Today, Jesus cries out; He cries out just as someone who is speaking and it is clear everyone should listen. His raised voice addresses His saving mission, as He has come “to save the world” (Jn 12:47), not on His own but in the name of “the Father who sent me commanded me what to say and speak” (Jn 12:49).

It is not yet been a month since we were celebrating the Paschal Triduum: how very present was the Father in the final hour, the hour of the Cross! As His Holiness Saint John Paul II wrote, “Jesus, overwhelmed by his foreknowledge of the trial waiting for him, alone before God, invokes him with his usual and tender expression of trust: ‘Abbá, Father’”. The next hours clearly show the intimate dialogue of the Son with the Father: “Father, forgive them, they know not what they do.” (Lk 23:34); “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit” (Lk 23:46).

The importance of this work by the Father and His Messenger, well deserves the personal response of he who is listening. This response is to believe, that is, a profession of faith (cf. Jn 12:44); faith that gives us the light —by the same Jesus— so that we shall not remain in darkness. But, he who rejects all these gifts and manifestations, and does not listen to those words “has something to judge him: the word that I spoke” (Jn 12:48).

Therefore, to accept Jesus is to believe in, see and listen to the Father, not to be in darkness, to obey the command of eternal life. We certainly deserve Saint John of the Cross’- rebuke: “[The Father] spoke everything to us at once in this sole Word… Those who now desire to question God or receive some vision or revelation are guilty not only of foolish behavior but also of offending him by not fixing their eyes entirely on Christ and by living with the desire for some other novelty.”