Jn 16:12-15 (5-20) [Jn 15:26-16:20].

 

Satisfying Solutions vs Spirit of Truth

(Jn 15:26-16:4a)

 

Faith in the Master is already eternal life, or rather Life of the Eternal (in action here and now).

He Himself is Bread of authentic and indestructible existence, though still earthly.

In short, the intimate life of God reaches us in our time.

First step is the adventure of Faith that gives a Vision; irruption of the Spirit that gives rebirth from above.

Impulse that animates a different - not empty - existence.

The sign of such adherence is believing Jesus as Son: man manifesting the divine condition.

 

Christ is Bread of life also because His Word is creative, and the path of following Him transmits to us the qualities of indestructible Life.

The outpouring of the Spirit stirs in us the same beating Heart of the Eternal.

We experience this in the deaths and resurrections of daily life and in the long rigmarole of the Vocation, reaffirmed from path to path.

Even in persecution, he who 'sees' the Son has the Life of the Eternal within him.

Life that regenerates and always arranges new births, other premises and questions, different paths, in an uninterrupted; growing form.

The passion for the Friend unites us to Him, Bread: that is, the Revealer of the Truth that satiates men on their journey towards themselves and the world.

Souls that sometimes change skin, opinions, lifestyles.

 

In the Vision, we are empowered to directly appropriate, thereby drawing in and realising the Newness of God - even in advance, wisely.

Through Him 'we have a part'... in the Father's love for the Son who manifests Himself as personal Lord, as well as in the outgoing dilated life of the authentic Church.

The 'hidden' God of the First Testament, an obstacle that seemed insurmountable, now presents itself in the specifics of Faith, without the need for fatuous fires to support it.

Because the world of God in the soul is different.

One does not enter the Mystery with normal intentions and perfect expectations, let alone success and recognition.

 

Here (in the Gospel passage) the apostles' incomprehension comes into play.

Indeed, even to us, Jesus' manner of manifestation often seems undecipherable.

Even the Jews [actually: the returning Judaizers in the communities of the late 1st century] were waiting to grasp it in an overt way, perhaps on an occasion of public life.

Instead, even in times of 'glorification', the Master seems to want to trace the outwardly humble inappearance of his earthly ministry.

Many expected sensational fireworks at that time that they considered 'final'. Instead, no yielding to power ideology or religion-show.

So things did not go as expected: doubts were not dispelled; ambiguities, neither.

The titles of Israel's former nationalist and imperial glory did not reappear at all, quite the contrary!

 

Even today, the choice of Faith is not given to the apparatuses that would guarantee its visibility: no parachutes, no discounts.

Everything then seems to proceed as before, in the summary: to toil for a living and buy, to travel and not, to laugh and cry, to get sick and get well, to work and party... and so on.

Often in seemingly senseless pain; perhaps no decisive breakthroughs.

But in the same old things there is a different Light, planted on a new, immediate Relationship of needy humanity with the Father who regenerates us.

He stimulates new births, to reconnect desires, deep needs, external paths; to increase the intensity of life.

And it is in the mutual knowledge of the roots and grooves of reality that this circle of love between God and his children exists in the first place.

 

All that has not yet been understood will be called forth by the action of the Spirit. The only reliable impetus, which does not point to vain things.

A bond between man and Heaven, in us - not above.

Friendship that does not primarily contemplate resignation, effort, humiliation; rather, it is reworked in deepening.

This is where the true scope of our hearts - so limited, yet endowed with a mysterious imprint - for the complete, and personal, life of character comes into play.

 

In order to avoid intimidation, marginalisation, annoyance, some church members advocated a kind of covenant between Jesus and the Empire.

They proclaimed a Christ so vague and uninhibited that he would not scratch anyone.

Some ambitious people, who were the zealots of 'life in the spirit', felt that the time had come to shake off the earthly story of the carpenter's son.

Figure that was considered weak in itself, short-term, out of place and time; already extinguished.

Jn intends to rebalance the attempt at proclamation, diluted in compromises. 

The evangelist emphasises that the Risen One is the cipher and engine that bears the soul and generates us in today.

