March 18, 2026
IV Wednesday of Lent
Fr. Agustín Pelayo
Brothers and sisters, peace and all good.
I am Fr. Agustin Pelayo and I greet you from the holy city of Jerusalem, wishing you a fruitful Lenten journey. The Gospel of today brings us into a moment of tension,
Jesus has just healed a man on the Sabbath, a man who had been paralyzed for 38 years and instead of rejoicing for the life restored, some are scandalized. It is always like this, when God does something great, someone stops at the rule and loses mercy, yet in this very moment Jesus responds with a phrase that is a revelation. "My Father is always at work, and I too am working",
God never ceases to love and carries forward His plan of salvation for all the men loved by Him and He does so in ways that are sometimes incomprehensible to us. God, despite our hardness and coldness before Him, does not close His heart on the sacred day and continues to pour out His mercy for us. The Sabbath is not made to block life, but to safeguard it, and for this reason the Lord continues to work His wonders for us,
He is a God who is at work and He lets us feel this. And this is the God that Jesus reveals to us, a Father who always works for the love of His creatures. And God works in silence, works in the folds of history, works even when we see nothing,
How many times do we say, God does nothing, God is silent, God does not intervene, and yet Jesus says, and with His words and works, He gives us the certainty that the Father always works. Perhaps not as we want, nor as we expect, perhaps not even in the times we imagine, but He works. Jesus adds something surprising, "the Son can do nothing by Himself",
We must not see this as weakness, but as love. Jesus lives totally turned toward the Father, He does not seek His own plan, but that of the Father. And here there is a question for us,
Do our choices arise from the will of God or from our own desire and self affirmation? And this applies in service, also in religious life, also in pastoral life. One can do much, but not necessarily what the Father wants. Then Jesus gives us a wonderful word,
"Whoever hears my word and believes has eternal life". It is not a gift for the future, it is already here. If we listen to the word, if we listen to Jesus, we have eternal life,
Eternal life is not only after death, it is a quality of life that begins now. When we truly listen to the Gospel, when we forgive, when we love, when we choose the truth, there eternal life is present. Jesus also speaks of judgment, but the Christian judgment is not a cold tribunal,
It is the truth that comes to light. Whoever welcomes the light lives and whoever rejects the light closes himself. God does not delight in condemning, God delights in giving life and giving it to us in abundance,
Brothers and sisters, in this time of Lent, the Gospel asks us to trust in a God who never stops working. It asks us to enter into harmony with the Father like Jesus. It asks us to choose life in order to experience from now the immense love that He has for us,
May the God of love revealed by our Lord Jesus help us to put into practice this His word revealed to us. So be it.
