Brothers and sisters in Christ, Christianity is not primarily about private emotion or reason; it is about reality. Direct and immediate confrontation with reality is one of its demands. The Franciscan sine proprio (with nothing of one’s own) shows this with admirable simplicity. There is a correlation between absence of ‘self-love, self-will, and self-interest’[1] and grasp of reality. Spiritual and even actual poverty are places of crucifixion and resurrection: they demonstrate, in a concrete way, one’s response to reality and one’s ability to analyse and change it. Responding in this way is humility and devotion, both to God, to the reality He created, and to the Son He sent for our salvation. ‘Ego quos amo, arguo, et castigo’[2], says God to John of Patmos, ‘those I love I rebuke and chasten.’ This chastening, this castigation arises from reality and points to God. Examination of individual and collective conscience, in the light of the Gospel, leads to a challenge, a castigation, and an imperative: act for the Kingdom of God and against the reign of sin and oppression in the world.

Participation in liturgical sacraments alone is not enough. One must live and die as Friends of Christ, for the reign of God on earth as in heaven. Jesus’ words to Peter are addressed to us: ‘When thou wast young, thou girdest thyself, and walkedst whither thou wouldest: but when thou shalt be old, thou shalt stretch forth thy hands, and another shall gird thee, and carry thee whither thou wouldest not. This spake he, signifying by what death he should glorify God.’[3] Maturity, detachment, spiritual poverty and actual poverty: this is the Eucharistic tenderness, the martyrial openness required of all Christians. We are called to put our hearts and our hands into the spiritual and actual wounds of the world and those who suffer the false crucifixions brought about by structures of iniquity. Our discipleship depends on the ability to follow the Lamb wherever he goes. Our discipleship presupposes a forensic analysis of reality on the basis of where the Lamb went and the wounds He sustained.

Ignacio Ellacuria writes: ‘the life of the Risen One is the same life as that of Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified for us, so that the immortal life of the Rison One is the future of salvation only insofar as we abandon ourselves in obedience to the Crucified One, who can overcome sin.’[4] The Our Father is extremely fertile ground for contemplating the meaning of these words. ‘Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven’; here we see unification of time/eternity, of history/the will of God; we invoke the presence of a concrete, historical incarnation of that for which Christ died: the reign of God on earth. ‘The Crucified One rises, and rises because he was crucified; since his life was taken away for proclaiming the Reign, he receives a new life as fulfilment of the Reign of God.’[5] Christ crucified and Risen for the coming Reign of God on earth: not only in terms of the self but for history and society. There is a shocking continuity between the Crucified One of Nazareth and the Risen Christ. It is a continuity apprehended within history and within the sense of touch. In Matthew’s Gospel he records that ‘they came and held him by the feet and worshipped him.’[6] They held the feet of the Risen One, the feet that walked unto death for the Kingdom of God. In Luke’s Gospel the disciples see and are invited to handle the ‘flesh and bones’ of the Risen prophet of Nazareth: ‘Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself: handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have. And when he had thus spoken, he shewed them his hands and his feet.’[7] The patterns, the wounds, the memories, the transcendental yet historical proclamation is all present. The apostles received the imprint from Jesus of Nazareth. Reality received an imprint from the Reign of God he proclaimed and was killed for. We are heirs annexed to these sacred incisions in the bitter but real fabric of sin and corruption and division in this world.

Let us have the zeal of Thomas who said: ‘except I see in his hands the print of the nails, and put my finger in the holes of the nails, and thrust my hand into his side, I will not believe.’[8] Reproducing this pattern, both personally, ecclesially, and socially, would show a living faith not only inherited but inhabited. Through the Wounded yet Risen One we could strive to touch the imprints of nails driven into the flesh of God’s oppressed and poor, remembering that Christ is sacramentally present in them, waiting to redeem those crucified by the sins of history and humanity by rising forth and pouring blessings upon them and those who come to liberate them. In the peace of Christ we could show perfect Christian obedience: ‘put in thy finger here, and see my hands, and put forth thy hand and thrust it into my side, and be not without faith: but believe.’[9] Christ is exhorting all his followers to trace the continuity of sufferings of Jesus of Nazareth with the Risen One. He expects us to go to the place where wounds abound and to touch them with the hands of an active faith, not standing aloof from the crucified ones of today but going forth to proclaim, in our lives, the Reign of God on earth.

Notes

[1] Ignatius of Loyola, Spiritual Exercises, p55.

[2] Revelation 3:19.

[3] John 21:18-19.

[4] In Systematic Theology: Perspectives from Liberation Theology, p261.

[5] Ibid.

[6] 28:9.

[7] 24:39-40.

[8] John 20:25.

[9] John 20:27.