18th Sunday in Ordinary Time B (4 August 2024)

1. The manna "is the bread that the Lord has given you": this is how Moses explains to the people the meaning of the manna, which has various symbols in the Bible. The choice of the account of the manna in the first reading, taken from the book of Exodus, is linked to the "Eucharistic" discourse that Jesus gave in the synagogue of Capernaum. As many as 13 times, St John evokes the figure of Moses and the manna is mentioned five times as a symbol of the "bread of life". But what is manna? One morning the wandering Jews in the desert woke up and discovered next to their camps "a fine and grainy thing, minute as the frost on the earth" that had miraculously rained down between heaven and earth; they continued to find it every morning during their exodus in the desert. They gathered it every day except the Sabbath and kneaded it to make flatbreads to be baked with the vague taste of pasta in oil. Harvesting ceased, as we read in the book of Joshua, on entering the promised land (Jas 5:11-12). Manna has various meanings in the Bible: firstly, it is 'the bread' with which God feeds his people and tests them when they complain and murmur against him in the wilderness. It is a twofold test: firstly, Israel must learn the lesson of gratitude to the One who provides everything; and secondly, being hard-hearted people never content with anything, they must learn to remain faithful to the Lord's orders and commandments, who asks them to collect only enough manna for every single day because the surplus rots. In other words, God also educates the people he has chosen as his own.  In other books of the Old Testament, especially in the Psalms, manna becomes the symbol of God's word and divine love that continues to spread over humanity and finally, especially in the Jewish tradition, manna becomes the 'food of the messianic age'.  Ultimately, the manna in the desert also becomes for us Christians the sign of God's faithfulness and of our effort to trust him and believe his promises as we advance towards Heaven, our final homeland.

2. Psalm 77/78, of which we proclaim today only a few brief passages as a responsorial psalm, takes up the theme of God's faithfulness and of man's struggle to trust him.  The Lord "rained manna on them for food and gave them bread from heaven. Man ate the bread of the strong, he gave them food in abundance' (v.v. 23-24).  Even though gratitude for such a mysterious gift emerges here, Psalm 77/78 as a whole tells the true story of Israel, which unfolds between God's faithfulness and the fickleness of the people, even though they are always aware of the importance of preserving the memory of God's works. For faith to continue to be spread, three conditions are needed: the testimony of one who can say that God has intervened in his life; the courage to share this personal experience and pass it on faithfully; finally, it takes the willingness of a community to preserve the faith handed down by the ancestors as an inalienable inheritance. Israel knows that faith is not a baggage of intellectual notions, but the living experience of God's gifts and mercy. Here is the spiritual fabric of this psalm where in no less than seventy-two verses the faith of Israel is sung, founded in the memory of the liberation from slavery and on the memory of the long troubled pilgrimage from Egypt to Sinai marked by unfaithfulness and inconstancy: despite everything, faith is handed down from generation to generation. The strongest risk to faith is idolatry as denounced by all the prophets, a current risk in every age, today easy to recognise in the signs and gestures performed and flaunted as the boast of emancipated freedom. The psalmist denounces this idolatry as the cause of humanity's misfortune. Until man discovers the true face of God, not as he imagines it but as he is in truth, he will find the road to happiness barred because all kinds of idols block our path to responsible freedom. Superstition, fetishism, witchcraft, thirst for money, hunger for power and pleasure, worship of the person and ideologies force us to live in the regime of fear preventing us from knowing the true face of the living God. In verse 8 of the psalm (77/78), which we do not find in the liturgy today, the psalmist indicates unfaithfulness with the image of the valiant archer who fails and fails in his mission: "The sons of Ephraim, valiant archers, turned their backs in the days of battle". If today's 'cancel culture' wants to make us forget that everything is a gift in life, we fall into a sadness full of ingratitude, going so far as to mutter angrily: 'God does not exist, and if he does exist, he does not love me, indeed he has never loved me'. It follows that the dark clouds of ingratitude and anger sadden life and only the liberating experience of faith dispels and disperses them because it makes us rediscover that God exists, loves and forgives: his name is Mercy!

