7 March 2027 · Latin Rite
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“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” John 3:16
The Fourth Sunday of Lent takes its old name from the first word of the Entrance Antiphon: Laetare, “Rejoice, Jerusalem.” We have passed the middle of the forty days, and the Church lets a little of Easter's light shine through. Where it is the custom, the priest wears rose instead of violet, as the sky lightens before dawn. The first reading tells the saddest chapter of Israel's history and turns it into hope. The leaders and people were “exceedingly unfaithful,” and they polluted the house of the LORD. Yet God “sent persistently to them by his messengers, because he had compassion on his people.” They mocked the messengers and scoffed at the prophets, “until… there was no remedy.” Jerusalem was burned, the Temple destroyed, and the survivors carried off to Babylon. The Psalm gives voice to the exiles: “By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down and there we wept when we remembered Zion.” Their captors asked for a song; they hung their harps on the willows. But the Chronicler does not end in tears. After seventy years, as Jeremiah had foretold, “the LORD stirred up the spirit of King Cyrus of Persia,” a pagan king, to send the people home and rebuild the house of God. The last word of the Hebrew Bible, in the order Jewish tradition keeps, is this invitation: “Let him go up.”
The Gospel is part of Jesus' night conversation with Nicodemus, a Pharisee and leader who came to him in the dark. Jesus recalls a strange story from the wilderness. When the people were bitten by poisonous serpents, God told Moses to make a bronze serpent and set it on a pole, “and whenever a serpent bit someone, that person would look at the serpent of bronze and live.” “And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.” In John's Gospel “lifted up” means two things at once: raised on the cross and exalted in glory. The very sign of our wound becomes the place of our healing. Then come the words many call the Gospel in miniature: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” God's first word to the world is not condemnation: “God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.” Judgment is what happens when the light comes and we choose: “people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil.” Those who do what is true come to the light. Nicodemus himself, who came by night, will come into the open at the end, bringing a hundred pounds of myrrh and aloes for Jesus' burial.
St Paul tells the same good news in other words: “But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ.” We did not climb out of the grave of sin by ourselves: “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God.” Grace comes first, always. But grace is not idle. Paul goes on: “we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.” Our fasting, prayer and almsgiving do not buy God's love; they are the fruit of a love already given. Where the Second Scrutiny is celebrated, the Church today reads the Year A Gospel of the man born blind (John 9), and prays that the elect may be freed from darkness and come to Christ, the light of the world. In both Gospels the movement is the same: from darkness to light, from the bite of the serpent to the healing of the cross, from exile to home. That is why we rejoice in the middle of Lent. The One lifted up draws all people to himself.
Theme: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son.”
Exile and homecoming, the serpent lifted up, the love that saves, and the mercy that makes us alive.
“The LORD, the God of their ancestors, sent persistently to them by his messengers, because he had compassion on his people and on his dwelling place;” 2 Chronicles 36:15
“But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.” Romans 5:8
Apply: Name one area of your life where you feel in exile from God, and bring it to him in prayer this week.
“And the LORD said to Moses, “Make a poisonous serpent, and set it on a pole; and everyone who is bitten shall look at it and live.”” Numbers 21:8
“And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.” John 3:14–15
Apply: Spend five minutes before a crucifix each day this week, looking and letting yourself be healed.
“Have I any pleasure in the death of the wicked, says the Lord GOD, and not rather that they should turn from their ways and live?” Ezekiel 18:23
“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.” John 3:16–17
Apply: Bring one hidden thing into the light of confession before Holy Week.
“He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities. For as the heavens are high above the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him;” Psalm 103:10–11
“For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.” Ephesians 2:10
Apply: Do one good work this week as a thank-you to God, not as a payment.
God's compassion has the last word over our exile.
Christ lifted up on the cross is the love of God that saves, heals and makes us alive.
Take-home resolution: Learn John 3:16 by heart and pray it every morning until Easter.
