Mauro Giuseppe Lepori
There Is a Man who Longs for Life and Desires Happy Days
The Abbot of the Cistercian Monastery of Hauterive (Switzerland),
author
of the title of the Meeting. The testimony of the fulfillment of the promise.God
begging
for the desire for happiness in man’s heart. Only the witness to Christ
succeeds in going completely into this desire
“Is there a man who desires life and longs for happy days?” (see
Psalm 33:13). The idea of the theme of this year’s Meeting was triggered
by the theme of two years ago: “All of life asks for eternity.” It
resonated in me–I would say–as the expression of an anxiety, of a
concern, of a worry for today’s man. “All of life asks for eternity”:
human life is great, it is an immense mystery, it is called to a fullness without
end. But when we look at man, man as we meet him on the street, on the train,
in the workplace, at school, on vacation, in families; when we look at young
people, when we look at people’s faces... we wonder, “Is there really
a man who desires life and longs for happy days?!” Where is he, who is
the man today who wants to live fully, who desires happiness, true happiness,
the happiness that has no end? Has modern culture maybe succeeded in shaping
and spreading a type of man who does not live his own life, a man satisfied with
disappointment, content with sadness; a man no joy can surprise any more, whom
no joy, obtained or awaited, can mobilize? Maybe we no longer desire happiness?...
Fullness of life
It is important, first of all, to note that St Benedict puts our verse from Psalm
33 in God’s mouth. The Lord moves about among the multitude of men asking, “Is
there a man who desires life and longs for happy days?” At the origin of
everything, then, there is not our heart’s desire for life and happiness,
but God who desires the fullness of our life. God sets Himself to begging for
the desire for happiness in man’s heart. God moves about in the midst of
the crowd and shouts out, like a street vendor, His desire to find a man who
wants fullness of life and wants to be happy, a man who wants to live in joy.
God searches for this man as “His worker,” as one for whom He has
established a task. And yet, the condition set for answering His call, the condition
for living the human vocation and every particular vocation, the condition for
being useful to God, is not aptitudes, abilities, or merits, but simply the desire
for life and happiness, the desire for the fullness of life. Our fundamental
vocation is God’s call as He begs for our desire for happiness. …
“
I do”: it seems the simplest thing to say and to affirm. It seems so simple,
so taken for granted that man will say, “I do,” if someone asks him
if he wants life and happiness. And yet, it is precisely in that “I do,” in
that simple answer, “I do,” that everything gets stuck, and it is
as though God found Himself shouting His “Here I am, I am here to give
you life and happiness!” in a desert without souls, without faces, without
desire. Ever since the first sin, man has had a hard time saying “I do,” because
you cannot say “I” without putting yourself in front of a “You,” without
ontologically depending on a “You.” When God says to man, “Here
I am, right here!”, He announces Himself as the “You” in front
of whom man can say “I.” The happiness that God promises and offers
is not a feeling: it is a fullness of life, the fullness of our being human,
of our human “I.”…
Contemporary man
A scene from the Gospel seems to me to describe the situation in which we find
ourselves, and the vanishing point on a horizon of hope. It is the scene of the
meeting between Jesus and a wealthy young man who at first seems thirsty for
fullness (“Good master, what must I do to have eternal life?”), but
goes away sadly when Jesus, looking at him with love, proposes he abandon all
his riches in order to follow Him (Mk 10:17-22). This young man is the very image
of contemporary man who lets himself be moved for a while by a yearning for fullness,
but in front of a real proposal for life he is deflated, as though he said to
himself, “In any case, my destiny is death!”…
Jesus seems at first to want to underline the desperation of that refusal by
saying, “How hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom
of God!” (Mk 10:23). The disciples feel judged by the young man’s
departure and ask Jesus a desperate question: “Then who can be saved?” (Mk
10:26). But Jesus, as though He too were recovering from an instinctive discouragement,
states, firmly and confidently: “For mortals it is impossible, but not
for God; for God all things are possible.” (Mk 10:27). …
God can do nothing against the freedom of the man who turns his back on Him;
but no refusal by man can keep God’s freedom from loving him, sacrificing
Himself. God’s love surpasses man’s freedom in order to offer him,
beyond his refusal, room for an expectation, a gratuitousness, that revives human
freedom corrupted by sin, restoring to it room for responsibility. …
The event of the opening of Christ’s heart is so fundamental for man that
the Risen One would propose it again to the experience of the disciples. In the
Gospel of John, the first gesture of the Risen One when He appears to the Apostles
is to show them His hands and side. It is as though the Risen Christ wanted the
Apostles to understand immediately that now man’s life and happiness pour
forth from His pierced heart, from His mercy, because it is right at this moment
that the Apostles are sent into the world as living foundations of the Church: “As
the Father has sent me, so I send you” (Jn 20:21). …
Christ’s witnesses
This is the scandal that for 2,000 years has been burning the conscience of the
whole world, because it is as though the life and happiness of all were in the
hands of the most despised of men. There is no person in power, no emperor, no
sage of this world who can live in fullness without entrusting himself to and
believing in the testimony of those whom Christ has chosen to manifest Him as
risen from the dead, to reveal His open heart, and to whom to entrust the work
of the mercy of the Spirit until the end of time. This is why, for 2,000 years,
the Church has been loved and hated, welcomed and persecuted. The world hates
the Church because it does not forgive her for being the open and gratuitous–but
irreplaceable–treasure chest of the fullness of life for every man. …
The question posed by Psalm 33, “Is there a man who desires life and longs
for happy days?”, in order not to be a cynical, cruel question, in order
not to be a meaningless question, has to be expressed by someone who is Christ’s
witness. It would be cynical to arouse the desire for life and joy in a world
of death and woe without proposing a reality that is life and joy for man–a
reality seen with our eyes, touched with our hands, and yet surpassing the limitation
of our existence: the Word of life made flesh all the way to death on the cross,
and then risen from the dead. Only the witness to the Risen One is fit to propose
to man the hope of a life and happiness that hold up under the comparison with
the shadows of the destiny of death that looms over the world. …
The martyr, the witness to Christ, goes all the way to the heart of the desire
for life and happiness that God has put into man’s heart. The martyr is
the man who says, “I do,” with such truth and power that he can say
it also for others, because the life that the martyr wants and welcomes, to the
point of dying to himself for it, is Jesus Christ, the life of all, the fullness
of life for every man.