Artificial concord and compromise, or chaos and different stability

(Jn 6:16-21)

 

Jn narrates the episode differently from the Synoptics: not so much as the outcome of the communion of loaves, as the Manifestation of Christ.

The centre of gravity of the story is the presentation that Jesus makes of his Person: "I am" (v.20), the self-revelation of the God of the Exodus [3:14: "I am who I will be" - i.e.: "you will understand who I am by what I will do"].

This is to put an end to the tergiversations in the interpretation of his figure: the Son of God is not a healer nor a miracle-worker, but the Deliverer from whom the people expect the Manna that heartens them, the 'land' that is promised to them, salvation from death.

The passage is a parable of the church in the grip of the troubled waters of the abyss, dominated by doubt, uncertainty, a wavering faith, still lacking a blessed and everlasting seal.

In going hard and unsupported, we suddenly catch the Lord coming. He comes suddenly near, takes our step and that of the events themselves - to accompany the dizziness and the torment.

[It is like the very Word of God expected in the Liturgy: it immediately makes us touch shore... thanks to the free insertion into the Mystery of the divine thought and condition].

 

Our life proceeds towards the opposite shore, where the Master is. We go in hope, but sometimes adversity threatens to drown us, and with us they seem to drag the whole boat down.

Only the Lord 'walks on the sea', that is, he advances and overcomes death. If we accommodate Him, we realise that every element is in His power: and in Him everything serves to revive us, even the headwind.

The invisible Friend guides, infallibly realises, makes us reach 'shore' - a definitive condition that the force of the waves cannot affect, even when we have the feeling of being swept away by the waves.

Using paraphrases from the book of Exodus, Jn seeks to help his communities understand the Mystery of the Person of Jesus, and the vocational reality that can envelop us and characterise us when we do not reject his Call.

A call that launches us into a different way of life, from unexpected resources - which can be accessed when we stop fixing our attention only on what frightens and seems negative.

 

Even the internal debate about the Messiah, and the churches' relationship with the world - accentuated dissension and uncertainty.

Some Jewish converts considered Christ to be a character in line with their mentality and tradition, in agreement with First Testament prophecies and figures.

Conversely, some pagans who had accepted the Lord advocated an understanding with the worldly mentality. A sort of agreement between Jesus and the Empire, which the evangelist considers an idolatrous contamination [the temptation of the pagan crowd to make him king immediately precedes the passage: vv.14-15].

The situation of the tiny believing families in the empire was dark, doubtful, or conflicted inside and out. Jesus seemed absent, and the sea was rough, the wind contrary, threatening, unknown.

And yet, in the very condition of stranded pilgrims, in the Essential Faith they experienced a strange and different stability within: staying against the tide. Hence awakening, proliferation, growth.

Cultural marginalisation, unknowns, confrontations and trials did not swallow up the believers, on the contrary they made them more resolute and expeditious (v.21) - according to the Voice of the Risen One, present in the soul of each one.

Thus, here was a crossing towards Freedom, which came from that intimate perception, only welcoming.

Able to nourish one's spirit and tear it away from phobias - in the chaos of external securities. With which one could make peace.

 

So our story hangs in the balance: we move forward wavering - as on a small boat tossed about by earthquakes, ecclesiastical and otherwise, local and global, that seem to want to drag down the whole of life.

Episodes that make us realise how much Christ's friendship is worth to us and what it conveys.

Only the Lord overcomes the fear of upheaval, but he does so without rushing in, and without established patterns that frame him forever. It would be like making him perish.

When we welcome his Person in a simple and forthright manner, we realise that there is another realm, unaligned.

Then we will be able to seize everything to regenerate ourselves, even the quakes, the forks, the very pitfalls of seemingly disruptive evil.

Who then can calm the storms... in the way of growth in coexistence, and (together) character?

In short: can the Exodus be recreated?

 

From the earliest times, Faith in the Person of Christ the Messiah was already shaken, wavering; not relaxed.

The disciples did not possess the Master's same quiet trust in the Father.And yet, precisely in the situation of precarious wayfarers, always off the conformist track - in reinterpreting the Son's 'madness', they contacted the same deep emotions that had been His.

