My Dear People,

 On June 3rd it was Fr. Ireneo Lopez-Tovar 70th Anniversary of his ordination. I congratulate Fr. Ireneo and thank him for all his dedication and commitment to serve the Lord for so many years. We pray that more vocation will be there for the priesthood.

Having set forth Jesus’ teaching about eternal life, which his cross makes available and into which believers are born by the Spirit’s action, the Evangelist now penetrates to the heart of this Gospel’s message: For God so loved the world that he gave his only son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.  The Father’s love for the world leads him to give his only Son, his all, for the world’s salvation. The world is under condemnation and in spiritual darkness on account of sin, but the Father does not want any to perish (see Peter 3:9). Hence, he gives his Son so that the world might be saved through him.  The gift of salvation, which the Father offers us all through Jesus, is eternal life: a participation in the divine life of the Trinity.  We accept this gift through faith in Jesus. Faith is yielding to action and committing one’s whole life to God. As Jesus will later tell a crowd, faith is our consenting to and cooperating with God’s work in us: “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him” (6:44).

The human response to this transaction has the most serious of consequences, for the decision for belief or unbelief in the Son is directly linked to eternal life or condemnation:  Whoever believes in him will not be condemned, but whoever does not believe has already been condemned, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. One either accepts this witness of God and believes in “The name,” meaning the reality, of the Son of God, or one  refuses the witness and remains under condemnation and in the darkness of sin.

Jesus refers to His Father, and how he does the will of the Father, and how he is one with the Father. It is the relationship of the Father and the Son that is so strong that the result is the Holy Spirit.  Each person does the will of the other so totally and completely that each person leaves nothing for themselves. This is what makes the love of God so great because without love and self-giving it would not be possible to live in the Divine Will. This is what we are called to do in our lives as best as we can; we make a commitment to live in the Divine Will until we are in the presence of God when it will be really possible to live in the Divine Will totally and completely.

 Yours in Christ,

Fr. Vincent Clemente