With courage, with hands full of works of mercy

by Gianni Gennari

Still on the “Creed”. After the Resurrection the Ascension of the Lord Jesus "to the right hand of the Father". Last time on the "mission", which is precisely the first consequence of the Ascension: the Lord Jesus, Son of God, God himself and son of Mary, crucified, dead and resurrected, makes his disciples, witnesses of his resurrection, "see" also his return to the Father, manifested in the appropriate way of his time: God "in the highest". Here therefore: "What we have seen with our eyes", to recall the text of the First Letter of Saint John, is enriched by the last actual "vision". it is the image, told by themselves, of the "ascent" to Heaven of Him who at the same moment entrusts them, through the angelic voice, the mission of the announcement: "What are you doing with your eyes towards heaven? Go and announce..."

And so the poor and amazed Apostles and disciples, still full of "fear" to the point that they all took refuge in the Cenacle, find themselves entrusted with a total mission, which lasts until today... Their fear will be overcome by the sending, promised many times and maintained at Pentecost, of the Spirit... it is also our thing: in Baptism and Confirmation there is, precisely, the invasion of the Holy Spirit in us... But this is already further on, in the Creed. Now it's the turn of the "judgment".

The Judgment

In fact, in our Creed, immediately after the imaginative story of the visible "take-off" towards Heaven and up to the "right hand of the Father", there is the announcement of the return in "glory to judge the living and the dead"... it is the theme of "judgment". I write on the same day in which the front page of the Osservatore (28/11) carries this proclamation from Pope Francis: "He who practices mercy cannot be afraid of death".

Therefore, after the memory of the Ascension of the Lord, his return in glory for the final "judgment". The mission of the Apostles and of all the disciples over the centuries has as its goal the announcement and putting into practice, at the service of all men called to salvation by the Redemption of Christ, of the conditions in which "judgment" becomes welcome in the House of Father: “Come, you blessed by my Father…”.

Here is our victory over the fear of death, and therefore also of judgement. The word of Pope Francis, "he who practices mercy cannot be afraid of death", says a lot, and says everything about what our life should be, and also the life of all God's children, near or far from us , whether known or not, because God is the creator and father of all, and Jesus came to save everyone...

The judgement, then. Faith tells us that it accompanies - we do not know the "how", but we know the "what" - the reality of dying, and this statement by Pope Francis gives us the essential and unique rule: "Whoever practices mercy cannot be afraid of death”, therefore also of judgement. Judgment: the so-called "universal" one is beyond our reach. We can imagine it with the imagination of Michelangelo in the Sistine Chapel, but it is beyond us, and beyond the whole world. So what counts is what the Catechism calls the "particular judgement", the personal one that accompanies - we don't know how - our dying, this mysterious end of a way of being which in the vision of faith is not only "the" end, but also “the” end of our life itself. Death is in fact the "last enemy", but also the "sister", an object of fear for all, but also an object of desire and hope for the saved: "I desire to be freed and to be with Jesus Christ" (Phil, 1,23).

Our opinion

I am not talking here about dying, but in the wake of Francis' speech which announces to us the overcoming of fear, it is worth going and seeing how, in the Word of God, our personal judgment is presented to us, and by Jesus himself. , called "particular", the only moment on which our salvation depends.

There is no doubt about it: what will count, in the personal judgment that each of us will face in dying, is not the direct and perfect "knowledge" of God, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God announced by the Prophets and incarnated in Jesus himself, but his "recognition" in the neighbor to be loved in his needs: hunger, thirst, welcome, concern etc... is the announcement of Matthew 25: save those who even without having perfectly known God in Jesus Christ, they have in fact "recognized" others to love. Salvation comes from true love, which to be such must be that of brothers: it is the substance of the Gospel and of the Christian and Catholic announcement of salvation. The Church, the sacraments, the presence of the Holy Spirit in the heart of the "divinized" man if he abandons himself to his sanctifying and purifying action, are "grace" of explicit salvation, but the root of everything is that word that resonates on the mouth of Francis: "mercy" practiced... The mission of the Apostles remains over time, the duty of the mission that we spoke about in the previous meeting remains, and which begins "on our knees", because salvation does not come from us, but "from above" , that height in which Jesus himself was the first to hide himself from the eyes of the Apostles, in the manifestation of his ascending to Heaven to charge us, on earth, with the announcement of Heaven, the house of God which becomes ours by grace: " in the evening of life we ​​will be judged on love” (St. John of the Cross). The next one on “Pentecost”, therefore on the Holy Spirit…