Reflection on Today’s Gospel – Lk 9:43B-45
"Where is God, there is the future"
"Pay attention to what I am telling you" (Lk 9:44). For a strict, literal translation of Jesus' exhortation would be: "Put these words in your ears." In relation to the word of God, it is about welcoming it not only in your ears, but in your heart and life.
To what words should we pay attention to, what words are we to hear and take to heart? It is about the sentence: " The Son of Man is to be handed over to men." I reached for the Vulgate. The Latin translation of this sentence is: " Filius enim hominis futurum est ut tradatur in manus hominum". The Latin text - one could say - signals that "the future of the Son of man is that he should be handed over into the hands of men." The phrase "futurum est" means "will be" but if you were to treat it a bit loosely, you could say: "the future is". What, then, is the future of the Son of man? "It will be handed over to the people." Since I was touched by the Latin "futurum est", I did a little experiment. I used a computer to help me to find this phrase in the Latin text of the Bible.
I will only quote one of the results. In the Gospel according to St. Matthew we read: “When they had departed, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, "Rise, take the child and his mother, flee to Egypt, and stay there until I tell you. Herod is going to search for the child to destroy him." [futurum est enim ut Herodes quaerat puerum ad perdendum eum]” (Mt 2:13). The future of the Son of God who became a child is this: to be handed over into the hands of men, let us add: bad people; although when making this addition, we must remember that we are also surrounded by such people.
What is my future and ours? - I ask myself based on the words of the Gospel. And I fear the answer which is: to be like the Son of Man handed over to the hands of men! I ask myself; how do I see my future? Am I ready to be handed over to the people? I ask myself about the ability to entrust myself to the Father's hands, but also about the ability and readiness to entrust myself to the hands of people? In what and where is my future?
I find an important intuition in the words of Benedict XVI, which sometimes come back to my mind, and which were the slogans of his pilgrimage to Germany: "Where is God, there is the future". These words were spoken by the Pope a few years earlier at the Marian shrine in Mariazell, Austria (September 8, 2007). He said: “God has made himself small for us. God comes not with external force, but he comes in the powerlessness of his love, which is where his true strength lies. He places himself in our hands. He asks for our love. He invites us to become small ourselves, to come down from our high thrones and to learn to be childlike before God. He speaks to us informally. He asks us to trust him and thus to learn how-to live-in truth and love. The child Jesus naturally reminds us also of all the children in the world, in whom he wishes to come to us. Children who live in poverty; who are exploited as soldiers; who have never been able to experience the love of parents; sick and suffering children, but also those who are joyful and healthy. Europe has become child-poor: we want everything for ourselves, and place little trust in the future. Yet the earth will be deprived of a future only when the forces of the human heart and of reason illuminated by the heart are extinguished – when the face of God no longer shines upon the earth. Where God is, there is the future.”
The future of the Son of man - the near future - is to be betrayed into human hands. The distant future is that he will be resurrected. The future of the Son of man is to die and rise again. The Son of Man has a future! And that is why every son of man, every man living in union with Jesus Christ, the Son of God and the Son of man, has a future: the difficult one and the bright one. A person who lives in union with God has a future because "where God is, there is the future". God is my future! Our future is Jesus Christ, Crucified and Risen! Only in him is full life and only he has the words of eternal life! He alone is eternal life! Only he is the future!
Until Tomorrow
fr. george