There are many stories like this one, but it bears telling on the Fourth Sunday of Lent. At a Jesuit rectory in Dublin, Ireland, there was an obviously old painting hanging in the dining room. Nobody paid it much attention until a visitor, an art expert, recognized it as a work of great value. Under close investigation, it turned out to be the work of the great Roman painter Caravaggio. His painting of the arrest of Jesus now hangs in the National Art Gallery in Ireland, and is one of the Gallery’s great treasures.
All those years, when the painting hung in the dining room, it was no less a masterpiece, but its real value went unrecognized. In Ephesians 2, St. Paul says that we are God’s work of art, created in Christ Jesus to live the good life. Like that Caravaggio painting, our worth can go unnoticed – even to ourselves. We do not often think of ourselves as works of art, do we? Yet God does see us as His works of art, in progress.
Be sure to come to Mass this weekend ready to rejoice that God loves us unconditionally and without counting the cost. St. John’s Gospel says it wonderfully (3, 14-21): “God so loved the world that He gave His only Son.” God so loved us that He was supremely generous with His kindness and mercy. We are so valued that God did not spare His own Son, but gave Him up to save us all. Indeed, let us rejoice!
