WE AREN’T ORPHANS
A Church formed of Christians who relate to a Jesus who is badly known, little loved and barely remembered in a routine manner, is a Church that runs the risk of getting extinguished. A Christian community gathered around a Jesus who is burnt out, who doesn’t seduce or touch hearts, is a community without future.
In the Church of Jesus, we urgently need a new quality in our relationship with him. We need Christian communities marked by the lived experience of Jesus. We all can contribute so that the Church would feel and live Jesus in a new way. We can make her be more of Jesus, live more united to him. How?
In his Gospel, John recreates Jesus’ farewell at the last supper. The disciples gather that in a very short time he will be taken from them. What will become of them without Jesus? Whom will they follow? Where will they nourish their hope? Jesus speaks to them with special tenderness. Before leaving them, he wants to make them see how they will be able to live united to him, even after his death.
Above all, there must be engraved in their heart something that they must never forget: «I will not leave you orphans. I’ll come back». They should never feel themselves to be alone. Jesus speaks to them of a new presence that will enfold them and make them live, since it will reach into the most intimate part of their being. He won’t forget them. He will come and be with them.
Jesus will no longer be able to be seen with the light of this world, but will be able to be grasped by his followers with the eyes of faith. Don’t we need to care for and revive more and more this presence of the Risen Jesus in our midst? How are we going to work for a more human world and a more evangelical Church if we don’t feel him right next to us?
Jesus speaks to them of a new experience that up to now his disciples haven’t known, while they were following him on the roads of Galilee: «You will know that I am with my Father and you with me». This is the basic experience that sustains our faith. In the depth of our Christian heart we know that Jesus is with the Father and we are with him. This changes everything.
This experience is nourished by love: «To the one who loves me… I also will love him and will reveal myself to him». Is it possible to follow Jesus by taking up the cross each day without loving him and without feeling ourselves loved endearingly by him? Is it possible to avoid the decadence of Christianity without reviving this love? What power will be able to move the Church if we let it go out? Who will be able to fill the emptiness of Jesus? Who will be able to substitute for his living presence in our midst?
José Antonio Pagola
Translator: Fr. Jay VonHandorf