3. In order not to give in to the temptation of idolatry, which is fashionable today, God offers us a twofold nourishment: material food and spiritual food expressed in the "sign" of the multiplication of the loaves and fishes with which Jesus feeds an immense crowd. In the synagogue of Capernaum, Jesus takes this miracle as the starting point for the long discourse on the "bread of life" that is the Eucharist. A discourse that will continue in the coming Sundays, and has a surprising incipit at first sight. To the people who ask him a simple question: "Rabbi, when did you come here?" he does not answer directly, but starts with a solemn formula: "Verily, verily I say unto you", similar to that of the prophets in the Old Testament: "The Lord's prayer".  He draws attention to something important and difficult to understand, which he is about to say, and three times the listeners interrupt him with objections. With educational and provocative skill, using metaphorical and symbolic language, Jesus also leads us, step by step, to the revelation of the central mystery of faith: the mystery of the "Word who became flesh and dwelt among us" by offering his life on the cross for the salvation of mankind. In the entire discourse on the "bread of life" we hear resound the unsurpassed meditation of the prologue of the fourth gospel: Jesus is the Word of the Father who came into the world to give, to those who accept him, the power to become children of God, "to those who believe in his name and have been begotten of God" (cf. Jn 1:12). And to be clear, he immediately says that the people did not grasp the sign of the miracle: "You sought me out not because you saw signs, but because you ate of those loaves and were satisfied".  As if to say, you are happy because of what you have eaten, but you have not grasped the essential: I did not come to satisfy your hunger for material food, but this bread is the sign of something more important. Indeed, it was not I who acted, but the heavenly Father who sent me to give you a different food that preserves you for eternal life.  In fact, the distinction between material food and spiritual food was a theme dear to the Jewish religion, as is well understood in Deuteronomy: God "fed you with manna that you did not know... to make you understand that man does not live by bread alone, but by what comes from the mouth of the Lord" (Deut 8:3) and in the book of Wisdom: "You fed your people with angel food, you offered them bread from heaven that was ready-made without effort, capable of providing every delight and satisfying every taste.  This food of yours manifested your sweetness towards your children; it was adapted to the taste of those who swallowed it and became what each one desired...not the different kinds of fruit nourish man, but your word preserves those who believe in you" (Wis.16:20-28). The listeners understand what Jesus is referring to and ask: "What must we do to do the works of God?".  Jesus then presents himself as the expected Messiah: "This is the work of God: that you believe in him whom he has sent. And why believe? Moses performed the miracle of the manna and at that time great was the expectation for the promised manna as the food of the messianic age. The third question is therefore understood: "What work do you do that we may believe?" and Jesus answers: "My Father gives you the bread from heaven, the true bread". Misunderstanding does not stop him in his self-revelation and the Gospel text today closes with the proclamation of the Eucharist: "I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst'. The secret then is to have Faith! 

Good Sunday to all + Giovanni D'Ercole

P.S. I add today, memorial of the holy curate of Ars, Jean-Marie Vianney, this thought of his on faith and the Eucharist: "What joy for a Christian who has faith, who, rising from the Holy Table, leaves with all of heaven in his heart! Ah, happy the house in which such Christians dwell!... what respect one must have for them, during the day. To have, in the home, a second tabernacle where the good God has truly dwelt in body and soul!"

17th Sunday in Ordinary Time B (28 July 2024)

