Au In the beginning was the Word
 
IN THE NAME OF GOD
It is already blooming

san clemente de tahull1. The experience of faith means to listen to God’s Word and to announce it. Id est, it means to talk in the name of God. It is a prophetic experience. But, do prophets exist today? Which are the features of the true prophet? Can anyone prophesize? We may recall the Joel’s passage: “Your sons and daughters will prophesy” (Jl 3, 1). And what the Council says: “God’s saint people shares Christ’s prophetic function (LG 12; see Nm 11, 29).
2. Disciples of Emmaus see Jesus as “a powerful prophet in doings and words before God and all the people” (Lk 24, 19). Peter announces that God “has glorified his servant Jesus, whom you handed over to death and denied before Pilate” (Acts 3, 14). This “servant Jesus”, “God´s servant”, is the expected prophet. The Lord himself explains to the walkers of Emmaus “what about him was written in the Scriptures”, “starting with Moses and going through the prophets” (Lk 24, 27)
3. This is what Moses said: “He will raise up for you a prophet like myself from among the people, to whom you shall listen” (Dt 18, 15). Let us see what the prophets said. A great prophet, who lives among the exiled in Babylon, announces the end of the exile. It will be a new exodus that will arrive like the spring: “But do not dwell on the past, or remember the things of old; Look, I am doing a new thing: it is just blooming. Don’t you see it” (Is 43, 18 – 19)
4. The book of Consolation seems to be written in the sixth century B.C., between the year 553, in which Persian king Cyrus (Isaiah 45, 1 – 8; 41, 1 – 5; 48, 12 – 15) begins his campaigns, and the year 539, in which Babylon is conquered. In these years the decadence of the Babylonian empire and the raising of the Persian Empire are both evident. Both facts, interrelated, attract the attention of the exiled prophet. Cyrus is open-minded and tolerant: What is happening? Is it the end of the exile? Will there be a new exodus?
5. Difficulties are enormous. God´s word confronts Babylon, the arrogant, powerful and criminal, that one which says: “I am, and there is none besides me” (Is 47, 7 – 8). God´s word also confronts the imperial gods, who are a temptation to Israel: “They hire a goldsmith to make an image, before which they bow and worship” (46, 6). There are everywhere temples, statues, impressive liturgies, attended by huge crowds. It is a scandal, a stumbling stone for the believer people, who says: “My destiny is hidden to the Lord, my God ignores my rights (40, 27), the Lord has forsaken me, my Lord has forgotten me” (49, 14). Only a few have the door opened to hope.
6. In this context, a voice raises: “Be comforted, my people, be strengthened, says your God. Speak to the heart of Jerusalem; proclaim to her that her time of service is at an end, that her sin has been paid for, that from the hand of Yahweh she has received double punishment for all her iniquity.” (40, 1 – 2). The time of exile is not a time lost. The faith awakes before the difficulty. The historic books are written, from Jossua to the Kings, and the priestly text, which relates God´s, works from creation to Moses death. The old and the new books are in the community’s heart. Babylon’s fall approaches, the end of the exile. Like in the old times a path was opened in the sea, now a path is open in the dessert, that immense space that stretches from the own land, from Jerusalem: “In the wilderness prepare the way for Yahweh. Make straight in the dessert a highway for our God. Every valley will be raised up; every mountain and hill will be laid low. The stumbling blocks shall become level and the rugged places smooth. The glory of Yahweh will be revealed” (40, 3 – 5)
7. But, who is the one who talks in the name of God? An exiled prophet, who incarnates the figure of servant, he is in God´s service. His figure appears in four songs. In the first song (Is 42) God himself presents him, supports him, elects him, loves him, gives him his spirit and a mission to carry out: “Here is my servant whom I uphold, my chosen one in whom I delight. I have put my spirit upon him, and he will bring justice to the nations. He will not shout or raise his voice in the streets. A broken reed he will not crush, nor will he snuff out the light of the wavering wick. He will make justice appear in truth. He will not waver or be broken until he has established justice on earth; the islands are waiting for his law.” Servant’s mission has no frontiers. He must introduce the right and the law of God, open his will to knowledge, make justice. He will neither impose on force nor subjugate, but he will not neither shut up nor dismay. The servant, God´s collaborator and his hands´ work, accomplishes a destiny received from God: “I, the Lord, have called you for the sake of justice; I will hold your hand to make you firm; I will make you as a covenant to the people, and as a light to the nations, to open eyes that do not see, to free captives from prison, to bring out to light those who sit in darkness”
8. In the second song (Is 49) servant’s mission, apparently a failure, reaches the ends of the earth. And God´s call reaches the root of his own existence: “Listen to me, Oh islands, pay attention, peoples from distant lands. The Lord called me from my mother’s womb; he pronounced my name before I was born. He made my mouth like a sharpened sword. He hid me in a shadow; he made me into a polished arrow set apart in his quiver. He said to me, “you are Israel, my servant, in whom I am glorified”. But I thought, “I have laboured in vain, I have spent my strength for nothing”… The servant’s mouth, that proclaims God´s word, is sharpened sword and polished arrow, close weapon and far weapon that the Lord uses in the adequate moment. For a while, the sword is hidden in the shadow of his hand and the arrow kept in his quiver. But it is not neither lost time nor useless work. The servant’s failure is only apparent. It is not only to try to gather Jacob’s tribes. His mission reaches the end of the earth: “I will make you the light of the nations so that my salvation will reach to the ends of the earth”. God prepares in history’s stage a universal event, visible to all nations.
