4th Sunday of Lent, Year B

You are God’s work of art

2 Chr 36:14-16, 19-23 Ps 137:1-2, 3, 4-5, 6 Eph 2:4-10 John 3:14-21

I remember once here in our missionary house in Manila, we were very busy making a chapel. In all the Verbum Dei chapels in the world there is Christ in the tabernacle, a cross, an image of Mary and a world map. The map reminds us that our lives are for the five continents as each Christian is called to have a universal love for all. We asked a young Filipino artist to make us a map, Filipino style. We gave her a kind of bamboo shell and left the rest to her creativity. When we saw the finished map, wow! A work of art, with bright vibrant colours. It is quite gorgeous. In the readings of this Sunday St. Paul uses the same terminology. He says we are God’s work of art. Wow! Have you ever considered yourself ‘a work of art’? Sometimes we feel more like work in progress! The reality is we are God’s unfinished masterpieces.

What fills us with more love and appreciation is when we remember where we have been rescued from. The first reading is a list of the faults and failures of the chosen people. God chooses to act through King Cyrus to bring his people back from Babylon. God does not get tired of loving. He is a very patient artist. Even in our sinfulness, when our hearts become hardened like stone, he does not lose sight of the masterpiece in the block of marble. St Paul reminds us “God loved us with so much love that he was generous with his mercy: when we were dead through our sins, he brought us to life with Christ” (Ephesians 2:4-10). There are stories of old masterpieces lying in tatters and abandoned, gathering dust and unrecognized. Then an art collector spots the real value of the painting, seeing beyond the grime that has collected. God’s vision on us never changes. Even when our lives attract some dirt and grime he does not lose sight of our true colours which can remain hidden. We have been made in the image and likeness of Christ. And with so much love.

God’s masterpiece of love and mercy is most clearly revealed on the cross. John the evangelist tells us that “God loved the world so much that he gave his only son.” Sometimes we hear negative things about our world of today but we must never forget that God loves this world SO MUCH. So much that he sent his only Son; so much that he sent you and me. And the gift of the Son is this; “The Son of Man must be lifted up as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.” In the desert Moses mounted the deadly snakes on a pole so that all looking at them would be saved. Christ is lifted up on the cross and all who fix their gaze on him and believe in him will be saved too. God’s mercy is so great that it can reconstruct broken lives and restore a person to their original beauty. It is like the famous statue of the Pieta in St Peter’s basilica. Once, a deranged man attacked it with a hammer, striking Michelangelo’s sculpture, breaking the marble nose and arm of the Virgin Mary. After painstaking reconstruction the statue was restored. Part of the mission of the Church is to restore damaged lives, through the sacrament of reconciliation, through her charitable works to give back dignity to lives that have lost their shines and to eyes that have stopped sparkling. Like the religious sisters here who have an orphanage for abandoned children. One of them was found on a garbage tip. But now after being rescued she is once more smiling again.

God continues to ask each one of us to participate in his work of restoring his masterpieces – the lives of each person. May we be like Mother Teresa, a pencil or paintbrush in the hands of the Lord, offering to him our hearts as colourful palettes of mercy, joy and forgiveness for him to continue his work of art in the lives of many people.