It was the same Son of God who sustained a harsh denunciation and several battles with the authorities.To the opportunists of his time, the Master had dared to touch positions, vanity, and the bag of commerce.

Thus persecuted, tried, vilified, condemned as subversive, and cursed by God.

 

In short, the Holy Spirit does not go after butterflies.

Action of the Spirit [which internalises and actualises] and historical memory of Jesus must always be combined.

Only in such a frank perspective is it possible to grasp the Truth of the Eternal, and the Truth of Man, in all times and circumstances.

In addition: the Father is the Creator of each of our deepest inclinations, to which he affixes an indelible signature.

It manifests itself in an innate instinct, which wants to germinate, find space, express itself.

We have rooted in our innermost being a unique, invincible Vocation and (plural) faces; each one.

We cannot deny ourselves, our Roots - even where an open-faced testimony would be unappealing.

The Truth about each 'Person' is consequential.

 

By Grace, we are depositaries of an astounding dignity.

Even in error, or what is considered error, it imparts exceptional Desires. 

Truth that still restores Dreams: an unseen hope, which activates enthralling passions.

In vain would we have peace and happiness by seeking cultural and social concord, or by playing roles, characters, tasks that do not belong to us - albeit appeasing.

We become outsiders.

Truth: Faithfulness to God in Christ. And frankness in every choice, with our character in relation and situation.

The rest is calculation - deep disturbance, which will leave us disassociated and sick inside.

 

 

To internalise and live the message:

 

Do you take a stand and face the consequences? When your vocational character is at stake, do you stand up and put your face to it or do you blend in?

Are you being vague, do you value reciprocation and seek tribute or protection from satisfactory synagogues? Or do you wish to unite your life with Christ?

 

 

Paraclete, Sin Justice Judgment

(Jn 16:5-11)

 

In ancient times there were no lawyers, and one had to defend oneself by finding witnesses.

The accused could e.g. be guilty but worthy of forgiveness, or innocent yet unable to show proof.

In such cases absolution was secured by an esteemed person from the audience, who rose from the assembly and stood silently beside the accused, vouching for him and thus justifying him.

This is the action of the Spirit, in Jn referred to as the Paraclete: 'called alongside'.

 

Jesus was condemned by the expert teachers of the official religion as a lunatic, a heretic, and an unforgivable sinner.

It is normal to expect that those who renounce simulation and accept Christ as Lord of their lives will be judged in the same way: they will feel their identity of destiny with Him on the inside and deep inside.

 

But in us there is a silent force of conviction that harmonises even accusations, that frees us from externally induced tensions.

Correspondence that reknots the threads of the vocational weave, that brings the soul back to the inner concert, for the mission; and makes one restart even after the labours of idiotic harassment.

This intimate and friendly power is not related to obstinacy, but to listening to oneself - outside of any local, cultural, social or religious conditioning parameters.

All for the task at hand, and without exhausting our sharp energy in direct confrontations.

 

There is an inner world of Presence that opens doors.

It has a secret power of authority (devoid of judgement or imposition) that releases the soul from the incessant struggle against adversity.

And one gladly relies on such silent virtue: of the independent life that emerges and comes.

 

'Sin' (vv.8-9) is in fact the inability to accept the Call to follow one's own Seed, one's own Core, one's own 'will' that detests others' dirigisme, efforts, noise.

A kernel that weaves its roots into the ground, and unerringly leads to realisation - as well as correspondence.

Thus testifying to the unrepeatable personal Calling, Pearl without even a heap of pain and obstinacy.

 

By Way the authentic disciple will understand that the Lord has condoned his 'sin', that is, he has erased the humiliation of the unbridgeable gap [between creaturely condition and perfection].

The latter attribute preached by common religiosity; so grown-up, accommodated, hypocritical and installed that it prevents us from becoming human.

Sinfulness in the moralistic [not theological] sense is something else.

 

"Justice": divine justice is not retributive, for it would distinguish mine from yours. And from division to division he would fall into the worst injustices.

The Father acts by creating: He makes Justice where there is none; He places in conformed positions, He places debts where they do not yet exist.