1. We are called to build unity: but how? Already last Sunday the Apostle Paul in the second reading from the letter to the Ephesians (Eph 2:13-18) mentioned the problems that disturbed the peace of the community of Ephesus, due to the discord that arose especially between Jews and pagan converts. Imprisoned in Rome, he is well aware that diatribes arise everywhere and there are risks of heresy, so his concern is to reiterate the need for Christian unity both in behaviour and doctrine. He reminds them that there is 'one body and one spirit... one hope... one Lord, one faith, one baptism... one God and Father of all'.  Seven times he repeats 'one', and at the end of the chain, made up of seven links, there is the heavenly Father above all, who uses each one to bring his love to all. Well aware of human frailty, St Paul affirms that unity is the work, indeed the gift of God, and is the 'loving design of the will of God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ' with which he chose us before the creation of the world, as the liturgy made us meditate in the second reading of the Mass two Sundays ago (Eph 1:1-13). Gift and plan of salvation that will be fully realised when "all things, those in heaven and those on earth, are brought back to Christ the One Head" in the fullness of time. We are asked to contribute by "supporting and bearing one another in love". Unity is therefore God's gift and man's way of trying to activate this gift. But how? Jesus pointed this out to the apostles at the Last Supper when he insisted on the urgency of "abiding" with him and in him seven times, which in biblical language means "always".  Only united with Jesus can we contribute to "building up the body of Christ". By immersing ourselves in Christ we will be able to strive "all to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to the perfect man, to the fullness of Christ" (Eph 4:13). And the whole of humanity will become one body with Jesus: "the total body of Christ".  With baptism we have accepted the invitation to work in this building site that is the world, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. The word Church (in Greek ecclesia) has in its root the meaning of 'call': with baptism we are called to follow Jesus, 'meek and humble of heart', who will carry out the heavenly Father's plan with our cooperation if we allow ourselves to be transformed by his Spirit. To the apostles in the Upper Room he recommended: "By this all will know that you are my disciples: if you have love for one another" (Jn13:35). God alone can make us capable of loving and loving one another, which is impossible in our own strength. The apostle's invitation is to live in humility, meekness and patience, so that others may recognise that God exists and it is he who does everything in us. The best of life will then appear, which is the free intervention of God the Trinity "koinonia-communion of love" that enables us "to preserve the unity of the spirit, through the bond of Peace". And therein lies our fulfilment.

2. As the Bible teaches, the believer is one who lives entirely and always from the perspective of the gift, existence itself being enveloped in the mystery of the gift and its miracles. It is in this light that we read today the first reading, taken from the second Book of Kings, the responsorial psalm: "You open your hand, Lord, and satisfy the desire of every man" (Psalm 144/145), the second reading from the Letter to the Ephesians, and the Gospel of John, which is the beginning of chapter six, loaded with messages related to the mystery of the Eucharist, defined as "the Miracle that is Gift" par excellence. St John does not speak, like the other evangelists, of the institution of the Eucharist during the Last Supper; instead, he recounts the washing of the feet, conveying to us the secret of evangelical love. However, he prepares us for the Eucharist with Chapter VI, which we begin meditating on today and will continue for five Sundays. Internalising a text of St John always asks us to let ourselves be attracted by symbols that are not easy to understand at first sight and that always say more than we can comprehend. Jesus has chosen his disciples and has already performed miracles, attracting the favour of the crowd that follows him. Having crossed the Lake of Tiberias, we read in today's gospel, he passes to the other shore of Galilee, his homeland where he was not well received by his own and it is precisely in this context that he performs one of the six miracles that the fourth gospel always refers to as 'signs'. It is the multiplication of the loaves that all the evangelists report, but St John emphasises its historical context, which is the preparation for the coming Easter. Jesus goes up the mountain (as there are no mountains in the area one understands that this takes on a symbolic tone: he is about to authoritatively accomplish something very high and important). He realises that the people are hungry and it is he, the Lord, who takes the initiative to feed them. But how? There is no bread, there is no money and the crowd is large - the apostles reply, only one little boy has five barley loaves and two fish with him. And from this small gift of a stranger comes the miracle that will provide loaves of bread to eat for five thousand men, leaving as many as 12 bags of bread enough to feed many more. It all stems from the gift of a young man who could never have thought that his few loaves would satisfy so many people.  But therein lies the miracle of the gift, where the little enriches all. Also in the first reading, a story is told of a fellow who offers 20 barley loaves to the prophet Elisha, and he does not take them for himself, but asks for them to be given to the people "for the Lord says: They shall eat of them, and they shall bring forth. And so it came to pass: twenty loaves offered and a hundred men fed, here too the disproportion between the means employed and the result obtained is evident. Once again the miracle of the gift returns. And that is not all.

