All humanity will see the salvation of God
Luke 3:1-6
The word of God dwells in the desert and in people who are silent.
“God is supremely indifferent to what human beings construct, but out of love he sends his word to them uncontaminated by civilization, and this word enables them to handle what is to come” (Giovanni Vannucci).
“The less a wise person works (non-action), the more he/she creates,” says the Taoist tradition.
The Incarnation takes place in the womb of a woman who “does not work,” who “does not know man.” Fertile virginity is precisely the mystery of an inhabited void; it is a readiness to be visited in the midst of non-action.
The desert mentioned in Luke’s text is a non-place, an existential experience in which everything is reduced to silence and therefore to the possibility of listening. And here John the Baptist baptizes, that is, he invites people to self-awareness. He asks them to courageously descend (symbolized by immersion in water) into their inner world, in order to ascend to full life, to the possibility of experiencing rebirth (emersion from the water). Only those who know their inner world are able to know God and the world around them. “Know yourself,” reads an inscription on the entrance to the temple of Apollo at Delphi, and thus you will know both yourself and God.
It is only in the death-rebirth process that we experience the forgiveness of our sins. If we make this great inner journey, if we dwell in the desert within ourselves because every foothold (all the images, desires, illusions, etc. in which we placed our hopes for salvation) has proven useless, then we will connect with God-in-us and come to experience the Love capable of shattering sin, our existential defeat.
This is the moment in which “every person will see the salvation of God.”
How wonderful that we are called to see salvation, and no longer strive to work out our salvation. We are already saved; we don’t have to save ourselves.
Taken from the Homilies of Fr. Paolo Scquizzato
