Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Vatican City (Agenzia Fides) - The personal story of every believer from the first real encounter with Jesus, undergoes a profound change, it will never be the same again: it becomes a story of salvation! It is no longer a history of earthly events because the encounter with the supernatural, the interweaving with divine grace has raised it up to the Heavens: from on high it is "re-written" and transformed by the Lord into a story of grace.
How sweet it is to know for certain that Jesus is the King of the Universe who reigns over the vicissitudes of every Christian, becoming the Protagonist, because in Him we put our trust, to Him we entrust our present with the past and the future: everything becomes His and Christ becomes our everything.
The words Saint Paul wrote to the Colossians: “Reality is Christ!” (Col 2, 17), are still valid for us, the Christians of the third millennium. The history of the world for us believers is only a shadow of that of the future. The flow of events here below - which at times, seem overwhelm humanity like a swollen river -, can never suck us into its vortex because we believe that God has saved us from history decayed with sin and introduced us into history redeemed by Christ: “It is he who has rescued us from the ruling force of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of the Son He loves, and in him we enjoy our freedom, the forgiveness of sin” (Col 1, 13-14).
It we put our whole life without reserve into the hands of Christ, we will bear personal witness that there is another history, to which history lived without Him cannot be compared. Jesus always keeps his promises and when he assures us that He is “the Way, the Truth and the Life”, if we put our trust in Him, He allows us to experience this new Way, this new Truth and this new Life, which begin here on earth. The Christian in fact is not a dreamer who flees events or, while waiting for something that will happen after death, spurns everything.
Christians already live the experience of a life made new by God, they already sense that history is saved, joy is given, eternity has begun… certainly in proportion to the state of earthly creatures, while waiting to enjoy the unimaginable measure of glory that they will experience in the Kingdom of God, in Paradise. Christians live as pardoned persons in the "already, but not yet”!
It takes no great effort to allow Jesus to “enter” our history, since the human heart is measured on His and our love is derived from His; we are not the source of our being, He is! A small opening is enough to let Him in, a slight opening in our freedom which seeks and invokes Him...
The Gospel is full of episodes which tell of life-stories changed by an encounter with the Person of Jesus. Recently on the feast of Christ the King we meditated the Gospel of the 'good thief' (cfr. Lk 23, 35-43). He was tied to a cross because he was guilty and his life's story was coming to a miserable end, just like the miserable scene before his eyes. Such was the human wickedness against The Crucified One, that there radiated from his countenance a majestic beauty, a peace beyond description: despite his atrocious suffering, he uttered no complaint or curse, instead he forgave and said those mysterious words to John, “behold your mother!”.
Yes, the Mother and the Crucified Son must have captured the heart of the good thief, filling him with a longing for the innocence legible on those two Faces, marked by unspeakable suffering, which was however so different from crude human suffering: it was a suffering which saved! So a tiny glimmer was kindled in his heart, a thirst for eternity illuminated his mind and moved his will, until that moment paralysed by anguish, and with his last words he entrusted his story of a damned man to the Lord of history redeemed: “Jesus, remember me when you enter your kingdom” (Lk 23, 42). In that very moment everything changed. That story of a man condemned to death, touched by the History of Redemption, became the story of man sanctified: “Amen I say to you, this day you will be with me in Paradise” (Lk 23, 43)! (Agenzia Fides 28/11/2007; righe 48, parole 717)
