Isaiah is somehow the prophet of Advent. His texts (which, despite having been written twenty-eight centuries ago, can move us as if they had been composed yesterday) are especially present in the Eucharists of this time of preparation for Christmas. It is quite logical: as we prepare to celebrate the birth of the Prince of Peace in Bethlehem, we read the poet of Israel who most ardently dreamed about peace. Some of his most immortal and well-known pages are, in fact, beautiful songs against war and in favor of non-violence: «They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more» (Is 2:4)1. Or this passage, justly famous, which does not cease to amaze us in spite of being so well known: «The wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat, the calf and the lion and the yearling together; and a little child will lead them. The cow will feed with the bear, their young will lie down together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox. The infant will play near the cobra’s den, and the young child will put its hand into the viper’s nest. They will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain, for the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.» (Is 11:6-9).
In this Advent of 2023, Isaiah's dream of peace seems very distant, even more distant and unattainable than a few years ago. The world, according to analysts, is becoming a more violent place, if we compare it with the scenario we had just at the beginning of the century. Apart from dozens of minor struggles (which, even though they are minor, cause countless victims), there are large-scale armed conflicts in Burkina Faso, in Somalia, in Sudan, in Yemen, in Myanmar, in Nigeria and in Syria... apart , obviously, of the war in Ukraine, in the heart of Europe (which will be two years old in February 2024, with hundreds of thousands of soldiers and more than 10,000 civilians killed to date) and the war between Israel and Hamas, which already accumulates nearly 20,000 fatalities. The Gaza Strip, paradoxically, is located less than sixty miles from Bethlehem, the birthplace of the Prince of Peace.
What to do, given this scenario? Should we forget forever about Isaiah and his dreams? Shall we surrender to the conviction that humanity will never be able to eradicate war? Must we understand that, as long as there are immense economic interests related to the arms industry, plows will never be forged from swords? It is a tempting position. The facts seem to support it.
The alternative is, of course, to argue that Isaiah's pacifist dream is a better path. To affirm that, in the face of the current return to war that we are experiencing, Isaiah, as well as the Gospel of Jesus (who will affirm that those who work for peace are blessed) are more necessary than ever. The alternative is to work so that these wars, today, are the last expressions of an ancient humanity, which one day will disappear, to give way to a new humanity, attached to peace, faithful to the visions of Isaiah and Jesus.
Each of us, with our daily attitudes —opting for non-violent ways to resolve the small conflicts in which we find ourselves, betting on dialogue and promoting justice— can work so that this new humanity is not an illusion. In Advent, in this Advent, it would not be a bad idea to redouble our commitment to peace. In the end, let us not doubt it, Isaiah will be right.
(1) This phrase, as is well known, is carved on a wall at the United Nations headquarters in New York.
These last two weekends, as we celebrated the 21st and 22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time (cycle A) we have read the account of Jesus’ dialogue with his disciples in the region of Caesarea Philippi, according to the Gospel of Matthew (Mt 16:13-27). At two different moments in the passage, Jesus addresses Peter with two contrasting phrases, using two statements in which the second seems to be exactly the opposite of the first. When Peter declares that Jesus is the Messiah and the Son of the living God, Jesus exclaims: «Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for no man has revealed this to you, but my heavenly Father» (16:17). Then, when Peter rebukes Jesus, telling him that it is impossible for him to be executed, Jesus, after speaking to him with unusual harshness (treating him as Satan!), adds: «You think like men do, not like God does» (16: 23). First, he said that Peter’s declaration of faith came from God, then Jesus states that Peter’s attempt to divert him from his mission is a purely human thought. The story, in summary, makes it very clear that there is a way of thinking proper to men, which is opposed to God’s way of thinking.
How do «men» think? How does God think? What is the specific nature of each way of thinking?
We can deduce the answer to these questions from the context in which the phrases are pronounced, and also by looking at what Jesus says next: «Whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it» (16:25).
To think like men—to think humanly, without taking the Gospel into account—is to put our well-being and our personal comfort before any other consideration. It is to place our peace of mind before anything else. It is to live avoiding conflicts, making sure that the anguish and suffering of others do not touch us; it is to live dodging problems, dangers and headaches. It is to make of our personal security the absolute good to which we aspire.
To think like God is to understand that sometimes we must risk our well-being so that the world looks a little bit more like the kingdom of God. It is to understand that, although our peace of mind is important, there are much more important things in life: the construction of a more just world, the creation of environments of authentic freedom, of spaces where everyone fits, where there is no room for exploitation and where no one abuses anyone: the reasons, ultimately, why Jesus (who thought like God, not like men) decided to go to Jerusalem to face the unjust system that oppressed his people, even though he knew that failure and death were waiting for him there.
We can go a little deeper: to think like men is also to see the world as something finished, completed, that exists to satisfy our needs. It is to conceive the world as a sort of a huge supermarket, with the shelves full of products and resources well arranged, ready for us to take them home... without thinking that, sooner or later, the supermarket will be empty.
To think like God is to understand that the world is a work in process, something we must help create every day. It is to imagine the world as a field that must be cultivated with skill, love and dedication, an immense garden that you and I can continue to sow, water, and prune, so that it never stops producing fruit.
To think like men is to see others as means to our ends, and to think: «From him I can get affection; from her, instead, money, since she is rich; from that one, advice, because he is wise; from the one a recommendation, since she is very well connected with important people»…
And to think like God is to ask myself: «What can I do for others, so that everyone I know may live better, fuller lives?».
In short, to think like men is to have a predatory mentality; to think that reality exists solely so that I may obtain from it what I need. Thinking like God is acting out of a creative mentality: what can I do to enrich the reality that surrounds me?
When we make decisions, whether they are trivial or critical, and especially if they are critical, do we decide thinking like the Peter who assured Jesus that he was the Son of God—or like the Peter who was frightened by the prospect of the cross? How do we live our lives? Thinking like God, or thinking like men?
We continue with our commentary on the Beatitudes of the Gospel of Matthew, which we started a few weeks ago. Today we take a look at the second one, which continues to stress the paradoxical nature of Jesus’ path to happiness.
Statue of Fray Antonio de Montesinos in Santo Domingo: he was
someone who allowed himself to be moved by the suffering of his brothers and sisters.
«Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted» (Mt 5:4)
How should we understand this statement, which apparently is an absolute contradiction? How can suffering have the key to the door of happiness? How can the afflicted or those who cry be happy?
Here, too, it is necessary to begin by clarifying that it would be very possible to conduct an erroneous reading of the beatitude, according to which Jesus would be glorifying and praising suffering by itself. Someone could, indeed, use this verse to affirm that anguish and sorrow are good in themselves, and that, therefore, Christians must desire and proactively seek their torments. And it is not so: Jesus dedicated his life to alleviate the pain of others, curing the sick, feeding the hungry, restoring sight to the blind, and denouncing those who, with their selfishness, made the weakest suffer... Christianity is not a masochistic religion.
A second thing that Jesus is not saying in this beatitude is that it is necessary to suffer here, on this Earth, in order to be consoled in the afterlife. This does not agree with the spirit and the thinking of Jesus. To say something like, «look, you must agonize in this world, because then you will receive comfort in Heaven» would imply the image of a cruel God, who first needs to see our tears to then open the door to those who will have won their place in Heaven by enduring hardships. It cannot be so, when, first, Jesus never despised this present world (on the contrary, he affirmed that «the reign of God is already in your midst», in Lk 17:21) and, secondly, he said that his merciful Father is always eager to welcome us, to open wide the doors of his house, where there is room for everyone (Jn 14:2): Heaven is not «earned» on the basis of our many tribulations.
How are we, then, to understand this second beatitude? Perhaps in the sense that in this life only those who are not indifferent will be truly happy. That is, those who toil so that their hearts do not harden; those who keep alive their ability to be moved by someone else’s pain.
Certainly, if your heart is made of stone, you do not suffer, nor do you ever cry. But your life is, then, inhuman, and empty. It is much better to experience sorrow and to mourn because you have a human heart—which is moved by the pain of your brothers and sisters―than to live protected by an armor of indifference that, yes, prevents you from suffering, but also stops you from feeling love.
Those who mourn are those who walk around the world without an armor, with empathy towards their neighbors. In the end, this ability to cry with those who cry will give us the certainty—and the comfort— to know that we did not waste our lives, and this will surely bring joy into our hearts.
