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Jesus Master and Prayer
At times, even in the truest of moments, such as those
of prayer, we fill ourselves with many words, and perhaps we do not attain
a moment in which we truly experience the presence of God. Prayer means
permitting God to make himself present in our lives, which means total
availability to him and our radical lack of stability. When the Lord gifts
us with moments of his presence, we experience eternity. Everything else
becomes relative, becomes small, insignificant, (our problems, sins, anxieties,
joys), before the impressive event of God present in the history of humankind.
When this reality appears, all of history is set in motion, it acquires
the stability-truth of God.
This is prayer. If God lets himself be found by a person,
the latter becomes the hope, the door which lets the whole world enter
into the time of God, which lets all humanity pass to God.
This presence of God is given in a concrete Person: the
Person has become an event of salvation and of hope for all people, "For
the fullness of divine nature lives in Christ, in his humanity," exclaims
St. Paul (cf. Col. 2:9).
Jesus of Nazareth, true man and true God, revealed himself
as "way, truth, and life" (Jn. 14:6). All recent exegesis is in agreement
in affirming that the key word in this text of John is "way" (cf. Jn.
13:31 - 14:14). Jesus is the way through which the Father entered into
the history of humanity, in order to put human history back on the way
toward God. Jesus Truth is the guarantee, the trustworthiness of this
"way of God." He is the sure, stable way that leads to the very life of
God, to live the mystery of the offering, in learning to be son (cf. Heb.
5:7-10).
I take inspiration from a note of the Jerusalem Bible,
which is very rich here as in many other places. It can help us grasp
in synthesis how Jesus makes his own the substance of God Truth, considered
in the first part of this meditation (cf. note on Jn. 8:32).
"Jesus is the truth, the total reality of the gift of
the Father and of his salvific design." Jesus is the truth, not in the
Greek sense of "doctrine," but he is the manifestation of the total trustworthiness/fidelity
of God in the history of humanity. He is the "action" of God flowing from
God's fidelity, from God's love for human beings.
This gift is total, radical. St. John of the Cross says
it well: before Christ there were revelations, visions, figures, symbols;
in fact, God "answered, spoke or revealed mysteries of our faith, or truth
which refered to it or led to it. But now that the faith is based on Christ
and the evangelical law is established in this era of grace, now we no
longer need to question God, nor does he need to speak or respond as then.
In fact in giving us his Son, who is his unique and definitive Word, he
has told us everything at once and has nothing more to reveal.. God has
become mute in a certain sense, having nothing more to say." (Ascent of
Mt. Carmel, Bk. II, Ch. 22).
Jesus is truth, because "in him the realities announced
by the law became present." St. Paul explains it very well in the second
letter to the Corinthians. He had promised to pass by Corinth, but had
not been able. Because of this he was accused of fickleness, of promising
and not keeping his promise, of playing with 'yes - no,' Paul appeals
to the truth of God, of which he is the minister: "As God keeps his word,
I declare to you that my word to you is not 'yes' one minute and 'no'
the next. Jesus Christ, whom Silvanus, Timothy and I preached to you as
Son of God, was not alternately 'yes' and 'no'"; he was never anything
but 'yes.' Whatever promises God has made have been fulfilled in him;
therefore it is through him that we address our Amen to God when we worship
together" (2 Cor. 1:18-20).
Jesus Christ is truth. And we too are truth for humanity,
we who, insofar as we are Church, are the visible continuation of his
incarnation in history, his body, the place where the promises of God
wait to become Amen, where God can continue to demonstrate his fidelity
to humankind.
Jesus is truth because "he proclaims the words heard by
the Father who sent him, he lets us know what he knows and invites us
to believe in him with faith." In the gospel of John many times Jesus
repeats that he does and says that which he has seen and heard from his
Father.
When he affirms that, Jesus declares himself to be a son
of Israel, son that is, of that person which presents itself to others
with the statement that it has "heard" and "seen" God (cf. Ex. 19:11;
20:18-19; 24:10-11; Dt. 5:27; 18:16, etc.).
Jesus is truth, therefore, because he bears in himself
the Words of God and communicates what is truly from God, the Holy Spirit:
"For the One whom God has sent speaks the words of God; he does not ration
his gift of the Spirit" (Jn. 3:34).
Jesus is the truth because he bears within himself the
perfect image of the Father, the complete icon of him, as the Fathers
used to say.
He is truth because he is Son, and has a relationship
of total intimacy with the Father, Abba (cf. Rom. 8:15).
Jesus is truth because he transforms his whole self in
"mission" and his mission is a work of "consecration," "They are not for
the world, any more than I belong to the world. Consecrate them by means
of truth, 'Your word is truth.' As you have sent me into the world, so
I have sent them into the world; I consecrate myself for their sakes now,
that they may be consecrated in truth" (Jn. 17:16-19). The Jerusalem Bible
comments: "consecrate them in the truth: to put aside for God, to vow
to God [in the full sense of the term]. Jesus sanctifies himself presenting
himself before the Father to be one with him and before all as the perfect
revelation."
Jesus is truth because he stands radically before God
and before humanity. His constitutive being is "to be for others."
Why
St. Paul | Getting
to Know Paul the Apostle
Mary, as Mother, Teacher and Queen
Apostolic Spirituality and Holiness | Communicating
Christ
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