Foreign glory (or religious culture that produces models and slaves)

(Lk 17:11-19)

The impure had to stay out of the way: anything that differed from the dominant thinking was undermined.

According to the ancient religious scheme, the places of the 'infected' were considered equivalent to cemeteries.

Diseases were imagined as punishments for transgressions.

But leprosy - a disease that corrodes from within - was the very symbol of sin [yet here it seems that it is the observant who are the walking image of death].

Any recovery was considered a miraculous resurrection.

And before being readmitted into society, all (supposed) sins had to be atoned for.

Jesus replaces the nerve-wracking complexity of these arcane and superstitious procedures with a very simple path to recovery.

In this way, he destroys archaic, superstitious idolatrous devotion, replacing it with a proposal for real life.

This passage is exclusive to Luke, but in all the Gospels the term 'village' has strongly negative connotations.

'Villages' are places where the Lord is not welcomed. There is no room for the new there, and if it takes root, it becomes an obligatory tradition.

They are territories and swamps of reduction, of stubborn confirmation, of wanting to reproduce consolidated thoughts and impose more or less seraphic customs on anyone. We know them.

In the Church, the 'village' mentality is one of certainty at all costs.

It is the typical conviction of those who consider themselves sacramentally correct and entitled to marginalise, chase away, reject, keep away, and disregard.

The passage can be read on several levels.

The Master walks with the Apostles and addresses them (Lk 17:1-11), but suddenly he seems to find himself alone (v. 12). It is as if the 'lepers of the village' were none other than his own [at that time, no one affected by the disease could live in residential areas].

The impurity contracted by the disciples and also by us today depends precisely on the damaged condition, decay and corruption of the reduced and infected environment.

The latter makes regeneration impossible - because in it the followers themselves (who seem close) sometimes close themselves off, all grouped together.

The ten lepers represent us.

The number itself indicates a totality (like fingers).

But right here, if we are at least made aware of the separation from the realisation of our face, here is the first step towards personal involvement with the Lord.

We all have signs of non-life.

Those who consider themselves to have arrived and to be free from pathologies put up fences to protect themselves and their world, but remain there, awkward.

When, on the other hand, they realise that development has not yet flourished, a sense of tolerance towards others is triggered, and the personal spring that overcomes empty, intimate, or coerced adherence.

Even in the first assemblies of those called to be children and brothers, a self-satisfied and isolationist mentality sometimes manifested itself towards the pagans who presented themselves at the threshold of the community.

The newcomers - scrutinised by the veterans who could not tolerate differences - cried out, appealing directly to Christ himself.

The question arose - still relevant today:

'You who are at the head [v. 13 Greek text], you who command the church, what do you think of your own? What do you say about this village mentality?

"Do the first ones who believe they have the right to shun others really have the right to do so?"

"Has the Father you proclaimed become exactly like the grim God of religions?"

In fact, the 'lepers' are not asking for healing, but for compassion.

In short, the Call is 'internal'.

This means that it is precisely the phenomena of the acquired role or ministry - perhaps colonialist - that should be healed.

Conditioned by false guides, we too often approach Christ in an abstruse, wrong way: asking him for 'mercy'.

One does not ask a Friend or a Father for 'mercy'.

This is why Jesus is clear. Those who consider themselves unclean or want to be pitied must go elsewhere, to the official religion.

Everyone is complete, and this can be seen in the choice of the stranger who alone understands and returns to Christ.

No one needs to punish themselves by submitting to conformist protocols.

But then it was the priests of the Temple who verified and decided whether the already healed (!) could be readmitted into society.

In short, all of us sinners are made pure not by miracles that come down like lightning, but in the Exodus.

A journey that moves us away from a putrid and diseased environment - well before anyone checks, makes trivial recommendations, and dictates the rhythm of petty practices.

It is only the 'village' that makes us - and considers us - impure... because we do not resemble it!

All we need to do is break free from ghettoising thoughts and customs to gain serenity and motivation: we will no longer feel rejected and singled out.

We will discover ourselves and God with us.

He made us this way for a special Mission; not modelled on prototypes to be copied as if we were idiots: but as supremely lovable children.