In this second beatitude Jesus warns us against apathy. This warning is more necessary than ever, because today, overwhelmed as we are by a constant flood of news, which is often very tragic, it would be easy to fall into insensitivity. We read or hear that a jealous husband killed his wife, that once again a group of immigrants died in the desert trying to cross the border, that there have been more innocent deaths in the Ukraine, in Yemen or in the Congo, that Haiti has been devastated by another storm, that in Iran they have executed someone who cried for freedom or that in Uganda someone has been imprisoned simply because he is gay—and we shrug our shoulders, without giving much importance to what we have just read or heard, and we quietly continue to sip our morning coffee, thinking already about something else. That is an unhappy life.
In the priceless parable of the good Samaritan (Lk 10:25-37) we discover two conflicting urgencies. Indeed, the encounter with the wounded man on the side of the road confronts each of the three characters who go down from Jerusalem to Jericho with a dilemma: what is more important? My urgency to reach my destination as soon as possible, or the one of the stranger who bleeds to death before my eyes? The first two men, the priest and the Levite, decide —quite cynically— that their urgency is, so to speak, more urgent than that of wounded man. The Samaritan understands that no matter how rushed he is, or how important it is for him to get where he is going and do what he had planned, now the urgency of caring for the person he has met is a priority.
We also live our lives under the pressure of a thousand and one urgencies: we must finish this or that personal or professional project, we have to arrive on time for a meeting, or finish some accounts, or schedule a weekend outing, or do the shopping, or answer several emails that accumulate in our tray, or to return messages and phone calls...
And we too, like the three characters in the story, suddenly encounter badly injured people fallen in the ditches of our itineraries: brothers and sisters who are going through a personal crisis, who are sick, people hit by poverty and injustice, by anguish or depression, those who feel abandoned.
And then we must ask ourselves what is more urgent: to accomplish what we were planning to do with our day—or to try to do whatever we can to alleviate the pain of those we have encountered.
Often, an honest and compassionate look at the suffering of others puts our urgencies into perspective, showing us their exact measure. It is not that we suddenly discover that they were insignificant or imaginary. What we discover, in the face of other people’s misfortune, is they can wait. Maybe they were not that serious.
The Good Samaritan, with his ability to change his plans and pay immediate attention to the wounded man, shows us the path of mental flexibility, which is a condition for and prelude to mercy. In other words: with his decision to postpone his objectives to assist the stranger, the Samaritan teaches us that rigidity and inflexibility are often an impediment for charity and tenderness to flourish in the world. Other people’s crisis cannot be programmed: they arise unexpectedly, when we least expect them, like a man beaten on the side of our road. We will only be able to properly respond to these crisis if we are willing to postpone, over and over again, our emergencies.
In the coming weeks and months, we will be publishing short entries on this blog commenting, one by one, the Beatitudes of the Gospel of Matthew. We will do it without any attempt of erudition or academic scholarship—simply reacting carefully to what Jesus proposes, trying to apply it to our daily lives.
Preface
The Beatitudes from the Gospel of Matthew (Mt 5:1-12) are a fundamental text of the Christian faith, as well as one of the most beautiful pages of the New Testament. In them, Jesus masterfully summarizes his lifestyle, the lifestyle that he invites his followers to put into practice.
The first great virtue and merit of the Beatitudes is that, in them, Jesus avoids moral or moralistic language, and does not speak of the duty of his followers, of what they are obliged to carry out to be considered upright people. He does not prohibit anything either (in the line of the ten commandments of the Old Testament). The use of mandates and prohibitions would have turned the Beatitudes into a legalistic text, a new decalogue: perhaps useful and very wise, but not necessarily attractive or exciting. Instead of opting for the language of the law, Jesus describes his lifestyle, emphasizing what it ultimately is: a path to happiness. Happy are those who do what I am saying, he affirms. Happy. By framing his teaching in the context of joy, Jesus touches an intimate chord in everyone who listens to him. Because, who doesn’t want to be happy? Assuring that what he proposes is a journey towards joy, Jesus reaches every human being, of any age and culture, by appealing to one of the most universal desires that exist.
What then happens, of course, is that when we start reading, we find out that this path towards happiness is very paradoxical. We immediately realize that it is a surprising, daring program, far removed from the conventional formulas that we would instinctively think of if we were asked how to attain joy. Jesus’ proposal constitutes an alternative path to the one we usually imagine, from our categories and with our imagination, when we meditate on what is required to obtain happiness. This paradoxical character of Jesus’ proposal is already evident in the first beatitude.
"Happy are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven"
This is a statement that, if it is misunderstood, can lead to a dangerous demagogy: someone could use this first beatitude to praise and applaud material poverty, and could end up saying that poverty helps us become better people, and that to go hungry makes a person happy—something that any hungry person would deny without the slightest hesitation. No, Jesus (who, in line with all the Old Testament prophets, denounced economic inequality and the abuse of the poor by the wealthy and powerful) is not praising material poverty (because there is nothing praiseworthy in it).
What Jesus says, when he states that the poor in spirit will be happy, is, to begin with, that the first condition to obtain true joy is to acknowledge one’s need of other people: to be poor in one’s heart means to recognize that I need all that others, and God, give me. Thus, this first beatitude is fundamentally a serious warning against self-sufficiency. The arrogance of those who think that they are rich, in the sense that they do not need anything from anyone, is a sure path to bitterness, due to the simple fact that it is a lie: we all need others, and the sooner we recognize it, the better.
«For theirs is the kingdom of heaven.» Absolutely: only people who are aware of their fragility, their vulnerability, of needing the support, warmth, tenderness, consolation, company and friendship of others, will be able to live in the kingdom of God, the «place» where the values of the Gospel are to be found. The arrogant and self-important, the narcissist unable to recognize that other people can teach him something useful, those who see other people as a burden and not as richness, will not know how to live in a kingdom that is founded on fraternity.
In addition to this, the first beatitude has, indeed, an economic dimension. Because it is only logical to think that the poor in spirit are also those who have made a choice for a sober lifestyle. They have understood that, in this world, true wealth is to be found in others, and in the friendships that one can forge with them through life. Therefore, they have relativized the importance of all material treasures. They have understood that it is possible to live with less; they have grasped the danger of idolizing money. In consequence, they practice a healthy austerity, the responsible austerity of those who understand that the world’s resources are limited, and that, in our global village, the luxury of a few is paid with the misery of many.
Youth from La Resurrección Parish in Bogotá planting a tree near their church
The readings for the Sundays of Advent, especially those from the prophet Isaiah, underscore the importance of dreaming. They remind us that the ability to imagine a better future, a tomorrow in which today's problems are left behind, is essential. Isaiah dreams, and he dreams big; he dreams without limits. He dreams that one day, swords will be forged into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks, and that no one will train for war anymore. He dreams of a world without violence in which the strong will no longer destroy the weak, in which wolf and lamb, leopard and kid, lion and calf will live together without attacking each other. He dreams of a blossoming desert, where the blind will regain their sight, the deaf will hear, and the lame will leap like deer. Someone, without a doubt, could brand Isaiah as naive, crazy, deluded, and reproach him for living in an unreal world. He would surely reply that the only fools are those who do not dream. And that it is always better to hope for too much than to lock oneself in the resignation of those who assume that the problems of the present have no solution.
The prophets dream. Jesus also dreams. In his case, in a kingdom of brotherhood and justice (the kingdom of God is Jesus’ big dream), a kingdom of free people, of new men and women, in which even the smallest will be greater than John the Baptist (and «among those born of women there has been none greater than John the Baptist»).
Advent reminds us that if we don’t have dreams left, we don’t have anything.
And it is good to remember that everything (that is, everything good) starts with a dream. A family, a friendship, a project, a community... it all starts with someone entertaining an idea (which at the time may seem crazy) and telling themselves that it is worth working to make it a reality. «The struggle will be long. Let’s start right now» used to say Camilo Torres. And to start is to start dreaming. Many good things that today we take for granted and consider very normal, one day they were not. Furthermore, for the majority they were chimeras. Today they are a reality because someone dared to dream about them, and dared to think that they were possible. Someone, one day, imagined a world without slaves. Or a world without dictators, in which every four years the people would vote for their rulers. Someone dreamed of a world in which women had the same rights as men. A world where workers had a humane working day and a decent wage. A world in which the color of our skin no longer mattered.
