A legitimate reaction of Jesus.

When someone reminds you of something, how do you respond? Jesus responds, too. Someone said to Jesus: “Go away from here, go away” (Luke 13:31)…?

There is no room in faith for risk-taking, underestimation, sinful calculating, etc. It is necessary not to lose proper judgment and discernment, and to persevere in goodness to the end. But such a life is not impossible. The Christian is convinced of the relevance of the words of Jesus, “My yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Mt 11:30). The Christian begs for the grace to persevere faithfully in the difficult moments, the trials of life when God often tests him like Job. It is not enough, therefore, to resolve once for the kingdom of God in life, and only once, even once a day, to remind oneself of it, but not to lose sight of the soul in all the duties and events of the day, and to keep one’s eyes fixed on God and do His will.

The love of God is so great that He not only seeks the sinner out again, giving him new grace to begin anew, but He goes to the sinner as a “good shepherd” to a straying sheep and opens His arms as a “good father” when he welcomes a prodigal son. Let us remember St. Paul. Jesus waits for the persecutor at the gates of Damascus. St. Augustine found his God while listening to the sermon of St. Ambrose, though he traveled from Carthage to Milan with entirely different motives. St. Magdalene of Cortona found God in beholding the decomposing body of her illicit husband. And others in similar situations, and others when they received the voice of God and no longer renounced it but guarded it as their treasure.

Behold how it began already with St. Edith Stein, a convert from Judaism. In Frankfurt, Edith met her friend. They decided to see the city. She was most impressed by the cathedral. What stuck in her mind? Not the beauty of the architecture, the sculpture, the paintings, but the abandoned woman is kneeling in the church, buried in a prayer shawl. For India, this is the first revelation of God present in Catholic churches. Later, she will tell about it: “It was something completely new to me. I’ll never forget it.”

We realize that if we genuinely seek God, we guard the treasure of our faith. We don’t all find it at a certain age on the roll of our lives. St. Dominic Sávio, the patron saint of minstrels and boys, found it on the day of his First Communion when he wrote in his prayer book, “I would rather die than sin.” And the thief on the cross in the last hour of his life, when he turned to Jesus with a plea, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom” (Lk 23:42). We must all work on the role of our lives.