GOOD NEWS FOR THE HUMAN RACE JESUS
STRENNA 2010, by Pascual Chávez Villanueva
THE GOSPEL TO THE YOUNG
“Jesus is God’s Yes to man and also man’s reply to God” (2Cor 1,18-24).
For a number of years I have been mulling over the idea of offering the Salesian Family in this monthly reflection in the SB, some simple and systematic thoughts on what is at the centre of our faith, emphasising some aspect of the Salesian tradition going back to Don Bosco, and, as indicated in the Strenna for 2010, in the centenary year of the death of Blessed Michael Rua: In imitation of Don Rua, as authentic disciples and zealous apostles let us bring the Gospel to the young. In his first encyclical, Benedict XVI reminds us that “Being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon” (Deus Caritas est, 1). Christianity is not a collection of truths arrived at through reflection over many centuries, nor of moral norms to be practised, but rather a personal encounter with the Lord Jesus which, as we see in the New Testament radically changes our lives and makes us real “Christians,” that is to say “those who are Christ’s”. This characteristic can be clearly seen in a key word of the Sacred Scriptures which we are familiar with: “Gospel” based on the original Greek word which means “good news,” and which Mark the first to write down the oral witness of the Christian community about Jesus used as a title: “The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ the Son of God” (Mc 1,1). From the very beginning, enlightened by the Spirit, Christians understood that Jesus was the very best news for the whole human race.
Riflettiamo. A really good piece of news has three characteristics: it is something unexpected; it comes from “outside”; it fills the heart with unaccustomed joy. Applying this to Christianity, we understand that it is not a question of human joy, no matter how deep this may be, but of the marvellous truth that God loves us and has made us in Christ his children. It is absolutely the very best news. No one could have imagined or guessed anything like it. The People of Israel too even though for centuries they had been waiting for the Messiah were disconcerted. Everyone was taken by surprise and only those who were to change their whole way of thinking succeeded in accepting Jesus as the Messiah/Christ. But it has to be recognised that it was not “good news” for everyone; for someone who relied on the strength of his own proud self-sufficiency, on power and riches (cf. Lk. 1,51-53) it was rather bad news, and in the end it led the one who brought it to death. Believing that Christianity is the best news for the human race has, as a consequence, the duty of communicating it to the whole world. Since “they will not ask for his help unless they believe in him, and they will not believe in him unless they have heard of him and they will not hear of him unless they get a preacher?” (Rm 10,14). Giving up the task of being an evangeliser and a missionary would be the greatest infidelity to God and the most selfish action towards the human race. Just imagine a very poor family which has received a ticket for the National Lottery … and the winning ticket. If because of their poverty they did not have access to the news they would not be able to collect their winnings. Someone who knew and did not tell them would be unforgivably selfish. Well then, in Jesus the human race has won the 1st prize in the most extraordinary lottery imaginable, but more than five sixths of them don’t know it! It would be absolutely unjustifiable if we were not to communicate this news which, as Pope Benedict says, “gives a new horizon to life” the present one and above all eternal life.
Looking at Don Bosco we can make two reflections. In the first place, his system of education and pastoral work are not a collection of ideas and norms, but a faith journey which leads to a living encounter with the person of Jesus. He educated the young by pursuing a path of human fulfilment and Christian holiness, based on friendship with Jesus Christ which presupposes a personal relationship, deeply lived. On the other hand he felt very strongly the situation of those who had not received this marvellous news so that from the very beginning of his work and according to the forces he had (and sometimes beyond them) he was a promoter of missionary work leaving to the whole Salesian Family as a particular characteristic this concern. Every year I have the joy of being able to send, with the blessing of God and the giving of the crucifix, many members of the Salesian Family who join with the thousands already in mission lands, following a tradition going back to 1875. And yet the words of Jesus are still relevant: “The harvest is great but the labourers are few.” Each one is called according to their own state of life and according to their own possibilities to bring to their brothers and sisters, through their words, the witness of their own lives the great news: we are the sons and daughters of a God who loves us
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).The 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!”
Rector Major
