Meditation for youth during Holy Week of 1946

“I have come that you may have life and have it in abundance.” (Jn 10,10)

I have just returned from the greatest country in the world. At least this is what the second greatest, Churchill said concerning North America in the largest and most comfortable hotel on the globe, the Waldorf Astoria. There we have the highest buildings: the Empire State: 102 floors, the Chrysler… Radio City the largest theater is filled from 7 in the morning till the following day. The rivers are crossed through subterranean tunnels; in the cities there are three, four or more levels of transportation… All the records: velocity, four thousand kilometers in four hours. Production, factories that produce five hundred automobiles an hour and hope soon to produce a thousand… Here, today is 46% of the world’s gold; fantastic technical progress: death has been delayed, life prolonged. In Washington a plane takes off every three minutes: the great Constellations can cross all the oceans; millions of automobiles and refrigerators … And as someone has said: So what!

And what was my impression as a whole? That the material is not enough, that civilization does not satisfy, that comfort is a good thing but is not where happiness is found. That it gives too little and costs too much! That these toys cost man his true greatness because the price of all this life-style for the great majority is emptiness, losing touch with the spirit, blindness with respect to the supernatural. The concept of a man of progress who dominates the material can be described as: clean, hygienic, well built for sports, well fed, well clothed, with access to music and an automobile, nice automobiles! Perhaps for some, trips around the world, a comfortable home, a wife for as long as he gets along with her, no prejudices… Eliminate sickness and die at seventy. What more can you ask? And I have just returned from a splendid trip on a cargo ship, nice and slow, the only passenger, with time to pray, think and write… I reflected: Is this all there is?

I look up at these splendid heavens, magnificent, imposing protecting us: again, is this all there is to life? Seventy years to enjoy all these comforts and conveniences? Man is the king of creation, is it all for this? Does the progress of humanity mean only to achieve the possession of a bathroom, a radio, a washing machine, an automobile? Is this the greatness of man? Is there nothing more than this? Is this what life is all about? In the meantime are we not awaiting the next war that we can all sniff on the winds of our times, awaiting it with fear and trembling?

Empire State, Chrysler: how much longer will you stand tall? The Ford, Packard and Chrysler factories, how long will you last? Horrified by the threat of an atomic war, not long ago, Einstein wrote that with the meager means atomic energy now has at its disposal, man has only recently managed to achieve fission and, as a consequence, two thirds of humanity may perish! Is this life? Is this the crowning achievement of man?

And I look at the calm… serene night sky… The stars radiate their gentle light… And these words resound in my ears: “God so loved the world that He gave us His only Son” (Jn 3,16). He loved me, also me! Who? God! The Creator of all energy, of the stars, the earth, of man, of perhaps two thousand generations of men who have lived on the earth and millions more that will come… This immense God before whom insignificant man disappears. How much greater than man He is!

What does God think of man? Of human life? Of the meaning of our existence? Does He condemn these inventions, this progress, this eagerness to discover effective new medicines, fast automobiles, planes that conquer all risk? No. Even more, He is overjoyed with these efforts to better this life of ours. But for those who still have ears to hear despite the noise around them He tells us: “I have come that they may have life and have it in abundance.”

Listen, son: It’s me. Who? “I”, Jesus, Son of God and true God. “I”, the eternal God, “have come”: I have journeyed… a very long journey. From the infinite to the finite, a journey so long it scandalizes the wise, discomfits philosophers. From the infinite to the finite! The eternal to the temporal! God to the creature? Yes, that’s it! This journey is very real “I have come.” This is my journey!

For man. The only reason for this journey: man. This minuscule yet great creature? Because though small, he is great. The greatest creature in the universe? Greater than the stars? I have never made a journey for them, even less suffered for them! But for man, yes…

For man, but perhaps you do not understand me: for you man of colour, for you poor Japanese, for you my beloved Chilean, for you high school student in Curico. I do not love the masses, I love each person: a man, a woman… I have come for you!

“That you may have life” Life? What life are you talking about? Life, true life, the only life that can justify God’s journey is divine life: “That we might be called and be sons of God” (1Jn 3,1) We are called and we are truly sons! The eternal God does not make such a journey except to give us a gift of great price: Nothing less than His own divine life, the participation in his nature that He gifts us through Grace.

Do we believe in this life? There are Catholics, like the one I met on my journey who said to me: “Another life? No, Father, you’re joking.” There are Catholics who have never thought about this life… The majority are not concerned about it. They ignore it. And yet this is the only true life: Whoever has this life, truly lives; whoever does not possess it though he be healthy, rich, wise and blessed with friends: he is dead.

“What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world but suffers the loss of his own soul?” (Mt 16,26) “He who wishes to save his life will lose it and he who loses his life for my sake will find it” (Mk 8,35), goes the old refrain of the Church! The only thing necessary, so great because so old, or better still, so old because it is so great. So necessary, so irreplaceable! The man with all that civilization can offer has not been able to extinguish the echo of these words, and if he should do so he will die, not only to this life but even to his own human life.

“And may they have it in abundance.” There is a poor sort of life, hardly to be called life; a life of infidelity to grace, spiritual deafness, lack of generosity; and there is a rich life, full, fruitful and generous. This is the life that Christ has called us to. This is sanctity. And Christ wants integral Christians, who do not close their souls to any invitation of Grace, that let themselves be possessed by this invading torrent, allow themselves to be taken over by Christ, penetrated by Him. Life is truly life in the measure that Christ is possessed, in the measure that it is Christ. Through knowledge, through love and through service. God wants to make me a saint! He wants twentieth century style saints: Chilean style, high school style, lawyer style but all fully reflecting His life. This is the greatest thing in the world! Greater by far than the Empire State Building, than a Ford factory with a daily production of eight thousand automobiles. Of greater value for humanity than the discovery of atomic energy, or a vaccine or penicillin.

Here it behoves us to say along with the Samaritan woman. “Lord, give me to drink of this water so that I may no longer thirst” (Jn 4,15). Or like Nicodemus: “How can I be born again when I am an old man?” (Jn 3,4). This is God’s gift but one that He desires to give me, because “God so loved the world that He gave us His only begotten Son” (Jn 3,16). If He has given us His only Son, what would He now refuse us? (cf. Rom 8,32). Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Lord, give us life, life in abundance. “The life I await is so great that I die because I cannot die.”