When you lift up the Son of Man, then you will realize that I AM”

You owe your entire life to Christ Jesus since he gave his life for yours, and he bore bitter torments so that you would not bear eternal torment. What could be difficult or frightening for you when you call to mind that he, whose condition was divine, on the day of his eternity, before the daystar, in the splendor of the saints; he, the splendor and very imprint of God’s being, came into your prison, sinking to his neck, as it is written, to the depths of your mire. (Phil 2:6; Ps 109[110]:3; Heb 1:3; Ps 68[69]:3) Who would not seem gentle in your eyes when you have taken to heart all your Lord’s bitter pains, first of all remembering the restrictions of his childhood and then the fatigue of his preaching, the temptations of his fasting, his watching in prayer, tears of compassion and the traps set against him… then, too, the insults, spitting, slaps and whipping, the derision, mockery, nails and everything he bore for our salvation? What undeserved compassion, what a free love proved in this way, what unexpected esteem, what amazing gentleness, what unassailable goodness! The king of glory (Ps 23[24]) crucified as a contemptible slave! Who has ever heard of such a thing? Who has ever seen anything like it? For “only with difficulty does one die for a just person” (Rm 5:7). But he, he died for his enemies and the unjust, choosing to leave heaven in order to restore us to heaven; he, the sweet friend, the wise counselor, the steady help. How can I repay the Lord for all he has done for me? (Ps 116:12).

It would seem to me that the Lord’s words: “I am the light of the world” are clear enough for those with eyes that enable them to have a share in that light. But those who only have bodily eyes are astonished to hear it said by our Lord Jesus Christ: “I am the light of the world.” There may even be those who say: “Would Christ be the sun that determines the day by its rising and setting?”… No, Christ is not that. The Lord is not the created sun but him by whom the sun was created. For “all things came to be through him, and without him nothing came to be” (Jn 1:3). Therefore he is the light who created the light we see. Let us love this light, understand it, desire it, that led by it we may in due course attain it and may live in it so as never to die… So you see, my brethren, you see, if you have eyes that see spiritual things, what kind of light this is of which the Lord says: “Whoever follows me does not walk in darkness.” Follow that sun and let us see whether or not you walk in darkness. Behold how he arises and comes towards you. Following his course he makes his way westwards; but you on your part, must walk towards the rising sun, the Christ.

I am deeply confused over the fact that I have spent so great a part of my life not only without loving God but even in offending him after he did me the honour of destining me to love him. I have admired, with a feeling of great sweetness, the infinite patience and mercy of the same God. He saw the contempt in which I held so glorious an end, the consequence being that I was not any good for him in the world, but on the contrary harmful to his interests. Yet he never ceased to allow me to remain in it and to wait until I should be willing to think better of why I was here, and even to remind me of it from time to time. I have felt no difficulty in promising him to live in the future only to serve and glorify him.

Any work, any place, any condition that may befall me physically—health, sickness, imprisonment, life, death—are all, by God’s grace, most indifferent to me. I even feel that I am envious of those whom blindness or some other habitual handicap prevents from having any dealings with the world, obliging them to live as though they were already dead. I am not sure that it is the thought of the struggle I foresee I shall have to undertake for the rest of my life that makes me find an attraction in such conditions, when I could live perhaps in a greater repose and a detachment which would be mine at a much smaller cost. When a man wants to live with God at any cost, it is easy to understand how he desires the strangest means, when they appear to him to be the surest. In the ardent desire that God gives me never to love anything but him, and to keep my heart free of all attachment to creatures, life imprisonment, to which a calumny had condemned me, would seem an incomparable stroke of good fortune. I do not think that with heaven’s help I would ever grow tired of it.

Saint Claude La Colombière

I WOULDN’T TRADE MY ENEMIES FOR THE WORLD

“Let Me alone, then, that My wrath may blaze up against them to consume them. Then I will make of you a great nation.” —Exodus 32:10

The Lord offered Moses the opportunity to start all over without the bothersome people who fashioned a golden calf and worshiped it. Moses, however, prefigured Jesus and asked God to forgive them and love them.

We all are tempted to be discontent with the people the Lord has put into our lives to love. We wish our spouses were perfect, our children were angels, and our parents were sinless. We sigh: “If only my pastor were a canonized saint and my fellow parishioners were holy, understanding, sensitive, and dedicated!” What if God offered you what He offered Moses! Would you let the Lord remove all your problem-people and leave you with a crossless life of little love?

Jean Paul Sartre, a French philosopher, claimed: “Hell is other people.” In fact, other people are not hell. Rather they may be the crosses which we endure on our road to heaven. The person who gives you the most problems can be your best opportunity to love as Jesus loves. Consequently, thank the Lord for your enemies because your enemies may hold your ticket to heaven. Your enemies may provide you the opportunity to become children of God the Father (Mt 5:44-45). Thank the Lord for the gift of your enemies.

“Remember, now, you have been cured. Give up your sins so that something worse may not overtake you.” —John 5:14

There is something much worse than being sick for thirty-eight years (see Jn 5:5). There is something much worse than Job’s sufferings of going bankrupt, suffering the tragic deaths of his ten children, and becoming seriously ill (Jb 1:13ff). There is something much worse than the greatest of calamities.

The worst thing that can happen to a human being is the second death (Rv 2:11), hell, which is everlasting damnation and alienation from God. However, the Lord wants all to be saved (1 Tm 2:4). He wants everyone in heaven and no one in hell. For love of us, God even became a man and died on the cross so that all could live forever with Him in infinite love. The Lord has done everything necessary to give us the best and save us from the worst.

