Category: The Last Word

The end of mission is the missionary’s joy: he becomes God’s child. But it is also the Son’s joy, who dances at the Father’s tune, because children are born to Him. It is the most beautiful joy: that of the Father/Mother because of the children who are born, and that of the Son because of the brethren who came to life. We are at the peak of the Gospel: a meteorite fallen from John the Evangelist’s sky, a wandering rock come down from a very high mountain. We are God’s joy, Father, Son and Holy Spirit! Jesus tells His disciples that to see this explosion of joy is the supreme beatitude, the fulfillment of every promise (Luke 10:23ff). The ultimate mission completion is for us to share the Trinity’s dance. What God is by nature, we are by grace: we have His Spirit, His life, His love. We are called and really are His children, even if our condition is not yet fully manifested (1 John 3:1ff). It is, however, revealed to us in this sublime scene. It is like a snapshot not so much of what God does for us, but especially of how He feels about us. It is beyond every possible desire we may have: we are precious in His eyes and worthy of esteem, because He loves us (Isaiah 43:4). The Father loves us of a unique, total love as He loves the Son; and the latter loves us with the very same Father’s love. God loves us more than He loves Himself: on our behalf, He has given up His own life in the Son (Cf. John 17:23; 15:9.13; 3:16). God is in love with His creatures (Saint Catherine); He loves us with an everlasting love (Jeremiah 31:3).  “It was then that (Jesus) danced in the Holy Spirit” – Jesus jumps and dances with uncontainable happiness. It is the time when the Seventy-Two come back from their mission; it is like an anticipation of the mission completion, when every person will recognize his/her dignity as God’s child and brother/sister of all. Our history points to that hour, to the exultation of the Father and the Son in the Spirit. From this everlasting dance, issues the salvation time: Jesus’ time, God’s everlasting “today” that makes itself present to every human being by means of announcement and reception. “I bless You, Father” – The Son’s exultation exalts the Father. Jesus witnesses to God’s paternity: He is the Son who, on behalf of the brethren, reveals the God who nobody has ever known. “For hiding these things from the learned and the clever and revealing them to mere children” – Infants are wordless, they only know saying: “Abba, Father.” This original love experience is the foundation of every existence: without it, every wisdom and prudence of grown up people generates nothing but unhappiness and fear. “Yes, Father, for this is what it pleased You to do” – The Son’s joy is a “yes” to the Father’s joy who,

The word “Mission” is related to “Mass,” and these words refer to the Eucharist. The Eucharist is the life of the children who love the Father and the brethren, therefore, it is the beginning and end of mission. It is the beginning because whoever loves the Father is sent to the brethren who still do not know Him. It is the end because mission wants to bring all the children to the same table in the joy of the Father. Human beings are made for joy, the fruit of returned love. The Eucharist is the sharing of a meal as children and brothers and sisters. The food maintains our physical life; the “way” we share food can give us our spiritual life.  If dogs feed from their bowls, showing their teeth at each other, human beings eat at table, “facing” each other. In our table of fellowship, we nourish one another on the love given and received. The common meal is sacrament of mutual love, God’s life and our life as His children. The Eucharist is not mere ritual. Our spiritual worship is very… down-to-earth: it is to live out our love for our brethren in concrete (Romans 12:1ff). For this reason, Paul tells those of Corinth that their gathering is not “eating the supper of the Lord”: they “eat and drink their condemnation,” because they act the opposite of what they celebrate.  They do not know how to “discern the Lord’s body” in their brothers who are poor. These actually, when they arrive at the Eucharist after having served their masters, don’t find food anymore because the rich have already grabbed and devoured everything (1 Corinthians 11:17-33). We are called to do like Jesus does who “takes” everything, even His own life, “giving thanks” to the Father. The Son lives His life and everything else as a sign of His love that gives everything; because of this, knowing that He is loved, He knows how to love: “He breaks and gives” to the brethren. He is the same as the Father because He not only receives but gives.  This is a blessed life that takes and gives, making a Eucharist of everything: joy, grace, beauty, goodness and love. It is the only possible way in this world; it is the most beautiful to think of. Instead, the existence of those who “take and eat” everything and everybody, without ever giving, bloats with curse and death. “In the same house” – It is the house of the host who has become son because he welcomes the messenger like a brother. This house is open to the other and, therefore, to the Other, God: it is fragrant with life: it is the Church, the shelter of those who accept and are accepted. It is not built with cement or bricks that are all the same; it is made of “living stones,” persons all different from each other, who must adapt one to the other in order to form the temple which

Prayer gives us a new heart: the Son’s who loves like the Father. The Father loves each one of us with the same unique and total love by which He loves the Son. Of us, Jesus tells the Father: “You have loved them even as You have loved Me” (John 17:23). Whoever ignores that he is loved, does bad to himself and others. Evil, the only problem of humanity, is not eliminated by repaying it with the same currency: that would double its capital! We overcome it with a love that is stronger than death itself. This is what Jesus did and what He tells us to do: to overcome evil with good (Romans12:21). To be like lambs amongst wolves is the color of Jesus’ mission and of our mission as well. Urged by the same love (2 Corinthians 5:14), in our flesh we complete what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of our brethren (Colossians 1:24). The lamb is related to the gospel ass that, carrying the others’ burdens, fulfills the law of Christ (Galatians 6:2). Thus it overcomes the violence of the powerful (Zechariah 9:9). Jesus entrusts to His disciples His own mission: to untie the ass, symbol of humility and service, in order to be like lambs. Our capacity of serving is the way we resemble God: it makes us share the Lamb’s victory (Revelation 6:12). To serve means to love. Love, complete fulfillment of the whole law (Romans 13:10), makes us perfect like the Father (Matthew 5:48), whose essence is to be merciful like a mother (Luke 6:36). Truly, God is love (1 John 4:8). In the love that forgives all, even evil turns into goodness. This is what Joseph tells his brothers who had sold him into slavery: “As for you, you meant evil against me; but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today” (Genesis 50:20). “Go your way!” – After having ordered prayer that transforms ourselves into Him, Jesus sends us to the brethren: “As the Father has sent Me, even so I send you” so does the Risen Christ say to us, showing His wounds as the slaughtered Lamb and yet victorious, everlasting source of joy (John 20:20ff). “Behold, I send you out as lambs in the midst of wolves.” – Jesus sends us out as He Himself was sent out, the Lamb, already predestined for our salvation before the world started (1 Peter 1:18-20). He is the Lamb who takes away the sins of the world (John 1:29), the Immolated and Risen Lamb who overcomes evil and death itself (Revelation 5:12ff). He is the only One, by His death and resurrection, who can open the seven seals and read the book of history, explaining its puzzles (Revelation 5:1-6). We are sent “in the midst of wolves,” like the Son. He is the Shepherd because He is the Lamb that exposes, disposes and deposes His life for the