The hundredfold is ours. God has spoken His Word to us, as to the lost son’s older brother, “You are always with me. All I have is yours.” Jesus is himself this message of the Father’s deep love. Christ Jesus our Lord is himself the hundredfold he promises. He has pressed himself to us, to our humanity in its shabbiness and breathed new life into us. In his passion and resurrection, he has healed and refreshed, renewed and transformed it all.
And if, as Saint Benedict exhorts us, we are to prefer absolutely nothing to Christ, it is because he has first of all preferred absolutely nothing at all to each of us, accepting even death, death on a cross for our sake. We are invited to lose everything in order to gain everything. Jesus himself is the everything; Jesus who is the gift given to us a hundred times over. Beyond our wildest dreams, the love of the Father for the Son in the Spirit is now ours in Christ Jesus, our Lord.
Icon written by Brother Terence.