 

In short, Love remains unbalanced: it stands on the irregular side of the free Gift, which is not kept at bay.

Rather, it rewrites the whole story. With much of excess.It is not the mercy of merits: the mereor ("mereor" is in fact the root of "meretriciousness").

 

"Thence shall he come to judge" - recites the Apostles' Creed: from where? The divine Judgement is not the banal, weighted one of intimist customs.

"Judgement" in the evangelical sense is the active, personal and intimate invitation of Jesus, who gives himself completely, down to the last drop of blood; who communicates his life-giving Spirit (Jn 19:30) and annihilates the accusations decreed by the "world" of convenience.

 

From where? From the Cross.

The same point from which he who is enlightened by the Spirit who overcomes interest and death, heals and frees from the fetters of 'ne quid nimis' [nothing too much].

The true believer knows how to be with himself in a different way. Regenerating the lives of so many brothers and sisters.

 

 

To internalise and live the message:

 

Do you know the error of "the world"?

Do you defend yourself by your own criteria or do you allow yourself to be exonerated?

 

 

"From Mine": the dramatic and happy experience of the origins

(Jn 16:12-15)

 

"Receive from Mine and proclaim to you [...] receive from Mine and proclaim to you" (vv.14-15).

The teaching imparted by Jesus with his life was not incomplete, but a germ that traced fundamental options, guidelines.

The magisterial insufficiency in the detailed case histories is significant. Christ is not a cast and dead model, but a Motive and Motor.

And God is not a predictor of the future, nor a reassurer - but a vital Presence. Even when in adverse events there seems to be a lack of air.

Although limited in space and time, his story and Word still germinates the main lines of an alternative world, empathetic even in the drama of bad times.

The complete Truth of the Lord (including the meaning of his death) is not about quantity - the number of truths, prescriptions: it is in fieri.

'Truth' itself demands to be deepened, intensified, made qualitative, totalising.

 

The writings of the New Testament attest to the action of the Spirit, who starting from archaic community situations (Mk) increasingly refines and reveals the sense of what "is to come" (v.13).

In the personal and ecclesial sequelae also extra moenia - it is about the possibility of an ever sharper understanding on our part.

We are not repositories of an aptitude for divination - of course - but for discernment [now capable of appreciating even deviations].

We are given a faculty to grasp the genius of time, even in imbalance and uprooting.

This is in relation to the disciples' capacity to correspond to the vocation that welcomes the new: a slow paradoxical glorification; for them too, 'the way of elevation'.

The penetration of the Mystery and the history of salvation, which had its apex and germinal source in Jesus of Nazareth, acquires more and more surprising clarity; new ways of being.

We discover in the Faith that our life can broaden the horizon. It is not carried out in function of God, as in archaic religions, which cage... but the other way around.

 

Christ speaks not of new truths, but of 'complete truth': specifically concerning the face of Heaven within; the profile of the integral and authentic woman and man; the character of the new society.

One of the ways in which the early Christians experienced the presence of the Holy Spirit was prophecy, made fruitful by even unpleasant events that incessantly forced them to exodus, to move, to turn their gaze - thus overcoming the fear of growing.

One had to remain... only in individual or ecclesial frankness. 

If anyone had to 'isolate' themselves from the common mentality, it was to rediscover their deep roots, to interrupt the artificial behaviour ready to barter values.

Gradually the community brothers experienced the depth and total dimension of the teaching received.

Even persecutions and 'crosses' were not eradicated hastily.

In the right time, crises were transformed into the spelling of love; into opportunities to experience needs and relationships differently - even paradoxically, for genuine change; from within, natural.

In this perspective, every event was always better understood, internalised, assimilated and made one's own as the historical call of the God who reveals himself.

In the events of the early days, all the situations in which the Church will always find itself are revealed.

 

In this way and in that spirit, the disciples began a journey of understanding the facts of Easter.

The Lord's intimates were discovering step by step that the story of Christ would embrace all the secrets of God.

 

In short, the first fraternities observed the "extraordinary" things of living following and 'inner guidance'.