Dear brothers and sisters, today the Church says: Laetare, rejoice! We are halfway through Lent, and the violet is touched with rose, like the sky before dawn. Why rejoice in a season of penance? Because today's readings tell us how much God loves us.
The first reading tells of a people who were exceedingly unfaithful. Yet God sent persistently to them by his messengers, because he had compassion on his people (2 Chronicles 36:15). They mocked his prophets and ended in exile, weeping by the rivers of Babylon. But God did not abandon them. After seventy years he stirred up the spirit of Cyrus, and the word went out: let him go up. God always has a way home for us.
In the Gospel Jesus tells Nicodemus: just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up (John 3:14). In the desert those bitten by serpents looked at the bronze serpent and lived. We, bitten by sin, look at Jesus on the cross and live.
Then the words we should all know by heart: for God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life (John 3:16). God did not send the Son to condemn the world, but to save it. If there is judgment, it is because we prefer the darkness. Jesus invites us to come to the light.
St Paul says: God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (Ephesians 2:4–5). By grace you have been saved. It is a gift. And we are created in Christ Jesus for good works. Our Lenten works do not buy God's love; they answer it.
So let us rejoice today. Let us look at the cross and live. Let us bring our hidden sins into the light of confession. And let us pray for the elect, who today ask the Lord to open their eyes, so that at Easter they may see. Amen.
Children, today is called Laetare Sunday, rejoice Sunday! Why? Because God loves us so much that he gave us Jesus. Let us learn this verse: God so loved the world that he gave his only Son.
When the people in the desert were bitten by snakes, they looked at the bronze snake and got better. When we are sad or have done wrong, we can look at Jesus on the cross and he makes us better.
O God, who through your Word reconcile the human race to yourself in a wonderful way, grant, we pray, that with prompt devotion and eager faith the Christian people may hasten toward the solemn celebrations to come. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever. Amen. Let us also pray: Father rich in mercy, you so loved the world that you gave your only Son. Draw us out of the darkness of sin into the light of Christ lifted up, give the elect the light of faith, and bring us rejoicing to Easter. Amen.
This is Laetare Sunday, named for the first word of the Latin entrance antiphon, “Rejoice, Jerusalem” (Isaiah 66:10). We are past the midpoint of Lent and Easter is three weeks away. Rose vestments may be worn, and the mood lifts a little. But the Church has not chosen light readings for her day of joy. The joy is that of people who know how far they had fallen and who have heard that God loved them anyway.
The readings tell the same story at three levels. The Chronicler tells it of a nation: unfaithfulness, destruction, exile, and then a pagan king says, “Let him go up.” Psalm 137 is the song of those sitting by the rivers of Babylon. St Paul tells it of each believer: “dead through our trespasses”, and made alive by grace. And John tells it of the whole world: “God so loved the world.” In each case the turn comes from God alone. The key words are compassion, grace and lifted up.
Setting.
The Books of Chronicles were written after the exile, probably in the fourth century BC according to many scholars. They retell the history of the kings with the Temple at the center, for a small community trying to understand what had happened to it and what its future might be. This last chapter hurries through the final kings of Judah to the end.
The Babylonians took Jerusalem and destroyed the Temple in 587/586 BC. Cyrus of Persia, having conquered Babylon in 539 BC, allowed the exiles to return, about 538 BC. In the usual Jewish order of the books, Chronicles stands last in the Hebrew Bible, so that the whole of Scripture there ends on this note of going up to Jerusalem. The Lectionary omits vv. 17–18, which describe the slaughter.
Structure.
Key words.
Verse by verse.
“The Lord, the God of their ancestors, sent persistently to them by his messengers, because he had compassion on his people and on his dwelling place;” (36:15)
“Persistently” renders the Hebrew “rising early and sending”, the idiom we know from Jeremiah. Long before the disaster, the prophets were the form God’s compassion took.
