Sunday, March 14, 2010

Lent Retreat - Week 4, Monday

Readings Is. 65:17-21, Ps. 30, Jn. 4:43-54

The readings today teach us to trust in the Lord and his power to transform both the whole of creation and our lives. Sometimes we may wonder if God really cares about the little things and even the big things that happen in our lives, we can feel as if our actions, and even our very existence, is insignificant in a world that is so vast. Whenever we feel like this we should look to the Cross, the place where we will always find reassurance and consolation. God cares for us so much that he is to die for us on Good Friday, to pour out his life on the Cross for our salvation. The readings ask us to place our faith in him as the God who can create a new heavens and a new earth, both definitively at the end of time and also in our individual lives, with their cares and concerns, joys and sorrows. If we have faith to believe in the power of God to change our lives, then we can trust in his merciful love to guide us into all truth. Just a word from God is enough to change everything, to lead us from the darkness into the light, to use our broken and sinful lives as a means to do something beautiful and glorious. This way our lives become signs, like the sign in the Gospel, beacons of hope to those who have no hope, light to those in darkness.

1 comment:

  1. Don't you think there's also a sense, though, in which the Cross puts the little things - and the big things - into a persepctive which shows us how unimportant they really are in the context of eternity ?

    Thus, it's not so much that God doesn't care about them, but rather that He teaches us that we don't need to care about them so much : because, as you say, He loves us enough to give His life for us - and compared with that, what else matters ?

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