John 3:16–18
At
that time, Jesus said to Nicodemus: “For God so loved the world that he gave
his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have
eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the
world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Those who
believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned
already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God.”
Commentary
Today
we celebrate one of the “doctrine feats”, The Trinity. It should be noted that although it is
classed as a “solemnity” in the Church’s calendar, the feast, and in fact all
“doctrine feasts”, is subordinate to “event feasts”, which are main events of
Jesus’ life. This is because the liturgy
of the Church is always focusing on Jesus, who like us, lived in a particular
historical circumstances and responded to particular challenges as he met them. Thus, we celebrate the birth and childhood of
Jesus at Advent and Christmas; his teaching at Lent, his passion and death at
the Sacred Triduum, h is resurrection culminating in the Ascension and the
Pentecost at Easter.
Further,
all these events are not ordinary events, but mysteries, as Jesus is now lives
these events now in his followers and in the Church. We do not simply look at or admire these
events, but celebrate them not only as stories of Jesus, but also recognize
them from our own experience, so as to allow them to lead us to be more like
Jesus.
Today’s
feast is the result of the meditation on the life of Jesus over many centuries. As a result, the Trinity is now a doctrine of
our faith. However, we can still
meditate on Jesus today, to see how he faced life, how he related to others in
his life.
At
the beginning of today’s Gospel, Nicodemus came to visit Jesus at night. It is a concrete situation that Nicodemus is
afraid of the Jews. From the
conversation between him and Jesus, we can sense that Jesus is a free
person. And his freedom is rooted in his
relationship with the Father and the Holy Spirit and the fact that he is a
second persona of the Trinity. Jesus
invites not only Nicodemus to be a Trinitarian person, he also invites all of
us to be a Trinitarian person, so that we can be as free as he does.
As
it was said above that the focus of the liturgy of the Church is always on
Jesus, our focus today is on Jesus’ dialogue with Nicodemus. In the dialogue, Jesus talks about his
mission, the mission to bring eternal life and salvation to those who are
lost. It sounds platitude but for us
Christians it is related to us at present.
Eternal
life is different from temporary life not only in the sense of our physical
limitation that we will all die one day.
Eternal life also means that it is the “life” that allows and enables us
to survive all forms of death, should it be failure in relationship, failure in
our work or career, the loss of a loved one, our defeat and humiliation,
etc. We have all experienced the sense
of being lost when we feel insecure, confusing and disorienting. And we all have the experience of being saved
when we feel safe and sure after having found that we were back to the “right
track” again.
How
can we find the way after being drifted away for a long time? The answer is to follow Jesus, who is
life-giving and saving. From his
dialogue with Nicodemus, Jesus shows that his mission is truly life-giving
because the mission does not come from himself, but from the Father. Jesus is the only Son sent by the Father to
world as a gift to save the world. Both
the Father and the Son are non-possessive and both love selflessly. When we are in the difficult situation of
losing a loved one, we can find comfort in the selfless love in the Father and
in the Son.
Jesus
told Nicodemus that God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the
world. If God condemned the world, then
it could not reconcile with God’s love by sending his only Son to the
world. How can we understand this
saying? Truly, God is love. The sending of the only Son to the world is a
challenge to the world. It is a
challenge demanding our response to the love of God. The question demanded by the challenge
is: Do we accept or reject Jesus? If we reject him, we have to accept the consequence
of our choice and decision. That is
condemnation. We condemn our own selves
by rejecting Jesus.
In
today’s Gospel, there is another dimension about condemnation. Condemnation does not belong to the
responsibility of human beings. If we
take up the responsibility to condemn, we inevitably condemn others not in the
name of God but in our prejudices and narrow-mindedness. Take Nicodemus in today’s Gospel as an
example. He is afraid to come to see
Jesus in day time. However, Jesus did
not condemn him. This is because Jesus sees
Nicodemus as a free person created by God, who also received the Holy Spirit
from God. Thus, Jesus feels easy to
receive him at night. This freedom given
to us by God enables us not to condemn other and also to be free from the
bondage of other’s judgment against us.
In
conclusion, we should be aware of God as Father so that we can never take
control of Him. Further, we should know
that in Jesus we are also sons and daughters of God so that we share His
divinity. It ensures us that we are safe
all the time. Lastly, we should be aware
that the Holy Spirit is at work in others so that we respect the freedom of
others and never condemn. Amen.