“but they kept mocking the messengers of God, despising his words, and scoffing at his prophets, until the wrath of the Lord against his people became so great that there was no remedy.” (36:16)
Three verbs of contempt. The “wrath” of God in Scripture is not a loss of temper; it is the way his love looks when it meets stubborn refusal.
“All the days that it lay desolate it kept sabbath, to fulfill seventy years.” (36:21)
The seventy years come from Jeremiah (25:11; 29:10). From the fall of the city to Cyrus’s edict is about fifty years; seventy is a full, round number, the span of a human life, and here it marks the time God set.
“the Lord stirred up the spirit of King Cyrus of Persia” (36:22)
The surprise of the chapter. The instrument of return is a foreign king who does not worship Israel’s God as Israel does. Isaiah even calls him God’s “anointed” (Isaiah 45:1). God is not bound to the channels we expect.
“Whoever is among you of all his people, may the Lord his God be with him! Let him go up.” (36:23)
The same edict opens the Book of Ezra (Ezra 1:1–3). It ends here on an open door. The rest is left to those who will rise and go.
How the Church reads it.
The Catechism reads the exile in this way: unfaithfulness to the covenant ends in death, and the exile looks like the failure of God’s promises but is in fact the mysterious faithfulness of the Savior God and the beginning of the promised restoration (CCC 710). In Lent the Church hears in this her own story and that of every sinner. No one is too far gone for God to send a word of return. Those who have made a long way home in the confessional know what this chapter feels like.
Setting.
The letter presents itself as written by Paul from prison (3:1; 4:1; 6:20). Many scholars think that a disciple wrote it in his name after his death, because of its style and its developed thought about the Church. Others hold that Paul himself wrote it. The Church receives it as inspired Scripture in either case, and its teaching is what matters here.
The first verses of the chapter paint a dark picture: “you were dead through the trespasses and sins” (2:1). The reading starts at the turning point, with two of the most important words in the letter: “But God”.
Structure.
Key words.
Verse by verse.
“But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ” (2:4–5)
God loved us while we were dead, so it was not our movement toward him that began it. A dead man cannot do anything to deserve life.
“and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus,” (2:6)
Three Greek verbs in a row begin with syn-, “with”: made alive with, raised with, seated with. The Catechism uses this verse to say that the baptized already truly share in the heavenly life of the risen Christ (CCC 1003).
“For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God” (2:8)
“This” in Greek is neuter, and most interpreters take it to mean the whole event of being saved by grace through faith. St John Chrysostom, preaching on this verse, says that even faith is not from ourselves, since we could not have believed unless God had called us (in substance).
“not the result of works, so that no one may boast.” (2:9)
Nothing that comes before justification earns it. The Council of Trent says the same (Session 6, chapter 8).
“For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.” (2:10)
This verse must never be left out. Grace does not end with faith. We were remade so that we might do good. The works themselves are prepared by God, and the Greek says we are to “walk” in them. By his grace they are truly ours.
How the Church reads it.
The Catechism teaches that no one can merit the initial grace of forgiveness and justification (CCC 2010), that there is no strict right to any merit before God (CCC 2007), and yet that God has freely chosen to associate us with the work of his grace, so that the merit of good works is to be attributed first to his grace and then to the believer (CCC 2008). As one of the Mass prefaces of the Saints says to God, in crowning their merits you crown your own gifts. In the 1999 Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification, the Catholic Church and the Lutheran World Federation said together that by grace alone, in faith in Christ’s saving work, and not because of any merit on our part, we are accepted by God (no. 15).
Setting.
Nicodemus, a Pharisee and a leader, has come to Jesus by night (3:1–2) and has been told that he must be born from above. He will appear twice more, speaking up for Jesus (7:50) and bringing spices for his burial (19:39). In the course of the chapter the dialogue fades out, and Jesus’ words become a meditation. Scholars differ over where Jesus’ speech ends and the Evangelist’s reflection begins. The NRSV keeps it all in Jesus’ mouth, through v. 21.
