Jesus Christ, The Son Who "Lives For The Father"

There is an organic link between the truth of the intimate union of the Son with the Father and the fact that Jesus-Son lives completely "for the Father". We know indeed that the whole life, the entire earthly existence of Jesus is constantly directed to the Father, it is given to the Father without reserve.

While still only twelve years old, Jesus, son of Mary, had a precise awareness of his relationship with the Father, and he adopts an attitude consistent with his interior certainty: "Did you not know I had to be in my Father's house?" (Lk 2,49).

The awareness and attitude shown by Jesus already at the age of twelve are deeply rooted in his great farewell discourse which, according to John, was delivered during the Last Supper, at the end of his life: "realizing that the hour had come. . . (was fully aware) that the Father had handed everything over to him and that he had come from God and was going to God" (Jn 13,3).

Hebrews emphasizes the same truth, referring in a certain way to the pre-existence of Jesus when it states, "Wherefore, on coming into the world, Jesus said, 'Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but a body you have prepared for me; holocausts and sin offerings you took no delight in. Then I said, "As is written of me in the book, I have come to do your will, O God"'"(Heb 10,5-7).

"To do the will" of the Father, in the words and deeds of Jesus, means to live totally for the Father, "Just as the Father who has life sent me. . . I have life because of the Father" (Jn 6,57), Jesus says in the context of the announcement of the institution of the Eucharist.

He lives in this way-totally directed to the Father-because he has "come forth" from the Father and "goes" to the Father knowing that the Father "has given everything over to him" (Jn 3,35).

The Son's human life, his activity, his earthly existence, is so completely directed to the Father-Jesus lives entirely through the Father-because in him the source of everything is his eternal unity with the Father, "I and the Father are one" (Jn 10,30).

His works are the proof of the close communion of the divine Persons. In them the same divinity is manifested as the unity of the Father and the Son-the truth that provoked so much opposition.

As if foreseeing the further consequences of that opposition, Jesus says in another moment of his conflict with the Jews, "When you lift up the Son of Man, you will come to realize that I AM and that I do nothing by myself. I say only what the Father has taught me. The One who sent me is with me. He has not deserted me since I always do what pleases him" (Jn 8,27-29)

Truly Jesus has fulfilled the Father's will to the end. By his passion and death on the cross he confirmed that "he always does what pleases the Father". He fulfilled the salvific will for the redemption of the world, in which the Father and Son. are united because they are eternally "one" (Jn 10,30)

When dying on the cross Jesus "cried out with a loud voice, 'Father into thy hands I commend my spirit' " (cf. Lk 23,46) These final words of his testified that to the very end his whole earthly existence was directed to the Father.

Living, as Son, "through the Father" he lived completely "for the Father". And the Father, as he had predicted, "did not desert him".

In Hebrews we read certain very consoling expressions, "Therefore Jesus is always able to save those who approach God through him, since he forever loves to make intercession for them" (Heb 7,25). He who as Son "of the same being with the Father" lives "through the Father", has revealed to man the way of eternal salvation.