The Lord will not forget

Homily for Wednesday of the 4th Week of Lent
17 March 2010
Memorial of Patrick, bishop, patron of Ireland and Nigeria

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On this day when it is forbidden to forget to wear green in honor of the great patron of Ireland, St. Patrick, we have a most profound image of God's promise to remember his people Israel in today's scripture from Isaiah. Can a mother forget the infant in her womb? Of course not. The infant and the mother are almost perfectly one. The infant has no independence whatsoever from his mother. Yet even if the mother be tempted to forget, the infant is within her as a constant reminder. Such an image is such a great consolation to those of us who are tempted to think that God is far way, or that we are forgotten by Him. Even when we are not mindful of God, God is mindful of us. Even if a mother could forget the infant in her womb, God cannot forget us. He has taken us to Himself, as his prized possession, even more intimately that a mother carries a child within her. In addition to the intense pro-life overtones of this prophecy from Isaiah, wherein we see that in God's eyes, the infant in a mother's womb is most definitely a person to be cherished and loved, we also see in the prophecy of Isaiah God's intention to place us, his creation, at the very center of His own trinitarian life. We are within God's life and within his love, as surely as a child is in the womb of his mother.

This intimacy between mother and child in the womb, and between God and the people that He loves, gives way to a more perfect intimacy between the Father and the Son. Even though a mother cannot go anywhere without the infant in her womb, nor vice versa, the two can be said to do different things. The infant can kick while the mother is eating lunch, for example. Although the union between the two is almost perfectly intimate, the union of Father and Son is greater, as Jesus says in John's Gospel that He only says what He hears, and that He can do nothing on His own. The intimacy described by Jesus shows that the spiritual love shared by the Father and Son, while requiring two persons, requires only one nature. Jesus is revealing the inner life of God by what He says. When Jesus speaks these words to us, He is inviting us to the place of intimacy that He shares with His Father. When Jesus speaks to us the words of spirit and life, they are words that come from the conversation He is having with His Father. In order to hear those words fully, we must be brought into the middle of that intimate union of Father and Son, where death can no longer reign. +m