The Father sees us as perfect, and in his own time he will bring forth amazing pearls from our supposed or intruding unworthiness.

Inadequacies in the 'village', which make up and complete the baggage of our precious personality and unique Vocation.

Coincidentally, we only realise ourselves spiritually by crossing local 'cultural' barriers.

Even by disobeying orders, but transgressing them (vv. 14ff.)!

In this way, Jesus does not contemplate inquisitors.

We must allow ourselves to be controlled solely by the Spirit, who already animates us.

This is a decisive issue. In fact, the meaning of the text does not concern the thanks that must be given!

Jesus is not saddened because he sees a lack of gratitude and good manners, but because only a foreigner gives 'glory to God' (v. 15).

That is, he recognises him as his personal Lord - in a relationship, precisely, without mediation.

That personal 'Eucharistic act' [...] 'and fell on his face at his feet' (v. 16 Greek text) has a strong, spousal meaning of perfect reciprocity on the Way.

All within the horizon of a crucial choice - not peaceful, nor calm and do-gooder, but decisive - between a life of exclusive quality or death.

Although marginalised from the 'sacred enclosures' of the Temple in the Holy City, it is precisely those who are distant and rejected (considered bastards and enemies) who immediately understand what does not disfigure the face of their humanity.

Here Luke quotes the term alloghenès (v. 18) carved in large letters on the tablets affixed to the first of the internal parapets of the Sanctuary of Jerusalem [the one that, under penalty of death, prevented pagans from participating in Jewish cultic sacrifice].

But on closer inspection, in the third Gospel, the models of Faith are all 'strangers': the centurion, the prostitute, the haemorrhaging woman, the blind man, and so on.

They immediately perceive the signs of Life, the signs of God!

Others who are more settled or attracted to normality are content to be reintegrated into the old and common religious practice, returning to the usual impersonal things and mass worship.

Yet those who readjust to the ways of the world become enslaved; they lose track of themselves and of Christ (v. 17).

They become slaves once again to a conformist, conventionalist mentality that is unquestioned and dominated by 'permanence'.

According to the encyclical Fratelli Tutti, the preservation of differences is the criterion of true fraternity, which does not destroy extroverted peaks.

In fact, even in a relationship of deep love and coexistence, 'there is a need to free oneself from the obligation to be the same' [Amoris Laetitia, n.139].

Pope Francis again:

'While solidarity is the principle of social planning that allows unequal people to become equal, fraternity is what allows equal people to be different' [Message to the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, 24/04/2017].

In short, by walking our own personal path with optimism and hope, we come to meet the living Christ; not the clamour of the Temple [ancient or fashionable].

It no longer sends precious messages; it only takes notes. It beats in our heads, but it does not touch us inside.

It will trap us in a web of predictable thoughts, hostile surveillance, induced customs, and so on.

Domestications devoid of affinity with events of specific weight - without the allied step of people of a particular culture and sensitivity.

Those who are healing the world.

Despite their ostensible belonging, behind sacred official scenes, relationships often loosen; they do not regenerate.

In those territories, models and prototypes, codes and patents, the obtuseness of petty prima donnas - figures of narrow-mindedness - are often born.

Instead, if recognised [as in the case of the Samaritan], a Presence in our favour allows us to rediscover, discover and understand.

It proceeds unrivalled through all our states of mind - without any more remorse for duties that do not belong to us.

Such Friendship allows us to recover the fixed points of truly intimate human codes, enhancing - outside the lines - both the system of recognition of ourselves and the authentic and unrepeatable way of honouring God in our brothers and sisters.

No longer the exclusive privilege of the elect and the best... all of whom are undecisive.

Regarding the essential divine willingness to embrace differences as riches, we recall the teaching of the Sufi master Ibn Ata Allah, who advocated the unparalleled immediacy of personal dialogue - where the wisdom of analysis and the experience of intoxication come together:

"He brings enlightenment upon you so that through it you may reach Him; He brings it upon you to remove you from the hands of others; He brings it upon you to free you from the slavery of creatures; He brings it upon you to bring you out of the prison of your existence towards the heaven of contemplation of Him."

A new, full, definitive life.

People of faith detach themselves from external religious identity: they dream, love and invent paths; they deviate and do not follow a path already traced.