The simple Mystery (Eucharistic)
(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 'viator' man - 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 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 no.152).
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 mountain 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, unbroken, effective solution, if one brings it forth from 'within', on the way, and standing in the middle - not in front, not at the top (v.36).
The place of God's revelation was supposed 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 our jolts, but so that we are enabled to build stores of wisdom not calibrated by nomenclature - which everyone can draw on, 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 in 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 they are divided supports the quotations on the malleable 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 nourishment-basis of the human-divine spirit, to which, however, is added a young and fresh 'companion' food that 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 indeed companion food - 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 say, to be active, to go further, to share the little - to nourish, to overflow [multiplying God's listening and action] and to make even the desperate regain esteem.
We are children: like few and little fish (v.34), but not wallowing in competitions that make life toxic.
On the contrary: called in the first person to write a singular, empathetic 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 Jesus the Messiah, Son of God, Saviour - acrostic of the Greek word 'Ichtys' [fish].
He is the Father's Initiative-Response, 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, Revolution of sacredness. It seems strange, for those of 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 Mk (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.
Faced with 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 all circumstances.
In this way, if Eucharistic participation does not only provoke punctual almsgiving, external pietism and mannerist 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. To reiterate: the issue of food is solved not from above, but from within the people and with the few loaves of bread they bring.
There is no solution with the verb 'multiply' - i.e. '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 directors and princes, who are sanctimonious and pretentious, the only ones yet to be converted.
The germ of their 'durability' should be not the position in the quota and the 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.
In short, the saved life comes to us by Incorporation.
To internalise and live the message:
Have you ever broken your bread, conveyed happiness and made recoveries that renew relationships, putting people who do not even have self-esteem back on their feet? Or have you favoured disinterest, chains, and elite attitudes?