By living the Master's teaching in the most varied circumstances [favourable and joyful, or sad and at a loss] He made Himself close in the soul; and He manifested Himself, taking the step of the brothers.A different Light - no longer neutral, standardised, whatever - animated the lives of the faithful and their coexistence.

They experienced a new Birth, like an unceasing Creation.

From the hearts of the believers in the Son of Man - even those who had previously been maligned - there gushed forth an unprecedented Source of conciliation and harmony of opposites. 

A Wisdom of things unknown to the world of empire and other beliefs was emerging.

The Spirit of the Risen One made it possible to understand the critical fruitfulness of the Cross ["the burden": v.12], thus expanding the solutions and orientations of the conventional competitive life.

Of course there were falls, due to natural precariousness, and to the fact that it was not immediate to understand the logic of the Crucified One.

But the Action of the Spirit of "Truth" [God's Faithfulness] illuminated, guided and stimulated them to interpret the Word of the Lord more deeply: not a storehouse of crystallised statements.

The children discovered that that Call was living, inexhaustible in its meanings and in the possibility of understanding things.

 

Truth about the Eternal and humanity, pregnant with existential implications.

Those reborn of water and the Spirit began to perceive it as a force of events, a real and overwhelming power.

His intelligence was enriched in history, through assembly events, experiences, dialogues, reflections.

The Spirit of the wounded and Living Christ internalised that Call that renewed women and men, and their relationships.

People who did not even have self-esteem were being revived. The profiteer became righteous, the doubter more secure; the unhappy person began to hope again.

All in mutual help realised that they could live happily.

The assistance of the total and mystical divine Spirit, even today, guides the access and fullness of facets of the Truth; and is a stimulus to an innovative, democratic, multifaceted, personal understanding.

Let us banish insecurity.

We can still be in the sharpest, most energetic and contemplative frankness; in a faithfulness of integral reading-interpretation of the Gospels that eschews all accommodation (vv.14-15).

 

 

"One Moment": critical living and recovery of lost time

 

"A very short time": we are not in the waiting room

(Jn 16:16-20)

 

The human communion of the first disciples with the Master was suggestive, not exhaustive. It must now renew itself.

This takes place in the passage of Jesus from the world to the Father. Therefore in the journey and dialogue outside any circle, to which the apostles themselves are called.

The earthly separation from the Lord was dramatic. But even today we are impelled to live and grow in the 'outgoing Church'.

A shift that obliges the faithful in Christ to move from community brothers and sisters to an all-encompassing relationship with the human family.

The immediate perception would become unbreakable: Jesus must go and leave us alone so that we enter the Mystery, in search.

This is so that it is the Risen One and the totally Other that emerges in this detachment, in the mist and night of the reaffirmed Exodus, all real and all new.

For us too, certainty becomes a problem; stability knows shocks. 

We are not protégés - as in pagan religion, where the gods descended into difficulties and sided with their friends.

 

There is a detachment from representations of God, even from our common way of thinking of the Risen One.

He becomes an echo of the soul, guiding. And it becomes 'body' i.e. Church; as well as 'call' to the shattering of idols, to outgoing witness.

The evangelising activity of the genuine apostles goes hand in hand with the Lord, and reflects his events, his teaching, his type of confrontations.

In this way, the Living One becomes present and active in us, seamlessly.

Certainly, the approaching events take on their own configuration - each time particular.

But for Faith in the victory of life over death, we understand: everything is configured in the ways that allow us to express the deepest core of being, our feeling called.

Fontal, authentic joy.

As disciples, we unfold the Risen One in the history of each one: death resurrection manifestations... personal, unprecedented even in the sign of travails - for each believer.

In such a typically Johannine perspective (and practical action) the death-resurrection, the glorification at the right hand of the Father [Ascension] and the Gift of the Spirit become simultaneous.

Like a 'new order' of things [so-called Return to the End of Time].

 

In short, the integral event of the humanising Messiah allows the believer to feel in communion with God, and united to the Son - without any caesura or temporal delay.

The Faith-Vision catches the innovative and creative Spirit of the Father at work, to build the definitive world.

