12.  AND YOU, WHO DO YOU SAY I AM?

 

1.-       To day, like 20 centuries ago, Jesus´ figure raises deep questions: Who really is Jesus?. A great man of the pass?. A revolutionary?. A prophet?. A brother for every man?. Someone acting in our life?.  That without whom nothing would have sense?. The true face of God?. If we are living in a catechumenal process, we already know what is to be in a searching situation and, also, what means in that situation to perceive some of the signals of the Gospel, Likewise we have embraced the main announcement: Christ is with us, it is necessary to change. Besides, we have advanced somehow in the way of the Gospel. Sooner or later the question arises: Who is Jesus of Nazareth for us.

2.-       Jesus himself asked the question to his disciples in the region of Caesarea of Philipo: “Who do people say of the Son of the Man?. They answered: “For some of them you are John the Baptist, for others Elijah or Jeremiah or one of the prophets” (Mt 16, 13-14). After exploring the opinion of the people, Jesus asks the direct question: “And you, who do you say I am?” (Mt 16,15). In the way of men towards Christ there is a point in which one stops being a spectator and begins to be the protagonist of a fight in which middles terms are not possible. “Whoever is not with me is against me” (Lk 11,23).

3.-       Peter answers to Jesus´ question with the illumination that comes from the high: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Mt 16,16). Christ means Anointed, word that included the messianic hope. Jesus calls Peter happy, for “ it is not flesh or blood that has revealed this to you but my Father in Heaven” (Mt 16,17). Peter really needed the revelation from God. This confession is possible because he has the living Word of God in his heart. To say who is Jesus is for Peter, Nicodemus, the centurion, the demoniacs, Thomas …. a question raised from the mystery present in the person of Christ. Any one understand it in his manner, according to the situation in which he finds himself.

4.-       Before the mystery of Christ, the reactions are diverse. Admiration is one of them. So, for instance, Nicodemus contemplates Jesus like a rabbi who has come from God, “for no one can perform miraculous signs like yours if God is not with him” (Jn 3,2). The centurion believes that Jesus has the power over the illness, which it is submitted and obeys to him, like the soldiers obey orders (Mt 8, 5-13). Before the calmed tempest the disciples discover something so extraordinary that they only can express it as a question: “What kind of man is this? Even the winds and the sea obey him? (Mt 8,27).

5.-       Another reaction: the scandal of the quotidian. Those who saw and heard Jesus sometime found themselves with the fact of having met him since he was a little boy and in his everyday life: “He went to his hometown and  taught in the synagogue. They were amazed and said: where did he get his wisdom and these special powers?. Is he not the carpenter’s son? And so they took offence at him. Jesus said to them: A prophet is respected everywhere except in his hometown and in his own family” (Mt 13, 54 – 57).

6.- Here is also a negative knowledge, a discernment in the repulse of what at the end Jesus of Nazareth is. It is the experience of the demoniacs. Two demoniacs came to him out of their tombs, so furious that nobody could go through that way. Suddenly they shouted: what do you want with us, you Son of God!. Have you come to torture us before this time? (Mt 8,29). Without arriving to certain extremes, it is possible to discover inside us that painful and deep resistance towards the person of Christ.

7.-            Adoration is the result of the Pasch.  The early church acquires definite conscience of Jesus´ identity as a direct fruit of his Pasch. If his precedent condition of Servant had made evident the point to which Jesus had been one of us, similar in everything less sin, the Paschal experience uncovers his transcendent condition: he does not only lives though the death; he is the Lord, same that God. In the light of the Paschal experience, the disciples undertake clear conscience of Jesus´ divine condition. Before the mystery of Christ, the Apostles and the blossoming Church render themselves in adoration attitude adopting the Thomas´ profession: “You are my Lord and my God” (Jn 20,28)

8.-            Enclosed in the Exodus´ experience, the people of Israel discovered some thing so important as to occupy with all honours the centre  of their life. God acts efficiently among the events and he is recognized as the Lord of History. His name is the Lord. I am who I am (Ex 3,14). In this sense, the first Christians are constituted as such thanks to a similar experience referred to Jesus of Nazareth, a man executed by a turbid justice, who has been proclaimed as Lord of History, same than God (see theme 2).

9.-       To day’s experience of faith that take us to the encountering with Christ and that means to us “to have been pursued by him” (Phil 3,12) is fundamental. As Saint Paul says: For me to live is Christ (1,12). And also: it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me (Gal 2,20). Christ ends being the the sense of our life. And the scriptures made live word by the action of the Holy Spirit converts itself in a favourable to him testimony. Jesus says to the Jews: “ You search in the Scriptures thinking that in them you will find eternal life; yet Scriptures bears witness of me”. (Jn 5,39; see DV 14-17)

10.-     Let us see some testimonies: I understand that those who have not met Christ say that life has no sense. Effectively, it is so. He is for me the One that gives sense to life and his word in the Gospel constitutes all our knowledge about living. He is the one who teaches us the true way of living. I do not see clearly what is intended to know when that is not known. I have seven children, one of them is a four years Down’s syndrome girl. Reading the Gospel, I have understood the message that these children bear with them and the word of real poverty they show us, word of solidarity too. I have made this and many other discoveries, because when Christ has become a person for someone, it is not possible to say in a few words all we have passed together” (family mother).

11.-     “My entry in the community’s  groups was like that of my fellows. Without too much spirit, simply with a desire to try…. . Nevertheless from the first day, we began to be attracted by the way in which the meetings were carried out, the manner of listening the word, of sharing our experiences of the week (good and bad), of putting them before God. In this way we went into the conversion process in community.  Things have changed a bit since the beginning. In that growth of the group, I could talk about by personal development problem, my internal conflicts… .  To have learned that Jesus answers, that he is always at my side, is what makes me more glad about my experience (student).

12.-     “After a physically and morally exhausting academic year, I spent my holidays in charge of three camps a colony, Named at the return for and additional camp, I could not afford it and I suffered a grave initiation of depression. I had to stay inactive for four months. Deepening more and more, I was convinced that everything I have done so far had no sense, because I did not take him into account. It is true that I had responsibilities in the parish and that in the neighbourhood I am known as a good and abnegate woman. But now I understand that if I have not really been happy it is because I wanted to carry out my life alone. I dedicated one or two hours weekly to Jesus Christ and the Father, but they do not take part in my life. I have found Jesus Christ again, I again find him daily, in every minute of my existence. He gives sense to any event, happy or mournful.  He has gradually revealed the Father with his project of love to all human beings, this Father attentive to every one, with unbreakable love” ( a teacher).

* Dialogue: And we, who do we say that Jesus of Nazareth is?