3. The reaction of the crowd after the multiplication of the loaves: "This is truly the prophet, the one who is coming into the world" suggests that the expectation of the Messiah was strong and the effervescence appeared more marked because they were preparing for Easter, the feast-memorial of the liberation from slavery from Egypt and prefiguring the total liberation that the Messiah would bring to the people of Israel. The fact that St John specifies that it was close to Easter, "the feast of the Jews" is an indispensable element in understanding this miracle/sign. In the coming Sundays, we will continue reading this chapter and better understand how much the paschal mystery is present in the long discourse that Jesus gives on the bread of life. For now, he leads the people who follow him to the "mountain", and the thought immediately goes to the messianic banquet that the prophet Isaiah had prophesied to console the enslaved people: the Lord will give a feast on this mountain for all peoples, a feast full of fat and succulent meat and fine wine (Cf. Is 25:6). To the hungry crowd awaiting the Messiah Jesus offers the sign that the long-awaited day has come: he is the Messiah. He is the one who takes the initiative to test the apostles to arouse faith in them. Philip did not immediately realise that Jesus was testing his faith and responds in a way that is understandable from a human point of view, namely by saying that even two hundred denarii of bread is not enough to give a piece to everyone present, and the Apostle Andrew points out the presence of a little boy with five loaves and two fish, but what can one do with that?  It is common sense that we would all have reacted with, but Jesus with his gestures provokes us to trust him. In the first reading, Elisha shows that he is a prophet rich in faith and Jesus amazes the apostles by asking them to sit down. Trust in God always: this is the message that comes to each of us in whatever situation we find ourselves, especially if we are suffering in life, because the specification that "there was much grass in that place is a clear reference to Jesus the good shepherd, who, by feeding the crowd, cares for all the sheep, for each one of us.  John, however, changes tone at this point and writes that Jesus took the loaves and after giving thanks gave them to the crowd.  It is easy to glimpse in the miracle and in Jesus' words a foretaste of the banquet of the Eucharist, prepared for all at the Last Supper: here is the gift of gifts! His body and blood, the true bread of life. 

+ Giovanni D'Ercole Happy Sunday.

XVI Sunday in Ordinary Time (B) [21 July 2024]

1. Jesus Christ, breaking down the wall of separation that divided us, has made us one. This is the good news we find in the second reading of this Sixteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time taken from St Paul's Letter to the Ephesians. The Apostle is in Rome under house arrest in a rented house and one of his first thoughts during his imprisonment is to write to his dear brothers in faith, Ephesians, Colossians, Philippians and to Philemon, presenting himself not as a prisoner of Caesar, but as a prisoner of Christ. He focuses the Letter to the Ephesians on the Church, a universal body composed of all those who are saved through faith in Christ Jesus. A new unity has been created by God through the reconciling work of the Cross (2:16) and thus Jews and Gentiles have become part of God's family, in which all racial, cultural and social barriers are broken down. There is only one Church of which Christ is the Head, and there are three images Paul uses to describe its nature: the Church is an edifice founded on the apostles and prophets of which the cornerstone is Christ; it is one body and one spirit; it is the Bride of Christ and a model of fellowship in every relationship, primarily in the family between husband, wife and children. Knowing well the situation of those communities, which he himself founded and which are still marked by discord and contrasts, St Paul hopes that his chains will help to encourage and support believers who suffer for the preservation of the faith. The difficulty of living together among both Jewish and pagan converts is the experience he had already had in the first communities he founded and which continued to be fuelled by misunderstandings and even violent clashes. It was in Antioch of Pisidia that he understood the realisation of the first great turning point in the history of revelation when, encountering the violent opposition of the Jews, he declared that after their refusal to convert to Christ, he would direct his preaching to the Gentiles (Acts 13:46). In the letter to the Ephesians he develops the theme of reconciliation between Christians of Jewish origin and those of pagan origin who have become brothers and therefore all with the same possibility of access, in one Spirit, to the one heavenly Father. He writes in this regard that of Israel and the pagans, Christ made one people "breaking down the wall of separation". Such a union seemed unattainable to many, and the Apostle's concern continued to the end to safeguard the unity that he unfortunately saw in serious danger. It was not a matter of operational choices, but the heart of the problem touched the very content of the Christian faith. For Paul the only thing that matters is that Jews and Gentiles through baptism are equally immersed in the new life of the Risen Christ and therefore every barrier that separates them must be broken down. And speaking of barriers he had in mind something that everyone knew well: the barrier that on the Temple esplanade in Jerusalem separated the space reserved for members of the people of Israel (men, women, priests), from the rest of the square where everyone could pass, Jews and non-Jews, circumcised and uncircumcised, members or not of the chosen people, people educated to the Mosaic Law and people who were not. A signpost formally forbade non-Jews to enter on pain of death, and St Paul had experienced the risk of being killed, as we read in the Acts of the Apostles because they thought he had brought in a certain Trophimus from Ephesus (Acts 21:27-31). That barrier is for St Paul an icon of the "wall of enmity", so marked between Jews and pagans because the Jews, circumcised out of loyalty to the Mosaic law, despised and called the pagans "the uncircumcised". In the Letter to the Ephesians, he then insists on God's new plan for the baptised people, a plan of love and reconciliation that concerns the whole of every community, the peoples of the whole world and even the whole of creation. 

