"WHO DO YOU SAY I AM?"
Christ, Center of Vocation

I have heard many things about him. I have often spoken of him. But many times they have been only words, ideas, feelings and not my own convictions - not my true love for him.

Who is Jesus ?" Or better, "Who is Jesus to me ?" This is a question I am faced with during the most important moments of my life. The same question confronts me in the urgency of making serious decisions or when crises arrive, both with their fruits of joy and suffering.

Who is Jesus to me? I have, from long ago, given up trying to come up with a theoretical answer, even a beautiful one. Jesus is becoming my daily struggle; my solitary secret; the fountain of my pilgrim reconciliation. Nowadays I realize that without him my vocation as a man, as a priest and a missionary doesn't make any sense.

Who is Jesus for us? And what have we done of him?... Jesus Christ should be a perpetual surprise, a continuous fresh start. He is himself the most crucial question we will ever face. The only valid vocational discernment.

DREAMER", "GUERRILLA", OR "SUPERSTAR"?
Sharing my ministry for eight years with students and young people, I have found among them a huge variety of "images" of Jesus Christ.
1) For some Jesus is a "nice" man who preached a "nice" message...
2) Others have reduced Jesus to a social revolutionary.
A hero -philosopher -poet who died in coherence with his ideology.
3) Still others look on Jesus as a "religious" leader. A physical and spiritual healer. A person with magic power. They "use" him when they have problems, when they want a "miracle." The relationship with this Jesus is mainly emotional. An escape from our realities. A spiritualism that "adapts" Jesus to our interests.
4) Many others substitute the real humanity of Jesus for a conventional symbol. We cry, for instance, in front of a bloody scene of Jesus on the cross or a loving baby Jesus in the manger, without questioning why he is on the cross or why he chooses to be born in such poor conditions. The tendency is to have a "cult" of Jesus, rather than following and imitating him.
5) Finally, there is the Christ of the bourgeoisie, where many of us priests and religious persons find ourselves. We look at the traditions of "common" people as a manifestation of their ignorance. Our Jesus is handsome, cultivated, well-educated, almighty, omniscent… But this Jesus Christ is abstract, he is bored, always in silence. A piece of decoration, good for our business. business. Doesn't disturb our lives. Never challenges us. His call to conversion is too sweet. If be could talk he could be very dangerous!

JESUS OF THE GOSPELS
Let us contemplate Jesus as though for the time. We don't have a biography of Jesus in usual sense. We can't find in the gospels a complete description of Jesus Christ. In point of fact, Jesus never really explained his person. He left the Jews, the masses, and even his own disciples in doubt as to who he was. We know Jesus only to the extent that we try to follow him. We are invited to share with his disciples, as one of them, their slow discovery of the mystery of Jesus. Real Christian faith matures little by little, after a long journey with him.

A) Jesus and nature (Mark 4:35-41)
One evening Jesus felt tired and said to his disciples: "Let's go across to the other side." So they left the crowd and took Jesus away. When they were in the middle of the sea "a storm gathered and the wind began to blow. The waves spilled over into the boat so that it was already filled with water. And Jesus was in the stern, asleep on the cushion."
I am sure we know this passage by heart. They woke him up and asked him to intervene. "As Jesus awoke, he rebuked the wind and ordered the sea, 'Quiet now! Be still!' The wind dropped and there was a great calm."
The conclusion of this paragraph is very interesting. The disciples were terribly afraid and they and they said to one another, "Who can this be that even the wind and the sea obey him?"
We don't have any answer… The gospel just puts us in face of evidences.

B) Jesus and the sick (Mark 1:40-45; 5:21-43)
The sick appeared whenever Jesus was. He had a special feeling for them, perhaps because they express better human poverty. There were blind persons, lepers, paralytics, a woman who had suffered from bleeding for twelve years, and Jesus cured them. Even more, he raised to life the dead daughter of Jairus.
Again, in all these cases, we don't find an intellectual definition of Jesus. The text of the gospel simply tells us: "Mere was astonishment, very great astonishment." Furthermore, his townnates were asking themselves, quite scandalized, "Who is this one? What kind of wisdom has been given to him that he performs also such miracles?" (Mark 6:2).

