God so loved the world: Easter Sunday of Lent

National Catholic Reporter, April 11, 2003 by Paulo Evaristo Arns, Cardinal

Scripture Readings

Acts 10:34a, 37-43 Colossians 3:1-4 John 20:1-9

No believer doubts that God created the world in a gesture of love. God's love is at the center of the universe. Creation is an act of love. Redemption is an act of love. The resurrection of Jesus is the theological confirmation that love is stronger than death; stronger than sin; stronger than any of the divisions that exist among human beings. Race, religion, gender, social class and nationalism divide us. Love is the power that breaks down the walls of prejudice and division.

God did not create the world eons ago and then forget about it. He continues to create goodness from generation to generation. Our God is a God of love and he delights in bringing together, in a relationship of love, all human beings.

Grace is God's love entering our individual or collective lives. He never "pushes" us or manipulates us. He invites us to enter the divine life of the Trinity, "to be one as we are one."

The Song of Songs insists that love is stronger than death, that there is no greater power in the world. When we love we identify ourselves with others who are different from us. Love frees us from the obstacles of our own egos and gives us the gift of seeing the richness there is in other races, religions, cultures and genders.

Love is not simply "romantic" or "passionate." Love is dying to egoism, to prejudice and to superiority complexes. Love is a transfiguration, a resurrection. As St. Paul would say, we divest ourselves of the old Adam, the "old man," which is sin, and clothe ourselves with the new Adam, the "new man," who is Christ.

The liturgical texts for Easter show us how God's love tries to expand the human mind of his followers. In the Acts of the Apostles, chapter 10, Peter, the good and true Jew, sees that God does not show favoritism, but accepts people from every nation who fear him and do justice. The circumcised believers who had come with Peter were astonished that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on the "pagan Gentiles."

John's Gospel shows how difficult it was for a patriarchal society to accept that the risen Lord appeared first to his women followers. It is only in this Gospel that Mary Magdalene returns to Jerusalem to convoke two men to confirm what the women had seen!

And St. Paul (1 Corinthians 5:6-8) begs us to be free of the "old yeast." Our "batch of dough," the new life of all humanity in the Spirit, will rise only if we get rid of the "old yeast" and see the world through the new. All malice must be rejected in our way of thinking so that we will be nourished with the "new bread" of sincerity and truth.

Ecumenism is the active commitment to the unity and to the communion of the whole human family. The Second Vatican Council, in Lumen Gentium, the "Dogmatic Constitution on the Church," states that the church exists as a sign and an instrument of unity for all humanity. If this is the reason for our existence, then it requires that we all make a serious effort to achieve unity.

We all know that if God is one, our human vocation is to reflect this "oneness" as a human family. The scriptures reveal this in Genesis, stating that all humanity has the same origin. And the Book of Revelation confirms it, stating that at the end of this world's history, all peoples will be united as the Bride of the Lamb of God. Eternity will be a wedding feast of unity: all celebrating, at the same table, our union with the Godhead.

Before he died, Jesus prayed for this unity: that it would begin here on earth in human history. He reveals that the world will only believe in the Father when there is complete unity.

Gaudium et Spes, the "Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World," says that Vatican II addresses itself to the whole human family seen in the context of all that envelops it. Everything that unites humanity comes from God. Everything that divides us comes from sin.

The unity of humankind reflects the unity of God. In the Trinity, persons who are different in themselves are one in the unity of the Godhead. Unity is part of the plan of God for all his creatures because it is the essence of divine life.

Ecumenism is not just an act of piety. The whole world is divided today for many reasons. But, as we have said before in another article, the different religions of these peoples give them a mystic justification for their struggles and their violence.

There has been an extremely disturbing cooling of the ecumenical climate that existed after the Second Vatican Council. Old anti-Catholic prejudices are coming to the fore because the ecumenically inclined are becoming frustrated with the lack of progress.

If this is true on a worldwide scale, it does not deny the fact that the struggle for unity is alive and well in many local churches. But in the decades since the council, where there is indifference and triumphalism, the number of regular churchgoers, of priestly vocations, and even the number of baptisms have fallen drastically.