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 sheep. This is why He has the power to take up His life again. As a matter of fact, the Father’s command is that of love that overcomes death (John 10:1-8). His is the mission of the Son of Man who is given into our hands, of us human beings (Luke 9:44): our hands rob Him of His life, He on His part surrenders His life.
The destiny of the lamb is to be devoured by the wolves. Thus darkness conceives light and evil becomes pregnant with goodness. The sheep, when alive, gives milk and wool, food and clothing. When killed – the sheep is always killed! – gives itself: it becomes flesh and skin, food and clothing. Jesus, the suffering Servant, silent Lamb confronting its shearers and butchers (Isaiah 53:7,12), is the Paschal Lamb, food of our liberation (Exodus 12:3ff). Born in a manger, where animals feed, He Himself eventually became food for all.
The lamb is always meek. Even a billion lambs don’t eat a wolf. The difference that is there between lamb and wolf is the same there is between Jesus and the world, love and selfishness, life and death. The world will behave with the disciples like the wolf with the lamb (John 15:18-16:4). But the disciple will behave with the world as Jesus and His Father, who loved the world so much that He gave His Son so that the world may be saved through Him (John 3:16). Only in the end, lamb and wolf will feed together (Isaiah 11:6). And the Lamb will prevail and receive power for the very reason of being slaughtered (Revelation 5:12). It is the victory of the Cross.
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