It is better for you that I go

TUESDAY 19 MAY (Jn 16,5-11)

The mystery of human redemption is accomplished with the sacrifice of Christ in his body on the cross: “For this reason, when he came into the world, he said: “Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but a body you prepared for me; holocausts and sin offerings you took no delight in. Then I said, ‘As is written of me in the scroll, Behold, I come to do your will, O God.'” First he says, “Sacrifices and offerings, holocausts and sin offerings, you neither desired nor delighted in.” These are offered according to the law. Then he says, “Behold, I come to do your will.” He takes away the first to establish the second. By this “will,” we have been consecrated through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. Every priest stands daily at his ministry, offering frequently those same sacrifices that can never take away sins. But this one offered one sacrifice for sins, and took his seat forever at the right hand of God; now he waits until his enemies are made his footstool. For by one offering he has made perfect forever those who are being consecrated. The holy Spirit also testifies to us, for after saying: “This is the covenant I will establish with them after those days, says the Lord: ‘I will put my laws in their hearts, and I will write them upon their minds,'” he also says: “Their sins and their evildoing I will remember no more.” Where there is forgiveness of these, there is no longer offering for sin” (Heb 10,5-18). If Jesus does not go, passing through the way of the cross, no redemption is accomplished and man remains in his sin. He will never be transformed into a new creature.

St. Paul has a very lively image. He says that Jesus in his body on the cross canceled, burned the document of our debt, whose conditions were unfavorable for us: “For in him dwells the whole fullness of the deity bodily, and you share in this fullness in him, who is the head of every principality and power. In him you were also circumcised with a circumcision not administered by hand, by stripping off the carnal body, with the circumcision of Christ. You were buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead. And even when you were dead (in) transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, he brought you to life along with him, having forgiven us all our transgressions; obliterating the bond against us, with its legal claims, which was opposed to us, he also removed it from our midst, nailing it to the cross; despoiling the principalities and the powers, he made a public spectacle of them, leading them away in triumph by it” (Col 2,9-16). That is why it is good for Jesus to go away. His death offered to the Father has as its fruit the redemption and salvation of every man. The mystery is great.

But now I am going to the one who sent me, and not one of you asks me, ‘Where are you going?’ But because I told you this, grief has filled your hearts. But I tell you the truth, it is better for you that I go. For if I do not go, the Advocate will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you. And when he comes he will convict the world in regard to sin and righteousness and condemnation: sin, because they do not believe in me; righteousness, because I am going to the Father and you will no longer see me; condemnation, because the ruler of this world has been condemned. Coming of the Advocate.

Jesus is not from his heart and never from the heart of men. The human heart sees an immediate, futile, vain and often even sinful profit. Jesus is always from the heart of the Father, who, in the eternal wisdom of the Holy Spirit, sees eternal good for man and according to this good he always works. God does not act for ephemeral, but for eternal goods. The eternal good is the eternal life of man. The Apostles of the Lord are also sent to the world not to realize ephemeral goods, but to produce the eternal good of redemption and salvation that is accomplished by announcing the Gospel, inviting every man to conversion, baptizing those who believe in the name of the Father and the Son and of the Holy Spirit and forming the invisible and visible body of Christ. Body of invisible Christ and body of visible Christ must be one body. You never have to think them separable. The Apostles are sent into the world to form the visible body of Jesus.

Mother of God, Angels and Saints, arrange that the invisible body never separates from the visible body.