{"id":1161,"date":"2016-03-09T09:10:08","date_gmt":"2016-03-09T07:10:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/?p=1161"},"modified":"2022-03-30T09:38:25","modified_gmt":"2022-03-30T13:38:25","slug":"4th-week-of-lent-wednesday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/2016\/03\/09\/4th-week-of-lent-wednesday\/","title":{"rendered":"4th Week of Lent, Wednesday"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Today&#8217;s Gospel\u00a0continues the aftermath of Our Lord healing an infirm man at Bethesda, which we considered <a href=\"http:\/\/temp.fathernikola.org\/2016\/03\/08\/4th-week-of-lent-tuesday\/\">yesterday<\/a>. Since Jesus had healed on a Sabbath, the &#8220;Jews&#8221; (the scribes and Pharisees) began to persecute him. Today&#8217;s Gospel begins with his response to their criticism: God the Father works on the Sabbath, and, therefore, so does he, since he&#8217;s been sent by the Father. Despite their lack of faith they intuit from this declaration that Jesus considers himself equal to God in this affirmation, which is why they think he deserves death. So we see events slowly turning toward Holy Week and Our Lord&#8217;s Passion.<\/p>\n<p>John&#8217;s Gospel often communicates at multiple levels. In this case, Our Lord is not shying away from the fact of being God the Son, although that would be a terrifying realization to his listeners if they grasped it fully, since the Lord for them was someone tremendous, transcendent, and awesome, but Our Lord is also explaining today how every believer, in imitation of him, should imagine and live\u00a0his relationship with God. God wants to be Our Father, so we should treat him as a good son or daughter would, in imitation of Jesus. Today&#8217;s First Reading encourages Israel to realize that the Lord loves us as a parent and beyond:\u00a0even if by some tragedy a mother should forget her child, the Lord would not forget.<\/p>\n<p>Lent is the perfect time to revisit our relationship with Our Father and see whether we&#8217;re being good sons and daughters. No matter what we do, he&#8217;ll never forget us or stop loving us. Seek his will, because his only desire is our\u00a0love and happiness.<\/p>\n<p><em>Readings:\u00a0Isaiah 49:8\u201315;\u00a0Psalm 145:8\u20139, 13c\u201314, 17\u201318;\u00a0John 5:17\u201330.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/temp.fathernikola.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2016\/12\/Icon-Liturgy-Purple-e1480745112394.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-1957\" src=\"http:\/\/temp.fathernikola.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2016\/12\/Icon-Liturgy-Purple-e1480745112394.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"205\" height=\"205\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today&#8217;s Gospel\u00a0continues the aftermath of Our Lord healing an infirm man at Bethesda, which we considered yesterday. Since Jesus had healed on a Sabbath, the &#8220;Jews&#8221; (the scribes and Pharisees) began to persecute him. Today&#8217;s Gospel begins with his response to their criticism: God the Father works on the Sabbath, and, therefore, so does he, &#8230; <a title=\"4th Week of Lent, Wednesday\" class=\"read-more\" href=\"http:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/2016\/03\/09\/4th-week-of-lent-wednesday\/\" aria-label=\"Read more about 4th Week of Lent, Wednesday\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[34,150,12],"class_list":["post-1161","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-fourth-week","tag-lent","tag-wednesday"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p65qtw-iJ","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1161","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1161"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1161\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2315,"href":"http:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1161\/revisions\/2315"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1161"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1161"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}