A Liberating Attractiveness

By Julián Carrón - God had created the first ones, man and woman, in a close relationship with Him, in a unique closeness, in a boundless familiarity. So true is it that "The Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and placed there the man whom He had fashioned" (Gen. 2:8). The familiarity was such that the "Lord God walked [with them] in the garden in the breeze of the day" (Gen 3:8). This is how man was created, in this unique relationship, beyond imagery. 

They could have remained in this familiarity. It was simple, they only had to adhere to the attraction of that presence that had made them and surrounded them with this unique preference! But it had made them free. He could have created them with the capacity for a mechanical response, like the laws that govern the universe or the instinctive system of other beings. But He did not want slaves; He preferred to be loved by humans freely. We do not struggle to understand this: who would not want to be loved freely?

And therefore, the former had to decide. No one is spared in life the decision about how to live. The choice from the beginning is simple: do we achieve happiness through a relationship with another, or can we achieve it on our own? The first hypothesis is easily recognized by those who have had an emotional experience and those who fall in love. Nothing makes him more himself than to be loved and thus to respond with love to the other's giving. Fullness and happiness are in the free recognition of the one who makes him truly himself. 

Therefore, the affirmation of another is the fullness of self. There is only one alternative to this possibility, always at hand: thinking that I alone can achieve fullness by affirming myself—self-affirmation as the meaning of one's living. The first, man and woman, were like us faced with this alternative: to affirm another as the fullness of self (it was He who walked with them; they were in this familiarity with Him), or to affirm self as the fullness of living.

Even those who had experienced this fullness from the beginning because God had placed them in that totally unique, preferential place could not avoid it due to the fact that they were free, deciding. They, too, had to decide freely. Despite having experienced this unique preference, the temptation can also carry him away, "Can't I be more myself by doing my own thing, cutting off any relationship to affirm me?" This is the temptation that the evil one introduces to them. "If you do your own thing, you will be like God, master of yourself, creator of your happiness. You do not need to recognize another presence as your fullness. You are enough for yourself." Each person can recognize in his own experience which of the two options makes him more himself. We have seen which was the choice of the first.

Since then, we have been born into a world where relationships have been damaged, into which the suspicion has been introduced that perhaps we do better by doing our own thing. And we cannot free ourselves from the temptation to achieve wholeness by our strength, by our own plans, and by asserting ourselves.

We need one to deliver us from this deadly temptation, the struggle that Jesus waged with the tempter, as we heard in the Gospel. The miracles He performed, crushing demons, were a sign that the struggle had begun. The attraction of His presence challenged everyone: the crowds who came to see Him, His own and some of the relatives who thought He was out of His depth, the scribes who wanted to test Him. No one was exempt from having to decide that presence. All could see what It meant for their lives.

How does Jesus do that? He puts before us an attractiveness that liberates and makes us ourselves again. And the more attractive it is, the more each person is called upon to decide between God and Beelzebul. The Pharisees said. "Jesus was possessed by Beelzebul," Jesus, on the other hand, claimed that it was God who came to liberate us from the evil of suspicion that Beelzebul insinuated in each of us. Each was called to choose before Jesus. It is an alternative in which no one is spared, not even those closest.

"His mother and brothers came, and standing outside, they sent for him. Around him was sitting a crowd, and they said to him, 'Behold, your mother and your brothers and sisters are standing outside looking for you.' But he answered them [stunning everyone], "Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?" Turning his gaze to those around him, he said, "Here are my mother and brothers! For whoever does the will of God, he is brother and sister and mother to me.'" Who indulges that attraction? Those who, like those who listen to him, go along with him. So not only is the drama not over, but Jesus raises the ball even higher because he puts a more powerful attraction in front of everyone who meets him. 

But the drama continues even after Jesus-as St. Paul says in the second reading; it is not spared even for us who came later, as St. Paul says: "Brothers [we, who have been begotten], let us believe, convinced that he who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also [...] so that grace, increased by the work of many, may make the glory of God abound." 

The Christians, the believers St. Paul is addressing, had also received that gift. Still, the temptation of suspicion always knocks at the door through the things that do not fit.

St. Paul does not allow himself to be confused: we, in the face of tribulation, "are not discouraged" because "though our outward man is unraveling, our inward man, on the other hand, is being renewed." 

He who accepts the way the Mystery brings him to destiny and does not detach himself -- through suspicion -- from Him cannot avoid seeing the flourishing of living. "The outer man is unraveling, but the inner man is being renewed day by day." Therefore, the momentary and light burden of our tribulation provides us with an inordinate and eternal amount of glory, beauty, and attractiveness because it makes us partakers of the Eternal, not in the hereafter, but in time. 

Time is filled with that presence that truly makes us more ourselves. Like those before us, each of us is called to make a decision.

Unrevised notes and translation - Homily by Julián Carrón - Milan, June 9, 2024.