"The Gospel of God"

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The Virgin in Prayer by Giovanni Battista Salvi da Sassoferrato, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

This is the time of fulfillment. The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe the Gospel. Analyzing them, we shall understand the sense of the Incarnation and the Resurrection of Jesus.

The first phrase tells us that the time for waiting is finished: from the moment when Jesus is born on earth, he becomes contemporaneously the center of all human history. Here is the substance of the second phrase: heaven, which had been closed because of sin, is now open, in virtue of the transfigured flesh of Christ in his Resurrection. By now his kingdom of justice and peace has definitely arrived. ... The doors of paradise have been thrown open, and the dazzling light of Christ, raised and living, includes the resting place of all the redeemed. The third phrase reveals to us that in order to enjoy eternal beatitude, we must change our way of thinking and therefore our life in a total and radical way. We have been called to a continuous metanoia, a conversion, a reformulation of the priority of life, so that this reality can also be fully realized in our own existence. Finally, the fourth phrase tells us how to work this conversion: by living the Gospel. There we have all that is necessary. The Gospel, in turn, summarizes what Jesus commands his disciples: love one another, even as I have loved you.

What must we embody in order to assume all of this in a serious way? Permit me to respond with a simple personal anecdote. For twenty-six years—from 1942 to 1968—I went regularly to San Giovanni Rotondo to meet with Saint Pio of Pietrelcina. Some of the friars had posters in their cells with inscriptions and reminders. Some were from the Bible but Padre Pio had this: "Human greatness has always had sadness for a companion." The sense of it seemed clear to me: we must have humility, precisely like Jesus, whom Saint Paul describes as emptying himself (Phil 2:7), that is, of making himself man even though he was God, and of dying on the cross, rejected by men. After this poster was stolen from his room, Padre Pio put up another: "Mary is all the reason for my hope." If Mary, who is Mother of Jesus, is our hope, anyone—anyone who suffers, any one who is alone, or anyone who feels sad—can look at the Nativity of Jesus and at his Resurrection with a heart full of hope.