Disarming Beauty by Carrón Julián;

Author:Carrón, Julián;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press
Published: 2017-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

The Companion That Makes Freedom Historically Possible

Only when the Mystery, like the beloved, shows his face can a person have the clarity and the affective energy to adhere, that is, to engage all his freedom. With Jesus the Mystery became “a presence that attracts affection,” to the point of igniting people’s desire and challenging like nothing else their freedom, that is, their ability to adhere. For human beings it is enough that they give in to the overwhelming attractiveness of Jesus’ person. As happens to someone in love, it is the fascinating presence of the beloved who awakens in them all the energy of their affection. They only have to surrender to the appeal of the one in front of them. “What we need is a man, / not wisdom, / what we need is a man / in spirit and truth; / not a country, not things, / what we need is a man, / a sure-footed, and a hand held out / strong enough for all / to take it, and walk / free, and be saved.”30

And like the beloved, the Mystery present is also discovered in an encounter. Unexpected. Like a surprise! As happened to John and Andrew, the first who encountered Jesus and stayed attached to him throughout their lives. Their freedom was so challenged by his exceptionality that they could not go on living without having to reckon with that Person. In the encounter with Jesus such an unthinkable correspondence happened, something impossible elsewhere, that they never again left him. “Therefore [their] genuine freedom is the fruit of a personal encounter with Jesus.”31 The freedom of those who have met him has found a fulfillment beyond compare: the “hundredfold here on earth,” as Jesus called it, that is a satisfaction a hundred times greater, a foretaste of the full and final satisfaction.32 The apostles were not visionaries, and if they had not experienced a better life for themselves, sooner or later they would have left him.

It is this relationship that clarifies man’s otherwise confused desire. As William of Saint-Thierry says, Christ is the only one who “can teach me how to see the things that I desire.”33 It is he, Christ, who fully reveals man to himself, as Gaudium et Spes says.34

In order to attract man without him resisting, as Péguy said, the Mystery uses the method of preference. Just as it introduces us to love not through words, but by making us fall in love, in the same way, in order to reveal what freedom is, the Mystery stirs up all our desire for totality by putting before us a presence so attractive and correspondent that we may have, “contemporaneously,” the experience of the fulfillment of this desire.

Caro cardo salutis: Flesh is the pivot of salvation.35 Flesh, the Word made flesh, is the pivot of salvation. Only an affectively attractive presence in the flesh is able to overcome our resistance. An overwhelming attraction is the only hope for us, always so tempted by the

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