And in Him one is always reborn renewed, original, deeper.

By going beyond any reassuring but bland situation - which no longer said anything. And doing so from visceral cores of experience.

A crossing towards a breath that came from clinging to Jesus alone, in the chaos of certainties.

For a discordant permanence. Where the unusual appeared that cleansed one from manners or from the habituated and stagnant 'old'.

Upsetting the unequal activations of being a woman and a man in our own time, in order not to shy away from dialogue, debate, pressing emergencies.

Conditions that want to take us elsewhere.

Even today, it is the path of unaccustomed and critical growth that reveals the Lord capable of manifesting his quiet strength.

Thus restoring the disrupted elements to the energetic and preparatory calm; lively in itself with new desires, which urge one not to close one's eyes.

 

The direction of travel imposed by Jesus on his followers seems to go against the grain, and brazenly breaks the rules accepted by all.

While the disciples fondle nationalist desires, the Master begins to make it clear that He is not the awaited Messiah, restorer of the defunct empire of David or the Caesars.

The Kingdom of God is open to all mankind, which in those jolting times sought security, acceptance, points of reference. 

Not infrequently, in the first assemblies everyone could find home and shelter (Mt 13:32c; Mk 4:32b).

But the apostles and church veterans seemed averse to proposals of openness, hospitality, and risk. They remained insensitive to an overly broad idea of fraternity - which displaced them.

This is still a live and very serious problem.

The teaching and reminder imposed on the disciples is always to cross to the other shore (Mk 4:35; Lk 8:22; Jn 6:17), that is, not to keep for themselves, but to communicate the riches of the Father to the 'pagans', even though they are considered infected and infamous.

Yet already his people did not want to know about reckless disproportions that would actually make the action of the Son of God stand out.

They were calibrated to common purist religiosity, and a circumscribed ideology of power.

The resistance to the divine commission, as well as the resulting tearing internal disputes, seemed to unleash a great and dangerous storm in the assemblies of believers (Mt 8:24; Mk 4:37; Lk 8:23; Jn 6:18).

The storm, however, concerned only the disciples, the only ones dismayed; not Jesus "who walked on the sea and came near the boat" [Jn 6:19: this is the Risen One, in his definitive, divine condition].

 

What happens "inside" is not a mere reflection of what happens "outside". This is the error to be corrected.

Such identification blocks and makes life chronic, starting with the handling of emotionally relevant situations - which have their own meaning.

They make a significant and fundamental appeal, they introduce a different eye, excavation and dialogue.

 

In short, even today we are confused, embarrassed, and chaos rages? We are paradoxically going in the right direction, the essential one; but we must not get caught up in fear.

In Him, we are imbued with a different view of danger.

Says the Tao Tê Ching (xxii): 'The saint does not see by himself, therefore he is enlightened'. Even in bottlenecks.

Indeed, it seems that Jesus expressly wants for the apostles themselves, dark moments of confrontation and doubt.

Even for us, even if we were church leaders... because otherwise there will be no cleansing from repetitive convictions.

 

Textbook expectations, the habit of setting up conformist harmonies, mannerisms, block the flowering of what we are and hope for.

Above all: what is annoying or even 'against' has something decisive to tell us.

Even in the small boat of the churches (Mk 4:36) unease must be expressed: 'And they were afraid' (Jn 6:19c).

All this is to revive the essence of each one, the sense of community itself.

To introduce the hidden or repressed change, and trigger it in the most effective way - by contact with the hidden, primordial virtues.

More than the opposing frictions and conflicting external events, the anxiety, the impression of collapse, the anguish, come in fact from the very fear of facing the normal or decisive questions of existence.

Perhaps out of mistrust: feeling in danger only because we are intimately ungrown, incapable of Other intimate conversation. And to discover, rework, convert, or remodel.

 

The fatigue of questioning oneself and the suffering that the adventure of Faith holds, will also fade amidst the discomfort of the rough sea - which precisely does not want us to return to 'those of before'.

Just disengage from the idea of stability, even religious stability, and listen to life as it is, embracing it.Even in its throngs of bumps, bitterness, dashed hopes for harmony, sorrows - engaging with this flood of new peaks, and encountering one's own profound nature.