There is still a long way to go («the struggle will be long...»). Yet, the fact that today millions of people live in countries without slavery, with democracy, in which women and workers can claim their rights and in which racism is condemned, is because someone, one day, dreamed of these achievements.
Advent is a time for those who stopped dreaming to do so again, and a time for us to consider which deserts in our lives should be flourish again.
One of the messages of this time of preparation for Christmas is, without a doubt, that we should not be afraid of dreaming in a better future. And if then someone accuses us of being dreamers, in the negative sense that we sometimes give to the term, let us remember that in reality the only fool is the one who no longer dreams.
This September, Funambulista, a printing house from Madrid (Spain), has published the novel “Los cuadernos de Nadine” (“Nadine's notebooks”), by Martí Colom, a member of the Community of Saint Paul and a regular contributor to this blog.
The novel (published with the quality and care typical of books by Funambulista) opens with the story of the last days of Jean Jaurès, the leader of the French socialists who vehemently opposed the outbreak of the First World War in July 1914. Jaurès, knowing that the conflict would be a catastrophe in which the workers and the poorest in society had nothing to gain, was convinced until the last moment that it was possible to avoid the war, and he wore himself out orchestrating a political and public campaign against the conflict. As it progresses, the story focuses on the complex and tortured life of Raoul Villain, the man who murdered Jaurès, and on the contradictions faced by Nadine Ledoux, the young woman who loves Villain and becomes the true protagonist of the story, forced to decide what to do when the world she lives in falls apart.
“Los cuadernos de Nadine” is a fast-paced novel that, in addition to telling the unlikely (but true) story of Raoul Villain, confronts the readers with their own attitude towards violence and failure. Is it possible, ultimately, to remake one's own life when the certainties in which we had always trusted fall apart?
https://funambulista.net/libros/los-cuadernos-de-nadine/
This month—on the 19th—we celebrated the Feast of Corpus Christi, the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, and to illustrate the solemnity at Mass we read Luke’s account of the multiplication of the loaves and fishes (Lk 9:11-17). In this passage, two different ways of dealing with life’s challenges are immediately discernible.
On the one hand, faced with the pressing problem of the lack of food for the crowd that stands in front of them, there is the «solution» (let’s call it that) proposed by the disciples: that each one may look for what he needs. «Dismiss the crowd so that they can go into the villages and farms and find themselves bread». It is the law of the jungle: every man for himself.
And, on the other hand, there is the option that Jesus proposes: let us all stay here, together, and, united, let’s see what we can do about the problem we face. This, one could say, is the Eucharistic (that is, communitarian) way of life.
In the way of dealing with things of the disciples, no one takes responsibility for the well-being of the brother. Jesus, on the other hand, synthesizes his proposal precisely with the invitation (or mandate), that the disciples be the ones who start working to solve the needs of the crowd: «Give them something to eat yourselves» (Lk 9:13). And this becomes, then, the key phrase of the story. «Give them something to eat yourselves» is an order from Jesus that resounds throughout History, as an inescapable call to the ears and conscience of all those who, at times, would like to inhibit ourselves, shrug our shoulders, say that the needs of others are not our problem and to opt, with the disciples, for the law of the jungle, every man for himself.
In each celebration of the Eucharist we remember and emphasize that we come to receive communion as members of a community. In other words, we partake of the body of Christ (present in the consecrated host) in order to continue being the body of Christ (as Church, people, family), as Saint Paul said: «You are the body of Christ» (1 Cor. 12:27).
In this sense, it is obvious that there would be no greater contradiction than an intimate, privatized and individualistic experience of the Eucharist. It is beautiful that we experience the reception of the consecrated form as a moment of deep closeness with Jesus: but this should never become an excuse to then distance ourselves from others, under the pretext that «I am at peace with the Lord. Thus, I do not need anyone else». We receive communion, and in the act of receiving communion we feel the closeness of the Lord, yes: but the logical fruit of this closeness with the one who said «Give them something to eat yourselves» should be, time and time again, that then those of us who have received communion want to get closer and commit ourselves more with each other, and especially with those who are hungry. Because (we insist) we receive the body of Christ as members of the Body of Christ.
And what makes us be the Body of Christ, or the Church, or a people or a family? A baptism certificate? A passport, a flag? A surname, some genes? No, but rather what Luke’s text reveals: the ability to assume responsibility for one another.
A group of people where some take responsibility for the welfare of others is a community. On the contrary, one in which everyone goes their own way (regardless of whether they share nationality, or last name, or affiliation to the same church) will never be a true community.
Let us listen, with renewed ears, to the explicit words of Jesus: «Give them something to eat yourselves». In the capacity that we demonstrate to respond to this invitation hangs our very identity as members of the Church, as brothers and sisters, one with the other, forming the body of Christ.
Members of a youth group from La Resurrección Parish in Bogotá (Colombia),
after helping paint the house of a vulnerable family of their neighborhood during Holy Week, 2022.
The Beatitudes are one of the most beautiful pages of the Gospel. Brother Roger Schutz, founder of the ecumenical community of Taizé, in France, said that—together with the Our Father—we should consider them as the fundamental text of the Christian life. And we have two versions of the Beatitudes: those by Matthew (Mt 5:1-12), which are perhaps better known (the first that come to mind), and those by Luke (Lk 6:20- 26). We would like to focus on the latter, and on the differences with the Beatitudes of Matthew, and on the message that is hidden precisely in these differences.
To begin with, in Luke Jesus does not announce the Beatitudes from a mountain, as it happens in Matthew, but on a plain. This geographical location is significant: while Matthew wants to underline that the Master speaks from on high (the removed place where one arrives to meet God), in Luke Jesus pronounces the Beatitudes on the valley, the space where people live.
In Matthew, the first beatitude reads: «Blessed are the poor in spirit.» On the other hand, in Luke it will be «Blessed are the poor»: just the poor, the material poor. A few verses further down, Matthew will say that blessed are «those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.» Luke’s second beatitude will simply be «Blessed are the hungry.» Not those who hunger for righteousness, but those who hunger for bread.
Somehow, while Matthew underlines Jesus’ invitation to be people who have chosen to live simply and in austerity, who have become poor as a result of a personal decision, and who have a deep inner desire for justice in the world, Luke’s message is more social, less spiritual: blessed are the poor and the hungry, because God is on their side.
Both versions of the Beatitudes are important. Matthew’s, emphasizing interiority and our ultimate options, those we cultivate when we seek spaces of solitude and find God on the mountains of peace— and Luke’s version, emphasizing our social commitment, the one we assume in the valleys of the world, confronted with the reality of the material poverty suffered by so many (material poverty which is scandalous in a world where we could all live comfortably if wealth were not so poorly distributed).
In Luke the message is, with all clarity and energy, that God takes the side of the victims of this world: happy will be the poor, the hungry, those who cry, because they are God’s beloved.
And this implies, of course, a question: What about us? Do we always side with the victims, the oppressed and the humiliated, or, perhaps, in order not to create problems for ourselves, are we among those who remain silent in the face of injustice, or do we even join the group of those who only seek their own good?
In this same social line, the Beatitudes of Luke have something that those of Matthew do not have: they are accompanied by some warnings. «Woe to you!» To whom are these warnings addressed? To the rich, those who are satiated, those who laugh, those of whom everyone speaks well.
And what's wrong with laughing, or being satiated, or being talked about well? These are the attitudes that describe people who are complacent with their environment, who agree the state of the world as it is, and who therefore live carefree. Woe to those, in short, who adapt too much to their environment! And that is a very serious warning: in this world of ours, so pierced by injustice, feeling too comfortable (perhaps because things are already going well for me) is an act of evident selfishness.
One looks around and sees so much injustice, so much oppression, so many people working so hard for so little, and others working so little for so much, and so much abuse, so much violence, so much cruelty, so much indifference—that it is logical to conclude that no one should ever say, «Everything is great!» A Christian is a person who is aware that the world is not great, and therefore does not uncritically accommodate himself to it: on the contrary, he protests and works to build a more just society.
Let us make the Beatitudes our own: those of Matthew, more spiritual, that invite us to examine our ultimate, intimate choices about the kind of person we want to be. And Luke’s, more social, that encourage us to develop a greater social commitment with the poor and those who suffer.
Happy Easter! Jesus has risen!
This great feast, center of the liturgical year and of our entire Christian faith, invites us to seek Jesus among the living. Let us stop looking for him among the dead, in everything that destroys and oppresses, where there can be no green shoots of hope!
