After time awoke because of the rumbling of our steps, and after time had reached its zenith, Christ appeared in time, and renouncing the advantages of being God, he subjected himself to all the disadvantages of being man, and once reduced to our stature, he descended even lower to infrahuman levels.
Having descended to these abysses, he went much deeper until he touched the final bottom, the dust of nothing, denying his own instinct to live in loving obedience to the Father whose will permitted and disposed that the beloved Son should disappear amid the ruins of catastrophe, submissive and obedient until death, even death on the cross.
This is where Freedom raised its head, crowned with light in triumph. Denying his own self, Christ transcended himself. That means: by denying himself, he made an immense emptiness in his being, and this emptiness became, for him, the space of freedom which permitted him to be the man for other men. Because he was free, he was available; and because he was available, he could be the servant of the Father and of the brothers. From poverty to love.
Let us repeat it one more time: that loving, self-giving to the will of the Father dug an infinite void, like a tunnel; the projection and communication of God-Love in the history of humankind was realized; and that tunnel, that absolute emptiness of self, has a name: Jesus of Nazareth. This is the summary of a unique history of the incarnation, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ that can never be repeated.
This is the answer for today and tomorrow.
In the vortex of a devouring egoism, on the road leading from pleasure to death, threatened as we are by the shipwreck of values, on the verge of a suicide that can be collective, Christ rises, in the midst of dust and ruins as a column of light and as the Response, as only He who is capable of consolidating and integrating broken bones. And through this road of the Resurrection, He is the lordly meteor shooting through spaces and eternities like an arrow of hope.
Jesus Christ, behold! He is the answer, yesterday, today and tomorrow!
He is the only one who, through the revolution of love, can shake and rock the old order, the tower built, put together, and crowned by the innumerable sons of egoism. Much more yet: this revolution of love not only can raise and give impulse to a new world through optimistic trajectories, but also—and this is more important—Christ is the only one who can descend to the abyss of our fears, and like an expert magician, can charm our “horror of the emptiness.”
Extracted from the book “The Poor One of Nazareth” by Fr. Ignacio Larrañaga