2. The theme of communion, unity and forgiveness returns frequently in the Gospels and New Testament writings. It also constitutes a prevailing aspiration in the preaching of the Church Fathers showing us the face of the Churches of that time already dotted with examples of goodness but threatened by the virus of division and religious contrasts that sometimes intertwined with civil strife.  This indicates that the difficulty in achieving the communion desired by Christ is a constant challenge to the faith of every baptised person. Despite goodwill and efforts, we experience, in the world and in the Church, how difficult it is to get along. Unity and communion remain an aspiration that clashes with the fragility of life, and this has been the case, as history clearly shows, since the origin of humanity, ever since man was created to be in friendship with God and chose his autonomy, which soon proved to be a harbinger of misunderstandings and divisions, clashes and violence where the strongest think they can win by prevailing in so many ways over the weakest, the different, the enemy. Yet these words of the Apostle Paul continue to resonate in the consciousness of humanity: 'Jesus came to proclaim peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near'. How then can we internalise this proclamation of salvation when we hear simmering enmity and division between believers? There is talk of peace and unity, but the scandal of division persists, creating walls to bar life to different peoples, gates to well protect the spaces reserved for one's own group and one's own convictions, while in the general climate, beyond the declarations of understanding and peace, there is a growing dislike of the other that leads to gestures of rejection, often identifying him as an adversary and as an 'enemy'. Despite the scandal of disunity, however, there is no shortage of examples and gestures of courage, forgiveness, and reconciliation that show how much stronger than hatred is love, beyond appearances, and we believe that the last word will always be Love's capable of healing conflicts and divisions. This invincible hope sustains us and gives us strength.

3. "Come away, you alone, into a deserted place, and rest a while". The Gospel page offers us a space of quiet to understand how not to give in to life's anxieties, divisions and conflicts that destroy peace in hearts. For the first time, St Mark calls these disciples "apostles", and this indicates that Jesus is now calling them to share his own mission, which includes, alongside immersion in pastoral action, the need for adequate spaces of silence and solitude. To the Twelve who enthusiastically return from the first apostolic expedition and would like to immediately recount how it went, Jesus says first of all: Rest! Silence and prayer are needed for every apostle so that he does not forget that he is not the saviour of the world: we are only fragile instruments in the hands of God, and to the extent that we do not separate ourselves from him, we can become agents of his peacemaking. A holy priest, an apostle of charity, Don Oreste Benzi loved to repeat: 'To stand before the world, one must remain on one's knees before God'.  If Jesus shares with the disciples his anguish at seeing the "great crowd" of whom he has compassion because they seem like sheep without a shepherd, he first of all asks his own to spend some time alone with him.  The crowd that presses, notes the evangelist Mark, can wait even if they come from Galilee and from all parts of Judea, Idumea, Transjordan, the region of Tyre and Sidon, and there are also the religious authorities who make war on him and sow hatred to the point of crucifying him.  To go into action, the Lord is in no hurry: he wants each apostle to understand and marry with his life his own passion for souls with the inevitable difficulties and opposition that it entails. He does not ask the apostle for a strong social commitment, but communicates to him his divine compassion expressed by the evangelist with the Greek term "SPLANGKNA", which defines the movement of interiority, that is, the depth of being, and in Hebrew "RAHAMIN", translated as mercy. God's name is Mercy, love that leads to Christ's sacrifice to break down and destroy every wall of division, diversity and hatred. Unlike the evangelist John, St Mark does not develop the theme of the good shepherd, but presents it in filigree in these very words: Jesus "saw a great crowd, had compassion on them because they were like sheep that have no shepherd". Only Christ can give us the gift of his compassion so that we are not seized by the prophet Jeremiah's rebuke, which is very clear in the first reading: 'woe to the shepherds who cause my pasture to perish and scatter'.  

