very humble and discreet who serves as an example for our own life. In a few words, the people we look up influence our thoughts, our way of looking at the world, our behaviour. Therefore, it is very important to make the right choice of the people to which we are looking up. A wrong choice can mislead us, teach us wrong thoughts, and shape us in a bad way. Psalm 123 shows us the way: Lift up our eyes to God “until he has mercy upon us”.
In today’s gospel reading Jesus speaks about himself as “the Son of Man (who) must be lifted up … so that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him” (John 3:14). He refers to the book of Numbers 21, where Moses put a serpent on a pole. Whoever was bitten by the poisonous beast had only to look up to the iron serpent and could be healed. There is another reference to the prophet Zechariah where we read that the inhabitants of Jerusalem “look on the one whom they have pierced, they shall mourn for him, as one mourns for an only child” (Ze 12:10).
The season of Lent and the Holy Week including Easter is a time when we look intensely up to Jesus like the Israelites in the desert looked up to the serpent. On Good Friday we look on the one whose heart was pierced by a spear. We do it in order to be healed from our diseases and from the deadly bites of the serpent, the devil.
We look up to Jesus crucified not only with our bodily eyes, but with the eyes of our hearts. It means to believe in him, to love him and to make him the rule of our own life. In Jesus crucified we meet the suffering servant of God who according to the prophet Isaiah “was despised and rejected by others; a man of sufferings and acquainted with infirmity … He has borne our infirmities and carried our diseases … he was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities” (Is 53:3-5). In Him, God shows his own compassion with humanity.
Many Christians are permanently frightened of God because they see in him first of all the one who will judge us and can put to eternal punishment. However, we should never forget what Saint John wrote in his first letter: “There is no fear in love, but perfect love cast out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love” (1 John 4:18). And today we heard the central message of John’s gospel: “God sent his Son into the world not to condemn the world, but so that through him the world might be saved.” At the difference of human beings who are always ready to judge and to condemn, God’s intention is not to condemn the world, but “that the world might be saved”. Remember also the verse we heard today from the letter to the Ephesians: “God loved us with so much love that he was generous with his mercy: when we were dead through our sin, he brought us to life with Christ … and raised us up with him and gave us a place with him in heaven in Christ Jesus.” And what is the result of God’s love? “We are God’s work of art, created in Christ Jesus to live the good life as from the beginning he had meant us to live it.” (Ephesians 2:10) Yes, we are a new creation, God’s work of art in Christ Jesus, and called to live accordingly.
Dear friends in Christ, in Psalm 121 we pray, “I lift up my eyes to the hills – from where will my help come? My help comes from the LORD, who made heaven and earth” (Ps 121:1). As Christians we look up to the hill of Golgotha, to Jesus crucified. From there our help comes. Keep it in mind during this Holy Mass when the priest shows the host after the consecration and before the Holy Communion! Lift up your eyes to the one, from whom our help comes: Jesus Christ! Be assured that He looks still at each one of us interceding as he did on the cross: “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing” (Lk 23:34). This is divine love showed to you and to me.