All of us have seen the sign saying "John 3:16" in the end zone and other places at football games. The reference is to the beginning of the section of John's Gospel which we read today (Jn 3: 16-21) which says: "God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son so that everyone who believes in Him might not perish but have eternal life." Obviously wonderful language that focuses us on God's great gift to us-- Jesus-- and the need to believe in Him. We have just been through the Triduum, which makes very real the enormous magnitude of the gift in its various dimensions. But just saying "I believe in Jesus so everything is fine" is much too facile an understanding of what John is saying in this passage. If we read on, past John 3:16, it is clear that John is telling us that this belief in Jesus, if it is real, has a profound impact on our lives. We are to be people who prefer the light, rather than the darkness, and people who live the truth, not lies. We are to be people who live the truth and "come into the light so that (our) works may be clearly seen as done in God." So easy to live in the darkness, surrounded by lies. John tells us in this passage that "people preferred darkness to light, because their works were evil." Sadly, we see that a lot-- that shrouding acts in darkness so that the evil in them does not come to light. As was first publicized in modern times in the Watergate scandal, but has probably always been the case, the cover-up is worse than the crime. That's a big part of why the sex abuse scandal has been such a problem for the Church-- the coverup, the shrouding of facts in darkness. So the full implication of what John tells us today is that we are to be people whose lives can stand the glare of the light. We are to be people who have nothing to hide. We are to be people who live the truth. Easy to say-- hard to do. But as we make choices each day we might ask ourselves: Is this living the truth? Are we walking in light or in darkness? How would we feel if our actions were known to the world? After all, belief is more than a set of words-- it is a set of behaviors.