Cantalamessa: “Comfort, console my people, says your God”

Vatican City

Cardinal Cantalamessa meditated on the theme of eternal life this morning of the second Friday of Advent. Its starting point was the idea of ​​“the precariousness and transience of all things” and that the current pandemic has strongly shown us. The preacher quoted Pope Francis, who in the blessing “urbi et orbi” on March 27 said: “The storm unmasks our vulnerability and leaves uncovered those false and superficial assurances with which we have built our agendas, our projects, our customs and priorities ”.

Cantalamessa continued: “The planetary crisis that we are going through may be an opportunity to rediscover with relief that there is, despite everything, a firm point, a solid ground, even more, a rock, on which to base our earthly existence. The word Easter –Pesah in Hebrew – it means step and in Latin it translates to who passed “. Despite being able to make a negative interpretation of this term, citing Saint Augustine, he said: “To have Easter,” he explained, “means, yes, to pass, but ‘to pass to what is not happening”; means “to pass the world, not to pass with the world”[1]. Go with your heart before you go with the body ”. What never happens is eternity.

Rediscover Faith Beyond Life

“We need to rediscover faith in an afterlife. This is one of the great contributions that religions can make together in the effort to create a better and more fraternal world. This makes us understand that we are all fellow travelers, on the way to a common homeland where there is no distinction of race or nation. We have in common not only the path, but also the goal ”, declared the cardinal.

“For Christians,” emphasizes the preacher, “belief in eternal life is not based on questionable philosophical arguments about the immortality of the soul. It is based on a precise fact, the resurrection of Christ, and on his promise: “In my Father’s house there are many mansions. […] I will prepare a place for you ”(Jn 14,2).

An eclipse of fe

Cantalamessa wonders what happened to the Christian truth of eternal life?

He first cites certain philosophers like Hegel, Feuerbach and Marz, who “fought against the belief in life after death (…) The idea of ​​personal survival in God is replaced by the idea of ​​survival in life. species and in the society of the future. Gradually, with suspicion, the word “eternity” fell into oblivion and silence “.

To the approaches of these philosophers is added “secularization”, and he says of it: “secularism is synonymous with temporalism, of reduction of the real to the single earthly dimension. It means the radical elimination of the horizon of eternity ”.

What is the practical consequence of this eclipse of the idea of ​​eternity? Cantalamessa wonders. “Saint Paul refers to the plan of those who do not believe in the resurrection of the dead:” Let us eat, drink, die tomorrow “(1 Cor 15:32). The natural desire to live forever, distorted, becomes a desire, or a frenzy, to live goodthat is to say pleasantly, even to the detriment of others, if necessary (…) Once the horizon of eternity has fallen, human suffering seems doubly and hopelessly absurd. The world looks like “a collapsing anthill”, and man looks like “a pattern created by the wave on the seashore that the next wave erases”.

Faith in eternity and evangelization

Cantalamessa maintains that “faith in eternal life is one of the conditions for the possibility of evangelization. “But if Christ is not risen”, writes the Apostle, “is our preaching in vain and your faith also in vain (…) for this reason, he adds, The announcement of eternal life constitutes the strength and the bite of Christian preaching. Let’s see what happened during the very first Christian evangelization ”.

Faced with a world that places all the emphasis on enjoyment in this life, thinking about the beyond, in a life that is fuller and more luminous than that on earth, shows us that “we are finite beings capable of infinity” (a finite contains infinity), mortal beings with a secret desire for immortality ”. The preacher quotes Saint Augustine: “What is the use of living well, if there is not always life?”[2]. And he concludes this section by declaring: “To the men of our time who cultivate deep in their hearts this need for eternity, without perhaps having the courage to confess it even to themselves, we can repeat what Paul has. said to the Athenians: that you worship without knowing it, I come to announce it to you ”(cf. Acts 17:23).

Faith in Eternity as a Means of Sanctification

Cantalamessa insists on the fact that “A renewed faith in eternity does not serve us only for evangelization, that is to say for the announcement to be made to others; It serves us, even before, to give a new impetus to our path of sanctification. Its first fruit is to free us, not to attach ourselves to what is happening: to increase our own assets or our own prestige ”.

But he also warns that “The cooling of the idea of ​​eternity acts on believers, diminishing in them the capacity to face courageously the sufferings and trials of life. We must rediscover a part of the faith of Saint Bernard and Saint Ignatius of Loyola. In every situation and in the face of every obstacle, they said to themselves: “What is eternity?“What is that in relation to eternity?”

To the previous warning, he adds: “when we lose the measure of all that is eternity: earthly things and sufferings easily throw our soul to the ground. Everything seems too heavy, excessive ”. To this apparent weight of life and things, Cantalamessa adds: “Many ask:” What will eternal life consist of and what will we do all the time in heaven? “The answer lies in the Apophatic words of the Apostle which we have just heard:” Neither the eye has seen, nor the ear has heard, nor man can think what God has prepared. for those who love it. “

Eternity: a hope and a presence

For the believer, eternity is not just a promise and a hope, or, as Karl Marx thought, a pouring out of disappointed expectations from earth into heaven. It is also a presence and an experience. In Christ, “the eternal life which was with the Father was made visible.” We, says Juan, heard and saw it with our own eyes, contemplated and touched (cf. 1 Jn 1,1-3), says Cantalamessa.

This presence of eternity in time is called the Holy Spirit, affirms the cardinal, it is defined as “the pledge of our inheritance” (Eph 1,14; 2 Cor 5,5), and it was given because, having received the firstfruits, we aspire to fullness.

Referring to accusations against eternal life, according to which the expectation of eternity distracts from the commitment to the earth and the care of creation, the cardinal recalls that: “Before modern societies took up the task of promote health and culture, to improve the culture of the land and people’s living conditions. Who performed these tasks more and better than they – the frontline monks – who lived by faith in eternal life? “

Cantalamessa remembers the Canticle of the Creatures of Saint Francis of Assisi, which, far from distancing human beings from their action and their commitment in the world, confirms it and says of the holy founder: “The thought of eternal life does not had not made them despise this world and these creatures, but an even greater enthusiasm and gratitude for them and had made the current pain more bearable for him.

The preacher of the Pontifical House concludes: “Our meditation today on eternity certainly does not exempt us from living with all the other inhabitants of the earth the harshness of the trial we are living; however, it should at least help us believers not to be overwhelmed by it and to be able to instill courage and hope even in those who do not have the comfort of the faith.

The Cardinal invited to pray:

O God, who unites the hearts of your faithful in the same desire, give your people to love what you prescribe and wait for what you promise, so that in the midst of the vicissitudes of the world, our spirits are affirmed wherever there are joys. true[3].

[1] Saint Augustin, Treaties on John 55, 1: CCL 36, 463s.

[2] Saint Augustin, Treatises on the Gospel of John, 45, 2: PL 35, 1720.

[3] Collect prayer for the XXIst Sunday in ordinary time.