FOURTH SUNDAY OF EASTER
Words of trust
Fray Justo Pérez de Urbel
The word that fills us with sadness already sounds in our ears: "I'm leaving." Since Christmas Day the echo of that voice has vibrated in the poem of the liturgy, crying with us, teaching, healing, comforting, resurrecting the dead, pouring out forgiveness, talking about peace, destroying pain and sadness and cheering hearts with the announcement of the Good News. And now he tells us: "I'm leaving." The Apostles trembled when they heard this farewell a few hours before the Passion, and their trembling seems to move our souls as well. But our disturbance has a great consolation: the echo of that word will continue to vibrate in the earth, it will cross the centuries, it has reached us, and it will reach the end of the world. In addition, "it is convenient for Me to leave," says Jesus. When the Word goes, he will send the Holy Spirit, the Paraclite, the Comforter, the divine messenger, "who comes from the Father and the Son," as we sing in the Creed. "All excellent grace, all perfect gift," says James in the Epistle of this fourth Sunday of Easter time, "they are from above, and come from the Father of the lights, in whom there is no change or shadow of alteration."
Christ must disappear from the earth, because his visible presence would be incompatible with faith, which will be in the new order of things the principle of justification; but the Paraclyte will descend on earth to strengthen and enlighten all who believe in Him until the end of time. The powerful impulse from which the Church will come out will be a work of its activity. Focus, center, heart and spring of the Christian ideal and supernatural life, He will speak through the mouths of the disciples of Jesus, he will overcome in the martyrs, inflame the hearts of the saints, keep alive in the world that fire that Jesus came to bring to the earth, fertilize the prodigious seed of the Gospel, and keep the revealed truth unharmed, in the midst of the continuous attacks of trial and error. "He," says Christ, summarizing his action, "will argue the world of sin, justice and judgment."
These words were pronounced by a Man on the same day that he was going to suffer the torment of the slaves, like a vulgar impostor, when men betray and abandon him, and his work is eclipsed, and he seems a poor failure; he announces the advent of a new force in the world, the presence of a new element that was to transform consciences and put a new stamp on the history of Humanity. Now they judge me worthy of a cross: soon this act will be considered as the greatest iniquity of men. Now they treat me as an impious who wants to destroy the law of Moses; soon my doctrine will be seen by men as the supreme justice. Now the prince of this world machines my death with infernal hatred; soon the blindfold will fall off him, and he will see that my death has been fatal to his domination. And this transformation, which you believe unlikely, will be realized by that Spirit of truth, who will be for you the comfort of my absence.
The fat Caiaphas will have laughed when he heard the strange prediction: "A convict, who only has a small group of cowardly and ignorant disciples, and who, however, sees in his death the beginning and the cause of a world revolution! We see how the prophecy was fulfilled; how that mysterious fermentation of the Divine Spirit was carried out. Not only has the execution of Golgotha been looked at as the greatest crime in history, but the very concept of sin, justice and judgment has been transformed into human consciousness. There is a purer moral rule, a more exact meter of the actions of men and an incorberable court; there is a finer instinct of morality, a more exquisite sensitivity of evil and good, a more ardent longing for overcoming, a higher goal of spiritual perfection. It is the Paraclyte, that Spirit that in the beginning hovered the waters, the one who works perpetually hidden in the body of the Church, the one who irresistibly takes hold of the friends of God, the one who has renewed and transformed the earth.
Antiquity, certainly, knew the moral law written at the bottom of conscience; a law that spoke of justice or sin, a court that condemned or acquitted, a voice that approved or disapproved. "I don't do the good I want, I do the evil I don't want," said the Latin poet; and while Xenophon saw within himself two opposing souls, Plato considered his as dragged by two corcels, of which, one is noble and of easy direction, and the other brave, untamed, of bad mafias and flaming eyes.
However, just as Pilate, the ancient man lived under the anguish of the famous question: "What is the truth?" Neither with respect to divinity, nor with regard to the soul, he could give a satisfactory answer. The origin of man was for him an enigma, enigmas also life and death; and if the voice of duty let weak echoes of justice or sin be heard, the philosophy of mere chance or inexorable destiny, easily extinguished the timid babbling of nature. Men who venerated jealous and hostile gods, who did not admit a living and personal Providence, who believed themselves infallibly subject to the power of fate, had to find it impossible to reconcile the opposing ideas of freedom and necessity, of merit and demerit, of reward and punishment; and, consequently, not even the concept of sin, justice and judgment could be preserved among themselves in their primitive purity.
It was the Spirit sent by Jesus who came to help human wisdom, stuck in an abyss of errors, clearly tracing the borders of good and evil, illuminating life, tracing man a pure and precise ideal and placing him under the kind gaze of God, who has judged the prince of this world, but who, with his forgiveness, where there was ugliness of sin, puts glows of innocence. Everything has been transformed, purified, renewed; the world has been argued in order to sin, justice and judgment. The hesitation of the Greek hero at the crossroads of the two symbolic paths is no longer possible. In the heart of Humanity stands an inextinguishable lighthouse. There is a guide, a master, a divine instinct that does not sleep, and whose activity is the pledge of a more perfect renewal.
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