Father Cesar Augusto, SJ – Vatican News
“We want to see Jesus.” This is the desire of John the Baptist's Greek disciples when speaking of Philip, and certainly ours as well. When Philip and Andrew took this desire to the Lord, they heard the following statement: “Whoever lays hold on his life loses it; If anyone wants to serve me, follow me.
Not happy, on the contrary. Lots of clarity and real choice. Jesus came for all of us and wants to be welcomed by all, but his following is in abandonment, surrender, donation as we saw last Sunday. On the other hand, the Lord says: “He who lights up his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.
Our nature rejects all that is pain, unpleasantness, and death. But why this escape? Are we going to run away for the rest of our lives knowing that death is the last word? There will come a time when nothing will help, and we will die. Is this what God wants? Is this what He has planned for us?
Of course not. If that were the case, we would be resigned to our fate of walking through this valley of tears and dying in agony.
But that's not the case. We want life, we want it to the fullest, with health, affection, love, eternal happiness. As all these are our trademark. We were created for life and life. God, the Life, made us for Him, the Life. Therefore, we reject everything that has signs of death.
However, we often get it wrong. How many times have we chosen the path of death as the path of life! Selfishness, said “no” to the appeal of virtue, gesture of love and forgiveness, “yes” to sin, all these are the poison that deceives our happy life and meeting suffering and death.
When the Greeks asked to see Jesus, they asked him to see themselves as life and life as service, delivery, donation.
Life says that it does not agree with death or its symbols, ie egocentrism, personality and its family members.
Dear brothers and sisters, listeners of Radio Vaticano, what about us? Do we also want to see Jesus, but as a pain reliever for our ailments or to be healthy and alive?
Are we willing to endure suffering because of our faith in Jesus? Do we accept resignation and self-denial in order to make someone else's life healthier and happier?
How are our marriages, family and friendships? Is it a liberating relationship, giving, developing, or do we privatize it, subjecting the other to our needs and desires, or ourselves to theirs?
Seeing Jesus, meeting Jesus are acts of liberation, acts of life.
Just as Moses was called to take off his sandal because he was in the Holy Land, what must I take from my heart to see Jesus and be with him?
The 1st verse speaks of the law of the covenant imprinted in our bowels by the Father, and the 2nd, of Jesus' obedience, which became salvation for us all. Alliance and obedience are life-giving, and indeed, they are already life.
Let the desire to see Jesus every day renew in us the obedience that unites us to the Father and makes us bountiful producers of good fruit. Only those who are with Jesus bear fruit.