Mt 15:21-28 (21-37)

 

Jesus discovered the will of the Father in the events of life. The same was true for the growth of awareness of the first communities, which carried no small prejudices, at least until the third generation of believers (inclusive) - as witnessed by the Synoptics.

Religious law prevented dealing with foreigners and people of other ethnicities, borders or cultures. At first, Jesus [i.e.: He in the first communities, His Mystical Body] seems not to want to deal with them (v.26).

But after helping the crowds and his own to emancipate themselves from the prison of the norms of purity (vv.10-20) Christ breaks out of conformist ways of experiencing God.

He even exoduses himself from national and racial territories that then sequester the life-bloods - thus overcoming sacred preconceptions.

 

The Son's singular initiatives arise on the basis of a wholly personal experience of the divine, of a Father munificent in bestowing without conditions. 

Provident and unequal from the stingy God of religions: the latter discordant from creatures, alien, and (incomprehensibly) habitual.

The Lord himself helps us in his story to experience the transcendent in even summary life. Thus, to get out of the contrived doctrinal ways that cage existence [territory, customs, ideology, memberships of various kinds - even 'internal'].

With an unusual gimmick, the young Rabbi tries to open up the Judaizing mentality, crossing borders.

The intent is to make us develop his own Faith. It promoted diverse existence, and outside of traditional myopia could thus find astounding adherences.

No boundary fences, no obstacles ... can contain our will to live: we want to feed not on pride (or resistance) but on love at risk, not debased - and express ourselves completely.

Even dialogue with a woman not of his people was a 'thought' alien to the mentality of the crowds of the time - alien even to the conceptions of the first two generations of believers, in this respect still entrenched and mixed with idols.

But there was a whole people of strangers [the mestizo 'woman' and her spiritual 'descendants'] who felt they had no future. And this challenged the many apriorisms of the time.

In short, even the church of Mt had not fully grasped the meaning of the 'bread of the sons' - all available to be 'recognised'.

 

Because of atavistic rivalries, ancient peoples used to call foreigners by the derogatory appellation 'dog', synonymous with impudence, meanness and ignoble baseness.

They were widespread misgivings about the sense of human brotherhood - from primitive vision [and not only, in the age of access].

The Lord's harsh sentence (v.26) reflects a comparison from poor areas and family life, where pets and youth once abounded.

There was still a difference between 'children' generated by hearing the Word of God and those who adjusted 'by scent'.

But although no one denied sustenance to the 'children' in order to give it to the 'dogs' around - the latter at least had the right to the crumbs that fell on the ground.

In fact, the text speaks of 'little dogs' [kynaría-kynaríois] as pets loved by the very young and who easily fed them leftovers during meals.

In a certain sense, they belonged to 'the house'.

 

For the different and distant - even the misunderstood - it is not a problem to resort to Jesus instinctively; on the contrary, they would be content with the scraps.

According to this, the community of the sons should not lack bodily nourishment and wisdom food for anyone (Matt 14:20-21).

However, the old-timers who considered themselves family members of entitlement and asserted registry rights, sulked and in the assemblies pretended not to allow everyone to partake of the communion, the Eucharistic grains, the gifts of the festive kingdom.

But thanks to the appeal of the Gospels [quite different from the exaggerated imperial or legionary 'evangelical' proclamations] the dominion of evil was coming to an end (v.28).

According to Matthew, there should be no obsession, chain or preconception that can take away our orientation of progress and energy, so that with extreme freedom we are enabled to work and open ourselves to the needs of others, even pagans (Mt 14:22a).

 

So in the Judeo-Christian fraternities of Galilee and Syria, a debate arises about the conditions of community membership.

What is the position of converts from paganism? Do they have the right to participate in the breaking of the Bread without prior doctrine-discipline? Is there or is there not a break with the observant tradition?

Mt emphasises that we have no pre-emption: the principle of universal salvation is the attitude of Faith; not a right.

The community of the baptised is not allowed to live on rent. The Gospel is open, overriding the biblical priority of the chosen people.

The reason for any exception is sensitive love, which has the freedom to yield, which becomes the only principle of membership.

 

The condition of membership in the new people of God is Faith in the heart and not in the blood or in the head, nor in the discipline that distances us from ourselves, God and others.

Faith: a new principle, which shatters every illusion of exclusivity.

 

With the Father, in the Son, it is no longer a matter of mortifying oneself, depending, striving and struggling, in order to stand before one another.

Legal purity is inadequate (vv.1-20), indeed now it is the person even of disconcerting origins - previously an outsider - who emerges 'victorious' from the fight with the Lord.

Spousal entrustment is appreciable everywhere, by anyone: foundational Eros gushing from every soul, and not bound to repertoires. It overcomes any particularism.

