The prince of this world is determined to lay hold of me and to undermine my will which is intent on God. Let none of you here help him; instead show yourselves on my side, which is also God’s side. Do not talk about Jesus Christ as long as you love this world. Do not harbor envious thoughts. And supposing I should see you, if then I should beg you to intervene on my behalf, do not believe what I say. Believe instead what I am now writing to you. For though I am alive as I write to you, still my real desire is to die. My love of this life has been crucified, and there is no yearning in me for any earthly thing. Rather within me is the living water which says deep inside me: “Come to the Father.” I no longer take pleasure in perishable food or in the delights of this world. I want only God’s bread, which is the flesh of Jesus Christ, formed of the seed of David, and for drink I crave his blood, which is love that cannot perish.
(Congregation For Institutes Of Consecrated Life And Societies Of Apostolic Life)
The Service Of Authority And Obedience
In the following of Jesus, the obedient Son of the Father
8. On this journey we are not alone: we are guided by the example of Christ, the Beloved on whom the Father's favor rests (Mt 3:17; 17:5), but also he who has freed us thanks to his obedience. It is he who inspires our obedience in order that the divine plan of salvation be completed through us.
In him everything is a listening to and acceptance of the Father (cf. Jn 8:28-29); all of his earthly life is an expression and continuation of what the Word does from eternity: letting himself be loved by the Father, accepting his love in an unconditional way, to the point of deciding to do nothing by himself (cf. Jn 8:28) but to do always what is pleasing to the Father. The will of the Father is the food which sustains Jesus in his work (cf. Jn 4:34) and which merits for Him and for us the superabundance of the resurrection, the luminous joy of entering into the very heart of God, into the blessed company of his children (cf. Jn 1:12). It is by this obedience of Jesus that “all shall become just” (Rm 5:19).
He also lived obedience when it presented a difficult chalice to drink (cf. Mt 26:39, 42; Lk 22:42), and he made himself “obedient to the point of death, and death on a cross” (Phil 2:8). This is the dramatic aspect of the obedience of the Son wrapped in a mystery which we can never totally penetrate, but which for us is very relevant, because it uncovers for us even more the filial nature of Christian obedience: only the child who senses himself loved by the Father and loves him with his whole self, can arrive at this type of radical obedience.
