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