Homily for the Feast of Blessed Fr. Alberione
Rome, November 26, 2024
1Cor 9:16-23; Jn 14:1-14
Dear brothers and sisters,
may the Lord give you peace!
Fr. Alberione was an apostle of what we now call the new evangelization long before the term came into use. He recognized early on that the media, both in his time and even more so today, serves as a vital space for connecting the world with God. Since God revealed Himself through the Word, it was essential to be present wherever the Word was created and shared. We live in a world saturated not only with images but also with an abundance of words, with social media inundating us daily with messages of every kind. Therefore, it was necessary to be there in that new digital world, making it a priority to bring the Word of God into this modern media environment.
That is why we gather here today: to honor a saint and a blessed work that, over the years, has brought comfort, blessings, and support to generations of believers worldwide. It has made the Word of God accessible and understandable, drawing us closer to the person of Jesus with ever-deepening insight.
The Gospel takes us a step further in understanding what we are celebrating today. In this passage Jesus affirms that He is the gateway to the knowledge of God: “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (Jn. 14:6). He, moreover, presents Himself as an indissoluble unity with God the Father, “I am in the Father and the Father is in me” (Jn. 14:11).
If we think about it, these are unheard-of statements. We hear them so often that we may no longer truly notice or reflect on them. This Gospel passage reveals to us who God is and how we can come to Him, how to connect with Him. God, the unapproachable and invisible Otherness, here becomes close and tangible. Jesus is the Face of God, and by contemplating Him we contemplate God and have access to the understanding of Truth.
This passage continues to pose and will always pose a beautiful dilemma for interfaith dialogue: how to dialogue with other faiths if Jesus is the only way to experience God and His salvation. If there is no other way to know the Truth apart from Jesus? The notion of a vague, universal truth to which all religions offer some overlapping testimony is entirely foreign to Christianity.
The answer to this question is that while it is obviously true that many Christians and churches have been arrogant in the way they have presented the gospel, the whole setting of this passage shows that such arrogance is a denial of the very truth it claims to present. The truth, the life, through which we know and find the way, is Jesus himself. Not an abstract or generic Jesus, but the Jesus who washes the disciples' feet and asks them to follow his example, that Jesus who is about to give his life as a shepherd for the sheep. Let us not forget that this speech of Jesus is delivered in the Upper Room, after the washing of feet, on the eve of his passion. There is therefore nothing arrogant in it. It is only in recovering the courage to follow Jesus in the mission and vocation indicated in the Upper Room that we will also be able to fully understand the meaning of that unheard-of statement: I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.
If this is not understood, we will not even be able to understand the vision of the Father that the entire passage presents to us. Let us look at Jesus, the one weeping at his friend's grave, the one washing the feet of his followers, and we will know who the true God is. This was Jesus' response to Philip's beautiful request, “Lord, show us the Father and that is enough” (Jn. 14:8). It is his answer to the spontaneous questions that still arise in our hearts today. When Jesus, after washing his disciple's feet, says “I am the Way”, he shows us the specific way to know, reach out, and show the Father. It is only by following the example of what Jesus did in the Upper Room that our words about God will carry credibility. Only then can we truly reflect and reveal the authentic Face of God the Father.
After all, if we think about it for a moment, this is the story of all of us. In Philip's question lies our every vocation: to seek and contemplate the Face of God. Usually, this search begins with lofty and sublime projects, with extraordinary dedication and impulses, only to collide with our own humanity and that of those we meet on our path. And so, little by little, to bring into sharper focus the image of that Face, which corresponds less and less to the ideal image we had initially made for ourselves, we lower our sights, and discover more and more that His Face is to be found in the daily ability to forgive one another, in the imperfect and swinging love of our hearts, in the face of our brother and sister so different and distant from us, in the never fully fulfilled desire for encounter.
Well, in that imperfect loving one another, in the strenuous washing of one another's feet, lived with a sincere desire for truth, free as much as possible from all forms of possession, in that very way we experience Jesus and contemplate the Face of God.
This Gospel passage is reminiscent of a psalm verse that says, “I am just—let me see your face;
when I awake, let me be filled with your presence.” (Ps 17:15). Biblical righteousness consists in keeping the commandments, in doing God's will. And in this very long farewell discourse, Jesus delivers his commandment, that of love, and makes known to us his will (13:34). In the Gospel we find the presentation of the highest form of justice, by which the relationship between God and man is restored in its harmony, on the cross, when Jesus gives his life by forgiving his crucifiers. It is by loving one another, then, that we fulfill all righteousness and contemplate the face of God.
It is in the Holy Spirit that we will acquire this new and redeemed gaze on the world and on life, the ability to love the Church and our brothers and sisters despite everything, with the freedom of one who already contemplates the Face of God and lives in expectation of the fullness of the encounter with Him.
That is what we extremely need today, not only in the Holy Land. In that context of deep hatred, of contempt, of general mistrust, we need to look to the Father through the person of Jesus, through the cross, through the capacity for forgiveness, for a free look at the world and our neighbor, without letting ourselves be overwhelmed by fears that instead paralyze.
We have the tool par excellence, to be guided in this journey: the Word of God. In it we find nourishment, guidance, and support. In the events of ancient Israel and the primitive Christian community, in the dialogues of Jesus, and in his gestures, we find what we also need today to make unity in life, to define the criteria for interpreting what happens around us, for our small and great life choices.
With this new edition of the Bible in Arabic, I am sure that our Christian community in the Holy Land will also have one more tool to navigate within the vicissitudes and storms that have always accompanied it in that blessed and tormented Land.
May the Word of God accompany the journey of us all and give us the strength of temperance and fortitude in these controversial times. Amen.
+Pierbattista
Unofficial translation - for all quotations, please use the original text in Italian - Translated by the Latin Patriarchate Media Office