In life, we are so often guided by fear: fear of not being loved, of being abandoned, fear of disappointment, of suffering, of death. In the Gospel there is an extraordinary word from Jesus: "Love your enemies! Do good to those who hate you! Pray for those who persecute you!" because it is easy to love those who love us; even people without God can do that. It is easy to lend money to someone who will certainly repay us. Jesus knows that the fundamental problem of the world is that we hate those who hate us. He knows that if someone is violent toward me, I will be violent toward someone weaker than myself. Jesus came to transform violence into tenderness, into forgiveness; he came to bring love to the earth, to give us his Spirit so that we can love our enemy. But we say: "It's impossible! None of us is capable of loving the person who harms us, who frightens us." And Jesus tells us: "I will teach you." He is the master of the impossible. He can change our heart of stone into a heart of flesh. It takes time. A seed does not become a tree in a day. What matters, for it to grow, is to water it; what matters, for it to bear fruit, is that the soil is good. Today you cannot yet love your enemy, but do not worry: we are on a path where we will learn to love.
Even the smallest among us has a gift: of love, of welcome, of service, of fraternity, of motherhood.
Even the smallest among us has a gift: of love, of welcome, of service, of fraternity, of motherhood.Jesus said to his disciples: "You are the light of the world!" I imagine they looked at each other as if to say: "The world is not very well lit!" Jesus says to us too: "You are the light of the world!" and we might also say: "The world is certainly not very brightly lit!" But you know, to become luminous, you must plug in to the current. See those little lamps on the ceiling of the nave? If the sacristan had not switched them on—had not given them power—they would be dark and there would be darkness. So it is with us: for there to be light, the current must flow; we must be "plugged in" to Jesus for there to be light in us. If we unplug ourselves from him we will be in darkness and in darkness we will do every sort of foolish thing. The only true sin is to cut off the current that binds us to Jesus. If we remain plugged in to him, if his current flows through us, we will be luminous, in love and in peace.
One day Jesus was speaking in the courtyard of a house surrounded by a dense crowd. Above the heads, a small bed is lowered on ropes with a man lying on it—a man who is paralyzed, who cannot speak. Jesus looks him in the eyes and says to him: "Your sins are forgiven." I lift from your shoulders the burden of guilt. We are crushed by the weight of guilt because we all think we are not as we should be. For instance, when, eating a fine plate of pasta, we see on television the people of Ethiopia dying of hunger, we feel guilty. We have so many reasons to feel guilty; we do not feel light, we do not have a free heart, nor joy. Because the fruit of guilt is sadness. All of Jesus' work is to remove this weight from our shoulders, the weight of the past. He wants to give us a free heart, full of joy, capable of love.
When Jesus says: "Your sins are forgiven," the people around him are not pleased: "How can a man forgive? Only God can take away sins!" and they murmur against him. Jesus looks at them, knows what is in their hearts, and says: "Is it easier for the Son of Man to say 'your sins are forgiven' or to say 'rise and walk'? And so that you may know that the Son of Man has the power to forgive, I say to you"—and he looks at the paralyzed man—"Rise and walk!" And the paralyzed man gets up and cries out with joy.
Jesus says to each of us: "Rise and walk in love! Be men and women of hope in a world where hatred and fear dominate, where there is so much oppression of the small and the poor. I say to you: Rise, find hope again; build communities where the poor can find their place, welcome the poor into your home. It is not right that they live in institutions; they must be welcomed in places where they can find tenderness and love." This is what Jesus says to each of us.
But each of us carries the weight of guilt on our shoulders; Jesus then gives the power to grant forgiveness in God's name to certain men on earth. Every person has a particular gift, and even the smallest among us has a gift: of love, of welcome, of service, of fatherhood or motherhood. Everyone has his or her mission. To priests Jesus gives the gift of forgiveness. They hear the weight of guilt on earth and can say: "I forgive you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit."
In community we have discovered our wounds, our fears; we have seen how easy it is to unplug ourselves from the current of love, of the Holy Spirit. We did not believe the promises of Jesus and so each of us carries the weight of the hardness of our own heart.
That is why today, this day of reconciliation, we must ask Jesus to lift the weight of guilt from our shoulders, to give us back a heart full of joy, of freedom, the strength of the Holy Spirit so that we can forgive our enemy, so that we can go out to meet those who trouble us, those who frighten us.
This afternoon, a time of reconciliation and adoration, so that there may be more current of love in us, so that our communities may become more capable of welcome, more attentive to listening to the smallest, the poorest; so that the poorest are ever more honored, we must find the humility and smallness to kneel before this man who has received his mandate from Jesus and from the Church. We must find the humility and smallness to say: I forgive! I have turned away from you and from the poor! Restore in me that covenant of the Holy Spirit! Give me back a heart that knows how to love! Give me your strength so that I may be an instrument of your love in a world of hatred, of peace in a world of war, of hope in a world of despair. And then we will hear the priest say to us: "I forgive you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Go and make of this world a world of love where the poor find their place."
by Jean Vanier, 1986
See also: Scendere le scale