"Our anguish is our treasure: it can tear us apart in a vertical cry" (Fabrice Hajdadj)

(17.03.2024)

1. When I am warned that the end of the world is but a year away, I will not give up loving my wife, having another child with her, making my other five children discover the poetry of Dante... Because I know that this life is not for having a future, but for each of us to have eternal life" (Fabrice Hajdadj). Meditating on the New Covenant of which the biblical texts speak today, I was reminded of this young Arab philosopher convert of whom I offer a few brief excerpts. We begin with the second reading from the Letter to the Hebrews (5:7-9), addressed to Christians of Jewish origin: the author explains the Christian faith from the Jewish faith and their knowledge of the Old Testament. The aim is to show that with Christ, human history has reached its definitive stage: the Old Covenant is now superseded by the New Covenant announced by Jeremiah in the first reading: "Behold, the days will come when I will make a New Covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah". In Christ, this New and Eternal Covenant is fulfilled because he is both fully man and fully God, and thus able to reconcile God with humanity in himself. Subject to death as a man, Jesus experiences suffering and anguish. In fact, the author writes: "Christ, in the days of his earthly life, offered up prayers and supplications with loud cries and tears to God who could save him from death and, because of his full surrender to him, he was heard. How was he heard if Jesus was crucified as an evildoer?  Let us pause for a moment in Gethsemane where, after the Last Supper, he prays to the Father in solitude and even anguish. This is how the synoptic gospels describe him as pleading: 'Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me'! It is clear that Jesus desires to be delivered from death, he expressly asks for it, but his prayer does not stop at lament, it instead flows into total abandonment: "Yet not my will but your will be done" (Lk. 22.42).  The Father's wish comes before mine! And here we can well perceive a first great teaching. Jesus shows eternal trust in the Father; and when we speak here of "his full surrender to the Father" it corresponds to the obedience of which we have many references in the Bible: in short, it is a matter of total trust in God because he alone knows what is good for us. And Jesus wanted to convey this filial abandonment to us in the prayer of our Father: 'Father, thy will be done'. That is, we ask to desire the fulfilment of divine projects that go far beyond the horizon of our days and even history and are projects of love directed towards our true and eternal happiness. Moreover, on closer inspection, Christ's prayer was doubly answered: by his death the salvation of the world was accomplished and he was raised from the Father. 

2. The author of the Letter to the Hebrews adds that he "learned obedience from what he suffered". The verb used -learned- helps us to think that Jesus, like every human being, had to walk the path of suffering and anguish before death and his humanity was confronted with two different attitudes: fear of God and trust in God. But he did not abandon his trust in the God of life, and it is well for this reason that his path led him to the resurrection. At Caesarea Philippi he had taken care to warn the disciples that he would have to go to Jerusalem, suffer greatly from the elders of the people, the scribes, be put to death and on the third day rise again.  Peter then, pulling him aside, began to rebuke him harshly: 'God forbid, Lord! This will never happen to you", and Jesus reacted in a rush: "Get away from me, Satan! You are a scandal to me. Thou hast no sense of the things of God, but of the things of men" (Matt 16:21-23). In Gethsemane Jesus submitted himself in everything to the will of the Father and because of this total abandonment - concludes the short text of the letter to the Hebrews that today offers us the second reading - he was made perfect and "became the cause of eternal salvation for all those who obey him". Eternal salvation consists in knowing God, the God who makes us live by his infinite love. Lent is a time of spiritual training because, when we find ourselves in the most difficult situations of life, we learn obedience, which consists in keeping faith in God always, in spite of everything. Jesus advised the disciples to watch and pray so as not to yield to the power of temptation, which does not mean "if you pray God will keep you from temptation", but rather, know that the true meaning of prayer is to stay in touch with God at all times. Beware, however, of another frequent temptation: that of not trusting God and thinking that he is disinterested in us in difficulties. Rather, he wants us to freely manifest every desire to God, like a son to his father, but at the same time to say in faith: 'Nevertheless, not my will but yours be done'. 