+Giovanni D'Ercole. Happy Sunday

P.S. I attach a reflection on the Temple, taken from a lecture by Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi. "The world is like the eye: the sea is the white, the earth is the iris, Jerusalem is the pupil and the image reflected in it is the temple". This ancient rabbinic aphorism sharply and symbolically illustrates the function in the temple according to an intuition that is both primordial and universal. Two ideas underlie the image. The first is that of the cosmic 'centre' that the sacred place must represent... the outer horizon, with its fragmentation and its tensions, converges and subsides in an area that by its purity must embody the meaning, the heart, the order of the whole being. In the temple, therefore, the multiplicity of the real is "con-centred", finding in it peace and harmony... From the temple, then, a breath of life, of sanctity, of illumination is "de-centred", transfiguring the everyday and the ordinary texture of space. And it is at this point that the second theme underlying the Jewish saying evoked above enters the scene. The temple is the image that the pupil reflects and reveals. It is, therefore, a sign of light and beauty. Put another way, we could say that sacred space is an epiphany of cosmic harmony and a theophany of divine splendour... It is curious that symbolically, the three monotheistic religions anchor themselves in Jerusalem around three sacred stones, the Western Wall (popularly known as the 'Wailing Wall'), a sign of the Solomonic temple for the Jews, the rock of Muhammad's ascension to heaven in the mosque of Omar for Islam, and, indeed, the upturned stone of the Holy Sepulchre for Christianity. On the last page of the New Testament, when John the Seer looks out over the plan of the new Jerusalem of perfection and fullness, he is confronted with a fact that is disconcerting at first sight: "I saw no temple in it, for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple" (Revelation, 21, 22). Between God and man there is no longer any need for spatial mediation; the encounter is now between persons, the divine life intersects with human life in a direct way...God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth" (John 4: 21-24). There will be a further turning point that will settle the divine presence in the very 'flesh' of humanity through the person of Christ, as the famous prologue of John's Gospel declares: 'The Word became flesh and pitched his tent among us' (1:14), ... Paul will go further and, writing to the Christians of Corinth, will affirm: 'Do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you... Glorify therefore God in your body!" (i, 6, 19-20). "A temple of living stones", therefore, as St Peter will write, "employed for the construction of a spiritual building" (i, 2, 5) a sanctuary not extrinsic, material and spatial, but existential, a temple in time. The architectural temple will, therefore, always be necessary, but it must have in itself a symbolic function: it will no longer be an intangible and magical sacred element, but only the necessary sign of a divine presence in history and in the life of humanity. The temple, therefore, does not exclude or exorcise the square of civil life, but fertilises, transfigures and purifies its existence, giving it a further and transcendent meaning. We end our reflection with three testimonies. The first is a medieval Hebrew cabbalistic chant that recalls the various steps to find the place where one truly encounters God. The refrain in Hebrew...with a play on words and a dazzling insight says: 'He, God, is the Place of every place, / and yet this Place has no place'. The second testimony is linked to the figure of St Francis. A friar says to Francis: "We have no more money for the poor". Francis replies: "Strip the altar of the Virgin and sell its furnishings, if you cannot otherwise meet the needs of those in need". And immediately afterwards he adds: "Believe me, it will be dearer to the Virgin that the gospel of her Son be observed and her altar bare, than to see the altar adorned and the Son in the son of man despised". The third and final consideration is offered to us by Orthodox spirituality. A well-known twentieth-century Russian lay theologian who lived in Paris, Pavel Evdokimov, declared that between the square and the temple there should not be a barred door, but an open threshold so that the swirls of incense, the chants, the prayers of the faithful and the flickering of the lamps are also reflected in the square where laughter and tears, and even blasphemy and the cry of despair of the unhappy person resound. Indeed, the wind of God's Spirit must run between the sacred hall and the square where human activity takes place. In this way, one finds the authentic and profound soul of the Incarnation that weaves together space and infinity, history and eternity, the contingent and the absolute.

A teenager travelled attached to a train for several kilometres.

It is neither the only nor the first madness among 'bored and satiated' teenagers [not all] to whom we parents have given, in my opinion, too much.

There are several dangerous games in vogue: jumping from one balcony to another, or similar feats; binge drinking, pretending to strangle oneself, hanging upside down.

I read on social media that the latest stunt is to beat up passers-by and put it all on the net (I don't know if this is reliable).

Such abnormal behaviour could perhaps be avoided if parents set limits, but often they don't have them either.