C) Jesus and the sinner (Mark 2:1-12)
There is another kind of illness more terrible than the physical one: sin. Jesus also dealt with it. "While Jesus was speaking the Word to them, some people brought to him a paralyzed man. The four men who carried him couldn't get near Jesus, so they opened the roof above the room where Jesus was and, through the hole, lowered the man on his mat. When Jesus saw the faith of these people, he said to the paralyzed man, 'my son, your sins are forgiven'"
The teachers of the Law and the "conscientious" persons furiously remarked, "Who is this who speaks blasphemy? Who can forgive sins except God?" Jesus knew what they were thinking and said to them, "Now you shall know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins. And said to the paralyzed man, 'Rise, take up your mat and go home.'" The last verse expresses: "All of them were astonished and praised God saying, We have never seen anything like this!"

D) Jesus and the demons (Mark 1:21-28, 3:11-12; 5:1-20)
The demons seem to be the only ones who know who Jesus is; they fear him. It is a decisive combat between Jesus and Satan. When the demons saw Jesus from afar, they ran and cried with a loud voice, "What do you want with us, Jesus, Son of the Most High God?" Then Jesus commanded them, "Be silent and come out of this man!" Then the person who was enslaved experiences the liberation of God. His joy is indescribable. The end is always the same. Jesus forbids the demons to divulge it. "All the people were astonished and they wondered, 'What is this? With what authority he preaches! He orders evil spirits and they obey him!"

THE HEART OF THE DRAMA
In the center of the evangelical narration there comes a point when Jesus wants to test the faith of his disciples (Mark 8:27-33; Matthew 16:13-20). On the way he asked them, 'Who do people say I am?" And they told him, "Some say you are John the Baptist; others say you are Elijah or one of the prophets."

Until this point the exam is going smoothly because it is easier to talk about others than to risk giving our own opinion. Jesus goes to the core of the question, "But you, who do you say I am ?" I think the disciples were caught up in silence. But just then Peter, with his generosity and daring, answered, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living
Even if Peter's comprehension was still very weak, he was sincere and in that became a model of discipleship. Today the same question is directed to US.
Except for Peter's statements and an allusion during the triumphant entry into Jerusalem,"Hosannah Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!" (Mark 11:1-11), we do not find in the gospel any other explicit reference to, Jesus 'identity.
We need to wait until the ultimate sacrifice to understand who Jesus is. At the foot of the cross there are no secrets, none anymore. "Jesus uttered a loud cry and gave up his spirit. And immediately the curtain which enclosed the Temple Sanctuary was torn in two from top to bottom" (Mark 15:37-38).
The answer comes to us from a soldier, from a pagan. "The captain who was standing in front of him saw Jesus die and heard the cry he gave; and he said, 'Truly, this man was the Son of God'" (Mark 15:39).
The soldier, over the corpse of a crucified man, tells us the journey that has to be made for the profession of Christian faith to be true. Jesus is disconcerting! We have to die to our idea of him in order to accept him as he is: Love without limits!

TRUE MAN AND TRUE GOD
Who is Jesus? Nineteen long centuries have come and gone and he is the centerpiece of the human race. Nobody has affected the life of man upon earth as this solitary prophet has.
Jesus has the power to give us peace, to command over our storms. He is able to open our eyes from blindness, to cleanse us of our leprosy, to say to us in our paralysis: Get up and walk! He is the only one who destroys our sins and brings us to new life. He is our liberator from all our demons: fear, vice, injustice, division, infidelity, mediocrity....
Jesus is a radical newness. He gives all and he demands all. His messages is fire. He becomes an enigma: for or against him! His call to conversion is without compromise, without noise, without end. True man and true God.

