LOOKING TO THE CRUCIFIED ONE
The Gospel writer John tells us about a strange encounter of Jesus with an important Pharisee called Nicodemus. According to the story, it’s Nicodemus who takes the initiative and goes to where Jesus is «by night». He figures out that Jesus is «a man who comes from God», but he’s moving in darkness. Jesus will conduct him to the light.
In the story Nicodemus represents everyone who sincerely seeks to meet Jesus. That’s why, at one point, Nicodemus disappears from the scene and Jesus keeps up his discourse in order to end with a general invitation to not live in darkness, but to seek the light.
According to Jesus, the light that can illuminate everything is in the Crucified One. The affirmation is daring: «For this is how God loved the world: he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life». Can we see and feel the love of God in that man tortured on the cross?
Accustomed from childhood to see the cross all over the place, we haven’t learned to see the face of the Crucified One with faith and with love. Our distracted gaze isn’t capable of discovering in that face the light that could illuminate our life in the hardest and most difficult moments. However, Jesus is sending us signs of life and love from the cross.
In those extended arms that now can’t embrace children, and in those nailed hands that can’t caress lepers or bless the sick, we find God with arms open to welcome, embrace and sustain our poor lives, broken by so many sufferings.
From that face lifeless in death, from those eyes that can no longer look kindly on sinners and prostitutes, from that mouth that can’t cry out his indignation over the victims of so much abuse and injustice, God is revealing to us God’s «crazy love» for humanity.
«For God sent his Son into the world, not to judge the world, but so that through him the world might be saved». We can welcome that God, and we can reject that God. No one is forcing us. We ourselves are the ones who need to decide. But «the Light has already come into the world». Why do we so often reject the light that comes to us from the Crucified One?
He would be able to put light into the most unfortunate and failed life, but «Everyone who does wrong hates the light and avoids it, to prevent his actions from being shown up». When we live unworthily, we avoid the light because we feel bad before God. We don’t want to look on the Crucified One. But on the contrary, «Whoever does the truth comes out into the light». She doesn’t flee to the darkness. She has nothing to hide. She seeks the Crucified One with her gaze. He helps her live in the light.
José Antonio Pagola
Translator: Fr. Jay VonHandorf
