Thinking Anew: We should be a light for others

The Lord shows the disciples, to whom he appears for 40 days after his resurrection, the wounds that sealed his sacrifice; but they are no longer the ugliness of the painfully suffered disgrace, they are now the indelible proof of his faithful love to the very end. The risen Jesus with his body lives in the Trinitarian intimacy of God! And in it he does not lose his memory, he does not abandon his history, he does not dissolve the relationships he lived on earth. To his friends he promised: “And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also” (John 14:3). And he will come, not only will he come at the end for everyone, he will come each time for each one of us. He will come to seek us out to bring us to him. In this sense, death is a kind of step toward the encounter with Jesus who is waiting for me to bring me to him.

The Risen One lives in God’s world, where there is a place for everyone, where a new earth is being formed, and the heavenly city, man’s final dwelling place, is being built. We cannot imagine this transfiguration of our mortal corporality, but we are certain that it will keep our faces recognisable and allow us to remain human in God’s heaven. It will allow us to participate, with sublime emotion, in the infinite and blissful exuberance of God’s creative act, whose endless adventures we will experience first-hand.

When Jesus speaks of the Kingdom of God, he describes it as a wedding feast; as a party, that is, like a party, a party with friends awaits us; as the work that makes the house perfect, and the surprise that makes the harvest richer than the sowing. Taking seriously the Gospel words about the Kingdom enables our sensitivities to enjoy God’s working and creative love, and puts us in tune with the unprecedented destination of the life we sow. In our old age, my dear contemporaries – and I speak to the old men and old women – in our old age, the importance of the many “details” of which life is made – a caress, a smile, a gesture, an appreciated effort, an unexpected surprise, a hospitable cheerfulness, a faithful bond – becomes more acute. The essentials of life, which we hold most dear as we approach our farewell, become definitively clear to us. See: this wisdom of old age is the place of our gestation, which illuminates the lives of children, of young people, of adults, of the entire community. We, the elderly should be this for others: light for others. Our whole life appears like a seed that will have to be buried so that its flower and its fruit can be born. It will be born, along with everything else in the world. Not without labour pains, not without pain, but it will be born (cf. John 16:21-23). And the life of the risen body will be a hundred and a thousand times more alive than we have tasted it on this earth (cf. Mark 10:28-31).

Dear brothers and sisters, the Risen Lord, not by chance, while waiting for the Apostles by the lake, roasts some fish (cf. John 21:9) and then offers it to them. This gesture of caring love gives us a glimpse of what awaits us as we cross to the other shore. Yes, dear brothers and sisters, especially you elderly, the best of life is yet to come. “But we are old, what more is yet to come?” The best, because the best of life is yet to come. Let us hope, let us hope for this fulness of life that awaits us all, when the Lord calls us. May the Mother of the Lord and our Mother, who has preceded us to heaven, restore to us the eager anticipation of expectation, because it is not an anaesthetised expectation, it is not a bored expectation, no, it is an expectation with eager anticipation, it is an expectation: “When will my Lord come? When will I be able to go there?” A little bit of fear, because I don’t know what this passage means, and passing through that door causes a little fear – but there is always the hand of the Lord that carries us forward, and beyond the door there is the party.