A God crucified. A song of eternity. He is alive! He overcomes death! He is with us forever!

He Is Alive JESUS' BIO-DATA

NAME: JESUS
NAME OF PARENTS: Joseph (modest artisan, descendant of King David) and Mary.
PLACE OF BIRTH: Bethlehem of Judea. (In a manger).
PLACE OF UPBRINGING: Nazareth of Galilee. The province farthest from the Capital and most backward culturally.
OCCUPATION: Carpenter, Preacher.
EDUCATIONAL BACKGROUND:
-Presumably he had learned to read and write a little.
- Most of his culture was of an oral type.
-He never wrote his message.
He preached and acted.
-He knew the traditions of his people.
-He had studied the Bible in the local Synagogue.
-Study of the Scriptures gave him a wisdom and a rich vocabulary to express the sense of life.
ADDRESS: He did not have a fixed abode: "Foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head."
CIVIL STATUS: He had neither wife nor children. He was entirely devoured by his mission.

BEST QUALMES:
o "Merciful."
-His search for the lost sheep.
-His predilection for the "little ones."
-He waited respectfully for people to mature, never using undue power to convert them.
-Never judged, never imposed.
-Demanded radical options,
nevertheless, no one felt crushed.
o "A man of God:"
-Impressive rhythm of prayer.
-Profoundly united to the Father, always dependent on his will.
o "A man of everyone:"
-Absolutely approachable.
-He never put up any barriers.
-He inspired confidence.
-He did not brush off the importunate with an air of someone in a hurry, with a thousand things to do.
-He treated everyone as unique and special.
-He gave himself to all people, and all people were his family.

FRIENDS:
-Jesus was a true friend: gave his life for his friends.
-He had special friends, men and women: Mary, Martha, Lazarus, his disciples....
-Breaking through prejudices, he offered his friendship to the children, the poor, sinners, the sick, prostitutes, publicans, tax collectors, soldiers, government officials, slaves…
Preacher:
-He spoke in a very simple way, using examples and parables from daily life.
-He preached "as one who has authority" and "never has anyone spoken as that man."
-Harmony between his person, his deeds, and his words.
-He took the risk of telling the truth; he told the Scribes and Pharisees that their hearts were black sepulchers with fine exteriors.

FIDELITY TO HIS MSSION:
-Jesus had an ideal and he followed it to the end.
-Nothing made him deviate from his mission: not failures, conflicts, Persecution, loneliness....
-He was without a trace of bitterness or skepticism.

FREEDOM AND POVERTY
-Free and poor and forgetful of self.
-Free because he was poor. Total abandonment into the hands of the Father.
-Identified himself with the role of "servant".
-His executioners gambled for the only piece of property he had on earth - his coat.
-He was buried in a borrowed grave.

MESSAGE
-He proclaimed the presence of the Kingdom of God: love, justice, peace... to make people brothers and sisters.
-"Happy are you poor; the Kingdom of God is yours!"
-"Happy are you who mourn; God will comfort you!"
-"Happy are you who are merciful to others; God will be merciful to you!
-"Do not take revenge on someone who wrongs you. Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you."
-"There is no greater love than this: to lay down one's life for one's friends."

ONE SOLITARY PROPHET:
-Lonely in life and lonely in death, even if he was almost never physically alone.
-Incomprehension of his relatives and friends: "they were convinced he was out of his mind."
-Misunderstood by the crowds.
-His friends ran away. One of them denied him.
-He became the center of controversy. The public officials condemned him.
-Jesus did not leave anyone indifferent.

DEATH:
-He died on Calvary, on a Friday around 3:00 pm. He was 33 years old.
-He was nailed to a cross between two thieves.
-He taught a new way to suffer and to die: through fidelity to a cause.

EPILOGUE:
-He always did good! Never committed sin! Only he has words of eternal life!
-He was risen on the third day!
-His love is source of liberation!
-He founded the church!
-He is with us!

LORD JESUS