GOD BLESS YOU BELOVED OF STEEMCHURCH
HE CAME TO HIS OWN AND HIS YEARS WERE NOT RECEIVED
The first reading and the Gospel present the prophet and Jesus as the force of God, present in the world as a force that provokes hostility, rejection. Men can reject the Word, and persecute the Prophet. But the strength of the Word, the strength of God that is in him is more powerful than all the hostility of evil and of men. In this context we can read the life of Jesus and the life of Christians.
And in this context we have to read the message of Paul's letter about love, trying to deepen our concept of love. Paul's reflection leads us to the fundamental essence of faith, summed up by Jesus in answering the question of "what is the greatest commandment?" Jesus' answer is: "YOU will LOVE God with all your heart, with all your soul and all your strength, and with your neighbor as yourself, in these two commandments the whole Law and the prophets are summarized."
Thus, it is basic to understand that all the faith and action of the Christian is based on love. Love God and love men. The rest are consequences.
But we can not simplify the word "love". And to see what it is, let's look at the Gospel for a moment, to see how Jesus loves.
The theory (Lc 6, 35)
"Love your enemies, do them good, lend without expecting anything in return.Your reward will then be great: you will be children of the Most High, because He is good to the ungrateful and those who do evil."
The practice of Jesus (Lk 23, 33)
When they arrived at the place called "de la Calavera", they crucified him .... And Jesus said: "Father, forgive them, they do not know what they are doing".
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It's just an example. But if we analyze all of Jesus' relationships with people, we see that they are always inspired by the same thing: He is the Savior. He does not look upon his sins as obstacles that prevent him from loving them. His love for people goes deeper: sin tries to get between the love of Jesus and the person: but he does not succeed. No matter how much he is offended, he is still the Savior.
The origin of all this is not the kind humanity of Jesus. It is the saving divinity. It is God who is like that, and it is seen in Jesus. God is saving love. All creation is understood only from the love of God, which claims the existence of Sons in fullness. Sin is not an obstacle to love: it turns love into Savior, into Liberator of sin. Our sins try to come between us and the love of God, but they do not get it. And God present among us is El Salvador, the one who takes away the sin of the world.
In the same way, the origin of our position with respect to others is not in our kind humanity, in a natural affective and cordial. It is in that we have known the love of God, we live of the love of God, we feel loved by God and we do not know how to live more than saving, like God.
It is a conviction, a persuasion, but above all a faith, that is, a personal adherence. I accept God's love for me, and I can no longer live in any other way. I have known God's love in Jesus Christ. When I have come to believe in Jesus Christ, I have come to accept God my Savior, to trust Him. Believing in Jesus Christ is not simply being persuaded that he is a great man, or accepting his doctrine as satisfactory. To believe in Jesus Christ is to accept it as a way of life, as a revelation of God, to turn life around Him. To believe in Jesus Christ is first of all to admire and enjoy the love of God the Savior who becomes visible in Him. From there, my life changes: I know why I live, because God loves me. I already know what I live for, so that everyone loves him.
This is an ideal, a path, a conversion. Jesus is like that; we are going there. And everything we are and what we do has a provisional character, of "not yet". But we walk. In this sense, justice, the fear of God, the desire to reward for good works ... so many things, are "provisional charismas." But we must aspire to the superior charisms, we must aspire that our spirit enjoy the love of God and consequently live fully that gift: love men as God loves me.
This way of living is by no means easy. In the first place, because it is impossible "from outside to inside". It is not a rule that must be met. If it is fulfillment, it does not become love. It's not about "I behave like that because God wants it." It's about "I behave like that because I'm like that, I'm my father's son and I can not behave any other way". It is the end of conversion, when I no longer act subject to my sins, to my egoism or my envy or my vanity ... but free and saving, as Son.
Secondly, because in a world in which men do not love each other, but are harassed, cornered, envied, stolen, killed, this seems a weak way of living, exposed to everything that others want us to do.
Let's not get confused. Neither is a blandenguería of character, nor is a vocation of gentle lamb. To love above sins is a tremendous strength. To serve always, to always forgive, to always save, requires a force of spirit superior to all strength of character. It is only possible by the Spirit of God acting in us. And this force leads to be a witness, a liberator of all injustice and of all evil that happens to the children of God, an uncomfortable and sometimes intolerable presence for a society always interested in other values, often hostile.
Once again, the example and model is Jesus. A reading of any gospel, and more than the four, offers a figure of Jesus of impressive strength. His love for all the weak is accompanied by a foolproof courage and a brilliant freedom before all the powerful.
Jesus is able to defy the law to heal (leprous Mt 8, 1) of publicly insulting the king (about Herod, Lk 13, 31) of unmasking before the people the religious leaders and doctors of the Law (Mt 23, 13), and life is played defending a woman before the judicial harassment of the "just" (John 8, 1). No weakness, no softness. It is pure strength, at the service of those who need it and against what comes before it.
But Jesus is rejected. Love threatens all other ways of living. Jesus is rejected because with Him that religion, that temple, those socio-religious classes ends. Jesus harms the official religion, it does not interest the independence revolutionaries, it bothers Herod, it is indifferent to Pilate ... Love is out of place and is persecuted, until death. "The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not received it". And those of Jesus, like Jesus.
It is extremely worrisome that the Church is so scarcely persecuted in this Western society in which the values of the Gospel are nevertheless rejected frontally. And it is extremely comforting to see how they are persecuted, marginalized, Christians, people or groups, who take the Gospel very seriously. It is very normal that the political powers of some countries in which social injustice is very strong, do not tolerate Christian groups that fight against that injustice. Its normal. What is not normal is that in countries of unbridled consumption, of hallucinated search for pleasure and material well-being, in which the only God is the market economy and the consequent consumption, the Church lives so calmly. The only thing that can make us understand this phenomenon is to accept, with anguish, that the Church hides the Word, has lost its prophetic force and no longer announces its sins to the people, but merely reassures its conscience.
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