Meditation of His Beatitude Patriarch Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa: IV Sunday Of Lent, B

Below you can find the Meditation of His Beatitude Patriarch Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, for the Fourth Sunday Of Lent, B, Sunday 10 March 2024.

Jn 3:14-21

Today's Gospel passage (Jn. 3:14-21) is a wonderful summary and gives us a deeper interpretation of the Lenten journey we have been on.

Two keys of analysis have accompanied us in the past Sundays.

The first is the one of revelation: During Easter, God fully reveals himself. It is right there, in his death and resurrection, that we find the ultimate revelation of his face. And we can finally fulfill our longing to have a relationship with Him.

The second, which we encountered last Sunday, is the one of reversal: the revelation of how God operates in a contradicting the human way and reason. We saw how God overturned the tables.
Easter is the culmination of this overturning: Jesus, the Son of God, dies out of love for man. And because of this infinite love, this overturning saves us, whereby death is defeated and transformed into life.

Today's passage starts us off here.
In Jesus' words to Nicodemus, who comes to Him at night so that he can meet Him. Jesus first of all says two things.

The first is that Jesus will be lifted up (Jn 3:14). He referenced the serpent in the desert, which was lifted up by Moses so that anyone who was bitten by a snake could find healing and salvation (Nm 21:4-9).

When you want something to be seen well, to be seen by all, even those who are far away, you put it on high. 
So it is with Jesus. Jesus does not put himself on high as one who has power, as one who wants to demonstrate his superiority. Jesus sets himself on high so that everyone can see Him and His love for every man. The cross is what Jesus wants to grab our attention with: we cannot know him except by looking at him, raised on it.

It is not enough to look upon the cross for you to be healed, rather one must turn to Him with confidence, to have faith in Him.

For whoever looks at the cross, sees only one thing: the immensity of God's love for man, and it is the encounter with this love that saves man's life with depth: whoever believes has eternal life, participates in the very life of God.
The cross says nothing but this, "God so loved the world that he gave his only Son" (Jn. 3:16).

In his account, this is the first time John uses the verb to love, right here in this passage. He will use it many times later, especially in the farewell discourses (Jn 14-17). And in this first time, it is clear that the subject of love is God himself. God so loved the world. Later Jesus will ask us to love God and to love one another, but this will only be possible because God first loved us. This is the first, necessary, and indispensable step…

This Meditation was originally published on the website of the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem. Please click here to read the full text.