Like a Mother's Love

Homily for Wednesday of the Fourth Week of Lent

As I read over today’s Scripture readings, I thought back to a time when I was an itinerant preacher. For three years I went from place to place offering retreats, conferences, parish missions and homilies. On one particular occasion I was asked to preach a nine day novena at Our Lady of Guadalupe parish on the south side of Chicago. This parish was staffed by members of the Claretian community. It also served as the national shrine of St. Jude. As I am sure you know, St. Jude is the patron of people who are desperate. After each of the conferences, I was asked to spend some time in the confessional. It was in that confessional that I learned the true meaning of the word desperation.

I don’t think that I have ever been so completely desperate. However, as long as we live, we all will experience pain and anguish in greater or lesser degree, much of it resulting from the pain and anguish that afflicts those dear to us. But Jesus has taken our human flesh on himself, which means being one with us in the flesh. He is one with us also in our pain, worry, and anxiety. The identification is complete. We are not alone, nor is he in his passion and agony. We are with him as much as he is with us.

The reading from the prophet Isaiah that we hear this morning is one of the more famous passages. Through the prophet, God assures us that we are loved and cared for, a love and care that is compared to that of a mother for her child. The certain knowledge of our being loved to such an extent can fill us with a tremendous sense of what we mean to God, a mighty sense of our own worth. And this might well be what we need most in this world – a sense of our own worth, despite what we might think, despite what anyone else might seem to think. Does God really love me that much? The answer comes to us from St. John’s Gospel: “God so loved the world that he gave his only son.” The world that God loves is the people who live in this world. While we live in this world, we can be sure of that love. The Lord is indeed kind and merciful.