III SUNDAY OF EASTER

Sunday, April 14, 2024
Luke 24:35-48

“And he said to them, “Thus it is written that the Messiah would suffer and rise from the dead on the third day and that repentance, for the forgiveness of sins, would be preached in his name to all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem’”
(Luke 24:46-47)

If we had to summarize in one word the gift that Jesus gives us, we could truly say: forgiveness! This message of salvation and joy spreads “beginning from Jerusalem”! It is not just a city, but a sanctuary, the very altar where the Son of God was sacrificed and rose again after three days.

To understand more deeply the secret of Jerusalem, it must be related to another symbolic city: Babylon. In the Bible, they are not just two cities, but two theological concepts and two opposing worlds, in a dualism that will last until one of them disappears! The word Babylon comes from the Hebrew babel, and to understand it, we must go back in time. when people said: “Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower with its top in the sky, and so make a name for ourselves” (Gen 11:4). Through a great tower, they wanted to reach God. It is therefore a symbol of pride, arrogance, and haughtiness… God did not agree with this project, so he dispersed and confused them, preventing them from reaching their goal. Why? Because He held in His heart something different, that is inconceivable to the human mind, a will that is already glimpsed with the request made to Abraham to sacrifice the son of promise, the beloved Isaac. According to biblical tradition, this event took place on Mount Moriah (cf. 2 Chr 3:1), which is the very place where the Temple would later be built and where, finally, the Son of God would be sacrificed: Jerusalem!

Thus, Babylon represents humanity that, more or less openly, wants to take the place of God and save itself: flesh that makes itself God. In contrast, Jerusalem is the symbol that reminds us of God’s will to dwell in us, to enter into the details of our lives, to face with us the small and great challenges that arise daily. Jerusalem-Bethlehem represents humanity that obediently awaits God’s saving plan: God who becomes flesh, the Emmanuel.

May the mentality of Jerusalem grow more and more in our hearts, and as we open ourselves to the forgiveness that springs from it, may we ourselves become channels of forgiveness!

Fr. Giuseppe