FRIEND OF LIFE
«God is friend of life». This was one of Jesus’ basic convictions. That’s why, as he was discussing one day with a group of Sadducees who denied the resurrection, he clearly confessed his faith: «God isn’t the God of the dead, but of the living».
Jesus can’t imagine that God’s creatures went about dying to God; that, after some years of life, death goes about leaving God without beloved sons and daughters. It’s not possible. God is an inexhaustible source of life. God created the living, takes care of them, defends them, has compassion for them, and rescues their life from sin and death.
Jesus probably never read the book of Wisdom, written around the year 50 BCE in Alexandria, but his message about God reminds us of an unforgettable page that this Jewish wise man wrote thus: «You are powerful enough to do anything, but you are merciful to everyone; you overlook our sins and give us time to repent. You love everything that exists; you do not despise anything that you have made. If you had not liked it, you would not have made it in the first place. How could anything last, if you did not want it to? How could it endure, if you had not created it? You have allowed it all to exist, O Lord, because it is yours, and you love every living thing» (Wisdom 11,23-26).
God is friend of life. That’s why he has compassion on everything that doesn’t know how to or can’t live in a dignified way. God even arrives at «closing God’s eyes» to the sins of people so that they discover once again the path to life. God despises nothing of what God has created. God loves all creatures; otherwise God would not have made them. God forgives all, has compassion on all, wants all to be alive, because they are God’s.
How to not love more passionately the whole of creation? Why not take care of and defend more strongly the life of all creatures from so much pillaging and aggression? Why not have compassion for so many «excluded» who have no home in the world? How are we able to keep thinking that our welfare is more important than the life of so many men and women who feel themselves strangers and with no place to be in this Earth created by God for all?
It’s incredible that we don’t grasp how absurd our religion is when we sing to the Creator and the Resurrector of life, and at the same time contribute to generating hunger, suffering and degradation of God’s creatures.
José Antonio Pagola
Translator: Fr. Jay VonHandorf
