Wednesday of the Fourth Week of Lent, April 2, 2025

Today’s Readings, from the USCCB:

Reading 1

Isaiah 49:8-15

Thus says the LORD: In a time of favor I answer you, on the day of salvation I help you; and I have kept you and given you as a covenant to the people, To restore the land and allot the desolate heritages, Saying to the prisoners: Come out! To those in darkness: Show yourselves! Along the ways they shall find pasture, on every bare height shall their pastures be. They shall not hunger or thirst, nor shall the scorching wind or the sun strike them; For he who pities them leads them and guides them beside springs of water. I will cut a road through all my mountains, and make my highways level. See, some shall come from afar, others from the north and the west, and some from the land of Syene. Sing out, O heavens, and rejoice, O earth, break forth into song, you mountains. For the LORD comforts his people and shows mercy to his afflicted.

But Zion said, "The LORD has forsaken me; my Lord has forgotten me." Can a mother forget her infant, be without tenderness for the child of her womb? Even should she forget, I will never forget you.

Responsorial Psalm

Psalm 145:8-9, 13cd-14, 17-18

R. The Lord is gracious and merciful.

The LORD is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and of great kindness. The LORD is good to all and compassionate toward all his works.

R. The Lord is gracious and merciful.

The LORD is faithful in all his words and holy in all his works. The LORD lifts up all who are falling and raises up all who are bowed down.

R. The Lord is gracious and merciful.

The LORD is just in all his ways and holy in all his works. The LORD is near to all who call upon him, to all who call upon him in truth.

R. The Lord is gracious and merciful.

Verse Before the Gospel

John 11:25a, 26

I am the resurrection and the life, says the Lord; whoever believes in me will never die.

Gospel

John 5:17-30

Jesus answered the Jews: "My Father is at work until now, so I am at work." For this reason they tried all the more to kill him, because he not only broke the sabbath but he also called God his own father, making himself equal to God.

Jesus answered and said to them, "Amen, amen, I say to you, the Son cannot do anything on his own, but only what he sees the Father doing; for what he does, the Son will do also. For the Father loves the Son and shows him everything that he himself does, and he will show him greater works than these, so that you may be amazed. For just as the Father raises the dead and gives life, so also does the Son give life to whomever he wishes. Nor does the Father judge anyone, but he has given all judgment to the Son, so that all may honor the Son just as they honor the Father. Whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him. Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes in the one who sent me has eternal life and will not come to condemnation, but has passed from death to life. Amen, amen, I say to you, the hour is coming and is now here when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live. For just as the Father has life in himself, so also he gave to the Son the possession of life in himself. And he gave him power to exercise judgment, because he is the Son of Man. Do not be amazed at this, because the hour is coming in which all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and will come out, those who have done good deeds to the resurrection of life, but those who have done wicked deeds to the resurrection of condemnation.

"I cannot do anything on my own; I judge as I hear, and my judgment is just, because I do not seek my own will but the will of the one who sent me."

 

I Will Never Forget You

There are days I feel like Zion crying out in the reading from Isaiah –

“The Lord has forsaken me; my Lord has forgotten me.”

Some days that lament is louder than others. It doesn’t take much to stir it up – just a memory, a moment, or silence that stretches longer than it should.

Like when I prayed for my mom to be healed and it never came.

Like when I begged for a break for my son, for something to finally go his way.

Like when I stayed up late wondering if my dad’s passing was hastened by the weight of my own mistake – when others interjected and piled on, and I felt like the villain of a story I was trying to rewrite.

There are wounds I carry that no one else sees. And while time keeps marching forward, some wounds don’t scab over. They pulse beneath the surface, raw and remembered. And yet, the prophet says the Lord is near to all who call upon Him in truth. But what if my truth is jagged? What if my cry is laced with resentment, confusion, and a heart that doesn’t always know how to return?

God says, "Can a mother forget her infant? Even if she does, I will never forget you."

What a beautiful promise – yet some days, I admit, it’s hard to believe.

Some days, I feel forgotten.

Some days, I look around at Mass and see people going through the motions, and I wonder – what does real faith even look like anymore?

Some days, I feel like I’m walking through the world mute, like the man by the pool at Bethesda who couldn’t get anyone to help him get to the water. Thirty-eight years of waiting, passed over, unseen.

I’ve felt that too. That invisible ache of waiting for something to shift. For prayers to be answered. For hope to breathe again.

And yet –

In the Gospel, Jesus says “Whoever hears my word and believes…has passed from death to life.”

He says the Father shows the Son everything, not just the glory, but the grief too.

The rejection. The betrayal. The loss.

The long nights wondering if the people He was dying for would ever really understand the gift.

The line that undoes me today is this…

“I cannot do anything on my own.”

If the Son of God can say that…maybe I can too.

Maybe it’s okay to admit that I’m worn down from trying to carry it all alone – my guilt, my father’s death, the emotional distance I feel in my life, the unspoken prayers I’m afraid to repeat because I don’t know if I can survive another no.

Maybe it’s okay that I still long for someone to see me and say, “You don’t have to do it alone anymore.”

The water that flows from the temple in Ezekiel’s vision doesn’t rush in all at once. It starts as a trickle, ankle-deep.

Then knee-deep.

Then waist-deep.

Until it becomes a river that carries you.

That’s how healing works.

That’s how hope returns.

That’s how resurrection begins.

Maybe I’m still ankle-deep in this process. But the river is coming.

Even if my prayers have felt unanswered. Even if I haven’t been able to fix everything. Even if I’ve made mistakes that I’ll never be able to undo.

Even if I still wrestle with being the black sheep, the wild card, the “too much” son who loved big but sometimes got it wrong…

The Father still sees me.

He still calls me “mine.”

And maybe He’s been carrying me when I thought I was walking alone.

Not forgotten. Not abandoned. Not beyond redemption.

But seen.

Carried.

And still – somehow – loved.