Today's Gospel tells us of this kind of love, "God so loved the world that he gave his only Son that whoever believes in him may not be lost, but may have eternal life." Believing in that Son and in that Father is not always easy. The world which God made has this wonderful system of regeneration and rejuvenation of birth and death and of the coming of new life. This happens in the plant, animal and human kingdom as well as in the earth itself. While one part of the world is eroding, lahar is being spewed out from the bowels of the earth to provide fertile soil for future generations. But this wonderful process is often devastating and painful for those who get caught up in it. For the people who lose property and loved ones in a volcanic eruption, for those who lose relatives and even children in death, for those who suffer because of people's destruction of the ecology; it is hard - it is indeed impossible - to see the master plan of God behind it all. But God so loved the world that even though he could not change the system in which the world worked he showed that he was not cold hearted and indifferent. He sent his own son to be part of that world and to himself suffer grievously. The Christ whom he sent showed us by word and example where our freedom lay; in suffering gracefully in the face of the inevitable.

Jesus came into the world as a light - "but people loved the darkness rather than the light because their deeds were evil. For whoever does wrong hates the evil and does not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be shown to be evil."

For most people rats are symbols of the dirty and the hidden. Recently, I was in a house where the children had caught a rat in a cage. I asked them what they would do with the rat. "We will just put him out in the sun," they said, "and he will die in a short time." The creature that can adapt to sewers and filth and germs of every kind cannot endure the sun.

"But whoever lives according to the truth comes into the light so that it can be clearly seen that the works have been done in God." The great, mysterious, frightening truth of God needs to be brought into the light. It is always there like the sunlight behind the clouds. Just as it is often hard for us to believe in the sunlight during a typhoon, so too it is often hard to believe in God's love in times of calamity.

Meditation is a process that develops a third eye. It helps us not so much to see different things, but to see everything differently. In stillness we remove our own shadows - our own words, ideas and images - that keep getting in the way of our being in the presence of God's love. In stillness we gradually expose our darker inner selves to the sunlight of God's love where our vicious selves die like rats. In meditation we come to know a God who was willing to give his life for us, like the boy in our story, that we may know his love in a world that makes no sense outside of this paradoxical life; a life that brings life out of death as the morning brings light out of darkness.

Taken from Sundays into Silence - A Pathway to Life. Copyright © 1998 by Claretian Publications

If you are interested to buy this book, email us at cci@claret.org

Sundays into Silence
A Pathway to Life
by Gerry Pierse, cssr
380 pp., PhP 299, U$ 19.95

“The best word I can find to describe this book is integration. In these reflections on the gospel readings for year A, B, and C of the liturgical cycle, Fr. Pierse integrates the richness of the word of God with experiences and stories from life in the community. He shows how through silence, the word can bear fruit in service and sacrament.” (R. J. Cardinal Vidal)

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