(Mt 6:19-23)
«Where your treasure is, there your heart will be» (v.21). This is not an abused, insipid personal or institutional issue; it is one for easy irony.
To ignore it is to give it further breathing space, making it grow out of all proportion; making it even more out of time and difficult to read - and to identify its treatment.
All this, however, must be done by putting precipitation in brackets... in the spirit of broader understanding. It is understood that in order to grasp itself within and activate different resources, each community must go through moments of the most severe verification.
Even for denominational churches with a wide and prestigious tradition, the awareness of being losers in this respect today is indispensable to find oneself. Overcoming the 'forward', 'outgoing' stumbling block.
We read in the Encyclical Spe Salvi n.2 ["Faith is Hope"]:
"Hope is a central word in biblical faith - to the point that in several passages the words 'faith' and 'hope' seem interchangeable [...].
How decisive it was for the awareness of the early Christians that they had received a reliable hope as a gift, is also shown where Christian existence is compared with life before faith or with the situation of the followers of other religions [...].
Their gods had proved questionable and no hope emanated from their contradictory myths. Despite the gods, they were 'godless' and consequently found themselves in a dark world, facing a dark future. 'In nihil ab nihilo quam cito recidimus' (In nothing from nothing how soon we fall back) says an epitaph from that era [...].
It appears as a distinctive element of Christians that they have a future: it is not that they know in detail what awaits them, but they know on the whole that their life does not end in a vacuum.
Only when the future is certain as a positive reality does the present also become liveable. So we can now say: Christianity was not just 'good news' - a communication of hitherto unknown content.
In our language we would say: the Christian message was not just 'informative', but 'performative'. This means: the gospel is not just a communication of things that can be known, but a communication that produces facts and changes lives.
The dark door of time, of the future, has been thrown wide open. He who has hope lives differently; he has been given a new life'.
In the form of the Relationship, everything opens up intense life - which integrates and overcomes self-love, the thirst for domination.
This liberates from the 'old', that is, it closes a cycle of paths already set - to make us return as newborns.
The Hope that has weight dismantles the inessential; it expels the noise of thoughts that are no longer in tune with our growth, and introduces dreamy energies, a wealth of possibilities.
There will be initial resistance, but development sets in.
Hope sacrifices ballasts and activates us according to the 'divine within'. It opens the door to a new, brighter, corresponding phase.
Earth's treasures quickly blind; likewise they pass away: suddenly. The age of global crisis shoves it in our faces.
Yet, it is a necessary pain.
We understand: the new paths are not traced by goods, nor by devout memories, but by the Void, which acts as a gap to common, taken for granted, reassuring easiness.
Religiosity good for all seasons gives way to the unprecedented life of Faith.
This is where the Art of discernment and pastoral work comes in: it should know how to introduce new competitive, dissimilar energies - cosmic and personal - that prepare unprecedented, open, gratuitous syntheses.
We know this, and yet in some prestigious and already wealthy circles, the greed to possess under the guise of necessity does not allow them to see clearly.
It happens even to long-standing consecrated persons - it is not clear why such greedy, perfunctory duplicity.
Do we still want to emerge, raising more confusions? After all, we are dissatisfied with our mediocre choices.
At the beginning of the Vocation, we felt the need for a Relationship that would bring Meaning and a Centre to our feriality...
Then we deviated, perhaps out of dissatisfaction or for reasons of calculation and convenience - then the dullness of our robbing eyes prevailed. First here and there, gradually occupying the soul.
Even in some church leaders and circles of prominence, the basis of existence has become the volume of ropey business [scheming gangs, Pope Francis would say].
In multiple realities, the vain scene, the bag of commerce, the thrill of getting on the board, have supplanted real hearts - and eyes themselves.
As if to say: there is another experience of the 'divine', which is a doomsday: between one Psalm and another, better than Love becomes feeling powerful, secure, celebrated, respected around.
[God and accumulation give different orders? No problem: let it be understood that one does it for 'his' Glory].
So much for the common good.Not a few people are realising that counting is the most popular sport in various multi-multiple companies, fantastically embellished with events and initiatives (to cover what is really 'worth').
And litmus test is precisely that mean-spirited scrutiny (vv.22-23) that behind dense scenes, holds back, even judges, and keeps a distance from others.
Such is the gaze that closes the horizon of existence: the immediately at hand, and of circumstance, counts.
A seemingly superabundant belief - coincidentally without the prominence of Hope - is condemning us to the world's worst denatality rate.
The panorama of our devoutly empty villages and towns is discouraging.
But one revels in one's own niche, and in the small or grandiose situation.
The important thing is that everything is epidermically adorned.
Under the peculiar bell tower that sets the pace for the usual things, many people keep 'their' too much to themselves. Content to sacralise selfishness with grandiose proclamations, or more modestly, with the display of beautiful statues, customs, banners, colourful costumes and mannerisms.
Instead, according to the Gospels, in attempts and paths of Faith that are not satisfied with an empty spirituality, life becomes bright with creative Love that flourishes, and puts everyone at ease.
Even the old can re-emerge in this new spirit. For there are other Heights. For what makes one intimate with God is nothing external.
The authentic Church aroused by limpid 'visions' - without papier-mache and duplicity - always reveals something portentous: fruitfulness from nullity, life from the outpouring of it, birth from apparent sterility.
A river of unimagined attunements will reconnect the reading of events and the action of believers to the work of the Spirit, without barriers.
For when normalised thinking gives way, and settles down, the new advances.
The choice is now inexorable: between death and life; between longing and "darkness" (v.23), or Happiness.
The first step is to admit that one must make a journey.
To internalise and live the message:
Where is your Treasure? Is your heart and eye simple?
Have you ever experienced sides that others judge to be inconclusive (from a material point of view) and instead have prepared your new paths?
