RETREAT IN LENT 2021
Day 29,
Wednesday, 17 March
The Source of Life
We will be reading John’s gospel from now until Easter. John
crystalises the other gospels in the sense of drawing out key themes from the
whole revelation of Jesus; darkness and light, thirst and water, hunger and
bread and – here – death and life. The Father is the ‘source of life’ (John
5:17-30). When people are asked to say a prayer they often begin, ‘Father,
thank you for the gift of life.’ It is a spontaneous prayer that springs up in
the heart. The gift of life, of existence, of being, is the foundation of
everything.
At one moment we did not exist. Then we begin to exist and
for ever! That is the first gift, described in a colourful way in the book of
Genesis. But the gospels go much further and say this existence has a capacity
without limits. Existence, life, is open to a fulfilment beyond our imagination.
The other reading we have today, Isaiah 49:8-15, celebrates this, ‘come
out, show yourselves, break into happy cries! For the Lord consoles his
people.’
The journey of Lent has a purpose: it is to discover, ever
more deeply, the joy of God’s call to his people. He longs to fill us with his
own life and all that we live and do in this short life of ours paves the way
for this bubbling up of life from the source.
An image. Today is the feast of St Patrick, who, in the fifth
century, brought the gospel to the remotest isle in the west of Europe. In his Confessions,
he speaks of himself as a stone buried in the mud which God lifted out and
placed on the top of the wall.
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