9. In the third song (Is 50) the servant appears with the mission to listen and announce an encouraging word, in spite of the strikes he can receive: “The Lord has given me disciple’s tongue, so that I make known to the tired an encouraging word. Morning after morning my ear awakes, to hear like the disciples”. The servant has a tongue like that of the disciples. With his word that he receives from God, he supports the tired. Every morning he is alert to the Lord, who awakes his ear. Exiled, insulted, whipped, spitted, slapped…, he knows how to obey to the Lord and he knows how to bear: “And I did not resist, nor backed up. I offered my back to those who stroked me, my cheeks to those who pulled my beard. My face I did not hide to insults and spits”. The servant placed his confidence in the Lord. That is why he puts his face “hard as a stone”.
10. In the forth song (Is 53) the servant talks in third person. He has been seized, assassinated, like a lamb taken to the slaughter house: “Like a root out of dry ground like a sapling he grew up before us, with nothing attractive in his appearance, no beauty, no majesty… He was despised and rejected, a man of sorrows familiar with grief, a man from whom people hide their face”. The servant charges over himself the human sin, which is made evident in his own suffering: “Spurned and considered of no account, injured of God and humiliated. Yet ours were the sorrows he bore, ours were the sufferings he endured, stricken and brought low. He bore the punishment that brings us peace… Like a lamb led to the slaughter or a sheep before the shearer he did not open his mouth. He was taken away to detention and judgment – what an unthinkable destiny!. He was cut off from the land of the living, stricken for his people’s sin?” Nevertheless, God himself, who made fertile Sara’s womb, will give descendants to his servant: “He will have a long life and see his descendants. Through him the will of Yahweh is done…My servant will justify the multitude.” What holocausts and sacrifices did not get!
11. But, of whom are we talking about? That is what the Ethiopian pilgrim asks, when he meets Philip. Philip belongs to the greek sector of the community of Jerusalem. Like the Evangel, the greek sector has carried out a sweeping of laws and so upon this sector the prosecution specially falls. “Those who were scattered went about preaching the word” (Acts 8, 4). Well then, in this context a messenger, a “God´s angel”, talked to Philip, saying: “Go southwards towards the road that goes from Jerusalem to Gaza” (8, 26). He set out and departed. The Ethiopian, eunuch, an official in charge of the treasury, a pious man, came back from adoring in Jerusalem, sitting in his carriage, reading the Bible. The spirit (without any other mediation) tells Philip: “Go and catch up with that carriage” (8, 29). Philip ran to him and he heard him reading prophet Isaiah. He told him: “Do you understand what you are reading?” He answered: “How can I understand if nobody guides me?” And he request Philip to set in and to sit beside him). The Scripture passage he was reading was this: “He was led like a sheep to be slaughtered…” (Is 53, 7) The Ethiopian asked Philip: “Tell me, please, does the prophet speak of himself or of someone else?” Philip then, using the Scripture aas his starting point, began to tell him the “Good News of Jesus” (Acts 8, 34 – 35). All that has happened that day has a sense, nothing happened by chance. The key of all this is Jesus, crucified precisely in that place Fromm where the pilgrim comes back.
12. Jerusalem is asleep, she has drunk the cup of the rage and the chalice of the vertigo, she is captive: “Awake, awake! Arise, oh Jerusalem, you who drank, at the hand of Yahweh, the cup of his fury, the cup which made you tremble, that you drank to the last drop” (Is 51, 17), Awake, awake! Put on your strength, Oh Zion; put on you’re your glorious garments, Oh Jerusalem, holy city. For never will the uncircumcised or the unclean enter you again. Shake the dust off yourself and rise up, O Jerusalem. Loose the bonds from your neck, Oh captive Daughter of Zion. For thus says Yahweh: You were sold for no amount and you will be redeemed without money” (Is 52, 1 – 3).
