Fr. Bantu Mendonça writes from Angola

Jesus is a person uncomfortable yesterday, today and forever. The motivation for this inconvenience is that Jesus speaks, he speaks the truth and the truth is demanding, it concerns the life and focuses on human behavior: “I and the Father are one. ”

He reveals that the people – who took part in the festivities, hurrying around the Jewish Temple- in fact, are made part of His sheep, called to hear his words and to follow him. God, His Father, was He who gave them, and nobody will stay the hand of the Father. Jesus thus discredits the religious leaders of Israel, with its Temple and the synagogues, in considering themselves true pastors. They, oppressing and exploiting the people are rejecting Jesus, and thus is excluded from the gift that communicates the Father through His only begotten Son.

It is the truth that Jesus brings, the great newness, it is who He is the Song of God. His identity is of divine origin.

His divine Sonship makes it difficult to accept that those who want to understand on a human and rational level and thus are not open to transcendence. Therefore, the unrest and question of the chief of the Sanhedrin: “Are you the Messiah, the Blessed Son of God?”

Before this question, Jesus responded: “I am” (Mk 14:61b-62a) affirming that the Messiah is the Son of God, the Jewish religious world, with its leaders, seemed to have just caused an “earthquake” such that he provoked his detractors the total panic of losing the religious and political power, their social and familiar state. The reaction was flat: death.

Jesus provokes “earthquakes” still today in persons and in people, confronting ideologies and post modern thinking. He provokes equally in society, with His denunciation against permissiveness and relativistic with his strong calls to recognize the dignity of men, made to the image and similarity of God and redeemed by Jesus Christ, Salvador and Redeemer.

In the first place-in all the Gospels—Jesus made the self proclamation expressed in his Union with the Father. The work of Jesus is made in unity with the Father. This work to which we are called, is the gift of love and of eternal life. It may be my brother, my sister, one with Jesus. Turn yourself into a gift, into grace in the love of life.

Father Bantu Mendonça

translated from Portuguese