The reference is to Numbers 21:4–9. In the desert, the people complained and were bitten by poisonous serpents. God told Moses to set a bronze serpent on a pole, “and everyone who is bitten shall look at it and live” (21:8). The Book of Wisdom explains it carefully: the one who turned toward it “was saved, not by the thing that was beheld, but by you, the Savior of all” (Wisdom 16:7). Later, when people made the serpent an object of worship, King Hezekiah broke it in pieces (2 Kings 18:4).
Structure.
Key words.
Verse by verse.
“And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up,” (3:14)
The “must” is the Greek dei, the word for what God’s plan requires. St Augustine draws out the comparison: the biting serpents are our sins, and the serpent lifted up is the Lord’s death on the Cross. To look at it in faith is to be healed of what has been killing us (Tractates on John 12, in substance).
“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” (3:16)
The Gospel in one sentence. The Cross begins here, in the Father’s love, and it is not a way of changing God’s mind about us. “Gave” includes both the sending and the handing over.
“Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.” (3:17)
Those who think of Christ first as a stern judge should read this verse slowly. He will judge, as the Creed says, but this was not the purpose of his coming.
“And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil.” (3:19)
This is a verdict we give ourselves. People who have done wrong may avoid the light of the confessional for years, for this very reason: not because God has shut the door, but because of what the light will show.
“But those who do what is true come to the light,” (3:21)
Literally “do the truth”, a Semitic way of speaking. For John, truth is more than something to know. It is something one does. This is why Lent is not only a time for thinking.
How the Church reads it.
The Catechism quotes John 3:16 when it asks why the Word became flesh (CCC 458). On this passage it also says that the Son did not come to judge but to save, and that by rejecting grace in this life one already judges oneself (CCC 679). It sees in the bronze serpent an image God himself allowed, one pointing toward salvation through the incarnate Word (CCC 2130). The Church reads a part of this Gospel on 14 September, the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. The sign of healing lifted up over a wounded people hangs in our churches.
The First Reading says that God’s wrath destroyed Jerusalem. Are disasters today God’s punishment?
We should be slow to say so. The Chronicler reads the fall of Jerusalem through the eyes of prophetic faith, and his purpose is to call for repentance and hope. Jesus himself refused to treat those who suffered a disaster as worse sinners than others (Luke 13:1–5), and he said of a man born blind that neither he nor his parents had sinned (John 9:3). We may not read God’s judgment into another person’s suffering. We may ask him what he wishes to teach us in our own.
St Paul says “not the result of works”. Do Catholics believe that we are saved by works?
No. The Council of Trent taught that nothing before justification, neither faith nor works, merits the grace of justification (Session 6, chapter 8). But the same grace truly changes us and makes us capable of good. So the Church also teaches, with Ephesians 2:10 and James 2:24, that good works done in grace are pleasing to God and have merit, which is itself his gift (CCC 2008–2011). Paul speaks of “faith working through love” (Galatians 5:6). We are saved by grace, and that grace bears fruit in works.
“Those who do not believe are condemned already.” What about those who never heard of Christ?
John is writing about those who meet the light and turn from it. The Church teaches that those who, through no fault of their own, do not know the Gospel of Christ or his Church, but who seek God with a sincere heart and, moved by grace, try to do his will as they know it through their conscience, may also attain eternal salvation (Lumen Gentium 16; CCC 847). That does not lessen the Church’s duty to proclaim the Gospel. It does forbid us to pronounce on anyone’s final state.
On this Sunday, parishes with adults preparing for baptism at Easter celebrate the second Scrutiny, and for that Mass the Year A readings (the man born blind, John 9) may be used. Elsewhere the Year B readings are heard, as here. In the Latin tradition this is the Sunday of rose vestments and flowers on the altar, a brief relaxing of the Lenten rule. It is also a good day to look at how one’s Lent has gone so far, and to begin again. Three weeks remain. Many parishes offer a Lenten service of Confession about now, and the Gospel gives its reason: come to the light.