3. The human heart thirsts for hope and always has. To a discouraged people, the prophet Jeremiah reminded, "Behold, days will come...". This helps us to understand that the entire history of salvation is stretching towards an infinite and eternal future and that God's promises will always be fulfilled. Throughout the Old Testament, the Lord entrusts the prophets with the task of sentinels who watch in the night for the dawn of the new day and are capable of interpreting reality, ready to correct when it serves the people harshly for their faults. Their characteristic, however, is always to be able to grasp the budding shoots of newness: 'Behold, the days will come when I will make a New Covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah'. It is no coincidence that the word 'Covenant' recurs so often from the first chapter of Genesis to the last chapter of Revelation, that it could be the very title of the Bible: instead of 'Old Testament' it would be better to say 'Old Covenant' and instead of 'New Covenant' to translate 'New Covenant'. The current term 'Testament' comes from someone who translated the word covenant in Greek into the Latin word 'Testamentum', which in our languages suggests an act to be performed at a notary. Testament of love, as some translate it or Covenant, the characteristic of the Jewish faith as of the Christian faith consists in this Covenant: God chose to reveal himself by choosing a people and entrusting them with the mission to be his witness among and for all the other peoples of the universe. And he has always remained true to his word despite the recurring infidelity of us human beings. The expression "New Covenant" certainly does not indicate that he has changed his mind, that is, it is not a different Covenant from the first, but a new stage of the same Covenant, which, however, has something totally new: in short, a Covenant that is always the same but lived differently and which he summarises as follows: "I will put my law within them, I will write it in their hearts". If the Sinai Covenant was engraved on stone tablets and then on parchments and books, but often remained a dead letter, now the Lord wants it to enter the human heart and become intimate to our life, like a second nature of ours. But for this to happen the heart must be changed, and so here is the promise: "All will know me from the least to the greatest" because "I will be their God and they will be my people". It is surprising that God uses the verb "to know" which in the Bible takes on the meaning of the intimate conjugal relationship between bridegroom and bride. He does this because the gift of the New Covenant is knowledge of love: whoever accepts it knows God in his reality of love and by practising the Law with a generous heart sucks from it like nourishing milk the secret of happiness.

4. What makes this offer of love more important is the fact that the expression "New Covenant" is found only once in the Old Testament, and Jeremiah uses it here, although other prophets announce this same hope in different ways. For example, Ezekiel, in an oft-quoted text, prophesies: "I will give you a new heart, I will put a new spirit within you, I will remove from you the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh (Ez 36:26-27). And when Jeremiah proclaims: "Behold, the days are coming...", he is speaking of the days that have already come with Jesus, who, in instituting the Eucharist in the Upper Room, expressly referred to Jeremiah's words, as St Luke writes: "In the same way, after he had eaten dinner, he took the cup, saying: 'This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you'. (Lk 22:20). By giving all of himself in the Eucharistic sacrament, Jesus transforms our heart of stone into a heart of warm flesh, a heart capable of love. Christ, however, "paid" for this gift with his sacrifice on the cross, which a few days earlier he had foretold with the prophetic words that we find today in the gospel: Verily, verily, I say unto you, if the grain of wheat which falls into the earth does not die, it remains alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit. "Jn 12:23-24). It may seem strange that the evangelist John calls Jesus' passion-death "the hour of his glorification" and the verb glorify returns frequently in today's Gospel passage. But be careful not to get confused with glory, which in current parlance is a sign of victory, prestige and celebrity. In the Bible, the glory of God simply indicates His presence and when Jesus proclaims: "Father glorify Thy name", we could translate: "Make Thyself known, reveal Thyself as Thou art in this New Covenant sanctioned in the eternity of love". Proof of this divine love is the fact that the Only-Begotten Son accepted not only to become man, but even to offer Himself as a sacrifice on the cross. And since then, the cross, from being an instrument of hatred and pain, has become for Christians the throne of the triumph of Love. We realise that the hour has come when, turning our gaze towards the crucified Christ, we can discover the infinite love of the Trinity! In silence, contemplating the cross, we understand that the pedagogy of divine revelation over centuries and millennia is aimed at the spread and acceptance of this New Covenant by every people and nation. The proclamation resounded in heaven: "I have glorified him and I will glorify him again!" - Jesus tells us today in the gospel - it is "a voice that came not for me, but for you". For us and for all men.

