Tuesday of the Twenty-SixthWeek in Ordinary Time
To operate so that everything is completed
When the days for his being taken up were fulfilled, he resolutely determined to journey to Jerusalem, and he sent messengers ahead of him. On the way they entered a Samaritan village to prepare for his reception there, but they would not welcome him because the destination of his journey was Jerusalem. When the disciples James and John saw this they asked, “Lord, do you want us to call down fire from heaven to consume them?” Jesus turned and rebuked them, and they journeyed to another village. Lk 9,51-56
There is, in the engineer’s profession, a phase of the project which is the most interesting, the most fascinating and most important: the conclusion. This is the time when the plant has been built, the budget has been spent, the time is almost up: you must operate the plant and deliver it to those who have commissioned it. This is the time when you return home, leaving, where before there was the desert, a plant which works and a chimney which smokes, a sign of life and activity. There is in the life of the parents an equally beautiful and important phase: it is when the family has grown, the years have elapsed, the remaining forces are not so many, but the sons have already begun to walk with their legs and they are inserted into the production cycle of the life. It is when the plan of love “It is completed” (Jn 19,30), the mandate is returned back to the Father and we pray that the years which are still ahead can give their fruits. This is the phase of the salvation of the world which Jesus is experiencing in the today gospel: ” When the days for his being taken up were fulfilled, he resolutely determined to journey to Jerusalem”. For Jesus, to go to Jerusalem means to go to die on the cross and conclude the work of salvation which the Father has entrusted to him. Then he will be “lifted up” and he will return to the Father. It should be the time of the thanks and of the gratitude for the one who is completing the work to save the world from the sin, from his own limitations and from his own fears, but it is not so: the Samaritans “they would not welcome him” and the few disciples who accompanied him, still not understanding the moment which Jesus of Nazareth is experiencing, proposed him some petty revenges. He then criticizes them, but he does not discourage himself: “and they journed to another village”. There is always another village to refer to as well as someone who still needs our service, to the purpose that we can give a sense at the time of life which is still before us. Until the moment when everything “It is completed”.