Jesus, alive among the living, is not to be found in violence, which only generates more violence, and blindness, and death, discouragement, and sadness.
Jesus, living among the living, is not to be found in contempt, in situations where some look with disdain at others because of their race, their social status, their gender, their orientation, their past...
Jesus, alive among the living, is not to be found in those contexts of privilege and inequality where a few enjoy the goods that belong to all.
Jesus, alive among the living, is not to be found in the indifference that kills, in the indifference because of which the pain of those living on the margins of society becomes invisible, as if it did not exist… as if they did not exist!
We must look for Jesus, alive among us, in the gestures of peace and reconciliation of those who have understood that war, brute force, insult and slander are never the way.
We must look for Jesus, alive among us, in those who welcome everyone with open arms, whoever they are, wherever they live, however they love...
We must look for Jesus, alive among us, in the efforts of so many people to build groups and communities of the Gospel, where fraternity is not an empty word, where synodality and walking together is the formula to learn to listen to each other and value the richness of plurality.
We must look for Jesus, alive among us, in the sensitive hearts that are moved, over and over again, with the pain of the poorest, the Father's favorites.
The followers of Jesus, in short, are people who strive, always, and sometimes with a stubbornness bordering on obstinacy, to look for signs of new life in the world, aware that the strength of the Risen One always ends up making itself present wherever there are human beings open to the life-giving, liberating and renewing Spirit of God, who raised Jesus from the tomb.
Let's celebrate Easter by finding Jesus… Alive in our midst!
Our relationship with time can be oppressive or liberating. It all depends on the eyes and expectations with which we look at the past, the present and the future.
We live inserted in time: to be a person is to exist in history, to grow through the stages marked by the years. And it is healthy to ask ourselves what kind of relationship we have with time: with the past, the present and the future. These three dimensions of existence can become oppressive tyrannies or beautiful gifts, depending on how we relate to them.
The past can be a tyranny, a heavy rock that crushes us and prevents us from growing, when it is filled with suffering—when we are unable to let go and detach our today and our tomorrow from a yesterday cluttered with painful moments. It is common for people with a dark and distressing history to live subdued by the memory of the wounds they suffered: they feel defined, handcuffed, and subjugated by their past; a past they would rather forget and, yet, remains alive in their memories.
In other cases, the past can be a tyranny when the opposite happens and, instead of being a source of painful memories, it is full of joy. Remembering the happiness they savored, some people can chain themselves to their golden past, and fall into a sickly nostalgia that will prevent them from enjoying the present or from having exciting dreams about the future. They live trying to obsessively repeat, over and over again, what they already experienced: «Since my best years are behind me, they tell themselves, I must labor to reproduce them». This nostalgic and futile concern stops us, frustrates us and prevents us from seeing the possibilities offered by the present and the future.
Other people live immersed in the tyranny of the present, when they insist on turning today into the best day of their lives. Today is when I must experience everything, they say: yesterday doesn’t count, because it is gone. And tomorrow is uncertain; therefore, the only real thing is this moment, it is now, and now is when I must fulfill myself to the fullest. Instead of conceiving the present as one more moment between what has already taken place and what is yet to come, some may conceive it as the urgent scenario of a fullness that cannot be postponed. And it is true that yesterday is already gone, and that tomorrow is uncertain, but living without taking them into account, magnifying and exalting the present as the only thing that matters, impoverishes our perspective. The tyranny of the present (the self-imposition of thinking that today I must achieve all my dreams) subjects us to the immediacy of this precise moment, lacking both the wisdom offered by meditation on everything that has already happened to us and the hope that invites us to cultivate what is yet to come. The obligation of having a perfect, wonderful and stimulating present is a pipe dream (and, as such, a source of frustration). There will be times when our now will be beautiful and pleasant, and there will be disappointing, uncomfortable or painful «nows». Today cannot be constantly my best day.
The future can also be a tyranny when the years go by and we keep accumulating experiences of all kinds and, yet we persist in believing that the best is yet to come. We disdain past and present betting all our happiness on a tomorrow that we anticipate undoubtedly bright and shiny. What if it is not so? What if the most beautiful or stimulating or profound thing in your life does not lie in the future, but in the past? We should not stop dreaming, we should not give up having projects; but we surely should be grateful for what we have already experienced. Then, we can reject the tyranny of the future, the obligation to live always projecting ourselves towards what is to come. It is healthy to reject the subtle deception of blindly believing that what is important, significant, and relevant in our journey is yet to happen. It could be so, or not: maybe that trip we made a few years ago, or that extraordinary book I finished yesterday, or that conversation, or that friendship, or this moment of deep intimacy with someone or this hug already lived will be the most beautiful gift that your biography will give you. The constant expectation regarding what is to come can prevent us from calmly enjoying the riches of the present and valuing the joys of the past in their proper measure.
Our relationship with time, in short, can be painful: it is very possible to fall under the tyranny of the past, present or future when we conceive one of these dimensions as the only one that matters (forgetting about the others), and, in addition, we ask from it something that it cannot give us.
Past, present and future, on the other hand, can be an inexhaustible source of joy and a wonderful gift when we conceive them as an interconnected whole (the past is a dimension of the present, according to William Faulkner) and when we ask of each one of them what they can really offers to us.
The past is a gift when we manage to accept that everything we have experienced (from the most beautiful to the saddest) is a school of learning, including the conflicts and disappointments that one day made us suffer. And the years we leave behind are a gift when we manage to accept these sufferings from yesterday as part of our biography... a part of our biography that, although we would rather not have experienced, we can now integrate into our understanding of life, aware that everything (from the happiest to the most disastrous) contains valid teachings. The past is also a gift when we understand that, although the beauty and joy that we once lived should not become reasons for useless nostalgia, they can be a source of satisfaction, and it is healthy to preserve as treasures the memories of so many people who one day accompanied us, of so many gratifying moments that we can contemplate with a deep sense of gratitude. The past is a gift when we understand it as the land where our identity has matured, the workshop where the best of us has been forged, the history full of teachings that equips us to live the present and the future with more wisdom, without repeating mistakes, with serenity. Instead of looking at the past as that time to which we are always forced to return (either because then we suffer wounds that still hurt us, or because we want to recover the good things it gave us), it is possible to live with gratefulness for the experiences accumulated: without denying them their importance, and—at the same time— without exaggerating their role. The past is indeed the architect of our identity, but nothing prevents us from letting go of its most toxic aspects or freeing ourselves from a nostalgia that prevents us from giving ourselves enthusiastically to the present and the future.
The present is a gift when—without expecting that each moment be the most beautiful, the happiest or the richest that we have ever lived—we understand it as the arena in which we can become acutely aware of being alive, and when we see it as the moment in which we can also become aware of the world around us. The present is also the space of creativity where we can carry out something new; the territory where, without forgetting the past, we can go beyond old routines and perhaps reach some level of maturity hitherto unknown. The present is the arena where we can be fully free, the now in which it is possible to put everything we have lived at the service of a renewed effort to fully tune in with our environment, with others, with our interiority... and with God. Because, from a faith-filled standpoint, the present is the moment in which God’s today is manifested, the today that invites us to understand what we are experiencing right now as the stage in which the Father shows us his love, the “today” that Jesus announced in the synagogue of Nazareth after reading the scroll of the prophet Isaiah: «Today this passage that you have heard has been fulfilled» (Lk 4:21).
And the future is a gift when, while being aware of its fragility and the uncertainties that surround it, we see it as the horizon where perhaps the possibility of further growth will still be given to us. As well as the possibility of finding out more about the meaning of our lives in this world, and to discover new lessons about life, about others or about oneself. The future is the territory of hope, it is the area from which we can expect new beginnings, new encounters, and new projects. The future is the place where we can foresee ourselves as better people, free from the miseries that crippled us yesterday and that perhaps still dwarf us today. The future invites us to dream.
Our relationship with time can be oppressive or liberating. It all depends on the eyes and expectations with which we look at the past, the present and the future.
There is a tragic and bitter irony in the fact that a new war breaks out in the heart of Europe (something that to many of us seemed an impossibility) just a few days after in all our churches we heard—last Sunday—the radical proposal of Jesus to end violence.