Of course, it has its criteria - but they are essential: transparency, freshness, tension towards unity, overcoming conditions and taboos; value of the person; secret empathy of energies.

 

The Gospel passage traces a whole path of adherence to Christ.

Those who are far away can approach and even start from the popular - inconvenient - idea that Jesus is the expected 'Son of David' (v.22): a military commander and ruler who was supposed to seize power, subjugate the nations, ensure the golden age, fulfil the prescriptions of the Law himself as if he were a Model, and impose their observance on all.

The starting point of the journey may be a miserable glimmer, a beginning that perhaps does not promise much. In fact, in this specific case, it is decidedly confusing: the Master does not answer (v.23).

The title attributed to Him has nothing to do with God, nor does it concern the authentic Firstborn. He is not a powerful Messiah - a predatory, homologated image - but a servant.

It makes no sense even to ask Him for "Mercy" (v.22)! Indeed - let's face it - despite the superficial ritual habits we have, here Christ seems quite angry (v.23).

This is not the healthy relationship with the Lord: He does not chastise or enjoy being begged by the needy.

Rather, He educates as He does a friend, brother or parent; and He does not grant graces by lottery, or miracles by sympathy and protection, or favours by territory - like pagan gods.

That image is totally deviant, but it is a bogus figure that comes out of the very "insiders" (vv.23-24), who would have nothing to object to (v.23).

Indeed, their own catechesis is the source of it: the title 'son of David' sounds strange, on the lips of a pagan.

 

Even today, this homologising paternalistic idea - of inculcated guilt - tends to drive away those who seek an amiable companion.

The priority for 'Israel' is acknowledged by Jesus because it is precisely the eldest sons who must be converted to a new Face of the first God of Sinai - still assessed as Lawgiver and Judge, instead of Creator and Redeemer of our intelligence and freedom.

[Albeit in a good-natured way, they unfortunately continue to spread it, as a sullen notary, since pre-catechism].

Jesus distances himself from those who make claims and at the same time divert the souls of the needy who seek him.

Then, in spiritual terms, no one can boast a right to anything: the truly sacred Gifts do not derive from any selective election relationship, nor even clientelistic [of the buying and selling kind].

 

So, to become intimate with Christ... can one be content with the Eucharistic 'crumbs' - i.e. 'minimal salvation'?

Can one be satisfied with the mere crumbs that fall from the table of the supponent closed in small schemes (vv.26-27)?

Certainly, because it is Faith that saves (v.28), not a grand gesture or long practice in the disciplines of the arcane - nor a code of purity.

The authentic Lord only says:

"Woman, great is your Faith! Do as thou wilt with me" (v.28) - that is, go forth to the joy of a full life, transmissible to an "offspring" not destined for torment or premature death.

And without the judgement of others, the one with the usual deceitful tares of inadequacy, on your back.

Thanks to Him we are not introduced into a summary religious practice, but into a Relationship that is chiselled over time (vv.22-28).

 

How to orient oneself?

Instead of the narrow Law, it is the Gospel that fully empowers us.

As if we were "little dogs" (vv.26-27) that seek life and nourishment, instinctively proceeding [by "sniffing"] along unexplored paths. And that according to character, inclination, Calling by Name, appeal to other secret forces.

In short, all men - although still far from an explicit adherence of faith - are inhabited by this knowledge that is at once personal and primordial, that gives immediate and infallible direction.

So in simplicity will we too, to find the Way.For Faith has no nationality, and is the only valid language-relation-trajectory for communication between God and woman and man.

It is universal; it crosses time, denominational and even religious borders.

 

Commenting on the Tao Te Ching (LVIII), Master Wang Pi states:

"He who rules well has no form or name, he does not initiate administrations. The various categories divide and separate, that is why the people are fragmented'.

Master Ho-shang Kung adds:

'When the ruler is liberal, the people are united in wealth and satiety: people love each other and get along well'.

 

Today it is about sharing the minutiae and fragments of the 'more' we in the West inherited from past generations.

A very instructive and affluent 'more'; lavishly bestowed, yet received without 'anything too much' [ne quid nimis] nor much merit or risk (as 'good Christians...').

And respecting in everything the nomenclature of the veterans, of the cordate and the powerful - always disinclined to real coexistence.

Christ, on the other hand, is sapiential food for free circulation; not impeded food, to be kept locked in tabernacles.

His virtue is now understood only outside the sacristies - from far and wide (vv.21-22) - where even a minuet of bread makes one trust and rise, in sharing.

To break the Eucharist as source and summit is to proclaim it as a Gift not to be withheld or kept intact, but rather to be exposed and distributed without moralising.

To share that Food is to participate in the root of existence, what we have and are; the yardstick of what we proclaim, believe and practise.

 

Sadly, not infrequently the strangers and dissimilar are hungrier for the true Manna from Heaven.

