The Christian is called to be
a perfect image of Jesus in the world, before every man. Christ the Lord is invisible.
The Christian must always be the visible Christ. We speak of Christ, we see
Christ, we are converted to the Christ that we see. If the Christian is not the
visibility of Christ Jesus, no one can ever believe in him. An essential
element is missing from faith: visibility. Faith is not only born of listening,
it is also born of vision. For Saint John, faith is born through the
participation of every sense and every faculty of man.
Jesus gives himself as an
example to look at, always to be imitated. What he asked of us he did it first.
Nothing is asked without having been lived by Him. The Gospel is his life. Even
St. Paul sees Christ, he is seen in Christ, embraces every suffering like
Christ.
The “law", an eye for an eye, a tooth for a
tooth, was and still is a basic rule of justice that establishes a fair
proportion between the entity of the offense and the response of the person who
suffers it. A rule of justice that excludes however every principle of
forgiveness and fraternal love. Christ, who came not to abolish but to fulfill,
punishes the new principle which springs from his person and his proclamation
of mercy. «But I tell you not to oppose the wicked; in fact, if someone slaps
you on the right cheek, you can take the other one too ».
The gratuitousness of divine
love, poured upon us, while we were his enemies because of sin, must induce us
not to oppose the evil that plots against us and to be willing also to turn the
other cheek when someone strikes us. If we did not have the luminous example of
Christ who in his passion suffers, like a docile and meek lamb, the torture of
every kind, which is inflicted and that replies with the pardon to the cruel
crucifixion, we could think of an exaggeration and believe that the his proposal.
Instead he tells us: "Love one another as I have loved you". It is
that "how" that puts us in crisis; we must love and forgive as Jesus
did with us.
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