THE WORD IN LENT - Thursday, Fourth week in Lent
April 3, 2025 - Exodus 32: 7-14; John 5: 31-47
"You place your hopes on Moses, and Moses will be your accuser," warns the Lord today in the Gospel. Jesus comes to us as the ultimate mediator between us and our God, the God of Jesus (Eph 1:17), and our God, the Father of Jesus (Rom 15:6; Eph 1:17 etc.) and our Father! At times in our pride and presumption, we tend to think that we can get away with some of our terrible choices in life, because we do something, or we have some one who will cover for us. Just a simple second thought on such a proposition, will tell us how wrong we are. And that is what Jesus is telling us today.
Our penitential measures during the Lent, or our pilgrimages and charities on occasions, or our devotions and litanies to the Saints, should not become sources of assurance of our salvific hope. Intellectual study of scriptures, legal fulfilment of religious routines, diligent adherence to rules and regulations cannot claim the place of being the right assurances of belonging to God. Seeking each other's approval, looking for human respect, creating fake images of oneself to be presenting to the rest of the world, can never be assurances of our justification in the eyes of the Lord, for the Lord knows us through and through.
The Voice of the Lord, the Will of God and the Works of our Saviour calling us to act and to surrender ourselves to the Lord - that is our only and absolute assurance! The world tends to lose itself to the false hopes built by appearances and baseless constatations, while the Word and the Lent challenges us to return to the right assurances, that we find only in the Lord.