Wrath
Today’s gospel confronts us with God’s wrath, a theme we’d rather not think about. God is love, and if he is loving, surely he must be nice? Note, though, that the wrath in question is not the opposite of love. It does not stand for passionate anger on God’s part, but for self-enclosure on ours. Wrath as Jesus expounds it (‘he who refuses to believe in the Son will not see life; God’s wrath rests upon him’, Jn 3,36) is the opposite of life. Wrath is a state in which we confine ourselves when we refuse to receive life from a source that transcends us. To live under wrath is to feed on our own substance. Wrath finds expression in dark sadness. Life in wrath unfolds within a dank cloud of hopelessness. God’s gift to us in Christ, by the Holy Spirit, is not just survival, but life by which to flourish and bear fruit, overflowing life. Are we open to life on these terms? Or do we wrap ourselves up, be it unconsciously, in introspective, fruitless wrath?