S
TRENNA
2010
by
Pascual Chávez Villanueva
THE GOSPEL TO THE YOUNG
THE BIRTH OF EXPECTATION
The Word united himself with humanity without losing his divinity; he made himself small without losing anything of his greatness (Saint Augustine).
T he Gospel of John, the last to be written and which in some ways reflects the maturity of the faith of the first Christian communities, sums up the mystery of Jesus in a phrase which is simple yet incomparably dense: “The Word became flesh, and dwelt among us” (Jn 1,14). A simple term is used: Word. In the field of human relationships, not being able to read each other’s minds we can know each other only through communication. When someone says I love you, this not only reveals the depths of the feelings of the person speaking but also makes a deep impression on the person listening and establishes a new and possibly definitive relationship. Being limited creatures, we cannot know the infinite mystery of God. If he had not revealed it we could not even have imagined that he could love us: “The only Son of God … he has made him known” (Jn 1,18). And yet, unlike in human relationships, in which the words could be empty of meaning and even a lie, when God wants to “speak to us” he does so in the most incredible way, he gives us what is most dear to him, his own Son: “In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son” (1Jn 4,10). It is the very heart of our faith: saying that God is Love means that he is not isolated but a community of Persons, a Family, Trinity. For this reason the great news (the “Gospel”) is that he wanted to create us capable of loving and of being loved, called to take part in his Divine life as sons and daughters similar to Jesus Christ His Son.
◙ A beautiful expression of classical wisdom says: “Amor, aut similes invenit, aut similes facit” (Love is found between equals, or it makes equal those who love each other). Between God and us, weak and sinful creatures, there is an infinite abyss. But the Father wanted to overcome this abyss by sending his Son, as the greatest proof of his love, to share our life becoming flesh in the virginal womb of Mary by the power of the Holy Spirit, and being born as an infant, frail and defenceless, in a manger in Bethlehem. Often, at a time of religious pluralism such as we are living in, one hears it said: “In other religions too there is the idea of the divinity who becomes man.” Yes, but it is not the same thing, nor is it even anything similar. In the first place because outside the Christian faith, this ‘incarnation’ does not happen for the sake of love; in the second place, because it is not set in history, but in the dimension of myth; and finally because it consists in a simple appearance in human form, without the fully taking on of all the consequences of our human condition, as, on the other hand, Jesus did. One of those most in love with Christ, Saint Ignatius of Antioch, was so conscious of the danger of understanding the incarnation in this way, that in his marvellous letter to the Romans, before his martyrdom wrote: “ There are those who declare that Jesus Christ was only apparently a man and that he only apparently suffered … if only the chains I wear for him were also only apparent!”
◙ In this marvellous plan of God human collaboration could not be lacking. Not because God is imperfect, but because his Love did not want to act without our response. In “the fullness of time” (Gal 4,4) we find a Woman who in her own life has left complete openness for the will of God: “Let it be to me according to your word”. The Church has appreciated this collaboration so highly that it calls the annual celebration of the Incarnation the Solemnity of the Annunciation. The “yes” of Mary was to be repeated throughout her whole life, even at the bitter and, in human terms, incomprehensible hour of the Cross, so that she became the Mother of “the brothers and sisters of Jesus.” (cf. Acts 1,14-15). As the Salesian Family, faithful to Don Bosco, believing in the Incarnation of the Son of Gods leads us to take seriously the fact that “he made himself like us in everything except sin” and, therefore, to appreciate everything that is human. It is not by chance that in the Mass of our father and founder we listen to the text from the letter to the Philippians: “Brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honourable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.” (Phil 4,8). Terence could say: “I am a man: nothing that is human is foreign to me.” We can go further and say: “I am a Christian and nothing that is human is foreign to me, because it has been divinised in Jesus Christ.”
