4 April 2019
Thursday of the Fourth Week of Lent
“The works that the Father gave me to accomplish, these works that I perform testify on my behalf that the Father has sent me” (Jn 5:36). Through the works that Jesus accomplished, the others around him ought to have been able to recognize that he was sent by the Father. Insofar as we share in the life of Christ as Christians, others ought to be able to recognize that we live a live that descends from above as well. The servant of God Pedro Arrupe said that a Jesuit should live his life in such a way that it should never completely make sense apart from Jesus Christ. In other words, if a Jesuit lives a good life such that a person could say, “even if Jesus did not exist, that would be a fine life,” then there may be something missing from that life. There should always be something about a good Christian life that leaves people wondering what the “greater thing” is that stands behind that life, filling it with love and joy, even in the midst of the greatest trials, which only a life of love and joy would willingly take on.
This surpassing thing might even be the most ordinary of things. A few years ago, I had the great privilege of attending an audience with Pope Francis for young people in formation. The Pope asked us whether we knew what it meant to be a man or to be a woman. When we said that we did, he almost mockingly responded that he thought that we did not, and then continued saying that we would not ever know what it meant to be a man or to be a woman until we became good fathers or mothers. He said that what makes a good father or mother is not the simple biological begetting of a child, but rather the daily sacrificial gift of self that one sees a good parent make, out of love, to care for his or her family. If we religious in formation were not prepared to give ourselves daily in Christ to the people entrusted to our care in the same way, he said, we would never learn what it means to be a man or woman because we would never become the spiritual fathers and mothers that God would have us be.
The world needs good fathers and good mothers. It needs them at the heart of families and at the heart of the Church. Every Christian adult is called to be a good father or mother. And when we become these fathers and mothers, our works testify that we no longer stand on our own behalf, but rather within the greater Love that sends us for the healing of creation.