(Jn 5:17-30)
The centre of the Jewish hope was the return to ancient times, which, however, was transferred to an indeterminate future ["last day"].
According to the Master, life as saved begins now, and from listening to his specific Word-Person (v.24) that supersedes every code.
He ascribes to himself a total (even legal) character. It replaces the sphere once believed to be the prerogative of God alone: "He has given all judgment to the Son" (v.22).
Faced with the resounding of the present Logos and the efficacious and life-giving Dream of the Father, death loses all destructive efficacy.
The aspect of human and operative reality prevails over what to religions seemed to be reserved for the God of Heaven alone, and projected into a perfect future.
The Memorial is now. To remake the triumph - through Golgotha, here.
Says the Tao Tê Ching (xxi): "From ancient times until now, his Name does not pass away, and so he consents to all beginnings. From what do I know the manner of all beginnings? From this'.
Jesus expresses the intimate immanence with the Father by expanding his creative work, which is by no means finished: he continues to enliven us. He sustains the universe and our being, so he is always active.
It is impossible to confuse the scope of unceasing life with observances.
It would be difficult to call God by the term Father [Abba, papa] if He conveyed to us a desire to be and to do, only with detachment.
In fact, the healing of the paralytic (vv.1-16) has existential traits that pass in divine character; it is not comparable to the results of a doctor's activity, but to the work of the Spirit in us.
The time of man's diminishment before the Most High is over: his design is not for distress, but for growth - which authentically manifests the Judgement of the Eternal.
A judgement not of the preservation of order, but of love and regeneration: a human imprint in transmitting to us the divine condition [(v.18); cf. commentary on Jn 10:31-42: You make yourself God, you are Gods] in fullness of being and freedom, in the intimate experience of his Heart.
Here and now; not on the other side of time - so there is no inclination to the quiet slumber of conscience.
Indulgent yes, but because of the falls in the risk - of witnessing at least a crumb of his image within, without the lowest denominator.
In the encounter with the Person of Jesus, we become aware of his resurrection power: devoid of partiality, consistent and objective on the terrain of both life and death, remission, and judgement.
Unceasingly we assimilate his thoughts, impulses, words, actions, charged events: everything becomes a young experience of God revealing himself.
The Father always works, the Son - his first and unceasing imprint - imitates his quality of action in continuity.
It is a concrete covenant for the people: his all-embracing Council truly comes to us.
To this end, he is not afraid to transgress an approximate and narrow precept, an idol of the sacred, albeit devout, ancient tradition.
After all, even in the Sabbath rest the Creator blesses and consecrates (Gen 2:3).
Father and Son are not custodians of tranquillitas ordinis, nor do they induce a drowsiness of conscience.
The whole of manifold history is in a kind of unity principle: time of intervention for salvation, and relationship to the Mystery.
Wherever we proceed, he who reflects God does not stun with prejudices about human reality: instead, he is already there and remains to the bitter end.
Sons in the "Son of Man" (v.27) - to dialogue, to open, to support, to give refreshment, to make every situation intense and delicate.
To honour the Most High is to honour humanity in need of everything, at all times.
Only this manifests him, even in the infractions - a land rich in new springs that shorten distances.
This is the reciprocal and singular Work of God (Jn 6:29): to love, not "works" (v.28) burdensome with law and nomenclature.
To internalise and live the message:
How to be the face of the Father, creator of life, friend and brother, who raises up?
How to recognise the new Covenant and correspond to it? What does it mean for you to believe in the victory of life over death?
You make yourself God
(Jn 10:31-42)
In Jn the term Jews indicates not the people, but the spiritual leaders. A blasphemous Jesus claims mutual immanence with the Father, and dares to expand to us the boundaries of the Mystery that envelops and fills him.
But the divine condition manifested in its human fullness is rejected by the religious leaders precisely in the name of adherence to the Eternal.
The authorities reject the Son in the name of the Eternal and fidelity to the traditional idea, to the irreducible image of the victorious God (from which springs a certain type of competitive society, ruthless even in spiritual life).
According to Jesus, the Father is not revealed by reasoning and cerebral arguments, but by the indestructible quality of 'beautiful' works (vv.32-33).
The Greek term stands for the sense of fullness and wonder - truth, goodness, fascination, amazement - that emanates from the one action required in any work (major or minor): the love that resurrects the needy.
And Scripture recognises in each of us this sacred spark, which gives all happenings and emotions the step of Vertigo that surpasses the things around us, or how they 'should' be done.
Of course, to support us we need a Face, a relationship and a close kinship to identify what moves us, to peer inside what appears or is aroused.
The Unity of natures - He in us and we with the Father - corresponds to us in the Face of Christ, and is made manifest in listening, welcoming, not rushing to condemn, but making the weak strong.
The symbiosis with God in our activities, with our way of proposing or reacting, throughout our lives, unfolds in each Son His Likeness, even in difficult circumstances.
Everything that happens, even persecutions and assassination attempts due to misunderstanding or spiritual envy, can be looked at from a different perspective.
They are events, external happenings that activate overall energies: they become cosmic outside and acutely divine within us.
Rather than dangers and annoyances, they trace an Exodus destiny - like a river that carries, but in Christ escapes us from the hands of a deadly stasis (v.39), and admirably resonates with the forces that lead to the peripheries - where we must go.
From Son of David to Son of Man
The Church is Catholic because Christ embraces the whole of humanity in his mission of salvation. While Jesus' mission in his earthly life was limited to the Jewish people, "to the lost sheep of the house of Israel" (Mt 15:24), it was nevertheless oriented from the beginning to bring the light of the Gospel to all peoples and to bring all nations into the Kingdom of God. Confronted with the faith of the Centurion in Capernaum, Jesus exclaims: "Now I tell you that many will come from the east and the west and sit down at table with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven" (Mt 8:11). This universalistic perspective emerges, among other things, from the presentation Jesus made of himself not only as "Son of David", but as "son of man" (Mk 10:33), as we also heard in the Gospel passage just proclaimed. The title "Son of Man", in the language of the Jewish apocalyptic literature inspired by the vision of history in the Book of the Prophet Daniel (cf. 7:13-14), recalls the person who comes "with the clouds of heaven" (v. 13) and is an image that heralds an entirely new kingdom, a kingdom supported not by human powers, but by the true power that comes from God. Jesus uses this rich and complex expression and refers it to Himself to manifest the true character of His messianism, as a mission destined for the whole man and every man, overcoming all ethnic, national and religious particularism. And it is precisely in following Jesus, in allowing oneself to be drawn into his humanity and thus into communion with God, that one enters into this new kingdom, which the Church announces and anticipates, and which overcomes fragmentation and dispersion.
[Pope Benedict, address to the Consistory 24 November 2012].
