S TRENNA 2010

by Pascual Chávez Villanueva

THE GOSPEL TO THE YOUNG

THE UNHEARD OF TRIUMPH

Without thee, O Christ, we are born only to die; with thee we die only to rise again (Miguel de Unamuno).

_If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain (1Cor 15,14). Undoubtedly the resurrection is at the centre of the Christian faith. And yet, the lives of believers do not always reflect this conviction. It is enough to think about the limited number of pictures of the risen Christ in comparison with those of Jesus on the Cross. Paradoxically to understand the resurrection it is necessary to take his death seriously. Down the centuries, currents of thought have minimised the death of Jesus, preventing the resurrection from being properly understood. For the people of Israel, the death on a cross of the Rabbi from Galilee meant that God was not on his side, his Messianic pretentions had no value and even less those regarding his being the son of God. Thus, with regard to the disciples who saw him risen, this was described as an hallucination or simply that they saw what they hoped to see. There are two elements evident in the gospel accounts: above all, that the discovery of the empty tomb did not lead them to think that the one who had been buried was risen; and this explains the great difficulty the disciples had in accepting the fact that the person they were seeing alive rally was Jesus. We are talking about something which goes totally beyond our human experience. What the accounts in the New Testament lead us to can be summed in this way: the risen Jesus is the same one who lived with them and died on the cross, but he is not the same. His personal identity is complete: he retains the signs of his death on the cross, as can be seen in his meeting with the unbelieving Thomas: “Put you finger here and see my hands; and put out your hand and place it in my side; do not be faithless but believing!” (Jn 20,27).

■ In the same text we find the relationship between the testimony of the disciples and the faith of someone who, like us, without having seen believes in Him: “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe!” (Jn 20,29). It seems to me significant that there is no account in the NT which presents an appearance of the risen Jesus to his mother: she is the only person for whom the death of the Son does not result in any fracturing of her faith and trust in Him and in the Father. What does it mean nowadays to believe in the resurrection of Jesus? In the text quoted (1Cor 15), we see that the Apostle does not base our resurrection on that of the Lord; on the contrary, on two occasions he declares: “If there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised!”; “If the dead are not raised then Christ has not been raised” (1Cor 15,13.16). With the resurrection, Jesus does not return to the past, to his divine life “pre-incarnatoria”, instead he takes a decisive step forward. In the risen Jesus we find both his incarnation in its fullness and the human condition in its fullness. He assumes for ever our human nature. It is the risen Jesus who for the first time calls his disciples “brothers” (Mt 28,10; Jn 20,17). Starting from this moment the apostles devote their whole lives to preaching, to proclaiming “the truth about God and the truth about man”. The proclamation of the resurrection of the one who was crucified is the “Good News”, the very best that a human being can receive. The NT tells us what the genuine testimony to the resurrection is. “And with great power the apostles gave their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus … There was not a needy person among them for as many as were possessors of lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds … and laid it at the apostles feet; and distribution was made to each as any had need” (Act 4,33-35). There couldn’t be a better setting in which to speak about the testimony to the resurrection than that which shows the change in the lives of believers, fraternal love, total sharing : “See how they love one another!”, the astonished pagans exclaimed.

■ Don Bosco understood this perfectly. His whole life and his work on behalf of the young had at its heart an “easter spirituality”: the joy which constitutes the essence of the preventive system and is the key to youth holiness is not the naive or thoughtless cheerfulness of someone who “as yet” does not know about life’s difficulties, but that of someone who “carries the signs of the cross” but at the same time, is convinced that no one and nothing can separate him from the love of God shown in Christ Jesus (cf Rom 8,39). So too Don Bosco’s preoccupation to make the atmosphere at the Oratory the very best, the “educative ecology” indispensible for our charism, is an attempt to re-create, in the youthful and working class setting of Valdocco, the experience of the first Christian community and in this way succeed in becoming an authentic testimony to the new life of the Risen Lord. We should recall that “as we carry out our mission today, the Valdocco experience is still the lasting criterion for discernment and renewal in all our activities and works” (C. 40). May God grant that as the Salesian Family we may always and everywhere be authentic witnesses to the Resurrection.

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