Accepting and not transferring evaluations
(Mt 4:12-17.23-25)
The Kingdom is near if, thanks to our involvement, God comes to earth and happiness knocks at the door, converting us to something profoundly new: choices of light instead of judgement, possession, the exercise of power, the display of glory.
The Gospel of Matthew was written to support the communities of Galilee and Syria, made up of converted Jews, who were suffering accusations of betraying the promises of the Covenant and welcoming pagans.
The aim of the text is to bring out the figure of Jesus the Messiah [no longer the son of David] who brings salvation, deployed beyond the perimeters: not only to the chosen people and the observers of its normative clichés.
He excludes no one, and everyone must feel adequate.
Already in the opening genealogy, Mt foretells the universal ecclesiology of the new Rebbe as a source of wide-ranging blessing, even outside Israel and the observances.
An unambitious reality, an alternative to empire or the life of narrow cultures - absolutely not set up or ruled by us.
To encourage his faithful not to fear being excluded, and to recognise themselves in the Master, the evangelist reiterates precisely the criterion of redemption without borders.
He does so in the text of the Magi and in the present one: a salvation proposed as if on a journey, and without too much fighting against it.
The sad situation of ancient times (vv.14-16) is behind us.
Even in the Sermon on "the Mount" - for which Matthew 4 prepares the audience - the evangelist emphasises the specific nature of the vocation of Christian fraternities.
Their special trait: to turn to the whole earth, even their enemies. Without presumption, without any preclusion.
In Christ, there is no more imperfection, mistake or shaky condition that can keep us apart.
Everyone is indispensable and precious. Everyone is legitimate. No one has to atone.
Thus, the Call not to feel marginalised, the Vocation not to be neglected or overlooked, is reiterated throughout the book.
The authentic and divine Herald does not raise the tone or the pace, does not break the cracked reed (Mt 12:2-3), transcends the boundaries of purity and race.
Such is the basis of the good training of intimates; no cultural, ethnic or religious background gaps.
The young Announcer then sends out the disciples to all peoples - in the style of opening up without hesitation, and not being picky.
The accomplished idea of what we would today call a 'culture of encounter' was already born in the confrontation with the inner reality of the school of the Baptist.
The son of Zechariah and Elisabeth claimed to be able to prepare well for the Coming of the Kingdom. Conversely, it remained unpredictable.
An environment - John's - in which the Announcement was not solely positive, nor always full of life and only of joy and welcome: often of judgement and clear cut.
The Baptiser did not fully legitimise spontaneity, each person's own ways. He did not extinguish fears; nor the fears of every perplexed soul, that it might be 'wrong'.
Instead, if the Kingdom with unexpected facets is here, there is nothing but to experience it fully and with wonder.
Following the Baptist [and pupil, along with his first disciples] the new Master had definitively grasped the difference between reductionist ascetic dynamics and the Father's plan of salvation.
He stimulated an all-round humanisation - founded on the exchange of gifts, the creative freedom of love, and a spirit of broad understanding.
The luminous and universal mission of the Son of God was not understood except by very few - all fragile and little people - and was slow to assert itself.
This is the condition of the faithful addressed by Mt.
The Lord's friends must not let themselves go if they cannot convince everyone, immediately.
It is too difficult to make the religious veterans and their established realities believe that no one has the exclusive right.
Even the strong and self-confident need only accept the coming Life - let alone the weak and errant.
But until the Forerunner himself is imprisoned and silenced, even the authentic Messiah lives almost in the shadow of the last of the ancient Prophets (cf. Jn 3:22-23).
Then he is forced to flee even from his small, traditionalist and nationalist village (Mt 4:12-13.25).
No one could believe in a Kingdom without great proclamations and arduous conditions.
It seemed impossible that the Eternal One could share his wide-ranging life; already among us, so ordinary and nothing exceptional.
As if he were a Father who transcends but approaches us all, without prior conditions of purity.
It seemed improbable to pass from the idea of the imminence of the announced empire of power, to his daily and unclamorous presence.
All the more so - all this, in the Person of the servant Messiah; not executioner, nor leader, nor self-sufficient avenger.Such dim closeness, nothing clamorous, just like his friends, converted precisely from popular Judaism and paganism.
