In the first reading today, the Lord sings a beautiful song of compassion and love to Israel through the words of the prophet Isaiah. I answer you. I help you. I keep the covenant. I restore you. I give you green pastures and straight paths. I give you green pastures. I call you out of dark places. I eliminate your hunger and thirst. I comfort you and show you mercy. What an emotional love song. The Lord calls all of creation, the heavens, the earth, and the mountains, to break into song and rejoice. Rejoicing and song is the proper response of a people justified before the Lord.
Yet Israel looks at its history as a nation and each person looks at their own individual history with despair. They respond whining like a child proclaiming that they are forsaken and abandoned. Here we get a glimpse at the depth of the Lord’s love for us. Rather than becoming angry or dismissing them as children, he proclaims that he loves us even more than a mother loves her child.
Jesus is the living presence of that love for each of us. He says clearly today that the love of God takes us to eternal life.
Lent is a time for us to remember and intensify our connection to God’s love. Self-centered lives lead to an attitude of complaining and sadness. Complaining leads to despair and hopelessness. Depression, which is an epidemic in our modern society, grows out of despair and hopelessness. Lent is a time to renew our relationship with God and change our viewpoint towards life. It is a time to remember all that God has done for us throughout our whole life – to remember his love. It is a time to join all of creation’s song of thanksgiving. The psalm says: Sing joyfully to the Lord, you righteous; it is fitting for the upright to praise him.
Jesus reminds us today:
Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever hears my word
and believes in the one who sent me
has eternal life and will not come to condemnation,
but has passed from death to life.
Image: https://stgeorgeubf.org/i-will-not-forget-you-gods-unfailing-love-isaiah-498-16/