Rebirth - from failures

(Mt 13:24-30)

The metaphor that follows the initial parable is intended to emphasise that the presence of 'evil' in the world is not to be attributed to the lack of vitality of the Seed, nor to the divine Work.

Jesus upsets the precipitous cliché of apostolic morality:

"Do you therefore want us to reap them? But He declares: No, lest by reaping the darnels you uproot the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest' (vv.28-30).

In the commentary to Tao Tê Ching xxxvi Master Wang Pi writes: "By conforming to the nature of creatures, the best way to avoid future difficulties is to induce them to run to ruin spontaneously, without subjecting them to punishment.

Qualities are intertwined with errors, weaknesses and inconsistencies, but from the earliest days in the communities some believers found it hard to live with the different mentalities of the brothers of Faith - a situation that nevertheless allowed life to teem.

And it was experienced that time was the best medicine to let the tares dry up spontaneously: in perspective, it did not even turn out to be so; quite the contrary.

The parable of the good wheat and the weeds is meant to help us not to fall into exclusivism - not for ideological reasons, but for vital ones.

The rough hands of some disciples would tear up all the intertwining of the various roots with the earth and each other.

Premature sorting would ruin everything good in the present, and the future itself.

The fulfilment of the laws of purity had ensured the separation of Judaism from other cultures.

Thus some converts to the Christ Messiah were unwilling to give up their identity marks.

Others like Paul taught that impurity is good to be persecuted, but the sinner is to be tolerated.

The internal debate raised awareness: in real life there persists a mixture of things - in harmony and [at least at first sight] contrary to the Word of God.

Apparently there is like an ambitious enemy sleeping within each one of us and even in the churches, who may sometimes seem to want us to lose the very reason for believing.

Faced with the ambiguity of good and evil - or rather of ideas about good and evil - some people rush to want to resolve it immediately.

They claim to be able to eradicate indecency definitively on the basis of opinions, doctrinal and moral preconceptions - which, however, do not look at people and events [except in the usual (rigid) way].

The Lord's teaching is a reminder.

It is not immediate to understand the multifaceted significance of these preparatory energies, which from their magma and dissent will give birth to the unexpected attunements of God's inopinable future.

New opportunities also sprout from personal or institutional mediocrity. Even a paradoxical condition of growth and prosperity of the Church, 'perfect' to the extent that it recognises itself on the path of conversion to Christ: "semper conformanda".

The uniformity of fundamentalists or purists would like an external, immediate and decisive justice (in eloquent forms), but only God is able to plumb the depths of events.

Some cling to the certainties of the norm, but such schemes immediately close off the imbalances of the chaos that could have been made fruitful precisely by those providential novelties: those that supplant the stale, reworking and adapting the unsuspected [thus solving the real problems and making people dream of different intentions - another destiny].

In order not to mortify life in the illusion of 'non-negotiable' behaviour and procedures [mostly, cultural and religious certainties that are then abandoned], communities must not close themselves within suffocating hedges.

They would be unbearable: they have the mission of learning dialogue with differences and standing with disparate oppositions, so that life may become rich through diverse relationships and the concrete exchange of personal gifts, in varied and even discordant contexts.

Such is the added value that opens up the New Life, while the myth of indefectibility remains confined to sects.

In fact, not infrequently that very side of ourselves that we do not want, that we reject, that we would like to exclude or correct - and misjudged by others - has perhaps already revealed itself or will in time reveal itself to be the best part of us, both from the point of view of the exceptional realisation of the personality and of the Calling by Missionary Name.

Each believer is both 'ally' and unfaithful at the same time, but in such friction lurks the new sparks [even of fruitful disappointment] and our completion - walking the paradoxes of fallibility. As well as unprecedented cultural, even economic, political and social paths.

Says the Tao (LVIII): 'When the government in everything meddles, the people are fragmented [!] Fortune originates in misfortune, misfortune hides in fortune. Who knows its culmination? Those who do not correct. Correction turns into falsehood, good becomes an omen of misfortune, and every day the bewilderment of the people grows deeper and more lasting. That is why the Saint is square but does not cut, is incorrupt but does not wound, is straight but does not flaunt, is bright but does not dazzle'.

As in the Church, those who face life in the Spirit and want their adventure to flourish must learn to respect discomforts and make contradictions coexist within themselves.

Embrace the opposing sides and his own different images - dwelling within. And without commenting, more casually, with unencumbered perception.

Rejecting, naming and repressing what we imagine to be 'flaws'... precludes us from the other horizon - the one that becomes an Ally.

It is the unexpected point of view, which recovers and puts things right; generating knowledge, complete life and full, unpredictable, awe-inspiring relationships.

Here is Happiness unleashed - when you don't disturb it upstream.

Anxieties, prejudices, reproaches, customary opinions, expectations, unnatural propositions, fears, false attitudes of the approved ego (and so on) do not make one grow.

External preconceptions relegate and torment us into fideistic, historical, moralistic or performance digressions; ultimately confining each one to a sense of inferiority to models.

Judgments, paradigms, cliché epithets, cerebral conceptions and attitudes lock us all into neuroses, conflicts, anxieties, and vicious lapses that alter the possibilities of personal discovery - cutting off the sense of Mystery and the glimpse of the Other.

The world of God outside and inside us does not live by comparisons and judgements of guilt, which hold us back - but (pausing in the 'shortcomings') by a Goal that is not expected.

Excessive energy, untamable tendency, which overcomes all pious one-sidedness.

To internalise and live the message:

Do you dwell in the "lacks", or do you look Elsewhere?