The very different solution

(Mk 6:34-44)

«Man is a limited being who is himself limitless» (Fratelli Tutti [Brethren All] n.150).

In our hearts we have a great longing for fulfilment and Happiness. The Father has introduced it, He Himself satisfies it - but He wants us to be associated with His work - inside and outside.

The Son reflects God's design in compassion for the crowds in need of everything and - despite the plethora of teachers and experts - lacking any authentic teaching (v.34).

His solution is very different from that of all 'spiritual' guides, because it does not gloss over us with an indirect paternalism (v.37) that wipes away tears, heals wounds, erases humiliations.

It invites us to make use of what we are and have, even though it may seem ridiculous. But it teaches in no uncertain terms 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 man viator - a being of passage, his essential mark - and by sharing goods; not letting everyone make do (v.36).

Our real nakedness, the vicissitudes and experience of the many different brothers and sisters, are resources not to be evaluated with distrust: "as dangerous competitors or enemies" of our fulfilment (FT no.151).

Not only will the little we bring be enough to satiate us, but it will advance for others and with identical fullness of truth, human, epochal (vv.42-43: the particular passage insists on the Semitic symbolism of the number "twelve").

In Christ, everyone can inaugurate a new Time, and Salvation is already at hand, because people gather spontaneously around Him, coming as they are, with the burden of so many different needs.

The new people of God are not a crowd of chosen and pure people. Everyone brings with them problems that the Lord heals - healing not by proxy (v.37), as if from above or from without.

In short: another world is possible, but through the breaking of one's own (even paltry) bread and companion (v.38).

An authentic solution, if one makes it emerge from within, and by standing in the middle - not in front, not at the top (v.36).

In the symbolism of the five loaves and two fishes (v.38) - from a Christological perspective - it means: taking on the tradition, even the legalistic one, which has been the wise basic nourishment (5 books of the Torah), then one's own history and sapiential afflatus (Writings: Kethubhiim) as well as the prophetic character (Nevi'im: Prophets).

[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 "companion" - historical and ideal, in code and in deed].

The place of God's revelation was to be the place of thunderbolts, on a "mountain" smouldering like a furnace (Ex 19:18)... but finally even Elijah's violent zeal had to recant (1 Kings 19:12).

Even to women and men on the other side (vv.31-32) 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, all the needy 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 (v.38) but real and capable of restarting people and relationships.

The Spirit of God acts not by descending from on high, but by activating in us capacities that appear intangible, yet are able to gather up our dispersed being, classified as insubstantial - involving the everyday summary - and re-evaluate it.

The Incarnation retracts the heart in dignity and promotion; it truly unfolds, because it does not drag away poverty and obstacles: it rests on them and does not erase them at all. Thus it surpasses them, but transmutes them: creating new life.

Sap that draws juice and sprouts Flowers from the one muddy and 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.41).

Falls themselves can be a valuable sign; in Christ, they are no longer mere humiliations, but rather path markers (vv.32-34): perhaps we are not using and investing our resources to the fullest.

Thus collapses can be quickly transformed into (different, unpacked) rises, and a search for total completion in Communion.

Therefore, in the ideal of realising the Vocation and perceiving the type of contribution to be made, nothing is better than a living environment that does not clip the wings: a lively fraternity in the exchange of qualities.Not so much to dampen our jolts, but so that we are enabled to build knowledge stores not calibrated by nomenclatures - but full of personal resources and relationships that everyone can draw on, even those who are different and far from us.

'Together', the 'bad moments' immediately become a springboard for not stagnating in the same old situations - regenerating, moving on elsewhere; even by a lot.

Thus, the failures that put us on edge serve to make us realise what we had not noticed, thus to deviate from a conformist destiny.

They force us to seek suggestions, different horizons and relationships, a completion we had not imagined.

In short, our Heaven is intertwined with flesh, earth and our dust: a Supernatural that lies within and below, even in the souls of those who have collapsed to the ground; not behind the clouds.

It is the direct contact with our humus filled with royal juices that regenerates and even creates us... as new women and men, newly re-parturified in sharing.

The image of the Kingdom in the puny Eucharist does not eliminate defect and death: it takes them on and transfigures them into strengths; creating encounter, dialogue, predilection for the minimal - and New (frankly propulsive) Covenant.

Unfortunately, the exaggerated targeting of films about Jesus 'multiplying' abundance leads us completely astray.

It breeds the devotees of accretion... who disdain division (triplicators of money, property, titles, goals, relationships that matter, and so on).

Conversely, in Christ who distributes all things, we become like an actualised and propulsive body of sensitive witnesses (and living Scriptures!).

Infants in the Lord, we swim in this different Water - sometimes perhaps outwardly veiled or muddy and murky, but finally made transparent if only because it is yielding, compassionate (v.34) and benevolent.

The old exclusive puddle of religion that does not dare the risk of Faith (v.33) would not have helped to assimilate the proposal of the Messiah who solves the world's problems without immediate lightning bolts or shortcuts.

He is in us who have embraced his life proposal. And his Victory is this People, fraternal.

Initiative-Response of the Father, support in the journey in search of the Hope of the poor - of all of us destitute and waiting.

To internalise and live the message:

Have you ever transmitted happiness and made recoveries that renew relationships or put people who do not even have self-esteem back on their feet?

Is your Journey of Hope ethereal or concrete?