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In his farewell discourse, Jesus announced his imminent death and resurrection to his disciples with these mysterious words: “I go away, and I will come to you,” he said (John 14:28).
Dying is a “going away.” Even if the body of the deceased remains behind, he himself has gone away into the unknown, and we cannot follow him (see 13:36). Yet in Jesus’ case, there is something utterly new, which changes the world. In the case of our own death, the “going away” is definitive; there is no return. Jesus, on the other hand, says of his death: “I go away, and I will come to you.” It is by going away that he comes. His going ushers in a completely new and greater way of being present. By dying he enters into the love of the Father. His dying is an act of love. Love, however, is immortal. Therefore, his going away is transformed into a new coming, into a form of presence which reaches deeper and does not come…
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The riddle of time and creation - how and why is there anything at all! - has baffled the human mind from the beginiing. It always and of necessity always will baffle the mind. We can not possibly get “behind the Big Bang”, for example, in order to apprehend what there was behind or prior to the creration of this universe. Same with time. Same with our consciousness. Pope Benedict is telling us that Christ left our “here and now” and returned home, to that real place in the Father which does indeed take Him behind things, to the place of answer to all riddles. And what is so remarkable is that His going becomes a new mode His coming. For He returns to us from a place where our humanity alone can never reach - from the foundations of the world and of creation - with His mystical Presences which communicate to us in so many nonverbal ways that being and love are forever.