What will there be for us?

11 JULY (Mt 19,27-29)

When every man still lives in his small, frail humanity he seeks securities and certainties from God. He wants to base his life on valid hopes. The first to look for these hopes is Abraham. His dialogue with God reveals and attests still his smallness and fragility. But the Lord always comes to the aid of his children.

Some time after these events, this word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision: “Fear not, Abram! I am your shield; I will make your reward very great.” But Abram said, “O Lord GOD, what good will your gifts be, if I keep on being childless and have as my heir the steward of my house, Eliezer?” Abram continued, “See, you have given me no offspring, and so one of my servants will be my heir.” Then the word of the Lord came to him: “No, that one shall not be your heir; your own issue shall be your heir.” He took him outside and said: “Look up at the sky and count the stars, if you can. Just so,” he added, “shall your descendants be.” Abram put his faith in the Lord, who credited it to him as an act of righteousness. He then said to him, “I am the Lord who brought you from Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land as a possession.” “O Lord GOD,” he asked, “How am I to know that I shall possess it?” He answered him, “Bring me a three-year-old heifer, a three-year-old she-goat, a three-year-old ram, a turtle-dove, and a young pigeon.” He brought him all these, split them in two, and placed each half opposite the other; but the birds he did not cut up. Birds of prey swooped down on the carcasses, but Abram stayed with them. As the sun was about to set, a trance fell upon Abram, and a deep, terrifying darkness enveloped him. Then the Lord said to Abram: “Know for certain that your descendants shall be aliens in a land not their own, where they shall be enslaved and oppressed for four hundred years. But I will bring judgment on the nation they must serve, and in the end they will depart with great wealth. You, however, shall join your forefathers in peace; you shall be buried at a contented old age. In the fourth time-span the others shall come back here; the wickedness of the Amorites will not have reached its full measure until then.” When the sun had set and it was dark, there appeared a smoking brazier and a flaming torch, which passed between those pieces. It was on that occasion that the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying: “To your descendants I give this land, from the Wadi of Egypt to the Great River (the Euphrates), the land of the Kenites, the Kenizzites, the Kadmonites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites, and the Jebusites” (Gen 15,1-20).

We know that Abraham then grew up in the faith and no longer seeks any assurance or guarantee about his future from the Lord. Abraham knows that only God is his real future. Only in Him one must build his own existence. At this time Peter is living the same experience of Abraham. He search assurances, hopes and certainties from Jesus. However, this looking, asking and requesting is still the result of his smallness and fragility in the faith. When he is an adult, grows up, then he will not longer ask his Master for anything, because he will have learned that the Master is his future, not the things of this world. Never might the earth be a source of real hope for anyone.

Then Peter said to him in reply, “We have given up everything and followed you. What will there be for us?” Jesus said to them, “Amen, I say to you that you who have followed me, in the new age, when the Son of Man is seated on his throne of glory, will yourselves sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. And everyone who has given up houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or lands for the sake of my name will receive a hundred times more, and will inherit eternal life.

Jesus assures Peter doubly. At the regeneration of the world, that is, at the time of resurrection, they together with Jesus, will sit on twelve thrones and judge the twelve tribes of Israel. The Lord gives them this great glory, which is his alone and no one else’s. There will be perfect communion between Christ and his disciples. Together on earth, together in poverty, together on the cross, together in the resurrection and together in the glory. Christ and his disciples are one, not two. But even during this life they must not fear. The Lord will give them a hundred times over the value of all they have left. Jesus will multiply in their hearts by a hundred the joy that one thing or person could give. That is, it will be with no measure, full. Nothing will be missing them. Their heart will always be full, it will never lack in anything.

Virgin Mary, Mother of the Redemption, Angels and Saints make us strong in faith.