What contemplator in the world can tell us something that vibrated in the heart of Jesus Christ when he repeated this name so many times that night! The apostles must have seen Him at that moment, so radiant, so illuminated, so intoxicated… Philip, assuming and summarizing the mood of the others, came to say to Him: Master, you have lit a fire within us. We are dying of longing for that Father. Now, draw back the veil. Enough with words and show Him to us, and in person, for we want to embrace Him.
Beyond metaphors, Jesus presents salvation as a perpetual dwelling in the Father’s house, while damnation is essentially separation, remaining forever outside the golden walls of the paternal home. Hell is absence, loneliness, emptiness, hopeless longing… The disciples would not have understood these lofty concepts if He had not first instilled in them a great longing for that Father. Eternal Life? Let them know you (know in the sense of possess).
The whole problem of salvation and damnation always revolves around the absence and presence of the Father. Grave? Annihilation? Nothingness? No, death is entering into the joy of the Lord. Heaven is the Father, the Father is Heaven. The homeland? There is no homeland. The entire homeland is the Father. The Father’s house? Nor does the Father’s house exist. The Father’s house is the Father himself. Jesus Christ? Jesus Christ is the One Sent to reveal to us the paternal face of God and to open wells of longing in human soil. Wells of longing that will be full, forever quenched by the simultaneous and total possession of endless life, of infinite Love.
After revealing the Father to us, the natural attitude is one of abandonment: to do his will. This is his nourishment and his breath. The will of the Father is the meaning of his life, the light of his eyes, the joy of his living… Here I come, my Father, to do your will. This unconditional attitude of abandonment generated in Jesus energy, joy, and security. Furthermore, it powerfully enriched his personality, making him an incorruptible witness of God, full of greatness and courage. For Jesus, abandonment meant leaving aside his own interests and surrendering himself to the Other, confidently placing his head and his life in the hands of his loving Father.
The attitude of abandonment was, therefore, for Jesus a transfer of dominion, a giving of the “I” to a “Thou.” It was an active gesture because it involved a total offering of one’s will to the will of the loved one. It is not, therefore, a matter of resigning oneself to the fatal course of events. Abandonment is surrendering oneself with love to Someone who loves me and to whom I love, and because I love Him, I surrender myself.
Taken from the book: “God Within,” Chapter VI, Section: “Nourishment and Breathing,” by Father Ignacio Larrañaga.
