Tuesday of the First Week of Advent
God dwells in the man
At that very moment he rejoiced (in) the holy Spirit and said, “I give you praise, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, for although you have hidden these things from the wise and the learned you have revealed them to the childlike. Yes, Father, such has been your gracious will. All things have been handed over to me by my Father. No one knows who the Son is except the Father, and who the Father is except the Son and anyone to whom the Son wishes to reveal him.” Turning to the disciples in private he said, “Blessed are the eyes that see what you see. For I say to you, many prophets and kings desired to see what you see, but did not see it, and to hear what you hear, but did not hear it.”Lk 10,21-24
In the today’s gospel Jesus speaks of the tie which unites the Father to the Son and the Son to the Father. He does not explain it, it is an announcement, and Jesus proclaims it while rejoicing in the Holy Spirit, because God has revealed the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven to the humble people and he has hidden them to the wise ones. “These things”, as he calls it, are not to be understood: these are truths which must be heard and to which we must first believe, to be able to understand it. One of these truths, that one which is announced today, is the relationship of knowledge and communion between the Father and the Son: “No one knows who the Son is except the Father, or who the Father is except the Son”. We have all of us experienced this relationship, although in human form. When Gabriele calls Gian Mario or Claudia calls Giannandrea, they look back, because they recognize the voice of the sons and the people thereby present realize, from the immediacy of the responses and naturalness of the behaviors, that they are their fathers. It is the same feeling which we experience when, in the gospels, Jesus speaks of the Father. But there is more: we are dragged also ourselves in that deep tie which unites inseparably Jesus to the Father. St. Agostino says: “God could not have been given to the men a greater gift than this: he joined us to him as a member so that he [Jesus of Nazareth] was the Son of God and Son of the man, one only God with the Father, the same man among the men”. It is for this reason that, day after day, we meditate on the gospel and the Holy Scriptures: to familiarize ourselves with Jesus and the Father in order to assimilate the relevant spirit and thought. Then, during the day, we are obliged to transfer it in the works and to transmit it to people we meet. If we remain faithful, one day after another, to these our reflections of the morning, in the end we can say with st. Paolo: “Now we have the mind of Christ” (1Cor 2,16).