“Father of tenderness, I welcomed the sinners and the abandoned. Without scruples, I shared their tables and their status as the marginalized of society. I showed them your new face of a loving Father who welcomes the lost and who does not exclude anyone. I showed them that the Kingdom is a blessing to the poor and a welcome to sinners; and, after my death, which is a con- sequence of the way I lived, I deposit myself in your hands as an offering of love and redemption for sinners. I drag poverty and sin with me into the nothing that I have become. With the offering of my life, I share the lot of the poor, and I am in solidarity with the situation of the outcast, like me, who are excluded from society.
I want the pain and love of this afternoon to embrace like twilight and dawn, and let redemption be a tree with open frontiers which, with its shade cover the entire human race. I want to push humankind towards an unknown home, to free the tired feet from their heavy chains, and put into action a love that does not possess nor is possessed.
The grain of wheat, dead and buried under the earth, is now a golden spike swaying in the breeze. From death, life is born; from humiliation, glory and exaltation. The Poor One from Nazareth is now the Lord Jesus.
Jesus Christ is he “who has come,” but also the one “who is to come.” He is the lordly meteor shooting through spaces and eternities like an arrow of hope.
Jesus Christ lives yesterday, today and tomorrow!
From the book The Poor One of Nazareth by Fr. Ignacio Larrañaga