Saturated to the point of nausea - and perhaps still unable to comprehend its meaning - why live the shared Nourishment [perhaps with little regard for its meaning] as a problem and fear?

 

 

To internalise and live the message:

 

If not of 'your people', do you at least want to talk to them - even if veterans, inner clubs and regulars forbid it?

Don't you think the synodal path is a good opportunity to review abstract positions?

Do you know of any ecclesial parishes that do not give outsiders a chance?

Do you know people hurt by exclusions? What do you do, silence-assent?

 

 

Multiplication by Division, in itinerancy

 

The simple (Eucharistic) Mystery

(Mt 15:29-37)

 

"Man is the limit-being who has no limit" (Fratelli Tutti n.150).

In our hearts we have a great desire for fulfilment and Happiness. The Father has put it there, He Himself satisfies it - but He wants us associated with His work - inside and outside of us.

The Son reflects God's plan in his compassion for the crowds in need of everything (vv.30.32) and - despite the plethora of teachers and experts - lacking any authentic teaching [cf. Mt 9:36. 14:14].

His solution is very different from that of all "spiritual" guides, because he does not overlook us with an indirect paternalism [cf. Mt 14:16] that would dry tears, heal wounds, erase humiliations.

It invites us to make use of what we are and have, even though it may seem ridiculous. But it teaches in an absolutely clear way that by shifting energies, prodigious results are achieved.

This is how we respond in Christ to the world's great problems: by recovering the condition of the man viator - a being of passage, his essential mark - and by sharing goods; not letting everyone make do [cf. Mt 14:15].

Our real nakedness, the vicissitudes and the experience of our many brothers and sisters, who are different, are resources not to be evaluated with distrust, "as dangerous competitors or enemies" of our fulfilment (FT n.151).

Not only will the little we bring be enough to satiate us: it will advance for others and with identical fullness of truth, human, epochal [vv.34.37: the passage insists on the Semitic symbolism of the number "seven"].

 

In Mt Jesus is the new Moses who ascends 'the mountain' of authentic relationships - to inaugurate an alternative Time, which marks true history.

People no longer stay at the bottom of the valley waiting: they gather around Him, coming as they are, with the burden of so many different needs.

The new people of God are not a settled crowd, of the elect, chosen and pure.

Each one brings with him his own path, his own troubles and problems, which the Lord heals - healing not with a solution from above or from without.

In short: another world is possible, but through breaking one's own (even miserable) bread.

A wise, uninterrupted, effective solution, if one brings it out from within, on the way and standing in the middle - not in front, not at the head, not on top (v.36).

 

The place of God's revelation was to be the place of lightning, on a "mountain" smoking like a furnace (Ex 19:18)... but finally even Elijah's violent zeal had to recant (1 Kings 19:12).Even to the pagans, the Son reveals a Father who does not simply erase infirmities: he makes them understood as a place that is preparing a personal development, and that of the Community.

He imagined that in the time of the Messiah, the lame, the deaf and the blind would disappear (Is 35:5ff.). Golden age: everything at the top, no abyss.

In Jesus - distributed Bread - an unusual fullness of times is manifested, apparently nebulous and fragile, but real and capable of restarting people and relationships.

The Spirit of God acts not by descending like a thunderbolt from above, but by activating in us capacities that appear intangible, yet are capable of regrouping our dispersed being, classified as insubstantial - involving the everyday summary - and re-evaluating it.

 

The Incarnation reweaves our hearts, in dignity and promotion; it truly unfolds, because it not only drags obstacles away, but rests on them.

And it does not erase them at all: thus it overpowers them, but transmutes - posing new life.

Lymph that draws juice and sprouts Flowers from the one muddy, fertile soil, and communicates them.

Solidarity to which all are invited, not just those deemed to be in a state of perfection and compactness.

 

Our shortcomings make us attentive, and unique. They are not to be despised, but taken up, placed in the Son's hands and energised (v.36).

Falls themselves can be a valuable sign: in Christ, they are no longer reductive humiliations, but rather path markers. Perhaps we are not making the best use and investment of our resources.

Thus, collapses can quickly turn into rises - different, not packaged - and a search for total completion in Communion.

Therefore, in the ideal of realising the Vocation and sensing the type of contribution to be made, nothing is better than a living environment that does not clip the wings: a lively fraternity in exchange and coexistence.

Not so much to dampen the jolts, but so that we are enabled to build stores of wisdom not calibrated by nomenclature - which everyone can draw from, even those who are different and far from us.

If a shortcoming is found here too, it will be to teach us to be present in the world according to (perhaps) other and further directions, or to bring out mission and creative maturity - not to remain fixated on partiality and minutiae.

 

The allusion to the seven loaves (multiplied because divided) supports the quotations on the mouldable magma of biblical icons.