13. The messenger announces the Good News, the salvation, the liberation: “How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news, who herald peace and happiness, who proclaim salvation, and announce to Zion: your God is king!” (52, 7). The Lord opens a path in the middle of the dessert. It is necessary to go out from Babylon: “Depart, depart from the nation, come out! Touch nothing unclean! Get out from her, keep clean, you who bear all Yahweh´s holy vessels! Yet no in escape, or in fright, you will come out, for ahead is Yahweh, your vanguard” (52, 11 – 12)
14. The holy city is in ruins and without inhabitants, but the Lord announces its reconstruction: “Oh afflicted city, lashed by storms and disconsolate, look that I will set your stones with turquoise. I will crown your wall with agate, make your gates crystal, and your ramparts of precious stones” (54, 11 – 12). The Lord answers her complaints: “Can a woman forget he baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child of her womb? Though she may forget, I will not forget you. See, I have written your name upon the palm of my hands; your walls are ever before me” (49, 15 – 16)
15. Jerusalem is the holy city, but she is the wife too. Yesterday disconsolate, forsaken and sterile, now she listens a wonderful promise. She must make room for the children who are coming from the entire world. Now her husband is with her for ever: “Rejoice, O barren woman who has not yet given birth; sing and shout of joy, you who never had children, for more are the children of the rejected woman, that the children of the married wife, says the Lord. Enlarge the space of your tent.” (Is 54, 1 – 2)
16. Jesus´ mission accomplishes the announcement of prophet Isaiah. The word “evangel, good news” (Mk 1, 1) comes from the prophet who announces the end of the exile (Is 52, 7). John the Baptist, the precursor, presents himself with these words: “A voice shouts: In the dessert prepare the path of the Lord” (Mt 3, 3). Whenever he evangelizes, Jesus is not alone, he is with the disciples who accompany him: the twelve (Mk 10, 1) and, furthermore of this intimate circle, the group who follows Jesus (8, 21) and, also, the seventy two that Jesus sends to mission. (Lk 10, 1). The community is the new family of the disciple where the brotherly live is lived (Mk 4, 34; Jn 13, 35), the school where the evangel special teaching is received, the centre from which the received evangel is spread.
17. To carry out his mission, Jesus does not identify himself with any of the social or religious groups of his time: the Sadducees (who belong to the Jewish aristocracy and to the priestly institution, collaborationists with the roman power), the Zelote (violent revolution supporters, coming from the workers class), the Pharisee (strict observers of the law of Moses and non-politicians), the Essenians (ascetic religious, who go out from the world), the scribes (intellectual minority, dedicated to teach the Scriptures, without listening the Word). Jesus comes out of that circles and makes an option for the poor, for the humiliated and depressed crowd (Mt 9, 36)
18. Isaiah’s prophecy is fulfilled in this manner: “The spirit of the Lord is upon me. He has anointed me to bring good news to the poor, to proclaim liberty to captives and new sight to the blind” (Lk 4, 18). Elderly Simeon, who expects the “consolation of Israel” (Lk 2, 25), can already die in peace. The figure of the servant is fully fulfilled in the baptism (Mk 1, 11), in the transfiguration (9, 7), in the death and resurrection of Jesus. Church’s birth is contemplated in this manner: “I will rebuild the booth of Yahweh” (Acts 15, 16)
19. Fifty years ago, when Council announcement matured in John XXIII, it was not as the fruit of a long reflection, but as the flower of an unexpected spring. Afterwards, slowly, in successive approaches, we have been recovering the communitarian experience from the Acts of the Apostles and in this manner the most simple and pure features of the incipient Church have been appearing. In spite of difficulties and resistances, which have been a lot, renovation is not a vain word, but something that is already blooming, that is already in motion, that we are already living. Without this renovation – still pending in a large scale – the Church appears “like nothing” in the eyes of many (Ag 2, 3), without the fertility of a “grain of mustard” (Mt 13, 32), aged, without life, without hope. Like that old elm that A. Machado sang, with an eaten away and dusty trunk: “It will not be like singing poplars/ that keep the way and the bank/ inhabited by brown nightingales”
20. God´s word, which at its moment determines Jeremiah’s vocation, continues being present. The prophet sees like a signal “a branch of an almond tree”, the first tree that flourishes and it so announces spring: “You have observed correctly. I am watching to make sure that my word is carried out.” (Jr 1, 11 – 12). God´s word brings springtime. So that, I also “want to write in my wallet / the grace of the flourished branch./ My heart hopes / also, towards the light and towards the life, / another miracle of the spring.”
* Dialogue: “Jesus´ servant”,  “God´s servant”, is the expected prophet. Resurrected, he himself explains to the walkers of Emmaus “the things written about  himself in all the Scriptures.”, “beginning with Moses and following by all the prophets” (Lk 24, 27). Does he explain it to us?