The Gospel reading for the seventh Sunday in ordinary time, which we celebrated just four days ago, was the passage from the sixth chapter of Luke in which, precisely, Jesus invites us to break the cycle of violence (Lk 6:27-38). By asking us to love the enemy and turn the other cheek, Jesus is not asking us to be weak, timid, or humiliated. This is not the purpose of these words. What Jesus proposes, however arduous it may be to put into practice, is the only possible path to a solid and lasting peace. It is the path of non-violence that disarms, that deactivates the logic of war. It is not surrender or weakness: in fact, you have to be very brave to turn the other cheek. Only those who have understood that war is the worst of evils, and that it must be stopped at all costs, will be able to do so.
This appalling «failure of language» that is war (as Mark Twain defined it) is striking Ukraine today. The image of tanks and planes crossing a European border and invading a neighboring and sovereign nation is overwhelming. The temptation would be to believe that humanity is not advancing. That we always go back. That when we had understood that peace is sacred and that nothing justifies violence, we forget it again.
And, suddenly, a different story: the same day that the Russian army invades the neighboring nation, demonstrations against the war take place in more than fifty Russian cities. More than 1,500 people are arrested for participating in these marches.
They are brave. They raise their voices against the primitive and horrifying use of force ordered by their government.
Perhaps, after all, the words of Jesus did not fall on deaf ears. In the long run, only they, only the unwavering decision to stop violence by loving the enemy and turning the other cheek, will guarantee peace.
Today we celebrate the great feast of the birth of Jesus, the feast that, in a way, changes everything: the arrival of that child, and the good news that he announced, marked a turning point in the history of the human family. For believers, the feast of the incarnation means a profound transformation of the very idea of God: the haughty and distant God in whom we had believed, sometimes indifferent, other vengeful, always a judge, now comes to us in this poor and trembling baby, guarded only by his parents, humble and simple people, and an ox, and a cow. And that new identity of God, made one among us, is, indeed, an immense reason for joy.
One of the most endearing Christmas texts is the one we read, in preparation for today’s feast, on the fourth Sunday of Advent: the visitation of Mary, pregnant with Jesus, to Elizabeth, pregnant with John the Baptist. In this passage, Luke underlines precisely the joy that the presence of the child Jesus (in his mother’s womb) provokes around him: both Elizabeth and Mary herself are filled with joy, and the child John «leaps for joy» in Isabel’s belly.
Do we leap for joy when we feel close the presence of God?
It is a question worth asking. Because it is intriguing to observe that, often, the reaction that a closeness to the sacred provokes in us is not the reaction of John the Baptist—not one of joy, but of fear. Or guilt. Or both at the same time. Can we imagine Elizabeth saying to Mary, «When your greeting reached my ears, the child began to tremble with fear in my womb»? Or, «When your greeting reached my ears, the creature began to beat its chest, saying “through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault”»? And yet, that seems to be, sometimes, our response, when we feel the proximity of God.
These are perhaps understandable reactions. The divine is immeasurable: confronted with it, we become aware of our smallness, and, since we have been taught since childhood that God is a severe judge, then his closeness terrifies us. And our guilt seems more obvious to us, in his presence: this is what happened to Peter, that when he understood who Jesus was, and then exclaimed «Leave me, Lord, I am a sinful man» (Lk 5: 8).
And yet, these are reactions that respond to a pre-Christian idea of God—reactions that do not consider the Gospel. The fear and trembling that the sacred causes us is rooted in the experience of cultures that associated God with the terrible phenomena of nature, and that developed the idea of a God who, in any case, had to be appeased with our sacrifices. And all that has nothing to do with Jesus and his message; indeed, that is precisely what Jesus came to dismantle, with his good news that God is a merciful father, who loves us beyond comprehension.
To fully understand Christmas is to understand that the God in whom we, Christians, believe should always be, for us, a source of joy. Because Christmas means that God is not a judge, but a brother, who does not come to condemn us, but to walk with us, who does not look at us with disdain, but with tenderness, a God that we should not worry about appeasing, whom we should rather thank for all his goodness.
The question that we should then ask ourselves is whether with our behavior and attitudes we help to communicate that the closeness of God is comfort, and reason for happiness, or not. There is no doubt that sometimes, with our severity, with our rigidity and harshness, even with our bitterness, what we do is perpetuate the idea (this pre-Christian idea which contradicts the Gospels) that, before God, the most logical attitude is to be scared. When, in fact, the most natural thing would be to react like John the Baptist: leaping for joy.
A very blessed and merry Christmas to everyone!
Three weekends ago, at the Eucharist corresponding to the Thirtieth Sunday in ordinary time (cycle B), we read the passage from the Gospel of Mark that tells us about the healing of the blind Bartimaeus (Mk 10:46-52). Here we do not wish to develop an exhaustive interpretation of the episode. Rather, we would like to focus on a very specific detail: when some of those who walk with Jesus encourage the blind beggar to get up, because the teacher is calling him, he, the text tells us, «Threw off his cloak, jumped to his feet and approached Jesus». We all know what happens next: Jesus asks him what is that he wants, Bartimaeus replies that he wishes to see again, Jesus tells him «Go, your faith has healed you», and Bartimaeus regains his sight and begins to follow Jesus on the road (thus completing his conversion, since at the beginning of the story he was sitting «by the roadside», where—if we remember the parable of the Sower—is where the first seed fell, and bear fruit).
The detail we want to underline is the precision offered by Mark that we have highlighted in italics: before getting up to go to meet Jesus, the blind man dropped his cloak. What does this cloak represent?
Most likely, in the evangelist’s mind, the cloak symbolizes Bartimaeus’ old identity (the one that kept him blind, having placed him on the roadside) which he had to abandon in order to follow Jesus with complete freedom. Or perhaps Mark wants us to think of the cloak that the prophet Elijah threw over Elisha (1 kings 19:19), representing the authority of the master, who passed on to his disciple: Bartimaeus’ gesture, to get rid of the cloak, would then signify his relinquishing of a position of power to which he, until then, had been clinging.
However, we would like to attempt another interpretation. Bartimaeus is a beggar, a homeless, and to go to meet Jesus he gets rid of his only possession. Indeed, the cloak was all that he to protect himself from the cold, the rain, the bad weather. Seen like that, Bartimaeus’ cloak appears to us as the symbol of those minimal and precarious possessions that the poor own. It represents the rudimentary well-being that our society grants to the poorest—in order to keep them quiet.
Our capitalist world, so much oriented towards the constant accumulation of wealth, allows the poorest to have what one could call a mirage of patrimony. If, in our increasingly unequal societies, vast numbers of people owned absolutely nothing, and were literally starving, there would be a social outbreak and a revolution every day. To avoid this, the economic system in which we are immersed tolerates that the most unfortunate have something: in the poorest and most vulnerable homes in the most peripheral neighborhoods of a large Latin American city such as Bogotá or Mexico (for example) there is a television , even if he it is an old one; and people have a cell phone, even if the screen is scratched, or half broken, or the device is discharging every ten minutes because the battery is already quite exhausted; and there is a refrigerator, and in the refrigerator there is some food, even if it is of poor quality, and not very healthy. This rickety television, this phone with the screen half broken, and this unhealthy canned food are the cloak with which millions of Bartimaeaus continue to protect themselves from the elements today. Crumbs that the unfair system allows them to enjoy, as long as, in return, they remain silent and docile.
The gesture of the Bartimaeus, throwing off his cloak, reveals the awakened person, the one who opens his eyes and realizes the infinitely fuller life that he could enjoy next to Jesus, and realizes the crumbs with which some people have tried to numb his conscience. Once he walks by Jesus, with his sight recovered, he will have acquired a much deeper sense of his own worth. He will have understood that faith demands justice. He will have understood that, from the eyes of God, we all have the right to a real well-being, not just an apparent one. Bartimaeus, in short, casts the mantle aside because he is now aware of his own dignity.
On October 9 and 10, Pope Francis will begin, in Rome, the preparatory stage of the XVI Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops. A week later, on October 17, all the dioceses of the world will inaugurate the consultation and preparation phase, at the local level, of this synod of the Church, which will culminate with the meeting, in Rome in October 2023, of the participants at the actual synod gathering, who will approve a final document. The theme proposed for this very important ecclesial event is For a Synodal Church: Communion, Participation and Mission. In other words, the issue on which we are invited to reflect is precisely synodality, the way of being, of operating and of moving forward of the Church as an authentic community of brothers and sisters, where all voices are heard, where no one is left lagging behind, where we all feel like companions on the road, advancing at once (which is exactly what the etymology of the word synod means, made up of the Greek prefix sin —reunion, joint action— and the noun odos —way, path). To practice synodality is to walk together.
