God's Work of art 4th Sunday of Lent

When ever I get time I love to go to art gallery’s. I love looking at the expressions on peoples faces as they come face to face with a fantastic piece of art. I remember a number of years ago going to see the Mona Lisa in Paris. The painting was disappointedly small although beautiful but I was more interested in the people looking at the painting and marvelling at the beauty. It reminds me of that line by Oscar Wilde where he said “ In fact art does not reflect life but the viewers” St Paul tells us today that we are “God’s work of art.” An artist lovely creates his art. It reflects the beauty that the artist sees. God sees our beauty he sees his perfect creation and has loved us into being. 

But we know that sometimes when you look at a a piece of art from another angle sometimes we see a darker side there is a shadow and it hangs over the piece of art. The light and darkness sometimes over a piece of art shows a different side. This is the same with us. We have a side that sometimes is hard to catch in the light it is  our shadow side its our sin. Sometimes we choose to live in that sin we turn away from the created image the work of art that God has created. We are scared to see the true beauty of what has been created and hide in the shadows. We if you like find it hard to view who we really are. 

We know that we run away from that perfect piece of art we know that we have sinned but in the readings there is a sense of hope a sense of joy because God loves us so much because he loves the art that he has created that he does not condemn us. He loves us so much that he gave us his only Son who died for our Sins he died to safe us. God calls us his creation back to him constantly loving us dragging us out of the darkness of sin into his own wonderful light and life. He never condemns us. He loves us. He wants us to constantly come back to him and his love. 

So often though we live in the darkness of sin. We cannot see the light of Jesus love. We are so caught up in what we have done or where we have gone we cannot see the light. Jesus is that light he is the one who brings us back to the Fathers love. All we need to do is to have the courage to ask we need to realise that we are God’s work of art and that we are loved.  Sometimes I describe this as the longest and hardest journey that we take. To accept oneself and then to love oneself we know it intellectually but in the heart we find it difficult to feel it. The journey is painful and needs patience and there are things that can help us along the way like prayer, Mass and Alpha but it is a journey worth taking to see what God has created for you are all works of art. 

The question asked today is what is eternal life. It is being caught up in the eternal and absolutely love God has for us recognising that we are God’s work of art. This is the journey that we are all on.