It is true that such behaviour may be due to emulation of some false myth.

But beyond these extreme behaviours, playing is important for the human being.

In ancient times, Aristotle likened the concept of play to joy and virtue, while Kant called it a 'pleasurable' activity.

In the 1938 book Homo Ludens, Huizinga says that culture is born in a playful form, because everything comes in the form of play; and by playing, the collective expresses the explanation of life: play does not change into culture, but culture initially has the character of play.

In psychology, play plays a key role in the psychological development of the child - above all, of his or her personality.

Roger Caillois in his book 'Games and Men' (Ed. Bompiani) groups playful activity into four substantial classes, depending on whether competition, chance, simulacrum or vertigo prevails in the game.

He named them Agon (competition), Alea (chance, fate), Mimicry (Mimicry, disguise), Ilings (Vertigo). This distinction groups games of the same species.

In the game we first find amusement, undisciplinedness, little control, to which the author gave the term 'paidia' to arrive later at a disciplined, rule-abiding activity (Ludus).

Agon represents personal merit and is manifested in both its muscular and intellectual forms.

Examples are sports competitions, but also games of intellectual ability. The main aim is to assert one's own superiority.

Alea is the Latin word for the dice game; here the player is helpless and relies on fate, on destiny.

Mimicry includes acting, mimicry, disguise. Man abandons his own personality to pretend another.

Mimicry is conjuring; for the actor, it is attracting the other person's attention.

The last class of games described by Caillois is called Ilings.

It consists in making the consciousness feel a considerable fright.

This bewilderment is usually sought for its own sake.

Caillois gives us the example of the dancing dervishes who seek intoxication by turning in on themselves to the increasing rhythm of drums and the fear consists in this frenzied turning in on themselves.

On the other hand, without looking for striking examples, every child knows the effect of whirling around.

This kind of play is not only found in human beings, but also in the animal world.

Dogs sometimes spin on themselves to catch their tails, until they fall off.

The author cites the case of chamois as indicative.

According to Karl Groos, 'they climb up snowfields and from there each one jumps up the slope while the others watch' with the risk of crashing down.

In the course of my profession, I have often encountered teenagers playing games of this kind.

Boys on mopeds challenging cars or running red lights. Or even worse, who played walking in a slightly inebriated state on the side of a bridge.

In the last years of my profession I noticed that several teenagers were getting cuts on their bodies.

The incidents reported in the media about these extreme behaviours should not be ignored.

Of course we have all had moments when we have felt a sense of vertigo: swings as children, or games at the various amusement parks come to mind.

With increasing affluence, society often produces more and more powerful cars and motorbikes.

And there [beyond the status symbol] is also a conscious or unconscious search for a sense of vertigo.

But it should be understood that by associating vertigo (ilings) with fate (alea)... the game becomes danger - sometimes deadly.

Francesco Giovannozzi psychologist-psychotherapist.

15th Sunday in Ordinary Time - year B (14.07.2024)

1. "Jesus called the Twelve to himself and began to send them out two by two". Each evangelist recounts the choice and mission of the apostles: this Sunday it is St Mark who narrates the beginning of the missionary mandate of the Twelve chosen from among the disciples (Luke lists 72) and formed by Jesus keeping them close to him. Now however is the time to go on mission, but to be an apostle one must learn to remain a disciple and the disciple is the one who does not tire of learning from the master Jesus the art of evangelising. One does not learn it in a short time and the first condition that will then become permanent is precisely that of never detaching oneself from Jesus, the only true Master. Indeed, it is only by remaining a disciple of Jesus that the apostle can carry out the mission of proclaiming and witnessing to the gospel. Missionaries are not only the apostles, but every baptised person according to their specific vocation and charisma, and the richness of Christianity is the multiplicity of vocations at the service of the one cause: the Kingdom of God. The risk is that of wanting to be apostles without remaining disciples. The early Church spread like wildfire thanks to the fact that the twelve apostles did not forget that Jesus had chosen them to be with him and to go and proclaim the gospel with the power to cast out demons: "he gave them power over unclean spirits". Only three were the tasks he entrusted to them: to go together two by two, to keep the bare minimum for themselves and not to be frightened by inevitable persecutions. He sends them two by two because in the Jewish culture and mentality of the time for a testimony to be acceptable it had to be of at least two persons (cf. Deut 19:15) and since evangelising is bearing witness to what Jesus said and did, it cannot be the task of a single individual. After Pentecost the apostles will continue in this style: Peter and John will preach together in the temple in Jerusalem (Acts 1); Paul and Barnabas will be together in Syria and Asia Minor (Acts 13-15) and even after their separation Paul will continue his mission with Sulla (Acts 16-17) while Barnabas will take Mark with him. Secondly he asks them to make do with the bare essentials: just a stick, no food, no sack, no money, a pair of sandals and no spare tunic. Thus began the long journey of the Church and to continue it faithfully requires agility of movement, absolute readiness to serve the gospel and detachment from everything: these are valid, indeed indispensable, conditions for every evangeliser to neither give in to compromises with the world, nor allow themselves to be impressed by the persecutions they will encounter. The apostles had witnessed the failure of Jesus in Nazareth (Mk.6:1-6) and they will be reminded of this when they will have to face the same fate because of the obstinate opposition of the scribes and Pharisees and then in the persecutions that will follow.

