Jesus Christ is he “who has come,” but also the one… “who is to come.” Both aspects, neither contradict nor cancel out each other, but rather, in an eternal dialectic, complement each other, walking hand in hand towards the “plenitude.” (Eph 1:23)
What aspects of the eternal Christ should we note today so that people of today and tomorrow will find the answers to their questions and the meaning of their lives? It is evident that certain titles such as Lamb of God, Messiah, Son of David… have no meaning for today’s man. What direction does the dark stallion of humanity take; and towards what abyss is it galloping? What are the symptoms of our present culture and those of tomorrow so that Christ may be presented to them adequately and convincingly?
The question is really only one: change direction, make a complete turn, a true revolution, a turn which must necessarily go the way of martyrdom and the disintegration of the ego (the “I”).
Love, which is God, became a reality in the person of one named Jesus Christ, the God-with-us (Emmanuel). And this man was, above all, a Poor One, totally unconcerned about himself in order to be interested in others. He gave himself up in order to give encouragement and hope to others. In a class society, he took the side of the downtrodden; and in a puritanical society, he sided with those outside the law.
This is the answer for today and tomorrow.
In the vortex of a devouring egoism, on the road leading from pleasure to death, threatened as we are by the shipwreck of values, on the verge of a suicide that can be collective, Christ rises, in the midst of dust and ruins as a column of light and as the Response, as only He who is capable of consolidating and integrating broken bones.
He is the only one who, through the revolution of love, can shake and rock the old order, the tower built, put together, and crowned by the innumerable sons of egoism. Much more yet: this revolution of love not only can raise and give impulse to a new world through optimistic trajectories, but also—and this is more important—Christ is the only one who can descend to the abyss of our fears, and like an expert magician, can charm our “horror of the emptiness.”
Jesus Christ, behold! He is the answer, yesterday, today and tomorrow!
Extracted from the book “The Poor One of Nazareth” by Fr. Ignacio Larrañaga