Francis proposes that the Church, taking up the teachings of the Second Vatican Council (which stressed that the ecclesial community is, above all, a family, the People of God, where everyone counts and everyone has a mission), may assume its communal identity and renew her commitment to be, more and more, an articulated body that advances without discarding or marginalizing anyone, a body in which everyone, from the bishops to the most recent baptized believers, feel and are true companions on the journey.
This commitment, and this synod, are necessary. Because, despite the extraordinary advances made since the Council, when we look at our parishes, communities and ecclesial movements, we realize that we still have a lot of work to do. In how many parishes must everything still go through the pastor (from the most vital to the most trivial decisions), who reigns over his parishioners with a style more typical of a feudal lord than a shepherd? In how many religious congregations and dioceses is authority still exercised without the slightest dialogue between those who ordain and those who obey? In how many movements and institutions that call themselves Christian are the leaders and founders treated with an unhealthy cult of their personalities, which stifles any constructive criticism of their leadership before it can even be formulated? How many groups —starting, of course, with women, who, if I am not mistaken, make up half of humanity— still participate in the life of the Church in a peripheral and marginal way, without access to many areas, roles or functions?
We repeat beautiful sentences from the Council that emphasize the participation of all the baptized in the life of the Church, but in practice we are still a strongly hierarchical, often authoritarian structure, in which consensus matters little and in which some voices have a disproportionate weight, to the detriment of others.
In this sense, the next synod is a reason for hope. Let us pray, from now on, for its success. So that the Spirit, who, like the wind, «blows wherever it pleases» (Jn 3: 8) guide us along paths of authentic conversion in favor of synodality, this desire (so close to the heart of the Gospel) to leave no one behind, to listen to all voices and to count on everyone, especially on those that our society—and also the Church—tends to ignore and marginalize.
Can the Christian faith ever become a private matter, limited to the domain of the individual conscience?
The Gospel could be compared to music written on a piece of paper. What is, a musical score? It is a sheet of paper with signs on it, signs intended to become music. A staff full of notes that no one would ever play or sing, and that never, not once, would become a melody, would be a contradiction, an absurdity. Likewise, the gospels were written to be lived out. They are a collection of texts that want to become life, and it would be a complete contradiction for us to look at them from a distance, to perhaps study them, to examine them carefully (a useful thing, to be sure), if then we did nothing to put them into practice. What we would like to emphasize here is that, if a musical score exists to become a melody, the gospels exist to become community life and to shape the world. Indeed, this «putting the Gospel into practice» necessarily entails an experience of community, of people who—either as a family of blood, or as a family of faith, or as a group of friends, or as a parish team, or as an institute of consecrated life—, together, try to embody, in their own time and circumstances, what they learn in the gospels. And, together, then, they try to better the world they live in, making it more livable for everyone.
Today, in many cultural contexts, the idea that faith should be something strictly private, which would only affect the personal consciousness of individual believers, is gaining weight. I recently read a somewhat unfortunate article by a journalist (with whom, on the other hand, I usually agree), in which the author stated precisely that «no one should mock any religion, because, as long as it limits itself to the personal domain, what is the problem?» This is the issue, the crux of the matter. If the Gospel is to be enclosed into the personal domain, if it does not become fraternal life and action for social transformation, if it becomes something strictly private, then it will cease to sound. If we turn the Gospel into something private, we silence it.
Faith takes root and grows in our consciences and in our hearts, that is true. However, it does not stay there. The message of Jesus necessarily implies that those who adhere to it make it flesh, and they do so by living in community and thru their commitment to justice—a commitment to transform their environment. Privatizing the Christian faith will always be a contradiction, because the Christian faith is, by definition, communal and social.
And why is it that so many people, today, wish to turn faith into a private matter, limited to the personal domain? We could suspect, without wanting to be ill-thought, that a privatized Gospel benefits, above all, those who do not want anything to change, those who are already comfortable with the world as it is, those who do not care about inequality and injustice. Either because inequality and injustice do not affect them, or because they suit them. Those who think that the world should remain exactly as it is, are scared—with good reason—of a Gospel made life, made fraternity, made daily construction of the kingdom and rebuke of the abuses of a few against the rest. To privatize our faith is to deprive it of its transformative and liberating potential. If we do not want the Gospel to be reduced to dead letter, we will have to interpret, over and over again, the soft and captivating music that throbs in its pages. That’s why they were written.
We wish a blessed Easter to all the readers of this blog, friends of the Community of Saint Paul.
Easter Sunday: The scar
One finds a scar on the skin of Time.
Time, that old fool, still ponders it, perplexed.
What happened, that Sunday?
The punctual affliction that
Had never failed to arrive
In the lives of microbes, crabs, and lizards;
And iguanas, tortoises, felines, dromedaries and camels,
And this new biped that now thinks
And knows of love. Yet
That Wound, victor of every battle,
That particular sunny Sunday,
Was defeated.
Its defeat left a scar
On the smooth skin of Time.
And the eternal dance of Creation
By light, was split in two.
Reflection on Holy Thursday
The opening sentence of the Gospel that we read today, in the evening Mass of the Lord’s Supper, serves as a portico for the entire celebration of the Paschal Triduum: «Before the feast of Passover, Jesus realized that the hour had come for him to pass from this world to the Father. He had loved his own in this world, and would show his love for them to the end» (Jn 13: 1). This masterful introduction by John the evangelist is a matchless way to frame all the events that will unfold from here: The Last Supper, the washing of the feet, the prayer and the arrest of Jesus in Gethsemane, his trial, condemnation and crucifixion, his memorable forgiveness of his executioners from the cross, his death and his resurrection. The interpretive key that explains the Lord’s attitude through all these events is that, having loved his friends, he loved them to the end.
Today, as we enter with faith and emotion into the celebration of the central days of the liturgical year, it would not hurt to examine our reaction, both emotional and rational, to this moving statement of the evangelist. When I hear that Jesus «loved to the end,» how do I feel? What do I think?
And it is important to ask those questions because probably we are dealing with one of these Gospel passages that we could quickly dismiss. It would be easy to downplay it and to think, deep down, that it is a fine statement if we apply it Jesus, but that today, here, it is impossible to actually live out. That perhaps is not even desirable. For, what does it mean to love to the extreme? Is it even possible? Is there such pure love in the real world? Is this love that gives it all out actually healthy? Have we not learnt the importance of practicing self-care? And does not psychology teach us that in all acts of love for someone there is a bit (or a lot) of self-interest and self-love? From our experience of the complexity of life we could read this gospel story and think of it as a fable. Beautiful, yes, but fabulous after all. We will read that Jesus loved his friends to the extreme and reduce this phrase, at most, to an ideal. Nice, to be sure, but unrealistic. «In the real world, no one loves like that,» we will tell ourselves.
We will not be completely wrong if we think this way: absolute self-giving is attained by few people. For most of us, fears, selfishness and the pursuit of comfort reduce our ability to fully give ourselves to others. And yet, it is crucial that we realize that we are not facing an impossible horizon. Difficult, yes, but perhaps less distant than we think. There are, around us, in every neighborhood of every city in the world, in every village, in every town, people who love others with admirable dedication and generosity. To the end. The single mother who cares for her children working impossible hours in almost inhumane conditions, the woman who pays a daily and painful visit to her depressed neighbor and takes her for a walk, the grandson who lives with his grandmother, who’s been sick for years, and cares for her without losing his invincible smile, the parents who would do anything for their disabled son, the nun who cares for a group of orphans as if they were their own daughters. None of these examples (or many others that come to mind) is rhetorical or imagined: for each of them I am thinking of actual people who embody it, and whom I have had the privilege to meet. Suddenly, the model of Jesus, loving with a complete surrender, no longer seems so remote or unattainable.
Holy Week, with the contemplation of the Passion of Jesus (the man who loved to the end), could help us—who perhaps during the year let our Christian commitment cool down—to recover something of the passion of the saints. It is worth it: first of all, because having this radical love as our goal and horizon, will lift us up, even if we fall far short of fulfilling it. It will give depth and breadth to our life story. And, secondly, because if we «domesticate» the Gospel too much and try to live the faith without passion, sooner or later we will end up thinking that the Gospel demands a lot in exchange for too little. «He who loses his life will find it,» Jesus said. Only those who give themselves completely, or who at least try, and see self-giving as something possible and desirable, will reap (despite the many obstacles and hard times they will endure) the fruits of knowing that their time and efforts in this world are going somewhere. They will also experience the joy that this conviction brings with it. The absolute self-giving of Jesus, this Holy Thursday, tells us that a radical embrace of the Gospel is the way, also for us. A difficult path, no doubt, but one that will elevate us above our miseries, one that will help us get out of our little worlds, and one that is very much worth it. More than anything in this world.