Here Moses and Elijah on "the Mount": figures from the five Books of the Pentateuch (the First Foods), plus the two sections of Prophets and Writings.

All together "seven loaves": fullness of food and wisdom for the soul, called to proceed beyond the surrounding hedgerows, breaking the banks of the subjugated mentality.

It is the basic nourishment of the human-divine spirit, to which, however, is added a young and fresh companion food, which precisely involves us (v.34).

[As St Augustine said: "The Word of God that is daily explained to you and in a certain sense 'broken' is also daily Bread" (Sermo 58, IV: PL 38, 395)].

Complete food: basic food and 'companion' - historical and ideal, in code and in deed.

Here we become in Christ as an actualised and propulsive corpus of sensitive witnesses (and Scriptures!).

Certainly reduced, not yet affirmed - and lacking in heroic phenomena, but emphatically sapiential and practical.

Announcers and sharers, without resounding proclamations of self-sufficiency.

Never enclosed within archaic fences: always in fieri - therefore able to perceive unknown tracks.

 

And to 'break the Bread'... that is, to be active, to go further, to share the little - to nourish, to overflow (multiplying the listening and the action of God) and to make even the desperate regain esteem.

We are children: like few and small fish (v.34), but not wallowing in competitions that make life toxic.

On the contrary: called in the first person to write a singular, empathic and sacred Word-event.

Infants in the Lord, we swim in this different Water. Sometimes perhaps outwardly veiled or muddy and murky....

Finally made transparent if only because it is yielding, compassionate (v.32) and benevolent.

The old exclusive puddle of religion that does not dare the risk of Faith (v.33) would not have helped us to assimilate the proposal of the Jesus Messiah, Son of God, Saviour - acrostic of the Greek word Ichtys [fish].

He is the Father's Initiative-Answer, support in the (unethereal) journey in search of the Hope of the poor - of all of us destitute waiting.

 

The working Faith thus has as its emblem the Eucharist, a revolution of sacredness. It seems strange, for us who have grown accustomed to it.

In fact, the purpose of evangelisation is to participate in and emancipate the complete being from all that threatens it, not only in its extreme limitation: also in its everyday actions - to the point of seeking the communion of goods.

In Mark (7:31-37) the prodigy is placed after the opening of the "senses". Here after the healings by the Lake of Galilee (vv.29-31).

The Source and Summit Sign of the community of sons is a creative gesture that imposes a shift of vision, an absolutely new eye.

In the face of the destitution of the many - caused by the greed of the few - the attitude of the authentic Church does not take pleasure in emblems and fervour, nor in partial calls to distinguish itself in almsgiving.

The breaking of the Bread takes over from the Manna dropped from above in the desert (Mt 15:33) and involves its distribution - not only in special situations.

There is no settling, in multiplying life for all.

This is the attitude of the living Body of the thaumaturgic Christ [not the miracle worker] who feels called to be active in every circumstance.

 

If Eucharistic participation does not only provoke punctual alms-giving, external pietism and mannerly welfarism, here is the result:

Women and men will eat, remain full, and there will be food left over for others (not all of God's intended guests are still present...).

 

We note that it had not even occurred to the disciples that the solution might come from the people themselves and their spirit.

Not just from the paternalism of the leaders, or from some individual benefactor.

Unexpected solution: the question of food is solved not from above, but from within the people and with the few loaves they brought with them.

There is no solution with the verb 'multiply' - that is, 'increase' ... relationships that count, increase property, pile up wiles.

The only therapy is 'to break', 'to give', 'to offer' (v.36). And everyone is involved, no one privileged.

 

At that time, competitiveness and class mentality characterised the society of the empire - and began to infiltrate even the small community, just starting out.

As if the Lord and the God of retribution could live side by side, yet.

It is the communion of the needy that conversely rises to the top in the non-artisanal Church.

Real sharing acts as the professor of the ubiquitous veteran, pretentious people, the only ones yet to be converted.

The germ of their 'longevity' should be not altitude and role, but love.

Such is the only meaning of sacred gestures; not other projects tinged with prevarication, or appearance.

 

The 'belonging' astound.

For the Lord, the distant (though still poised in their choices) are full participants in the messianic banquet - without preclusions, nor disciplines of the arcane with nerve-racking expectations.

Conversely, that Canteen presses in favour of others who have yet to be called. For a kind of re-establishment of the original Unity.

 

In short, the Redemption does not belong to elites concerned about the stability of their rule - which it is even the weak who must sustain.

 

Saved life comes to us by incorporation.

 

 

To internalise and live the message:

 

Have you ever broken your bread, passed on happiness and made recoveries that renew relationships, putting people who do not even have self-esteem back on their feet? Or have you favoured selflessness, chains and elite attitudes?