This is “Hope”: God’s Grace is always Available!
Ezekiel 37:12-14; Romans 8:8-11; John 11:1-42
Quite often, the knowledge of our faith does not help us to weather the storms of temptations and trials. For example, how often do we remember the meaning of “grace,” which we learnt in our Catechism classes – “Grace is the supernatural gift of God which makes us believe that God will do everything for our justification and salvation.” Because of the wars and genocides around us, many think that the end of the world is approaching or that “rapture” is fast approaching. Where is the power of God’s grace in this bad news?
The good news is that we are not the first to panic about dooms-day predictions and doubt the possibility of salvation. Our first reading today presents us with the same kind of gloomy situation. The Babylonian captivity of which our first reading alludes spread fears of annihilation and extermination to most Jews; hope was out of the window; despair had taken the front seat. When no one expected it, Grace appeared: God sent the Prophet Ezekiel to announce hope and restoration. God’s message of God to Israel of old is what the Church proposes to us today, especially those of us who think that we are powerless before our sins, and that there is not salvation for us: “Thus says the Lord God: O my people, I will open your graves and have you rise from them, and bring you back to the land of Israel”. Hope beats our sins and sinfulness when we allow God to intervene in our helplessness. God intervenes through the messages of hope – the opening of graves and return from the exile of sin – and the abiding presence of his Holy Spirit – “I will put my Spirit in you”.
To be a sinner is to be excluded from God. To live a sinful live is to be in exile from God. Yet, there are rays of light, even in the dungeon of sin – it is called grace. “Grace” comes in the form of the Spirit of God that reassures us, sinners, that there is no death sentence against us as long as we are alive. That the Spirit of God can bring back to life what is dead or on the verge of dying. Yes, one may be in exile, but God offers us a roadmap to retrace our steps back to him. The map God offers each one of us is the Holy Spirit: “I will put my spirit in you that you may live, and I will settle you upon your land; thusyou shall know that I am the Lord. I have promised, and I will do it, says the Lord.”
The Holy Spirit is in us and becomes active each time you kneel down to pray, despite our sins; every time we show acts of kindness to someone in need; every moment we remember to go to confess our sins through the sacrament of Reconciliation. Paul says, “No one can say Jesus is Lord except through the Holy Spirit” (1 Corinthians 12:3). These activities of kindness are grace-moments that say that salvation is not far away from us; that God’s grace in us is not extinguished yet. These signs of hope are the manifestations that we are still children of God, unfinished products designed and fashioned for eternal life with God.
It cannot get any better because God has no records, either biblically or extra-biblically, of exterminating human beings. Indeed, we might cite the instances of Noah and Sodom and Gomorrah; but we should not forget that even those instances were punishments and not extermination. What God is known for is a superfluous outpour of grace of conversion, like the case of Jonah and the Ninevites, where even animals alongside human beings were spared God’s chastisement upon their penance. Besides, God sent his Son to save the world and not to condemn it (John 3:16-17).
My point is, if salvation depended on human beings, God’s sending his Son to us is pointless. On the contrary, God’s Son comes not only for our salvation, but also to make us Children of God. It was when we were incapacitated to save ourselves that Christ saved us. Meaning by that, the grace and power of God supersede human sinfulness and the power of sin. To bear this point, in an interesting rhetorical question, the Psalmist today asks and answers: “If you, O Lord, mark iniquities, Lord, who can stand? But with you is forgiveness, that you may be revered.” The “reverence” of the Lord and the acknowledgement that salvation and forgiveness of sins come from God’s grace helps us to count on the Lord’s gift of salvation and work out our salvation in fear and trembling (Philippians 2:12-13)! To assume that we can save ourselves without God’s grace is real damnation. For what we cannot do for ourselves, God does for us gratuitously.
For anyone who doubts the power of God to save, today’s gospel is your answer. A man died for three days; a man who started decomposing was brought back to life by Jesus, why would he fail to bring us back from our sins to life? Wait a minute: why was Lazarus raised from the dead? The words of his sister, sent to Jesus, is this: “Master, the one you love is ill.” Do you doubt the fact that Jesus loves us, and that we love him too? In whose name were we baptized? Whose sons and daughters were we made, through baptism? No records of Lazarus’ sins were kept and enumerated against him, but his sisters remember the power of love and evoked it to Jesus. Indeed, the sisters of Lazarus believed in the resurrection on the last day, but Jesus offers resurrection here and now. Jesus never needed to wait for the resurrection before bringing Lazarus back to life, just as Jesus wishes to bring us back to the life of grace and holiness here and now – this Lent!
What is remarkable in the raising of Lazarus to life is the reality of the ever presence of salvation; salvation is never in the past, it is always a present reality: it takes place every moment, because our God is not the God of the past but present; with him, there is no past but present, and so it is with salvation – it is an ongoing event and reality! So, to understand “grace” properly is to understand that God is continually at work us to bring about salvation (Philippians 2:13). Just as Jesus, in his conversation with Martha and Mary, draws them to the realization that he is God, hence, salvation is here and now, so must our faith in God’s will for our salvation be a present and constant reality. After all, Paul says, “This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all” (1 Timothy 2:3-5a).
Actually, to be dead is not to have the Spirit of God! According to our second reading, “Whoever does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him.” To “belong” to God is to have a guarantee of the resurrection. This assurance of the resurrection is the grace of salvation Jesus offers us through his cross, death and resurrection, which we call “justification.” Still in our second reading, Paul says that “But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the spirit is alive because of righteousness.” We do not judge ourselves on the basis of our merits, but on grounds of God’s grace, which is the salvation he offers us daily in Christ Jesus our Lord.
One thing is sure, I know that I will rise again despite my sins, because the Spirit of God dwells in me, despite my sins. My hope and believe is that “If the Spirit of the one who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, the one who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also, through his Spirit dwelling in you.” The little good we do testify to God’s Spirit alive and active in us. If God has not condemned us, we must refuse anyone’s judgement of condemnation over us!
Assignment for the Week:
Give yourself a treat this week, because every good you do is inspired by God’s Spirit in you as his child!