The best vaccine against the travails of the adventure together with the Risen One on the changing waves of the unexpected will be precisely: not to avoid worries upstream - on the contrary, to go towards them and welcome them; to recognise them, to let them happen.

Even in times of emergency, the apprehensions that seem to want to devastate, come to us as preparatory forces of other joys that wish to break through.

New cosmic attunements, they seek us; for astonishment starting with ourselves.

And guide us to the hereafter: "and immediately the boat came to the land where they were going" (Jn 6:21).

 

Our little boat is in an inverted, inverted, unequal stability; uncertain, inconvenient - yet gallivanting, prickly, capable of reinventing itself.

And it will even be excessive.

For a proposal of Tenderness - not corresponding.

It is not a zone of affectionate relaxation, because it rhymes with the terrible anxiety of exploration.

 

 

To internalise and live the message:

 

On what occasions have you found easy what previously seemed impossible? 

What existential, faith, friendship and missionary effect has contact with the deep emotions of friction and danger had on you?

 

 

Some other providence, which you ignore

 

"It is good not to fall, or to fall and get up again. And if it happens that you fall, it is good not to despair and not to become estranged from the love that the Sovereign has for man. If he wills it, he can indeed do mercy to our weakness. Only let us not turn away from him, let us not feel distressed if we are forced by the commandments, and let us not be disheartened if we come to nothing [...].

We must neither hurry nor fall back, but always begin again [...].

Wait for him, and he will show you mercy, either by conversion or by trials, or by some other providence which you do not know."

[Peter Damascene, Second Book, Eighth Discourse, in La Filocalia, Turin 1982, I,94].

 

 

Bread and wonders of the Christ-phantom. And we, the fringe of his cloak

 

(Mk 6:53-56 // Mt 14:34-36)

 

He who is devoted to the cause of non-violence and non-possession, who is driven by the pursuit of truth and righteousness, who is capable of solving his own emotional and intellectual problems, and who can show others the way to overcome their emotional and intellectual problems [Acharya Mahaprajna], can carry the mantle of the Master.

 

While some are continually crowding around Jesus and preventing others from having a personal relationship with Him, something has to be invented; at least take Him in stride (v.56).

"And wherever he entered villages or towns or hamlets they placed the sick in the squares and begged him to touch even the fringe of his cloak. And as many as touched him were saved".

Indeed, the fringe of the mantle is his People - and each of us, when by Gift we are enabled to perceive and prolong his call, spirit, care, action.

A 'touching' that is not mere gesture: it calls for total involvement; personal faith, digging in.

The crowds around the Lord and the Church, his primary presence, seek bread and healing... but sometimes they forget to adhere to the inner Person who gives and heals.

Yet even in these cases, the infallible Guide re-proposes his unbroken wave of life - with therapies that do not pass through souls as lightning would, but in real existence.

God liberates, saves, creates, from tensions and faults (also religious) because He wants to bring us to awareness.

The Father desires to penetrate the value of the act of love that makes the weak strong; every re-creating gesture, embodied, open to any sense of emptiness.

 

Annoyances do not happen out of misfortune or chastisement: they come to let us flourish again, precisely from the soul's pains.

If they persist, no fear: they become more explicit messages, from our own Higher Seed.

It means that in our orchestra something is out of tune or neglected, and must either fade away or be discovered and brought into play.

Otherwise, one will not be able to grow towards the destiny that characterises a Calling and every discomfort.

Even the symptoms of restlessness belong to the innate quintessence - which always has topical power.

The key will therefore not be looks, nor health, but the very acceptance of bitterness, of hardships, which come to clear away the inessential - and release trapped spiritual drives.

Energies of imbalance, which, however, want to be transformed into the ability to cast ballast; as well as to better accommodate and integrate the vocation into one's own history, in order to build life again.

 

Perhaps not a few would prefer to wait for a miraculous landing of the Master [typified healer] that brings immediate benefit, immediate favour.Outward salvation with a magical flavour - transient, even if physically palpable or even in ethical semblance.

A phenomenal, but simplistic Lord.

