To set before you an ideal (1 Cor 7, 35)

Jesus is the great prophet God raised up from among us at the coming of the time of fulfillment. He teaches with God’s authority.

God acknowledges that we are right, those of us who do not want to die listening to his words amidst peals of thunder and lightning, loud trumpet blast, heavy cloud and smoke. Hence, he deigns to speak to us through his Son made flesh. Jesus, the humanization of God, makes attractive and approachable the fearsome and transcendent God.

Becoming like human beings in every way and tested exactly like us, yet without sin, the Son of God learns obedience through suffering. That is why he sympathizes with our weaknesses. Humble and meek of heart, he does not break a bruised reed nor does he quench a smoldering wick.

So, unless we are unclean spirits, there is no reason for our knees to knock or for us to faint in dread before the one who has pitched his tent among us. He is one of us; he is not a stranger to us. Jesus is not heavy-handed nor is he bent on showing who the boss is. Sure of his sovereignty over all by virtue of his divine sonship, he treats with lenient and encouraging affection those who are sinful, weak, not so wise and hardly appreciated, those who are sick with various diseases and racked with pain, are marginalized, troubled and abandoned like sheep without a shepherd.

God’s Sent One evangelizes the poor “by words and by works,” to use a phrase from St. Vincent de Paul (FRXII:87-88). Jesus preaches, of course, bringing to light at the same time the root causes of poverty—injustice, lack of love, greed, indifference. But above all, he does what he says. He comforts the poor, he remedies their spiritual and temporal needs and he helps them in every way and sees to it that they are likewise helped by others.   It is because of this that people are astonished at his teaching, for he teaches with authority and not as the scribes.

And since “no one has greater [and more drawing] love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends,” then no one preaches more effectively than the one who does so from the altar of the cross. Lifted up from the earth, he draws everyone to himself.

Jesus draws us, for one thing, so that, instead of being scary monsters, we may be as human as he is.

Lord Jesus, grant that we never be fond of playing the superior (FRXI:346).

Ross Reyes Dizon

READ THE SPANISH VERSION