The Test of Love (2nd Sunday Lent B)

Sacrifice is the test of love.  It is only when we have the capacity not to withhold for ourselves our most precious possession for the sake of another, only when we can give up even that which is most important to us for the good of the beloved, only then that we truly love.

Abraham’s devotion to God was tested.  The first reading today (Gn 22: 1-2, 9a, 10-13, 15-18) recounts the chilling moment when Abraham was about to offer up his beloved son, Isaac, as a holocaust.  Isaac was everything to Abraham.  Precisely because of Abraham’s love for his son that God asked him to offer up his beloved son as a sacrifice. Could he give up his son and everything that his son meant to him? Abraham proved his utmost devotion to God when he obeyed without questions God’s command and kept within himself the pain of having to sacrifice his own son.

We know the rest of the story of course.  God’s messenger stopped Abraham from slaying his son.  The messenger said: “I know now how devoted you are to God, since you did not withhold from me your own beloved son.”  A ram caught in the thicket was offered up as a holocaust instead of Isaac.

God could not allow Abraham to harm Isaac, much less to sacrifice him, his own beloved son, as a holocaust.  God certainly knew how excruciating the pain would be for a father to lose a beloved son by giving him up.  So, God spared the life of Isaac. God spared Abraham from the most unbearable pain a father may experience.

The ultimate test of God's love. But this test of Abraham’s devotion through an act of sacrifice somehow prefigures God’s own act of manifesting his love for his people—for all of us.  God, whom Jesus called his Father, would come to the point when He would allow his own beloved Son to be sacrificed on the cross for our sake.  God, the loving Father, the same God who spared Abraham and Isaac, kept within himself the unbearable pain when He did not spare his own Son in order to save us!  God remained silent, and He must be in great pain, when Jesus was about to die on the cross calling on his name, asking him, “Why have you abandoned me?”

St. Paul’s insight into the greatness of this sacrificial love is expressed in his assuring letter to the Romans:  “He who did not spare his own Son but handed him over for us all, how will he not also give us everything else along with him?” (Rom 8: 32).

What else can God refuse to do for our sake after having gone through the ultimate test of his love for us—giving up his own beloved Son?  What more can we ask for from this loving God who has given up everything for our sake?

And yet, the cruelest fact of our human insensitivity, we continue to doubt the love of God at some dark hours of our lives!

Invitation to confidence in the love of God. This second Sunday of Lent invites us to have confidence in God’s love for us.  The message of our readings is crystal clear:  God’s love is beyond doubt.  God’s love will see us through thick and thin, through floods and droughts.

Jesus’ transfiguration in today’s gospel reading (Mk. 9: 2-10) is meant to build the confidence of the followers who witnessed the event—Peter, James, and John.  Jesus’ awesome appearance with Moses and Elijah at his sides is an assurance, a preview of his glorious resurrection, which the apostles would hang onto when the darkest hour of Jesus’ passion and death comes.   The transfiguration event boosts the confidence that God’s love will ultimately triumph even if for the moment there are seemingly contrary evidences.

Reflection: Sacrifice is the test of love.  Have we made it through the test?  Do we really love? Can we bear silently our suffering when it is for the good of the people dear to us? Our reflection today has shown us that we can share in God’s salvific act of love whenever we embrace any suffering brought about by our decision to love.

Let us allow this blessed season of Lent to help us see clearly the greatness of God’s love for us and hence grow in the confidence that we are truly loved. Whenever we see the image of Jesus being offered up on the cross, may we perceive through it the love of the Father who has nothing more to withhold as he has offered up for our sakes the one he calls “my beloved Son.”