Do we believe that God loves our world? Even to the point of giving us his only Son? Let’s take a few moments and straightforwardly answer, “Do we believe that God truly loves our world?” and “What would prevent us from believing this?”

The world is the place of incarnation. The Son of God became man in order to reach humanity. He knew the joys and sorrows of human life. To think that the world is a place of perdition and to avoid life on earth in order to get to heaven more quickly is to reject the incarnation of the Son. How can we accept our human condition if we refuse to accept the incarnation of the Son? We cannot receive the power of the Resurrection if we reject Christ’s Passion and death. The^4th Sunday of Lent invites us to receive a foretaste of Easter joy. Divine life is offered to fully assume human life.

The world is a place of conversion. Sometimes, people tend to run away from the world or see it as bad. The Desert Fathers did not flee the world, but chose to set themselves “apart” from the world to better accompany those who lived in it. Contempt or hatred of the world has never made a man or woman happy. Loving the world as God loves it is the beginning of our own personal conversion, which in turn can lead to the transformation of the world. If the Son of God became incarnate and committed himself to our world – “And I am with you until the end of time”, Mt 28:20 – it was to save the world, not to judge it.

The world is a battleground. First of all, it’s God’s battle. God has only one enemy, the one we call the devil, Satan, the grappler, the tempter or the enemy of human nature. We can live the fight of faith in our world because of the testimony of Jesus: “I have overcome the world” Jn 16:33. The 4^ème Sunday in Lent known as ‘Laetareinvites us to share in the joy of the Victor. The Savior’s joy is our joy too. Our prayer is to ask God to communicate to us his way of loving the world and making us victorious over it.