Therefore, the Judgement from the Cross is now, it will not take place after a nerve-wracking wait, in a distant moment.

Church Time thus does not become 'intermediate'. Nor can it justify dark and empty forms of spirituality.The impact with the divine challenges and exposes. Yet it possesses its own, unique density.

The tribulations would be there - even very serious, full of embarrassment and unprecedented - but they would drag the consciences far beyond the bewilderment and the sudden unfulfilling.

In the experience of the envoys, placed face to face with the Mission, the enigmatic 'in a little while' would have nothing impenetrable about it.

We 'see' it in the Spirit, but not only in the heart.

It is for an Announcement together - without intimism. Free relationship with reality and the Living One, 'from' ourselves.

 

Jn reflects a question-and-answer catechesis addressed to those who could not understand the meaning of the Master's death and asked for explanations.

The masters of the ancient religion of consensus rejoiced at the disappearance of that subversive and heretic who instead of keeping quiet and making a career had been a thorn in the side of their prestige - and earnings - finally done away with and shamed.

By now a failure and rejection even by God.

Well, "a very short time" or "within a short time" are expressions that reaffirm and mark the continuity between the experience of physical closeness with Jesus and the 'vision' of the Risen One.

Transfigured and Lord-in-us, it is the same Master that we recognise in his earthly life, including the less happy aspects. E.g. of rejection, denunciation, rebuke.

Just like one who does not know how to be in the world.

These are priceless moments: times of rediscovery of cosmic and divine closeness, obviously purified of illusions of glory or social conformity.

Despite the hostile environment, the disciple's inner situation does not change: it is one of permanent unity and is not interrupted, indeed it becomes more incisive and goal-directed.

Faith is a penetrating relationship: even today, no longer linked to feeling, ritual experience, or the signs of a monopolistic and consolidated civitas christiana - but to the acuity and incisiveness of personal adhesion.

 

Does it sometimes seem to vanish? Immediately after a doubt arises, everything is turned upside down.

The frankness in the harsh confrontation with established power or the ideas of devotion good for festivals and all seasons, makes Him suddenly Present.

Alive and uncomfortable, but astonishing.

It is true: when everything smacks of sadness and trial, in an instant the situation is reversed.

It is the moment of profound Happiness: of the Vision of the invisible Friend manifesting Himself in His real Wisdom and strength.

Incarnation that continues in the critical witnesses and assemblies that take the form of the Lord's luminous Awakening.

They face the same Passion of love and do not shy away from problems: they make them flourish as the vital Newness of God.

 

 

To internalise and live the message:

 

Is your testimony diluted and sleepy, or is it intense, insightful, pungent?

 

 

Revelation at work in the Community

 

Affliction and joy in the pains of childbirth

(Jn 16:20-23a)

 

A widespread belief at the time of Jesus was that the last time would be preceded by an excess of tribulation and violence.

The joy of the golden age to come would be heralded by a period of unprecedented trials.

The image of the woman giving birth expressed the sense of the intensely painful history in the turning of the times.

Times that were not expected to be excessively long - compensated by a deliverance that would cause one to rejoice.

The spirit of self-sufficiency and feigned security of the surrounding world (even of the religious caste, preoccupied with safeguarding itself) would lead church members into terrifying loneliness.

The believers contradicted the pious and imperial way of looking at life, based on false certainties and a spirit of affirmation.

The moment in history seemed invaded by sadness and at the same time by an ineffable, radical expectation, which paradoxically arose from the same cause of persecution.

Exclusion produced a sense of discouragement, but it was also a spring that activated incisive glances, and action, for a reverse fulfilment - in the living experience of the divine Presence.

Social estrangement triggered a situation of Freedom: it became an unexpected, fruitful, tangible Gift.

Everything was shown to reconcile the multiplicity of faces with their own scattered history, brothers and sisters, God's future.

No more misunderstandings.

In the light of the real experience of the working Vision-Faith, even in the malaise there would be no questions to put forward: only answers.

The mystery of each person's existence was eloquently clarified, with no more scattering questions: rather, with inner guides.

