Dear Brothers and Sisters, Fiat!
Today’s Gospel passage (cf. Mt 16:21-27) is the continuation of last Sunday’s, which highlighted the profession of faith of Peter, the “rock” upon which Jesus wishes to build his Church. Today, in stark contrast, Matthew shows us the reaction of the same Peter when Jesus reveals to his disciples that He will have to suffer, be killed, and rise again (cf. 21). Peter takes the Teacher aside and reproaches Him because this — he says — cannot happen to Him, to Christ. But Jesus, in turn, rebukes Peter with harsh words: “Get behind me, Satan! You are a hindrance to me; for you are not on the side of God, but of men” (v. 23). A moment before, the Apostle had been blessed by the Father, because he had received that revelation from Him; he was a solid “rock” so that Jesus could build His community upon him; and immediately afterwards he becomes an obstacle, a rock but not for building, a stumbling block on the Messiah’s path. Jesus knows well that Peter and the others still have a long way to go to become his Apostles!
At that point, the Teacher turns to all those who were following Him, clearly presenting them the path to follow: “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me” (v. 24). Always, today too, the temptation is that of wanting to follow a Christ without the cross, on the contrary, of teaching God which is the right path; like Peter: “No, no Lord! This shall never happen”. But Jesus reminds us that his way is the way of love, and that there is no true love without self sacrifice. We are called to not let ourselves be absorbed by the vision of this world, but to be ever more aware of the need and of the effort for we Christians to walk against the current and uphill.
Jesus completes his proposal with words that express a great and ever valid wisdom, because they challenge the egocentric mentality and behaviour. He exhorts: “whoever would save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it (v. 25). This paradox contains the golden rule that God inscribed in the human nature created in Christ: the rule that only love gives meaning and happiness to life. To spend one’s own talents, one’s energy and one’s time only to save, protect and fulfil oneself, in reality leads to losing oneself, i.e. to a sad and barren existence. Instead let us live for the Lord and base our life on love, as Jesus did: we will be able to savour authentic joy, and our life will not be barren; it will be fruitful.
On April 16, 1933 Jesus explained to Luisa how He, in all the acts of Redemption, enclosed love, conquests, triumphs. “It’s God’s long love story. It is an interminable chain of incessant love, never interrupted. After all, God created the creature to love her, to keep her united with Him, and by not loving her He would go against His own Will, He would act against His own nature, which is all love. And besides, God created her because He felt the need to externize His love, and to let her hear the continuous whispering ‘I love you, I love you, I love you.’
From the moment Jesus was conceived, and during the whole course of His life, inside all the acts He did He enclosed love, conquest and triumph. His operating was quite different from that of the creatures: doing or not doing, suffering or not suffering, was in His power; His all-seeingness would hide nothing from Him. And Jesus, first He placed His Will in His acts, He enclosed fullness of sanctity, fullness of love, fullness of all goods; and then, with full knowledge, He offered Himself to operating or suffering, according to what He Himself wanted; and by this He rendered Himself conqueror and triumpher of His acts. He made these conquests and these triumphs for the creatures.
Jesus loved them too much, and He wanted to give, He wanted to be the Jesus victorious, He Himself giving them His conquests and His triumphs in order to win them to Him. So, His life down here was nothing other than a continuous act of heroic love that never says enough; of conquests and of triumphs, to render His children happy. And Jesus did this in everything: if He set out on the way, He possessed the virtue of being able to go from one city to another without making use of His steps, but He wanted to walk, to place His love in each step - in each step that ran and ran, and He rendered Himself conqueror and triumpher of His steps. If creatures paid attention to Him, they would hear in His steps the continuous cry: ‘I run - I run in search of creatures, to love them and to be loved.’
In order to form Redemption, a tear, a sigh, was enough for Him, but His love would not have been content; being able to give and do more, His love would have remained hampered within itself, and could not have claimed the boast of saying: ‘I have done everything, I have suffered everything, I have given you everything - my conquests are superabundant, my triumph is complete.’ He reached the point of confounding the human ingratitude with His love, with His excesses and with unheard-of pains.
So, Jesus placed in each pain the intensity of the most intense and bitter pain, the confusions most humiliating, the barbarities most cruel; and after He endowed it with all the most painful effects, which only a Man-God could endure, He offered Himself to suffer it, and - oh! the admirable conquests in His pains, and the full triumph that His love obtained! No one would have been able to touch Him, had He not wanted so; and here is all the secret: His pains were voluntary, wanted by Him, and therefore they contain the miraculous secret, the winning force, the love that transfixes; and they have the virtue of overwhelming the whole world, and of changing the face of the earth.
In the Eucharistic celebration we relive the mystery of the Cross; we not only remember, but we commemorate the redeeming Sacrifice in which the Son of God completely loses Himself so as to be received anew by the Father and thus find us again, we who were lost, together with all creatures. Each time we take part in the Holy Mass, the love of the crucified and Risen Christ is conveyed to us as food and drink, so that we may follow Him on the daily path, in concrete service to our brothers and sisters.
by don Marco