In order to animate the churches at a critical moment, Mt brings out in the Lord's own story the characteristic experience and the same peaks of discrimination suffered by the poor members of his tiny fraternities.
Like Jesus, they were not to be overcome by fear, condemnation, separatist and distinctive ideas, nor by feeling themselves to be a minority - or by fears of persecution.
Indeed, those reborn by such a wide Spirit were no longer to stifle their tendencies, innate inclinations, perceiving the mind and natural abilities as a conflict to be adjusted according to patterns.
We are not called to a small and stagnant proxy, but to be Light and Presence - in motion - to ourselves and the multitudes we recognise within and without (vv.23-25).
Also with silent and unforced Faith.
The innate Wisdom Character transmitted by God the Creator to each one can surface everywhere in the authenticity of the Gospel.
The Word crosses sacred boundaries: especially when it becomes a non-artificial echo of our essence, and a call of good-natured instinct.
It is a new Voice: that recomposes the intimate energy of all, and unfolds its superior Guidance.
Radical call that in every woman and man addresses and fulfils even the disturbances - a world that belongs to us, only apparently inferior.
And it goes beyond the absolute piousness of exclusive plans or mortifications.
A reality that does not transfer assessments beyond the person - but knows how to wait for it and does not dictate procedures, measures, cadences of others; electives.
No foreground, not even religiously 'correct'.
Commenting on the Tao Tê Ching (i) Master Ho-shang Kung states: "Mystery is Heaven. He says that both the man who has desires and the man who does not have desires equally receive ch'ì from Heaven".
To internalise and live the message:
How can you avoid cultural, doctrinal or charismatic closures (already all designed-regulated), and live the universality of the new humanisation?
What is the yardstick by which your ecclesial reality approaches those who are different?
Meaning of "Gospels", and Integral Healing
In today's liturgy, the evangelist Matthew presents the beginning of Christ's public mission. It consists essentially in the preaching of the Kingdom of God and the healing of the sick, showing that this Kingdom has come near, indeed, has now come among us. Jesus begins to preach in Galilee, the region where he grew up, a territory of "periphery" compared to the centre of the Jewish nation, which is Judea, and in it Jerusalem. But the prophet Isaiah had foretold that that land, assigned to the tribes of Zebulun and Naphtali, would know a glorious future: the people plunged in darkness would see a great light (cf. Is 8:23-9:1), the light of Christ and his Gospel (cf. Mt 4:12-16). The term "gospel", in Jesus' time, was used by the Roman emperors for their proclamations. Regardless of the content, they were referred to as "good news", i.e. proclamations of salvation, because the emperor was regarded as the ruler of the world and every one of his edicts as heralding good. Applying this word to Jesus' preaching therefore had a strongly critical meaning, as if to say: God, not the emperor, is the Lord of the world, and the true Gospel is that of Jesus Christ.
The 'good news' that Jesus proclaims is summed up in these words: 'The kingdom of God - or the kingdom of heaven - is at hand' (Mt 4:17; Mk 1:15). What does this expression mean? It certainly does not indicate an earthly kingdom delimited in space and time, but proclaims that it is God who reigns, that it is God the Lord and his lordship is present, actual, being realised. The novelty of Christ's message is therefore that God in Him has become close, He now reigns in our midst, as the miracles and healings He performs show. God reigns in the world through his Son made man and through the power of the Holy Spirit, who is called the "finger of God" (cf. Lk 11:20). Where Jesus comes, the Creator Spirit brings life and men are healed of diseases of body and spirit. God's lordship is then manifested in the integral healing of man. With this, Jesus wants to reveal the face of the true God, the near God, full of mercy for every human being; the God who gives us life in abundance, his own life. The kingdom of God is therefore the life that asserts itself over death, the light of truth that dispels the darkness of ignorance and lies.
Let us pray to Mary Most Holy, that she may always obtain for the Church the same passion for the Kingdom of God that animated the mission of Jesus Christ: passion for God, for his lordship of love and life; passion for man, met in truth with the desire to give him the most precious treasure: the love of God, his Creator and Father.
[Pope Benedict, Angelus 27 January 2008]