 

In the figure of Jesus "greeting" his own, Jn introduces the Gift of the Paraclete. Spirit bearing the joy of the [silent] Presence of the Master.

Still in the midst - He was bringing the new world into being.

The frequent allusions to inner suffering in the text describe the reality of the Johannine communities in late 1st century Asia Minor, tormented by defections.The oppression under Domitian was increasing, and many community brothers were impatient: they needed a profound key to interpretation, and perspective.

They would not have made it on their own, starting from themselves.

Jn intends to sustain the pains of the believers and to avoid flight, encouraging all to see in persecutions a generating mechanism of new life [labour pains: v.21].

Only in this way would those who had death before their eyes not be afraid to continue in their frankness as witnesses: they had to have a strong Hope.

On such a ray of light and in the wake of God in history, step by step everything became clear.

In the life of the woman and the man of Faith, melancholy and joy went hand in hand - indeed, it was the absolute and lacerating trials that unleashed the flow of life.

The death of Christ and his people made a new birth of humanity possible.

Mystery of life, of tribulations, and of being fully new creatures, from genesis to genesis.

 

In the Bible, Happiness is a perception of fullness of life, a place of celebration that transports the person and the entire fraternity from the ills of the journey - it is the great sign of the New World.

But the primitive communities experienced that intimate joy arose from the tears of a painful birth: this was also to be the case for the world to come; of unprecedented conquest and freedom.

From the labour pains arose a different, primordial life, filled with a different kind of exultation: dissonant from old forms, nomenclatures, and intentions, even for those giving birth.

In short, suffering did not deny the irradiation of the Spirit: it was a law of birth [not a negative force] that could indeed annihilate, but only those whose gaze was averted.

This was also the case for the Kingdom: its establishment happened within a struggle, never harmless - which even though it wounded outside and inside even the human substance, in the depths of the heart and relationships.

But it then reharmonised and more, in the thrill of discoveries, in the suggestions that throbbed - from which a new creation sprang.

To the official notes of the true Church [a holy catholic apostolic] one should perhaps add: harassed, scourged, nailed down. In this way, strengthened by a Word-Person that resonated within.

From all this came an unimpeded 'taste' from the earliest times, which immediately incurs worldly hostility. Nothing to do with empire and its pyramidal-feudal logic.

Precisely in the travail, each trial produced in the children of God the joy of a rediscovered Presence, in the long time of evangelisation - always in danger of going astray and in the temptation to yield.

We must remember this rhythm: sadness of farewell and a new heart, joy and sadness....

Paradoxical synergy that can grow our engaging union with the Risen One, acknowledged Lord.

 

 

Spe Salvi

 

We somehow desire life itself, true life, which is then untouched even by death; but at the same time we do not know what we are being driven towards. We cannot cease striving towards it and yet we know that all that we can experience or realise is not what we long for. This unknown "thing" is the true "hope" that impels us and its being unknown is, at the same time, the cause of all despair as well as of all positive or destructive impulses towards the authentic world and authentic man. The word "eternal life" tries to give a name to this unknown known reality. Necessarily is an insufficient word that creates confusion. "Eternal', in fact, arouses in us the idea of the interminable, and this frightens us; 'life' makes us think of the life we know, which we love and do not want to lose, and which, however, is often at the same time more effort than fulfilment, so that while on the one hand we desire it, on the other hand we do not want it. We can only try to escape with our thoughts from the temporality of which we are prisoners and somehow presage that eternity is not a continuous succession of calendar days, but something like the moment filled with fulfilment, in which totality embraces us and we embrace totality. It would be the moment of diving into the ocean of infinite love, in which time - the before and the after - no longer exists. We can only try to think that this moment is life in the full sense, an ever new immersion in the vastness of being, while we are simply overwhelmed with joy. This is how Jesus expresses it in the Gospel of John: "I will see you again and your heart will rejoice and no one will be able to take your joy away" (16:22). We must think in this direction if we are to understand what Christian hope aims at, what we expect from faith, from our being with Christ.

[Pope Benedict, Spe Salvi n.12]