Lent, a Loving Reminder that God Loves us at any Cost A middle‑aged father of a family told me how becoming a parent and growing older has helped him to understand several Bible teachings which had seemed to be exaggerations when he was a boy. As a kid, he found stories like that of the lost sheep bizarre: why should a man who has a hundred sheep be so upset if he loses just one of them? "Now, instead," he said, “as a parent I feel very differently. If something happens to one of my children, my thoughts are with that child the whole time.” Human fatherhood and motherhood are definitely noble examples of great and selfless love but become pale reflections of God's unspeakable tender love for each one of us. None of us, of course, will ever know God as He is, nor understand what it means to love with an infinite love. How can we begin to fathom this love? By listening to God… In today's Gospel, we hear Jesus being addressed as "My beloved son." God tells Jesus: "You are my beloved son!" This is the second time we hear God the Father affirming and reaffirming that Jesus is his beloved son. God tells you and me today, every day and every moment: “You too are my beloved son. You are my precious daughter!” Strange as it may seem, this is a truth most of us have trouble believing. Don't we find it easier to believe that someone suspects or criticises us than that someone truly, deeply loves us as we are unconditionally? Am I really convinced that God loves me and that I am precious to God? There is this touching story of an emaciated, ill-dressed beggar who went from door to door and lived on the alms people gave him. One day, he was found dead from malnutrition. Someone found a strange metal object in the tattered belt that the beggar wore. A scholar who saw the mysterious writing on the metal plaque deciphered it for the astounded audience. The metal plaque bore the King's signature! The man everyone considered a beggar was the King's own son, a prince who had been kidnapped as a child. The "beggar" died without realizing that he was a prince. Don't we make the same mistake? Don't we think and act like this young man who never realized that he was a prince, son of a king? Don’t we, too often, forget our divine lineage and live as mere people of the flesh, as mere material beings? The crucial point behind the first reading today (about Abraham's willingness to sacrifice Isaac) is not that God asked for human sacrifice, but that Abraham had full trust in God, knowing that God cared for him and for his son much more than he himself loved Isaac (Abraham's willingness is also a symbol of God's readiness to give up His son for us). What about Isaac? Was he afraid that his father Abraham was going to kill him? We see no resistance in Isaac. He surrendered completely to his father because he believed that his father would do him no harm, come what may. The same goes with Jesus. Even when he knew that he had to die a very ignominious and excruciatingly painful death on the cross, he would not flinch. He surrendered himself totally into the loving embrace of his Father, knowing that his Father knows what is best for his son. Listen to Paul in today’s second reading: "If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not spare His own Son but gave Him up for us all, will He not also give us all things with Him?" Paul who was a hater and persecutor of Christians changed over from the strict observance of a pharisee to the mercy offered in Christ, because of his Damascus encounter where he experienced the limitless love of Jesus. Jesus changes how God looks at us. Jesus changes how we look at God. No longer do we see the stern disciplinarian who is out to smite us at any given moment. No longer do we see a God of laws we could not possibly begin to keep. Through the gift of Jesus, we find a God of love. We find a God of Grace. We find a God of understanding. A God who offers second chances. A God who does not look for perfect Christians but Christians who can be perfected. There is nothing that God will hold back. God's life among us as a man is proof enough of that. And the same loving words He addressed to Jesus He speaks to each of us: "You are my beloved Son/Daughter." May this season of Lent and the time we take for listening to God's word help us to open our eyes and experience God’s ineffable, magnanimous, overwhelming, and transforming love! Fr P. Anil Pudota, SJ