By nature man experiences “within” existence the fragility of life.  He seeks to find security outside of himself in God.  Man therefore, seeks to reach God, to be like Him, to divinize himself through rites and the cult.

MAN SEEKS TO BECOME GOD

For Israel God is the totally OTHER, unreachable by man.  The cult does not divinize.  The unique ways of achieving salvation is by fidelity to the covenant.  God will gratuitously save those who expect all from Him and who faithfully observe His Law (1R).  But is such absolute fidelity possible to man, such response charged with the absolute, a total response that ties him to God and divinizes him?  Is there no contradiction between such aspiration and the creature condition that is mainly sinful?

The hope of overcoming such contradiction orientates Israel towards the future, in the expectation of the Messiah.  With the intervention of Christ the hope of Israel is fulfilled beyond measure.  Jesus of Nazareth presents Himself as the perfect imitator of the Father.  He is indeed the Messiah that man expected to speak with God as true interlocutor.  Paul says of Him that He is the image of the Father (2R).  At the same time Jesus is the image of man.  He demands for Himself and for His future disciples total self-denial, obedience unto death of the cross which is the condition for universal fraternal love i.e. total fidelity to our earthly condition.  Jesus is the God-Man, the Word incarnate, He can reunite the two terms of paradox: to be in the true sense of the word the Image of the Father and to be integrally faithful to the earthly condition of the creature.  Jesus-Man will bring to perfection the image of the Father in the sacrifice of the Cross.  There He will reveal the true face of the double love towards the Father and towards men from springs the history of salvation.

For man the invitation of the Father passes through Christ.  The Christian comes to Him configured in baptism and other sacraments.  This configuration should be seen in the events and meetings of daily life.  Self-sacrifice, gratuitous and universal love of neighbor makes the face of the Christian resplendent with the face of Christ and God.

WE MEET GOD IN THE LOVE OF CHRIST

Christ handles humanity like the Samaritan in the gospel account towards the stranger.  Like the Good Shepherd, He comes to save the harassed sheep (Jn 10:10).  Like the son of the Lord of the vineyard (Lk 20:9-18), He presents Himself after the prophets were sent in vain.  So the Samaritan arrives after the priest and Levite who did not want to and were unable to help the wounded man.

Here is reflected the history of salvation in which Jesus comes in the appearance of a despised Samaritan.  He reveals what the other techniques of salvation forgot.  He builds where these techniques failed.  In Christ God approaches man in a simple human figure.  God whom we now know “is not high or too far” from us and His Law is very close to us, it is in our mouth and in our heart so that we put it in practice (1R).  It is only by doing that which Christ also did that we truly meet God.   The secret is the great commandment of love which with Christ brings new exigencies.  It is not enough to love the neighbour as oneself.  It is important to ask how to be a neighbor for others and to love them as God does.  After the Last Supper Jesus gives a new commandment, to love others as He loves (Jn 13:34).  It is necessary to recognize belonging to this wounded humanity abandoned half-dead on the edge of the road who Christ came to save.

THE LOVE OF THE CHRISTIAN REVEALS GOD

In what way today’s man encounter God?  Which is the place of the revelation of God for him?  Certainly not the abstract demonstrations.  Today man is ravaged in areas, put to death, ensnared, forgotten and neglected.

There is a precise choice to make: to choose man above all, above money, career, structures…  To choose his freedom.  How are we to intervene – at the level of particular situations (to give a fish or to teach how to fish?) or at the general level of structures (so that he who knows how to fish does not become a victim of robbery and is put in the condition of suffering hunger).

If God is love, if Christ is the revelation of God because He gave up Himself to death for man, the Christian will reveal God to the world with his concrete love of the neighbor.

God bless you!

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