“In
all these things
we are more than
conquerors
through him who
loved us.”
–
Romans 8:37
Trusting
in the Father's Love for Us
A child
who is certain of his father’s
love will grow up strong, secure,
happy, and free for life. God’s
word wants to do this for us; it
wants to restore this security to
us. Man’s solitude in this world
cannot be overcome except by faith
in God the Father’s love. A
well-known philosopher wrote that
“God’s paternal love is the only
steadfast thing in life, the real
point of Archimedes” (Kierkegaard,
Journals, III, A73).
Observe a child out walking with
his father, holding his father’s
hand or being swung around by him,
and you will have the best picture
possible of a happy, free child,
full of pride. I read somewhere
about a trick that an acrobat once
did on the top floor of a
skyscraper. He leaned out as far
as he could possibly go,
supporting himself on the bare
tips of his toes and holding his
small child in his arms. When he
and the child came back down,
someone asked the child if he’d
been afraid. The child, surprised
at the question, answered, “No, I
wasn’t; my father was holding me!”
God’s word wants us to be like
that child. After reminding us
that God did not spare his own Son
for us, St. Paul cries out
joyfully and victoriously:
If God
is for us, who is against us?... Who shall
bring any charge against [us]?...
Who is to condemn?... Who shall
separate us from the love of
Christ? Shall tribulation, or
distress, or persecution, or
famine, or nakedness, or peril, or
sword?... No, in
all these things we are more than
conquerors through him who loved
us. (Romans 8:31-37)
And
Jesus tells us, therefore, to free
ourselves of all fear, of all
cowardice, of all discouragement.
Your Father knows you, and your
Father loves you, Jesus says. You
were not given a spirit of slaves
to fall back into fear, but a
spirit of children to cry out, “Abba,
Father!” (cf. Romans 8:15-16).
Before such an incomprehensible
love, it comes spontaneously to us
to turn to Jesus and ask him,
“Jesus, you are our elder brother;
tell us what we can do to be
worthy of so much love and
suffering on the Father’s part.”
And from the height of his cross,
Jesus answers us not with words
but with facts. “There is,” he
says, “something you can do,
something I also did, for it
pleases the Father: have
confidence in him, trust him
against everything, against
everyone, against yourselves. When
you are in darkness and distress,
when difficulties threaten to
suffocate you and you are on the
point of giving up, pull
yourselves together and cry aloud,
‘Father, I no longer understand
you but I trust you!’ And you will
find peace again.”
Redeemed
for Eternity
Some polls on religious beliefs
have revealed a strange fact: there are, even
among believers, some who believe in God but
not in a life after death for human beings.
Yet how could one think such a thing? The
Letter to the Hebrews says that Christ died to
win “an eternal redemption” for us
(9:12)—redemption not for time only, but
eternal. Some object, “But no one has ever
come back from the beyond to assure us that it
exists in fact and is not merely an illusion.”
That is not true. There is someone who comes
back from beyond death every day to give us
that certainty and to renew his promises, if
we but know how to listen to him. We are on
our way to meet the One who comes to meet us
every day in the Eucharist to give us a
foretaste (praegustatum!) of the
eternal banquet of the kingdom.
We need to cry out this, our hope, to help
ourselves and others to overcome the horror of
death and the mood of gloomy pessimism common
in our society. So many reasons are put
forward for the desperate state of the world.
Scientists research in ever greater detail the
possible scenario for the dissolution of the
cosmos. The earth and other planets will grow
cold, the sun and the stars will cool down,
and everything will grow cold. Light will
fade; there will be more and more black holes.
The universe will be full of gigantic black
holes drifting further and further apart until
eventually the expansion ceases, the
contraction begins, and all matter and all
energy collapse into a compact mass of
infinite density. It will all end in a grand
implosion, the “Big Crunch,” and all will
return to the emptiness and silence that
preceded the Big Bang fifty billion years ago.
No one knows whether things will really go
that way or some other way, but faith gives us
the assurance that, whatever may happen, it
will not be the total and final end. God did
not reconcile the world to himself only to
abandon it to nothingness; he did not promise
to remain with us to the end of the world only
to go—alone—back to his heaven when that end
comes. “I have loved you with an everlasting
love,” God says in the Bible (Jeremiah 31:3),
and God’s promises of “everlasting love” are
not like ours.
The
Cosmic Significance of the Cross
In Paul’s eyes, the cross assumes
a cosmic significance. Christ has torn down
the wall of separation with it; he has
reconciled men with God and with each other,
destroying hatred (cf. Ephesians 2:14-16).
Based on this truth, primitive tradition
developed the theme of the cross as a cosmic
tree that joins heaven and earth with the
vertical branch and unites the different
peoples of the world with the horizontal
branch. It is both a cosmic and a very
personal event at the same time: “[He] loved
me and gave himself for me!” (Galatians 2:20);
every man, as the apostle writes, is “one for
whom Christ died” (Romans 14:15).
From all of this arises the sense of the
cross, no longer as a punishment,
admonishment, or reason for affliction, but,
rather, a glory and the boast of a
Christian—that is, a joyful security
accompanied by heartfelt gratitude, to which
man rises in faith:
“But as for me, it is out of the
question that I should boast at all, except of
the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Galatians
6:14, NJB).
Paul has planted the cross at the
center of the Church like the mainmast at the
center of the ship. He has made it the
foundation and the center of gravity of
everything. He has established the permanent
framework of the Christian message. The gospels,
written after him, follow his framework, making
the story of Christ’s passion and death the
fulcrum toward which everything is oriented.
Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa,
O.F.M. Cap. (born July 22, 1934) is an
Italian Catholic priest in the Order
of Friars Minor Capuchin. He has
devoted his ministry to preaching and
writing. He is a Scripture scholar,
theologian, and noted author of
numerous books. Since 1980 he has
served as the Preacher to the Papal
Household under Pope John Paul II,
Pope Benedict XVI, and Pope Francis.
He is a noted ecumenist and frequent
worldwide speaker, and a member of the
Catholic Delegation for the Dialogue
with the Pentecostal Churches.
