In parishes where the readings for Year B are used today,* the Gospel tells us,

Those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God. (Jn 3:21 NRSV)

What a pronouncement of hope! Do we take it seriously?

Anyone thrown into the muck of this world, who does what is true, “comes” to the light. An inner dynamic towards the light come hand in hand with doing truth.

Any unconscious behaviour which accords with the claim that Jesus is the Truth leads – by ways we cannot guess and through psychological and historical difficulties that we cannot understand – to knowing it consciously and fully in the Church: either the pilgrim Church or the Church of heaven.

Why? Get ready. The answer is utterly humbling.

Why? So that it can be clearly seen that what they have done has been done in God. Whatever they did as true before their conversion, was done in God, and no one is to deny it! That’s why. That’s the reason why anyone “comes” to the light in the first place. It’s a forthright declaration of God’s plan – a plan that we cannot judge. We must humble ourselves and just accept everyone’s situation – accept that God so loved the world that his Spirit is working in the secrets of hearts. We cannot, we cannot, judge anyone harshly, because this might deny the very reason God brings people to the Church.

But there is a positive side, too, for the Christian. All of this has a bearing on the hope and vocation of the Christian, even when she has no signs of success or no clear signs of evangelization.

People learn and love by what is around them. The Christian thrown into the world is, in the measure she does not reject the gifts given by God, an example of light. A ministry of presence means just that: being present, taking Christ with us, being led by Christ. Do our neighbours run away from the best parts of us? If they do not run away, then they may come to God’s light – they may be coming to God’s light, in the full clarity of the Gospel. And why would they even come? To testify that they were on the way now; to testify to the Spirit; to testify to God’s inscrutable plan.

I am awed.

Hope, pray, keep going; in this Lent and always, convert our hearts ever more so that God’s light can be seen and people can come to it; but do it all in the knowledge that the Spirit is leading in the secrets of hearts.

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* It’s possible to substitute Year A readings for some Sundays in Lent, and this is one of them.