When
Christ said: “when I am lifted up from the earth, I shall draw all to myself”
he was referring to the CROSS. Through his death, passion, his total emptiness,
He was able to give life in abundance. He did not force life on us, on mankind.
It is up to us to receive. We are supposed to be multipliers of life in the
sense that we pass this on to others. What He had gone through, we will also go
through – by reaching out to the poor, by bringing about a community of
disciples of the Lord.
No
matter how beautiful our programs are, even with all the knowledge from modern
science, still, we can never set aside the Cross. We can never disregard His
sufferings and pains. It will be through our own death that we will be able to
give life—through our own sufferings. In this process, we will be fulfilling
what is lacking in the Body of Christ. If we know the reason why we suffer, or
why we die, I think there will already be joy in our hearts. It is like the joy
when life is born from a mother’s pain; like a seed that dies from which life
springs. The final reality here is that of the Resurrection, and we are
destined to share in it. That is what is beyond the Cross.
When
we empty ourselves we allow God to enter and communicate Himself to us. I
should find Him in me, as I find Him in others. In the same way, following His
command: “Love one another as I have loved you”, we should find Christ in one
another. The perfection of that selfless love is, of course, in dying for others. Perfection is surely not to be found
in this life. Perhaps, we have glimpses of it and the Lord gives us foretastes
of things to come. But it is after death that perfection starts. It is a
paradox. In death, time ends and eternity begins – that we are indeed in the
bosom of the Father, in the Trinity. We contemplate that reality which is
always new, it never grows old, “beauty ever ancient, ever new”. It is the
reality that we don’t see because the self locks us up in many things. It is a
life-long struggle, but as St. Paul said, “I can do all things…” He himself
experienced this. It boils down to the fact that God is all and we are nothing.
This
is the reality that we have to discern with new eyes, but we begin with our
nothingness. Then we will be a new creation.
From these
varied excerpts of homilies by our Bishop, our minds and hearts were opened to
a persistent question of our human
experience. How often have we asked, sometimes in hopelessness, that
question : Christ, where are you?”
The Bishop
gives us the words of Christ himself. He sets before us the life of the Lord.