Challenge of life in Christ

The US-Iraq conflict is crowding our front pages these days, as if there’s nothing else of moment to talk about; and as if the new gods today are the two protagonists of this world trouble – George W. Bush and the Iraqi dictator, Saddam Hussein – as if they have become the determining factor of the future of the world. God has been excluded from the deliberations of the United Nations Security Council – God who ultimately holds the destinies of men and nations, and who surely will have the last say to this. There is little mention how moral can a war be.

One lonely voice, John Paul II, said Iraq’s leaders had a duty to cooperate with the international community to avert war. In another news reported by Reuters, Vatican through Holy See spokesman, Joaquin Navarro Vals ‘scolded’ US President Bush saying he had assumed a ‘grave responsibility before God’ in deciding that diplomacy to avoid conflict with Iraq had been exhausted.

The challenge thrown to us by the Word of God today is not just theory or ideas. His Son, by investing His very life in the message of the Father, makes His very person the message for all men. The way Jesus lived His life challenges every man to come face to face with the questions: for whom do we live and what truths do we live by?

Mass media flood our world with their messages of happiness and the superstitions they imagine men crave for. New beliefs promise psychic tranquility to those who follow their latest vogue. Political ideologies of all types promise heaven for the votes that give them power. Drug addicts seek a more dubious bliss yet. But whether these messages promise power, possessions or knowledge, they are unremitting in multiplying their claims to be messages of instant happiness.

The message of Christ questions and challenges man to see through the sham of gods of man’s own fashioning. Instead, each of us is led to contrast all as superficial and the God who is with and for all men without exception. Jesus lived for His Father, and rang the death-knell to man-made gods. But this decision to invest His whole life to that one truth brought on Him the counter-attack of all the other competing alternatives and their messages.

Christ’s life shows clearly what values they are that merit the total investing of our own life. These are God and our neighbors (both friends and enemies) with no ifs or buts or whethers. Life’s meaning does not depend on possessions or power. The meaning of life depends on a commitment of will to live for God and for others.

"For God so loved the world, He gave His only Son… that the world might be saved through Him… whoever lives the truth comes to the light that His works may be clearly seen as done in God"(Jn 3:16-21). With Christ, a new situation between God and man is born. In spite of all the ways across history in which man has vilified the name of God, as well as corrupted himself, God is still in love with man.

Fourth Sunday in Lent, John 3:14-21.