An Appearance that dies at once, then starts again - if He (in us, in our turning points) did not involve the very uncertainties that mark us.

And the long time of processes, which gradually take on a more intimate weight.

Total and sacred - truly messianic - redemption is little prone to epidermal clamour.

Healing is not scenic. He only realises Himself step by step; thus He remains deep and radical.

He becomes capable of new beginnings and acts of birth of still embryonic energy, precisely from individual precariousness.

 

His People of intimates - a presence no longer ineffable and mysterious - works in proximity, to erase the false image of the philosophical or forensic God, always external. 

Sovereign or imperative engine, distant and absent - touchy, predatory - that occasionally takes aim; it does not overcome, nor does it reconfirm. It never looks at our present.

This is how the Church rejects the idea of the ratifying Eternal, but also that of the mass thaumaturge, immediately resolving - so dear to miracle merchants.

A figure that easily takes hold of our fantasies.

 

We announce his authentic Face with words and gestures, precisely to annihilate the idea of the Christ-phantom of the previous passage (v.49), a deplorable and absurd figure.

An evanescent icon, merely apologetic, which unfortunately in history has given ample space to business associates with the Most High.

In this way, being healed does not mean escaping transience.

A saved existence requires a transformation from within; a different beginning. A different foothold of the good.

 

Jesus travels through our environments as a silent wayfarer, and also accepts a primitive faith.

But albeit with dim power, the divine impulse operates in every seeker of meaning and every needy person.

One settles into it personally, precisely from interrupted dreams.

The Lord cannot be imprisoned and contained: he draws near, to initiate great cleansing, make us shift our gaze, and renew the stale universe.

Thus he transforms our souls, in the experience of his free communion,

He wants to take up residence in us, to merge and expand the impulse to life - perhaps cowering in abstention. So that each one marvels at himself, at unknown passions, at new relationships.

 

Believer and community manifest in empathic forms the incisive healing power of Faith in the Risen One, starting from one's own intimate story.

We experience Him alive in the monotonous, unrewarding, and precarious day-to-day - yet capable of changing the order of existence hidden in sketchy quarters [v.56: "hamlets"] and its unexpressed destination.

without disturbing it with special, one-sided, or pressing effects.

 

The Tao Tê Ching (xi) writes: 'Thirty races unite in one hub, and in its non-being is the usefulness of the chariot'.

Elsewhere from the civilisation of appearance is the improvement of our condition and security, from insecurity.

Not in a simple, indiscreet and transient getting back on one's feet.

Phenomenal, but only punctual and inconclusive, or finally abdicating.

 

 

To internalise and live the message:

 

How do you consider Jesus? Miracle worker or recuperator?

How do you deal with those who are excluded or seem to be without a shepherd?

 

 

Excita, Domine, potentiam tuam, et veni

"Excita, Domine, potentiam tuam, et veni" - with these and similar words the Church's liturgy prays repeatedly [...].

These are invocations probably formulated at the time of the decline of the Roman Empire. The disintegration of the fundamental orders of law and the basic moral attitudes that gave them strength caused the breaking of the banks that had hitherto protected peaceful coexistence between men. A world was passing away. Frequent natural cataclysms further increased this experience of insecurity. No force could be seen to put a stop to this decline. All the more insistent was the invocation of God's own power: that He would come and protect men from all these threats.

"Excita, Domine, potentiam tuam, et veni". Today, too, we have many reasons to join this prayer [...] The world with all its new hopes and possibilities is, at the same time, distressed by the impression that moral consensus is dissolving, a consensus without which legal and political structures do not function; consequently, the forces mobilised to defend these structures seem doomed to failure.

Excita - the prayer is reminiscent of the cry addressed to the Lord, who was sleeping in the disciples' storm-tossed boat that was close to sinking. When His mighty word had calmed the storm, He rebuked the disciples for their little faith (cf. Mt 8:26 and par.). He meant: in yourselves faith has slept. The same thing is meant for us. In us too, faith so often sleeps. Let us therefore pray to Him to awaken us from the slumber of a faith that has become weary and to restore to faith the power to move the mountains - that is, to give right order to the things of the world.

[Pope Benedict, to the Roman Curia 20 December 2010].