At number 41 of the Gaudium et Spes we read a particularly meaningful thought about value, for every man and every woman on earth, of the announcement of the Church about

 Jesus as the Savior of the world. We read: "Man [...] will always desire to know, at least vaguely, what is the meaning of his own existence, that is, the innermost truth about himself. The Church truly knows that only God, Whom she serves, meets the deepest longings of the human heart, which is never fully satisfied by what this world has to offer. But only God, Who created man to His own image and ransomed him from sin, provides the most adequate answer to the questions, and this He does through what He has revealed in Christ His Son, Who became man. Whoever follows after Christ, the perfect man, becomes himself more of a man." (GS 41).

This is, in fact, the belief that guides the community of believers in his journey through time: the duty to accompany every believer a personal encounter with Jesus,  just because in him is given access to the good life, whose research beats at the heart of each. In its full, perfect, humanity is, in fact, the possibility for everyone to discern the original and originating features of the truth of the human, often become opaque in contemporary culture.

The full humanity of Jesus

This is the focal point of the Gospel: the announcement of a God who visits our history not  through the signs of a powerful and irresistible glory, but in the disarming power of a child, a young man and an adult, fitting in troubled story of a small nation subjugated by the Roman Empire, teaches the truth of the human. Precisely in this humanity of Jesus, Christians -more truly  every man and woman- are invited to discover a happy pattern for their existence. That humanity is a happy  model, because it was never a small thing to live well, that is,  do not feeling unhappy, sad and depressed.

When, moreover, we are crossed by questions like: "And now what?", "What is guiding my life?", "What do I say?", "Now what should I do?" precisely these questions confirm the need to have a model, a reference, a baseline on which to judge our decisions and actions. And Christianity  bets exactly in assuming Jesus what model of existence, as a guide for daily life and unsurpassed interpreter of the always fascinating and tiring adventure of freedom. Therefore it calls upon to become humans like Jesus.

No one has lived more fully than Christ, intensely and conscious of him the adventure of human that we are and no one more than he can reveal the grammar. But how to say more precisely this fullness of humanity in and of Jesus? Particularly fascinating is that several years the Jesuit theologian Christoph Theobald suggests. In his massive work Il cristianesimo come stile. Una maniera di fare teologia nella postmodernità (2 volumi, Dehoniane, Bologna 2009-2010) we found a complete expression. The Author sees in Jesus a special form of holiness, a "hospitable holiness." This expression will report a singular concordance in Jesus’ gestures and words, between what it is alive in his soul and his style of presence to others, an elementary and simple unity of his being, a full concordance of and with himself  opened to his meetings  with the others, in his mission of itinerant rabbi. He looks so good teacher, a teacher who has words of eternal life, just because he manifests a presence in the world reconciled, healed and healing. This splendor of life so it doesn’t become something that will separate him from the other (holiness is precisely hospitable): on the contrary it becomes an element of irradiation, as endorsing the possibility that others may gain a similar position against the very existence: they can, in fact , to become "more of a man".

In a sign of divine blessing

The holiness and the fullness of humanity of Jesus did not isolate himself from the others, rather they are the promise and the premise that others can also be reconciled with themselves and with the world, and they are the promise and the premise that in the blessed and blessing company of  Abbà is their fulcrum. At the heart of the life and message of Jesus met in truth a God eager to serve the human and a man needy of love of God to do not go astray in the paths of existence. The religion which he opens does not want to harness or suppress the vital energy of man, can not be locked up in a remote past to replicate, doesn’t delude anyone with promises of being cheap. The religion invites each of us to conquer the world without losing the soul, invites us to love life and a life of love.

The whole public story of Jesus, from the baptism of John until the process that destines him to death on the cross, therefore, can be reinterpreted in the light of his attempt to reactivate the authorization to love in those who have encountered. Jesus did not leave out any possibility of the human: the sinner, the sick, the rich, the poor, the powerful, the wounded man, who is searching, the stranger. No human is too far away or irretrievably ripped from that God the Father's blessings authorizing his blessing.

To meet Jesus means, then, yesterday as now, awakening in us the desire to fullness and that fullness of desire, that desire for reconciliation and that reconciliation of desire, that craving to a good life that we carry inscribed in the innermost fibers of our meat, while in the middle of each failure or sin.

And who really meets Jesus meets precisely the truth of his existence: that is, that announcement of a blessed and blessing presence of God upon himself - the God that Jesus invites you to nominate Father - which entitles you to one of our full deployment in the world, a "traffic generation" of talent that we have received, as he reconciles us with that feeling of fear and terror, related to experience of finitude and death.

Theobald insists on this point, because what Jesus inspires and arouses in those who come to is ultimately "a new relationship with death," made possible by the announcement of the revelation of God as Abbà, who managed to disarm his death - he writes - "as the ultimate enemy of life and turns it into a messenger able to convince each individual of the inestimable value of his/her  existence: if he/she has only one life, this "once and for all "is the guarantee of his/her  uniqueness. Only a "father" source - od the Father- can carry the weight of this good news. One who intends  immediately perceives the singular newness that is his simple existence between birth and death."
This is the "miracle" of the encounter with the Lord Jesus: the possibility of a new relationship with themselves, which implies an unprecedented relationship with the creation and final dimension of existence, and opens a new way of inhabiting the world , in free correspondence to the uniqueness of each.

Magnetic force of Jesus

In times like ours -marked by a loss in more and more conspicuous of faith impact on the economy of the soul and the experience of many people, even in lands of ancient Christian tradition- the community of believers is invited to rediscover and revive the Magnetic strength of Jesus, the provocation inscribed in his holiness, in his way made of living in the world and relating with others, becomes the premise to be reconciled with life by each individual.

Therefore, the community of believers is asked to emphasize more healing, invigorating, uplifting, humanity of Jesus, who reconciles with the life. In a word, his hospitable holiness. He is the measure of the happy life. Yes, he is -recalling a word of St. Benedict- the door through which to have happy days.

Armando Matteo
Via Aurelia Antica, 284 - 00165 Roma