Consequently, let us accept His grace to give up our sins (Jn 5:14). Let us live our Baptisms by giving our lives totally to Jesus. Then we will not have the worst but the best: eternal life on high in Christ Jesus (Phil 3:14).

“To this end Christ died and lived again, that he might be Lord both of the dead and of the living” (Rm 14:9). But “God is not God of the dead, but of the living” (Lk 20:38). Consequently, the dead over whom he who lives has power are no longer dead but alive. Life has power over them so that they may live without any further fear of death just as “Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again” (Rm 6:9). Raised up and freed from corruption they shall see death no more. They will share in the resurrection of Christ just as he shared in their death. For no other reason did he descend to earth, whose bars are barriers to eternity, except to “shatter the doors of bronze, and cut in two the bars of iron” (Ps 107[106]:16). He came to lead our lives away from corruption to himself and gave us freedom in place of slavery. If the work of this arrangement of providence does not seem to be finished yet, for men still die and their bodies rot in the grave, this should in no way undermine our faith. In advance of all the good things already mentioned we have even now received a pledge through Christ our firstfruits. Through him we attain the highest heaven and take our places with him who carried us up to the heights with himself. That is what Saint Paul says somewhere: “he raised us up with him, and made us sit with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus” (Eph 2:6).

This passage of Saint Luke constitutes one of the peaks of spirituality and literature of all time. Indeed, what would our culture, art, and more generally our civilisation be without this revelation of a Father so full of mercy? It never fails to move us and every time we hear or read it, it can suggest to us ever new meanings. Above all, this Gospel text has the power of speaking to us of God, of enabling us to know his face and, better still, his heart. After Jesus has told us of the merciful Father, things are no longer as they were before. We now know God; he is our Father who out of love created us to be free and endowed us with a conscience, who suffers when we get lost and rejoices when we return. For this reason, our relationship with him is built up through events, just as it happens for every child with his parents: at first he depends on them, then he asserts his autonomy; and, in the end if he develops well he reaches a mature relationship based on gratitude and authentic love.

In these stages we can also identify moments along man’s journey in his relationship with God. There can be a phase that resembles childhood: religion prompted by need, by dependence. As man grows up and becomes emancipated, he wants to liberate himself from this submission and become free and adult, able to organise himself and make his own decisions, even thinking he can do without God. Precisely this stage is delicate and can lead to atheism, yet even this frequently conceals the need to discover God’s true face. Fortunately for us, God never fails in his faithfulness and even if we distance ourselves and get lost he continues to follow us with his love, forgiving our errors and speaking to our conscience from within in order to call us back to him. In this parable the sons behave in opposite ways: the younger son leaves home and sinks ever lower whereas the elder son stays at home, but he too has an immature relationship with the Father. In fact, when his brother comes back, the elder brother does not rejoice like the Father; on the contrary he becomes angry and refuses to enter the house. The two sons represent two immature ways of relating to God: rebellion and childish obedience. Both these forms are surmounted through the experience of mercy. Only by experiencing forgiveness, by recognising one is loved with a freely given love, a love greater than our wretchedness but also than our own merit, do we at last enter into a truly filial and free relationship with God….

Let us meditate on this parable. Let us compare ourselves to the two sons and, especially, contemplate the Heart of the Father. Let us throw ourselves into his arms and be regenerated by his merciful love.

Pope Benedict XVI

“I shall get up and go to my father”

If we do not care for this young man’s conduct, his departure horrifies us. Don’t let us ever abandon such a father! Simply the sight of the father causes sin to flee, banishes our faults, does away with all bad behavior and temptation. Yet if we have gone away, if we have wasted all our father’s inheritance in a life of debauchery, if we should happen to have committed some fault or misdeed or fallen into the mire of irreligiousness and complete dissipation: let us rise up for good and all and return to this best of fathers, summoned by such a beautiful example. “When the father saw him he ran to embrace him and covered him with kisses.” I ask you: where is there room for despair here? What pretext for excuse? What false reason for fear? Only, perhaps, if we dread meeting the father, if we are afraid of his kisses and embrace; only if we think that the father, when he takes his child by the hand, draws him to his breast and folds his arms around him, wants to seize the opportunity to make good his loss instead of welcoming in order to forgive. Such a thought, however, that destroys life and is contrary to our salvation, is fully overcome, wholly destroyed by what follows: “The father said to his servants: ‘Quickly bring the finest robe and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Take the fattened calf and slaughter it. Then let us celebrate with a feast, because this son of mine was dead, and has come to life again; he was lost, and has been found.’” When we have heard that, can we delay any longer? What more could we ask for to return to the father?

Benedict XVI, pope from 2005 to 2013

Encyclical “ Deus caritas est ”, § 17 – 18 ( © copyright Libreria Editrice Vaticana)

Loving God and neighbor

The love-story between God and man consists in the very fact that this communion of will increases in a communion of thought and sentiment, and thus our will and God’s will increasingly coincide: God’s will is no longer for me an alien will, something imposed on me from without by the commandments, but it is now my own will, based on the realization that God is in fact more deeply present to me than I am to myself.[10] Then self- abandonment to God increases and God becomes our joy (cf. Ps 73 [72]:23-28). Love of neighbour is thus shown to be possible in the way proclaimed by the Bible, by Jesus. It consists in the very fact that, in God and with God, I love even the person whom I do not like or even know. This can only take place on the basis of an intimate encounter with God, an encounter which has become a communion of will, even affecting my feelings. Then I learn to look on this other person not simply with my eyes and my feelings, but from the perspective of Jesus Christ. His friend is my friend… Seeing with the eyes of Christ, I can give to others much more than their outward necessities; I can give them the look of love which they crave.