2018-5-15

朋友们，在今天的福音中，耶稣升天前的祷文总结了祂绝妙的工作。耶稣本人是天上人间的汇合。天主和人性在祂身上合二为一，祂整个传道工作都是这个内在身份的外在表现。通过团结四分五裂的以色列、邀请穷人共餐、医治身心疾病、把宽恕与爱之道具体化，耶稣把天主的旨意和目的带到人间。

 

通过受难和死亡，耶稣把天堂一直带到人间。祂把神圣的光辉带入人类最黑暗的处境——怨恨、残酷、暴力、腐败、愚昧、苦难和死亡——从而改造这一切。天堂能够改造人间的证据当然就是耶稣的复活。

 

于是，我们知道残酷、怨恨、暴力、恐惧、苦难和死亡不是人间最强大的力量。于是，我们知道神圣的爱更为强大。繁殖于人类黑暗转而又制造黑暗的世间王国在原则上已经被天国打破。

 

Friends, Jesus’ prayer in today’s Gospel sums up his wonderful work as he is about to return to his Father. Jesus was, in his very person, the meeting of heaven and earth. God and humanity came together in him, and his entire ministry was the outward expression of that inward identity. By calling a scattered Israel to unity, inviting the poor to table fellowship, healing the sick in body and heart, and embodying the path of forgiveness and love, Jesus was bringing God’s will and purpose to earth.

 

Now, in his Passion and Death, Jesus brought heaven all the way down into the world. He carried the divine light into the darkest places of the human condition—hatred, cruelty, violence, corruption, stupidity, suffering, and death itself—and thereby transformed them. And the proof that heaven is able to transform earth is, of course, the Resurrection.

 

Now we know that cruelty, hatred, violence, fear, suffering, and death are not the most powerful forces in the world. Now we know that the divine love is more powerful. God’s kingdom has, in principle, broken the kingdoms of the world, which thrive upon, and in turn produce, those very negativities.

 

2018-5-16

朋友们，在今天的福音中，耶稣祈祷：“我在世上讲这话，是为叫他们的心充满我的喜乐。”

 

灵魂的悲伤来自自我关注的沉重，这种悲伤和重量使我们无法与他人真正结合。另一方面，喜乐必定是三位一体内共享的主要“情绪”，因为三位的生活只有忘我的爱。喜乐就是随着这种极乐而来的，谁要是得到了天主的恩典及耶稣基督赐予教会之恩，他们身上的标志就是喜乐。

 

切斯特顿绝妙之言用于此处最合适不过：“伟大圣人的一个特征是他们有着飘浮空中的能力。天使们之所以能飞翔是因为他们并不看重自己。”能克服自重的阴郁悲伤和沉重、能使我们轻松飘然地飞翔的莫过于耶稣复活的意外和真实性。

 

Friends, in today’s Gospel Jesus prays, saying: “I speak this in the world so that they may share my joy completely.”

 

Sadness of soul follows from the heaviness of self-regard, a sadness and weight which precludes real union with the other. Joy, on the other hand, must be the principal “emotion” shared by the trinitarian persons, since their life is nothing but self-forgetting love. Joy, a concomitant of that ecstasy, is the mark of anyone caught in the loop of grace and the gift of Jesus Christ to his Church.

 

Chesterton’s magnificent comment is apposite here: “A characteristic of the great saints is their power of levity. Angels can fly because they can take themselves lightly.” And nothing so conquers the dull sadness and heaviness of self-regard—nothing so makes us fly with lightness and levity—as the surprise and facticity of the Resurrection.