God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son. ▪ We love something; we love what we desire, what we make, and what does us good. God needs nothing. When he loves, it is because he wants the good of others. He does not take but gives. The greatness of his love is measured by the greatness of the gift. In the life of the Most Holy Trinity, the Father gives himself entirely to the Son, begetting him from eternity. And the same Son, in his incarnation, becomes a gift for us and for our salvation. We cannot imagine that God could give us anything greater. Such a gift, however, demands a response from us that would be worthy. It is beautifully expressed in the prayer of St. Ignatius of Loyola at the end of the Exercises: “Lord, accept my freedom, memory, reason, will, and all I have. ” You gave it to me, I return it to You. It is Yours; do with it as You will. Give me Your love and Your grace in return. That is enough for me.” So it is a sacred exchange. A person presents himself entirely to God because God gives himself to him. What God gives can never be a dead gift; it is life. We therefore live in God, with Him and in Him, through our Lord Jesus Christ.
So that whoever believes in Him may have eternal life. ▪ St. John calls the second divine person the Word who was in the beginning with God (John 1:1ff.). Of course, the term is a figurative expression. But it nevertheless reveals the meaning of the mystery. We use words to express our thoughts and feelings, which best reflect a person’s dignity. When our thinking becomes identified with the mind of God, we become sons of God the Father. In the vocabulary of our religion, this process is called faith. To believe means to accept as true what God reveals to us. However, faith is not abstract, mathematical thinking. Above all, it is trust and a positive attitude towards life. It therefore also includes abstractficial works. Believers are those who follow Christ, trust his words, and follow the path of his commandments. That path leads to life, and because it is the life of God, it is eternal. Therefore, it is inappropriate to say that we will receive eternity after death. In fact, we already have that eternity by believing that our mind is identified with the mind of God, that we recognize the Father who is in heaven.
The light has come into the world. ▪ The underground caves of the Moravian Karst became a destination for tourists from all over the world only after the introduction of electric lighting. Before that, they were dark holes that inspired fear. Only the light can reveal the beauty of stalactites. Even human life is such a mysterious cave. It only gains meaning when it is illuminated by faith. So-called converts, people who have become believers in an unusual way, vividly experience this phenomenon. Thus writes, for example, the well-known Alphonse Ratisbonne, a Jewish atheist, to whom the Virgin Mary appeared on January 20, 1842, in the Roman church of San Andrea del Fratte: “I was walking through the church. Suddenly I felt a great uneasiness, and it seemed to me as if a veil had covered everything. The whole church seemed to be, with the exception of one chapel, into which all the light poured. I raised my eyes to that chapel, shining with such light, and I saw that the Most Holy Virgin Mary stood on its altar… In her prepresence, Isence I understood everything, although she did not say a word to me: the whole horror of the state in which I was, the monstrosity of sin, and the beauty of the Catholic faith. In a word, I understood everything!”