What are the specific temptations of the Lent that we have just started?
Every year on the first Sunday of Lent we read the account of Jesus’ temptations in the desert. This past Sunday we read Mark’s version, which is much more succinct than the more elaborate ones of Matthew and Luke: «At that point the Spirit sent Jesus out toward the desert. He stayed in the desert forty days, tempted by Satan; he was with the wild beasts and angels waited on him» (Mk 1: 12-13). It is, without a doubt, a symbolic account that anticipates the entire life of Jesus. We could compare it to a cinematic trailer, when in one or two minutes we are given an overview of the entire film that will soon be released: in an instant we see the faces of the main characters and we capture the "flavor" of the story that then it will be explained to us in detail. In the “trailer” of the gospel that Mark gives us, we discover that the whole of Jesus’ life (represented by the forty days) he was driven and inspired by the Spirit that had descended on him on the day of his baptism; that his whole life was a journey through the desert (the desert of so much incomprehension that he had to endure); that he was constantly tempted (how many times did Jesus consider throwing in the towel and abandoning his mission?); and that he always lived surrounded by beasts (his many adversaries, from the Pharisees to the high priests of Jerusalem) and served by angels (those who helped him in his mission, from his disciples to the friends who welcomed him into their homes, like Martha, Mary and Lazarus).
What is particular about this story is that Mark does not specify what the temptations were. Unlike Matthew and Luke, who will talk about turning stones into bread, about power and glory, or about putting God to the test with Jesus' gesture of jumping from the parapet of the temple, here we are simply told that Jesus «was tempted.» And this helps us to understand that there are many temptations, that everyone has their own, and that we would always do well to ask ourselves what ours are.
In this sense, there may be some specific temptations for us during this Lent.
It is now a year since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, and twelve months later we are still immersed in it. Does not this context create the conditions for particular temptations? We think so—and we should probably examine them.
First, the temptation to give up. Tired, fatigued by the bad news, by so much pain lived and shared, by so much anxiety and uncertainty, perhaps the first temptation we must face, today more than ever, is that of discouragement—the temptation to stop fighting for the future of our families and to stop yearning for a tomorrow that may be attractive and worthwhile living.
The second may be the temptation to think, in the face of so much pain, that others exist only to serve me: that, somehow, my suffering is more serious and real and deep than yours. And, then, to forget that we are called to be these angels that the gospel spoke about—in any circumstance, whether there is a pandemic or not: to be ready to serve others. It is the temptation to forget about service. To give up being angels.
Then there is the temptation to become wild beasts. Hunted by the difficult and complicated context of the pandemic, we may feel justified to lose decency, respect, kindness, and behave in ways that, prior to the pandemic, would seem unacceptable to us. As if, in these uncertain times, everything would be allowed. In fact, many places have already been experiencing an increase in crime these last months. It is an effect of the crisis that we are experiencing, when some, in the midst of so much need, may assume that it is logical and acceptable to abandon the values that they previously held, and begin to live according to the law of the jungle .
The last temptation of the present time that we will mention (there could be more) is to turn social distancing into emotional and affective distance, and home confinement into mental isolation. There is no question that we must continue to practice all measures of prudence to take care of ourselves. Yet, we must also ensure that social distancing does not lead us to emotionally distance ourselves from others, and that confinement does not lead us to enclose ourselves in our little world of worries, forgetting that, beyond our homes, out there, there is a world of needy people.
Assuming that these may be some of the temptations that may haunt us during this Lent may be the best way to overcome them.
A new novel by Martí Colom
Recently Editorial San Pablo from Madrid has published a novel by Martí Colom, a member of our community. It is titled "The Sadness of the Zelot" (“La tristeza del zelota”, in Spanish), and it is a fiction set in the 1st century. The plot revolves around the letter of Paul of Tarsus to Philemon: as it is well known, in this letter—the shortest of the Pauline epistles—the Apostle to the Gentiles intercedes with Philemon for Onesimus, a runaway slave whom Paul has met in prison. We have no historical record of what happened with the letter once Paul dictated it and some scribe recorded it on a papyrus. Did it arrive to Philemon’s hands? If so, did Philemon obey Paul's recommendation, and forgive Onesimus? Or maybe he ignored the letter and punished the slave, as it was required by the law? What role did the other recipients of the letter —Apphia and Archippus—, play in the story?
Starting from these questions, Martí Colom builds up an agile and absorbing story in which he raises how, from the very beginning of the church, the gospel has been liberating for some people, while for others it became a pretext for intransigence and fanaticism. This is how Paul expresses it at one point in the novel: «Some people are capable of turning the most beautiful ideas into a heavy rock. They convert delightful truths into an unbearable burden. In their hands, as if they were clumsy and blind potters, the softest and purest clay, destined to produce the most beautiful of jars becomes deformed and ends up producing useless garbage».
https://libreria.sanpablo.es/libro/la-tristeza-del-zelota_206834
This past Sunday at Mass we read the passage from Matthew in which Peter asks Jesus if we must forgive seven times the one who has offended us (Mt 18:21-35). Studies about first Century Palestine tell us that, at that time, some teachers of the Jewish faith suggested that a good Israelite should forgive three times those who wronged him. Peter sensed that, to Jesus—who was so obviously always interested in mercy and reconciliation—the three times that were taught would seem insufficient. So he went ahead, took the floor, and suggested something that, in his view, would earn him praises from the Lord: he doubled the recommended three times and, just in case, added one more: seven. Jesus would surely answer him, «Very good, dear Peter! Yes, absolutely, it is seven times! You do understand me, my friend!»
We all know Jesus’ reply, which undoubtedly stunned good old Peter: «I don't tell you seven, but seventy times seven.»
What is the difference between the mentality expressed by Peter and that of Jesus? For the apostle, forgiveness was an act. An action. An action that could be repeated, but which, no matter how many times it was carried out, could still be counted (this is the meaning of Peter’s “seven times”). Jesus’ response indicates that for us forgiveness should not an act, but an attitude: seventy times seven (that is, always). In other words, our normal way of reacting to the offense received.
This difference is not small, because a specific action does not define us—but an attitude does. I can lie once, and that will not make me a liar. Or I may have had a good idea one day, and this will not mean that I am a genius. An attitude, on the other hand, does define what kind of person we are. Someone who wakes up every day with a new original idea in his head is a genius, and someone who lies constantly is a liar. Ultimately, what Jesus proposes is that the ability to forgive others is what defines us. That forgiveness may become, as it were, our ID, the most genuine expression of our character.
On a spiritual level there is, of course, a compelling reason for trying to make sure that we don’t see forgiveness as an act but as an attitude: for whoever does not make a habit of forgiveness will not understand God. To those who live installed in resentment and in grievance, the Merciful Father of Jesus will be nonsense, an un-believable God (in whom, literally, one cannot believe), a ridiculous being, weak and pointless. Conversely, learning to forgive is probably the one thing that can bring us to a better understanding of the loving Father announced by Jesus.
Nazareth, today
This past Monday, August 24, in the Church we celebrated the feast of Saint Bartholomew, one of the twelve apostles, also called Nathanael. The Gospel passage that we read that day, which narrates the way in which Nathanael met Jesus (Jn 1: 43-51), offers some interesting lessons.
Philip, who has already been with Jesus and is fascinated by what he has seen in him, approaches Nathanael and assures him that he has found the Messiah: “Jesus, son of Joseph, from Nazareth.” Nathanael’s reaction is charged with skepticism: “Can anything good come from Nazareth?”
Historians say that in the first century Nazareth was a village of shepherds and peasants that perhaps did not exceed two hundred inhabitants, an unremarkable Galilean village where, in fact, nothing relevant had ever happened: it is not mentioned even once in the Old Testament. Nathanael, very aware of the insignificance of Nazareth, reacts to Philip’s announcement by showing his prejudice in all its plainness: it is impossible for the Messiah to come from such a place, he says.