Amen! 

Happy Sunday + Giovanni D'Ercole

For further reflection.

*The stages of faith. Psychologists who study our religious behaviour recognise three stages in spiritual growth. The first stage is to relate to God like a child who only knows his desires and whims, then stamps his feet, protests, cries and demands. And it is as if he were saying: 'My will be done'. The second stage is when one becomes aware of one's structural inadequacy to fulfil all one's desires on one's own and then one prays to God to help us and our prayer becomes: 'May my will be done with your help, God'. Finally, the third is the stage of faith, that is, of total trust in God's plan and full surrender to his will, and one prays, albeit with effort, but with a sincere heart: 'Father, let not my will but your will be done'. 

* Fabrice Hadjadj, a young French philosopher born in Nanterre to Jewish parents of Tunisian origin and Maoist convictions, describes himself as "a Jew of Arabic name and Catholic confession". Thunderstruck before a crucifix in the church of Saint-Séverin - in the centre of Paris - he received Baptism in the famous abbey of Solesmes. Here are some short texts of his to get to know him better.  

*How did my conversion to Christianity come about? So, if Christianity or, rather, Christ himself is the Truth, as I believe, another question to ask is: how did it happen that I did not become a Christian earlier? What were the obstacles that prevented me from approaching a mystery that is reality itself? To tell you the truth, I don't like to talk much about my conversion. For two reasons, mainly. The first is that God converts us with the whole creation. One is converted first of all because one breathes, because of the primordial poem of breathing, as Rainer Maria Rilke would say. And then because the sun rises, the flowers are beautiful, the sun guides us, our mother smiled at us... But there is not only beauty, there is also this despair so deep that it assures us that we cannot give joy to ourselves and must therefore cry out to a Saviour. Then everything comes together, the good and the bad, so that we can turn to God. 

Then there is a second reason for my reticence. To present oneself as converted often means to enter into a triumphalist discourse: here I am, I have arrived! Now, conversion is not a conclusion, but a beginning. It commits us to convert again, deeper and deeper, until the final conversion, at the hour of death. In the end, now, I am a Catholic! But if this does not happen except to live charity, then I become worse than I was before. I take advantage of the riches of Christ for my own small gain and pride. I can relate one of the events in my intellectual journey that put me in the disposition to encounter the Crucified One. I was reflecting on technique, starting with Martin Heidegger and Georges Bataille. That is, on this technique that proposes to us to fabricate a pacified man by neurochemistry, virtuality, biogenetics... So, I had the intuition that our anguish is our treasure: it can tear us apart in a vertical cry. On the other hand, the origin of our anguish cannot come simultaneously from the side of death and that of Heaven. It is this pressure from Heaven that makes us hope for a greater happiness than this world and makes us experience this world in its extreme precariousness. The body, in its weakness, the suffering body, man in his tragic condition, all seemed to me to be greater than these superhumans stuffed with wealth and doped up for the result. At that point I was ready to listen to Ecce homo.

* True humility does not consist in prostrating oneself. It consists in letting God put us back on our feet".

* "The apostles were men of trades and the Benedictines chose the motto Ora et labora. Thus the great Christian authors think of the economy of salvation rather than a project of social transformation or political palingenesis. Without any resignation to injustice". *"Dostoevsky's question about the possibility of the Christian faith of "civilised man" is now overtaken by the crisis of atheistic humanism. The great utopias are over, we can no longer project ourselves into the distant times. The return of the faces'.