Wednesday, Fourth Week of Lent

The question asked at the end of today’s first reading has only one answer, ‘Does a woman forget her baby at the breast?’ Of course, a mother could never forget her baby at the breast. Isaiah is saying that the steadfast love of a mother for her suckling child is a reflection of God’s steadfast love for us. The love of a mother for her child is supremely life-giving for the child. Similarly, God’s love for us is uniquely life-giving. Jesus was the fullest expression possible in a human life of God’s life-giving love. As is said in today’s gospel reading, ‘the Father, who is the source of life, has made the Son the source of life’. Accordingly, Jesus declares in our reading, ‘I tell you most solemnly, whoever listens to my words, and believes in the one who sent me, has eternal life. We usually think of eternal life as a life that begins after our earthly life. In this gospel of John, eternal life is the life of God present in God’s Son and it can become a present possession for those who are united with the Son through faith. Here and now we can already begin to enjoy a foretaste of that life which awaits us in its fullness beyond this earthly life. The life of God, eternal life, is a life of love. Jesus will go on to declare in this gospel of John, ‘As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you. Remain in my love’. Jesus, our risen Lord, draws us into his own relationship of love with God, his Father and ours. As we enter into that relationship we will begin to live with the life of God, a live over which death has no power. We are drawn by the Lord into his relationship with God so that we can be sent out as life-givers, by loving others as the Lord has loved us.