Philip does not give up, and invites his friend: “Come, see for yourself.” And then what we wanted to emphasize takes place: Nathanael, despite his prejudice, gets up and goes with Philip to meet Jesus. Maybe he walks full of suspicion, maybe he thinks he is wasting his time. But nonetheless, there he goes. In him, the power of prejudice has not been dominant enough to dissuade him from going to check, for himself, what Philip has said. Nathanael, who shows that he has prejudices, also shows that he is able of questioning them. From the fact that he goes with Philip to meet that Nazarene, it is clear that he is willing to let reality surprise him. For him, his prejudice is not an absolute truth.
Perhaps it is almost impossible to completely get rid of our prejudices. And it is almost impossible, in the first place, because prejudices are usually unconscious. We absorb them from childhood, we breathe them at home, at school, in the neighborhood. Mario Levrero explains it quite well in a passage of his posthumous book, the original and suggestive The luminous novel: «It is quite difficult to discover our own prejudices», writes the Uruguayan novelist, «they settle in the mind as absurd dictators, and one accepts them as revealed truths. From time to time and by some accident or chance one feels obliged to review a prejudice, to question it. In those cases, it is possible to uproot it. But all the others remain standing, disguised, taking us foolishly down the wrong paths[1]». This does not mean, of course, that we should not fight to eradicate prejudices from our minds and hearts. It just means that it is a tricky and difficult business. Nathanael, in this Gospel passage from the first chapter of John, shows us a way to carry it out, when he dared to go and verify if his prejudice was true. As he walked toward Jesus, he was undoubtedly still thinking that “nothing good can come of Nazareth.” And yet he went to check it out. And as he went, he was admitting the possibility that his opinion about that unremarkable village was one of these absurd dictators described by Levrero, resolved on constructing for us a reality riddled with lies.
It is all that it takes: to have the courage to stand up, to leave the small world where our prejudices reign and dare to confront them with reality. If we did it more often, we would surely unmask a good number of blind spots that, without knowing it, we carry with us everywhere.
[1] Mario Levrero, La novela luminosa (Bogotá, Penguin Random House, 2016), p. 74
Fr. Ellacuría, murdered in El Salvador in 1989
These days, in the midst of the avalanche of information about the development of the Covid19 pandemic, some media—both secular and Catholic—have made reference to another current piece of news: the beginning, in Spain, of Inocente Orlando Montano’s trial. He is a former colonel from El Salvador, accused of the murder of the Jesuits in the Universidad Centroamericana (UCA). On November 16, 1989, during the civil war that was then devastating that country, a platoon of the government’s armed forces entered into the university’s residence and murdered in cold blood the Jesuit priests Ignacio Ellacuría, Ignacio Martín Baró, Segundo Montes, Amando López, Juan Ramón Moreno and Joaquín López, together with Elba Julia Ramos, the person who tended to the residence, and her fifteen year old daughter Celina. The Jesuits had gained notoriety for their intellectual positions sympathetic to Liberation Theology, which the more conservative sectors in the country viewed as a sign that they were supportive of the Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional (FMLN), the leftist guerrilla that fought against the government. The main target of the killers was the rector of the UCA, Fr. Ellacuría. Colonel René Emilio Ponce, the person in charge of the group which committed the crime, had declared, expeditious and sinister: «Ellacuría must be eliminated, and I want no witnesses left».
The trial gives us the opportunity to remember one of Ellacuría’s most popular sentences, one that perhaps has been repeated often because, with the passing of time, it has become ever more relevant. We are talking about his observation that, in view of the inequalities that exist in the world, the only path left to humanity is what he called the road of shared austerity.
Thirty years after the murder of Ellacuría and his companions, inequality in the world and the bridge between the rich and the poor have continued to grow [1]; at the same time, the environmental crisis hurting the planet has become the main threat to humanity’s future. Today it would just be impossible for everyone to live in the same way that the wealthiest among us conduct their lives. The available resources in our battered planet would not permit it. In fact, the dire poverty that suffer the most disadvantaged is the exact price that humanity is paying for the wealth that others enjoy. If every human being on Earth (we are getting close to 8.000 billion) was to use the same living space and energetic resources that today uses the average American, we would need five planets such as ours. What is the problem with that? That we only have one Earth. If everyone wants to survive, we only have one path left ahead of us: the civilization of shared austerity proposed by Ellacuría.
None of this is new. Here we would only like to underline something, quite simple, about the spiritual dimension of these issues: the belief that to embrace this call to austerity would not only be very good news for those who, as a result, would be able to move away from their current material poverty. The acceptance of austerity would also be a gift for those of us who live using more resources than we should—and who must learn how to live with less. Why? Because this learning of austerity is the only thing that will free us from the slavery to which we are subjected when we live in the civilization of insane spending.
¿Slavery? Is not that, perhaps, too strong of a word? Not at all.
It is slavery for someone to live thinking at all times about the need to acquire the latest model of smartphone available in the market. It is slavery for someone to force himself to wear only clothes produced by certain popular and expensive brands. It is slavery to live changing my vehicle every few years, even if the old one was still taking me to places without any trouble. It is slavery to live watching the neighbor with apprehension, fearing that his financial success might undermine mine. The fixation with success is also a form of enslavement. As it is the nightmare of having turned life into a permanent competition for profit. It is slavery to have made a god out of money.
Perhaps someone will read the preceding paragraph and say, with a disdainful smile in his or her lips: «Well, that was a rather simplistic and shallow picture of the “consumerist” person: no one really lives like that». True, perhaps no one is like that all the time. Perhaps nobody is the exact image of this rough caricature of the “homo consumericus”. And yet, many of us have one of his traits, or several. And this is reason enough to ask ourselves what we are going to do with Ellacurías’s warning. Will we ignore it, performing an act of irresponsibility and selfishness that, on top of hurting the poor, will enslave ourselves? Or will we begin to think that this issue of shared austerity is a serious one that, indeed, has a lot to do with each one of us?
[1] Noah Yuval Harari reminded us in his 21 lessons for the 21st Century (2018) that we are moving towards the most unequal society of all times.
30/06/2020 -
“HOPE”
San Pablo Publishing House from Madrid (Spain) has recently printed the essay “Esperanza" (Hope), by Martí Colom, a member of our Community and regular collaborator of this blog. The book has appeared as part of the “Adentro” Collection (Books on Spirituality), and it is a meditation on the foundations and nature of hope; on how can hope contribute to our personal and collective development, and on the role it has played in History. The text also asks the question of what is specific of Christian hope: what kind of hope moved Jesus, what sort of hope can we find in the Gospels? Finally, the author presents the intimate relationship between hope and solidarity, concluding that where there is no hope is quite difficult for solidarity to grow. Hope is, in fact, the best possible yeast for solidarity —that solidarity which today the world desperately needs to overcome the abysmal differences between rich and poor that hurt it.
Congratulations, Martí, on the publication of this book!
This past Sunday we have celebrated the great feast of Pentecost. In the passage from the book of the Acts of the Apostles that narrates the descent of the Holy Spirit on the gathered community (Acts 2:1-11), it is clear that the spirit comes to transform reality. If before it is poured out on the disciples they are a frightened, inward looking group, after receiving it they are a courageous community that projects itself to the world.
If, beyond this fundamental observation, we look at what their preaching produces, we see that the fruit of the Spirit having been poured out on the community is that the Gospel («the mighty acts of God») is proclaimed in a way that everyone can understand it.
The task of the Church, from the day of Pentecost onward, is to translate the Christian message so that peoples of all ages and cultures can understand it. In the same way that the passage from Acts makes it very clear that people of diverse origins («Parthians, Medes, and Elamites, inhabitants of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia»…) heard the preaching «each in our own tongue», today we must strive to make the Gospel comprehensible to all.
We will not be carrying out our mission if we speak an opaque language, far removed from the language of the street, no matter how erudite it may be and no matter how elaborate our arguments are —in our opinion. In this case, we will have lost sight of the fact that the mission was, and always will be, to translate: to translate the meaning of the life and the words of Jesus for each new generation, for each new culture, for each person.
Today, in the midst of a rapidly changing society in which cultural categories that we used yesterday are no longer understood, perhaps it is more urgent than ever to know how to translate our message. Assuming that the very language, the expressions and the images that helped us to get closer to Jesus may no longer work for those who ask about him today.
Let us ask the Holy Spirit, this Great Translator, to inspire us with new and necessary ways to express our deepest convictions.
