Appeal to Experience
Julián Cárrón - Seeing Him Alive
The beginning of the Exodus text is striking: "I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt." God's words to his people can only be understood because they appeal to the people's experience.
This appeal to experience is crucial in understanding the scope of anything we hear. Therefore, God never separates the statement, "I am the Lord your God," from the event in which they experienced this in history, "I brought you out of the land of Egypt."
How hollow God's words would sound without this inseparable connection between words and deeds! Just observe what happens in us when we hear someone saying to us, "I love you" and do not see those words confirmed by deeds that document their truth!
They just seem to us hollow and unreliable, so that we are left in disbelief. To avoid this risk, God always begins His relationship with man by taking the initiative with facts, such as the exodus from Egypt, so that His words could make sense to those who hear them, so that they may be completely convincing, pregnant to those who hear them so that they are truly trustworthy. This is the way He makes Himself known.
That is why the initial gesture of the exodus from Egypt was so revealing of Him that it defined the nature of the "God of Israel" as the "God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt." God cannot be separated from His action. When the child cries "Mum," he is saying a word that contains the whole history of his relationship with her.
This way of God's action is decisive not only at the beginning but at every moment. That is why the beginning, that original fact, that unique initiative, can never become "past." The beginning is "the source from which one can never depart" (Balthasar) in order to understand.
This is especially important to understanding the sense of the later commandments. "I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt" is the antefact of the sense of the commandments. Only with this fact before one's eyes will one be able to understand their sense, otherwise they become a to-do list to which they are often reduced, thus becoming incomprehensible and impracticable.
On the other hand, for those who are deeply moved by the liberation from Egypt, what could be more reasonable than to obey God’s commandment, “You shall have no other gods before me”? As Hans Urs von Balthasar stated, "Our freedom is inseparable from our having been liberated."
That event is the continuous origin of freedom, the satisfaction of the desire for wholeness that frees one from everything else. It is from there that the reason and energy can arise to keep the commandments: "You shall not bow down to them [other gods] and serve them [...]. You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain [...] You shall not kill. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal. You shall not covet your neighbor's house, nor his wife, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that belongs to your neighbor." How can these commandments be lived out with our weakness? Only because God fills life with such fullness, to the point of commotion, that we can be so free, so full, that we need not covet the house, the wife, the possessions of others to the point of stealing or committing adultery.
To remind us of this origin, God uses a tool: the Sabbatical rest, which is the gesture invented by God to educate us to always keep that event in mind to always experience that event as something present. But man does not remain in this original position, he is always falling back, clinging to the crumbs, trying to fill the emptiness that God no longer fills.
The Gospel documents how true this is: "He found people in the temple selling oxen, sheep, and doves, and money changers sitting there. He made a scourge of cords, and drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and the oxen; and he threw the money of the moneychangers to the ground, and overthrew their booths; and to the sellers of doves, he said, "Take these things out of here, and do not make my Father's house a marketplace. His disciples remembered that it is written, "Zeal for your house will devour me.
The Temple, the House of God, built for the sacred purpose of remembering that event and always honoring the memory of the God who showed Himself passionate for His people, is decaying into a marketplace or, as the prophet Jeremiah says, a "den of thieves." What remains of this liberating event? Because of this decay, the Old Testament documents in so many passages the longing that the prophets always expressed for a purification of the Temple in the Messianic times. It was a sign that this time would come.
The expulsion of the merchants from the Temple is the fulfillment of this longed-for purification. Jesus' gesture is meant to restore the true meaning of the temple as a place of remembrance, of worship of God, that this event is not just past, here is the "zeal for your house" that will consume Jesus. But it is still not understood, and his gesture arouses the opposition of the Jews, who had been the first to experience God's initiative with his people, confirming how far they had already detached themselves from the origin of their history.
The beginning was so far in the past that they could not understand Jesus' initiative. And so they pressed him: "How are you doing these things? What sign do you show us to do these things?" Jesus responds by giving them a sign that they do not understand, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up." But they could not understand such a challenging answer, so far beyond their ability to understand, as evidenced by the reply, "This temple was built in forty-six years, and you will raise it up in three days?" "But he spoke of the temple of his body.
When he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this, and they believed the Scripture and the word that Jesus spoke." The true temple will be revealed only with the resurrection of Christ. This fact will show what is the true fulfillment of the temple cleansing, what is the place where we can truly reach God. Not a temple built by us, but the temple created by God, which is the body of Jesus. Only this new temple will be able to ensure that the beginning does not become the past. The risen Christ will always be present in our midst.
But in anticipation of this fulfilled realization, the signs in the present provoked the freedom of those who saw them, and some believed: "While he was in Jerusalem at the Passover, during the feast, many who saw the signs he did believe in his name." But this belief was considered unreliable by Jesus. In fact, the Gospel continues, "Jesus did not trust them because he knew everyone and did not need anyone to testify about the man. For he knew what was in the man.
This drama that Jesus introduces into history to provoke man's reason and freedom will continue throughout human history, as St. Paul shows us. For some this way of God's acting is a scandal, for others foolishness. "Brothers, the Jews ask for signs, and the Greeks seek wisdom, but we, on the other hand," St. Paul says after the event of the encounter with the risen Christ, "proclaim Christ crucified: scandal to the Jews and foolishness to the Gentiles. Only "those who are called, both Jews and Greeks," will be able to understand that "Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God."
Only those who are called, those who have had the grace to participate in the Christ event and are bold enough to test God's method, will be able to see in experience, as St. Paul did, that "Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God. And that "the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. Only Christ, dear brethren, "the power of God," is the fulfillment of that liberation that began in Egypt. He alone is able to free us forever. This is the liberation to which each one of us is called.
* This text compiles several homilies delivered by Julián Carrón during the Easter season of 2024. The sections are organized thematically rather than following the chronological order of the liturgy. This text is part of the document "Seeing Him Alive" from paginasdigital.es and has not been revised by the author.
Translation by Mo Caplin - EpochalChange.org
