Love of God Reaches to Redeem and Renews Us to Become Fruitful Lovers – Friday of the Third Week of Lent

A theme for today’s readings is love, which is mutual between God and us, as well as across one another. Thus, love flows vertically between God and us first. Then, God flows horizontally across and among us (Mark 12:30-31; Deuteronomy 6:5; Leviticus 19:13). The directions of love between God and us and among us form a cross. Yes, a cross, evoking the Cross that our Lenten journey is heading to witness the culmination of what God’s love for us really means on Good Friday.

In the First Reading (Hosea 14:2-10), we hear God’s voice of love, calling back His beloved Israel (Ephraim), who went away from God for idols. In the Gospel Reading (Mark 12:28-34), Jesus reminds us that the most important aspect of our faith is to show our love of God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength, while loving our neighbors as we love ourselves.

 Prophet Hosea describes God’s love is like spousal love, matrimonial covenant love. Every time we sin, we break God’s commandment, God’s covenant love, chesed, is violated. So, did God “divorce” from us?

 In the Book of Hosea, God’s loving mercy is personified in prophet Hosea, whose wife, Gomer, is adulterous. The Book of Hosea is not just a story about Hosea-Gomer couple, faithful husband and unfaithful wife, but about a story of God and us. Namely, our steadfast faithfulness of God to us is represented by Hosea’s enduring love for his unfaithful wife, Gomer, while our unfaithfulness to God is represented by her. The love of Hosea for Gomer represents God’s love for us, while Gomer represents us as sinners.

 Gomer’s persistent infidelity, characterized with adultery, is literally a symbolic expression of the Israelites’ unfaithfulness and idolatries during 8^th century BC. That was when kings of both Israel and Judah were also unfaithful and evil, except Hezekiah. That prophet Hosea has been known as contemporary to Isaiah, Amos, and Micah.

 During the time of Hosea, the Israelites were deviating from the way that God had commanded but going their own way with their own gods in idols. This was a kind of problem that God addressed through prophet Jeremiah, also after many generations from the time of Hosea, as in yesterday’s First Reading (Jeremiah 7:23-28).

After years and generations of our infidelity to God, God is still expressing His love and calling us to return to Him, His love. And this is the gist of today’s First Reading (Hosea 14:2-10).

 God calls His beloved: Return, Israel, to the Lord, your God; you have stumbled because of your iniquity (Hosea 14:2).

 Unfaithful Israel is also Gomer, the wife of Hosea. But, it is also us as we have sinned and drifted away from God and the path that He had commanded to walk.

 So, God is calling us, “Return, O my beloved, your God”.

 This recalls, indeed, what we read in the First Reading when we began our Lenten journey on Ash Wednesday.

 “Return to me with your whole heart, with fasting, weeping, and mourning”(Joel 2:12).

 To those who recognize that they have been drifting away from God and made a turn and go back to God, as today’s First Reading (Hosea 14:2-10) poetically describes, He will renew their lives with His love. And, as a result of the renewal, we are blessed to be fruitful:

 I am like a verdant cypress tree. From me fruit will be found for you! (Hosea 14:9b)

 We become fruitful not away from God but connected to God. And this is echoed in these words of Jesus during the Last Supper:

 Remain in me, as I remain in you. Just as a branch cannot bear fruit on its own unless it remains on the vine, so neither can you unless you remain in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever remains in me and I in him will bear much fruit, because without me you can do nothing (John 15:4-5).

 We return to God and remain in Him. And God love endures forever (Psalm 136) to bring us back from wherever we have been scattered away and keep us remaining in Him. For this, God’s love can forgive our sins (Hosea 14:3,5).

In response to God’s love that constantly reaches out from Him to us, to bring us  back and to keep us in Him, as reflected in the First Reading (Hosea 14:2-10), Jesus in today’s the Gospel Reading (Mark 12:28-34) teaches us to love God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength, in return to His love that we receive, while loving our neighbors.

Love first comes from God to us, even we have cut ourselves off by our sins, to bring us back and to keep in Him so that we are renewed and become fruitful in Him, as reflected in the First Reading. In return, we love God with nothing withheld and one another as neighbors, as our brothers and sisters, as taught by Jesus in today’s Gospel Reading.  This flow of love from God to us, and from us to God and among us, is reflected in 1 John 4:19-21:

We love because he first loved us. If anyone says, “I love God,” but hates his brother, he is a liar; for whoever does not love a brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. This is the commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.

 Basically, Jesus wants us not to turn the love flows and reaches out from God to us in vain by rejecting and stubbornly drifting away from Him further. He wants us to be touched by God’s love and turn back to Him, and show our love to Him and to share the love with one another. And this is the way to the Kingdom of God.

We are now in the latter part of Lenten journey as Third Week of Lent draws nearer to its end. Are we still scattered far away from God, not yet recognizing the love that has been reaching out to us and calling us to return to Him so that we love Him in return and our neighbors? Or, are we already on the way back to God, the source of the love that has reached out to us and has been renewing us? As our lives are renewed by God’s love, we become better lovers to God and to one another, as Christ has loved us (John 13:34). And, love is a proof of our fruitfulness in God (Hosea 14:9; Galatians 5:22), as well as the mark of being Christian – disciples of Christ (John 13:35).

 After all, Deus caritas est – God is love (1 John 4:8).

 Let our Lent a journey of falling in love with God - Hagamos de esta Cuaresma un camino de amor, un camino de enamoramiento de Dios como nos invita el P. Pedro Arrupe, SJ.

¡Enamórate!

Nada puede importar más que encontrar a Dios.

Es decir, enamorarse de Él

de una manera definitiva y absoluta.

Aquello de lo que te enamoras atrapa tu imaginación,

y acaba por ir dejando su huella en todo.

Será lo que decida qué es

lo que te saca de la cama en la mañana,

qué haces con tus atardeceres,

en qué empleas tus fines de semana,

lo que lees, lo que conoces,

lo que rompe tu corazón,

y lo que te sobrecoge de alegría y gratitud.

¡Enamórate! ¡Permanece en el amor!

Todo será de otra manera

Por supuesto, enamórate y permanece en el amor de Dios.