Vigils Reading

A reading from

XAVIER LEON-DUFOUR

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In its internal logic, punishment reveals God: it is like a theophany

adapted to the sinner. He who does not accept the grace of the divine visit

clashes with holiness and encounters God. This is what the prophet repeats

without ceasing: “Then you will know that I am Yahweh”. Because punishment

is revelation, it is the Word which executes it; and it is in confrontation with the

crucified that it assumes its true dimensions.

Since punishment is thus ordered to the recognition of Yahweh and of

Jesus, it is so much the more terrible when the one whom it affects is closer to

God. The same presence, sweet to the pure heart, becomes painful to the

hardened heart even though all suffering is not punishment. Still more,

punishment reveals the depths of God’s heart: his jealousy as soon as one

entered into God’s covenant, God’s wrath and vengeance toward the enemies,

God’s justice and readiness to pardon and finally God’s mercy and pressing

love…. But there is a punishment at the very heart of our history where the

tempter and sin have been struck dead — it is the cross where the Wisdom of

God shines forth. In the cross, the “closed” condemnation of Satan, sin, and

death, and the “open” suffering, the source of life, coincide.

This wisdom has made its way through every ancient covenant; the

education of liberty was not able to be accomplished without “correction”.

Punishment is connected with the law; historically, this age has passed, but

psychologically many Christians delay there still: punishment is, then, one of

the bonds which continues to unite the sinner to God. But the Christian who

lives with the Spirit is free from punishment. If he recognizes this as coming

5 Dictionary of Biblical Theology, Xavier Leon-Dufour, Seabury Press, 1970, p. 476.11

from the love of the Father, it is in view of conversion. And, in our

eschatological times, the true and only punishment is final obduracy.

This proximity of decisive judgment, already at work, confers on the

punishment of “carnal” human being the value of a sign: it anticipates the

condemnation of everything that is not able to inherit the kingdom. But for the

“spiritual,” the judgment is justification: the punishment then becomes

expiation in Christ; voluntarily accepted, it makes the flesh die to live according

to the Spirit.