59._ Pilgrimage and mission

According to were spending the years and dying the people, without appearing the Kingdom of God, was raising the disquieting inevitably doubt: was mistaken Jesus?

He had said that it would not pass a generation without everything was fulfilled; but that generation had happened and the Kingdom was not visible; on the contrary, were increased the persecutions and the misfortunes.

Then they were assuming the conviction of that the coming of Jesus Christ, the Parusia, the "second coming", would take much yet; therefore there was to be preparing the Kingdom little by little in the practical normal life, in "this world". Instead of remaining watching towards the clouds to see appear on them the Son of Man, it seemed them to see ascend Jesus Christ towards the clouds, while the angels said to them: "what there you do watching the sky? He will return, as he has gone away ".

Now begins the long pilgrimage of the church of Jesus Christ by history, as it were the pilgrimage of Israel by the desert; the calves of gold, the apostasies, the idolatries, the violences and the crimes will come --many in name of God and Christ--; but also the repentances, the works of justice and mercy, the orations, the manna and the quails; and in the end it waits --like then-- the Promised Land.

The Church will have to work in this world by the Kingdom, calling to all to the conversion, proclaiming the good news, reinforcing the ethics that leads to the humanity to the attainment of the Last Newness.

Certainly, the presence of the spirit of God in the human level of emergence, like "drops of providence in the sea of the chance and the necessity", or like a "secret voice", guides to the humanity in its enterprise of self-completion; nevertheless, it does not stop being uncertain its success; it is obvious that to the Spirit a reinforcing comes to him well, and it is not disrespectful to affirm it, since it comes to him from Himself.

It is the spirit of Redemption that goes in reinforcement of the spirit of Creation, being both two "moments" of the same spirit of God. As we said previously: "we do not have to forget that when speaking of the Redemption we are speaking of a “loop” in the time. The spirit of God, operating in the Redemption, reinforces His immanent creative action in the nature, in the humanity. God ‘realizes Himself’ also by means of the Redemption." Could be imagined a better reinforcement than the contributed one by the own goal for the recognition of the means that to him lead?
Thus, God does not leave us in the risk of not being able to hear His weak "secret voice", but amplifies it and explains it abundantly: the natural ethics, the one of the "love God and to the neighbour", is completed with the ethics of "love each other as I have loved you"; the unknown face of a God only reasonable becomes the revealed face of the benevolent Father.

The natural ethics, that it looks for God, knows the necessity to count on the others. Still more: it is when opening itself to the others to jointly find the own accomplishment, that considers the project of God. But never it is sufficiently sure, in the concrete historical development, which is the value of the individual; it can seem that each individual is a solely insignificant means and entirely "sacrificeable" in altars of the "common good". In fact, it is not only inevitable that the individuals suffer and die, but that often is seen like advisable. History is "a slaughter house". The society has put under, and puts under, to countless individuals to the oppression and the injustice.

Can be justified this by a shining and wonderful future for which will remain of the humanity? It can be justified in name of God? The Spirit of Redemption that comes from the Father and the Son, who flows from the crucified/resurrected one, gives the answer to us: God revealed His criteria; the Church, missionary of the Kingdom, must proclaim them to reinforce the human ethical development and separate it from its deviations:

All the individuals, all the people of any time and condition, are "redeemable", are loved of God. All person has been rescued by God and has an infinite value, independently of her merits or faults. All person is called to the salvation, invited to the Kingdom, and this wants to do it God respecting her freedom, softly, without impositions, lovingly. All injustice and oppression are opposite to the will of God, is a way misled for the completion of the humanity.

The mission of the Kingdom cannot consist of sustaining a structure of human power, cannot be the endorsement of a closed moral; on the contrary, it must consist of "fermenting" the human societies, providing them with a moral opened towards the Last Newness.
It cannot either consist of the disinteresting of the terrenal reality, of an ascetic ideal that rejects the material, the vital thing and the human thing, to wait for an “ultraworldly heaven” passively; it must incarnate in the world and history the criteria of benevolent God, load the cross of the reality to carry it to the resurrection of Jesus Christ.