2. It is indeed true: opposition and even persecution are the fate of Christ's disciples as it was of the prophets in the Old Testament. In today's first reading we meet the prophet Amos who was rejected by Amasias, priest of Bethel, after a few months of preaching: "Go away, seer" (7:12) and although hindered, he continued tirelessly in his opposing mission.  Like him, all prophets suffered the same fate and Jesus experienced it as the evangelist Mark recounted last Sunday: 'A prophet is not despised except in his own country, among his relatives, and in his own house. Anyone who decides to convert to Christ and intends to be his apostle must be prepared to experience the same opposition and even outright rejection. A question then arises: "Why is it that the preaching of God's love and forgiveness open to all, which sums up the proclamation of the gospel, always meets with incomprehension and opposition?" Let us not forget that Jesus "gave the apostles power over unclean spirits": when God's gratuitous love is proclaimed, Satan's hatred is unleashed, which in different ways confuses the human soul. He clouds the mind and pollutes it with the most diverse ideas about God, as we read for example in the book of Exodus: "The Lord said to Moses: 'I have looked upon this people: behold, they are a hard-necked people'" (Ex.32:7-14), but above all he hardens the heart. In order not to give in to discouragement, it is useful to always have before one's eyes the image of Jesus crucified and to think of the many martyrs who have followed in his footsteps, while the Lord continues to remind all of them: "Whoever does not take up his cross and follow me is not worthy of me" (Mt 10:37-42).

3. Alongside many who open their hearts to the gospel there are others who reject it, and Jesus in this regard does not invite us to react with violence and contempt, but to respect freedom by not forcing anyone. He says in fact: "If in any place they do not welcome you and do not listen to you, go away and shake the dust from under your feet as a testimony to them". Shake the dust from your feet: how should this gesture be interpreted as a testimony for people?  Benedict XVI explains: "Jesus warns the Twelve that it may happen that in some places they will be rejected. In that case, they will have to go elsewhere, after having made the gesture of shaking the dust under their feet in front of the people, a sign that expresses detachment in two senses: moral detachment - as if to say: the proclamation has been given to you, it is you who reject it - and material detachment - we did not want and do not want anything for ourselves (cf. Mk 6:11)" (Holy Mass Frascati 15 July 2012).  In short, Jesus invites us not to give in to discouragement in the face of defeat, but to start again, always walking with feet freed even from the dust. While it is true that hardened and hostile hearts are encountered, the spiritual satisfactions are many more, and the growth of Christian communities is proof of the power of the risen Christ. Right from the beginning, in the Acts of the Apostles, there are accounts of people everywhere who opened their homes and hearts to the preachers of the gospel, and the flow of evangelisation has continued unstoppable over the centuries. Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini writes: 'Lean on the Gospel, trust the Gospel. The word 'faith', in its long history - in the Old Testament, in the Bible, in the Hebrew version of Scripture - represents the situation of one who trusts, of one who leans on a rock, of one who feels firm because he is leaning on someone much stronger than he is." (6th meeting of the School of the Word, 6.11.1980)

+ Giovanni D'Ercole

P.S. Faced with those who predict the death of the Church at all times, St John Henry Newman, an English cardinal converted to Catholicism and canonised by Pope Francis, writes: "The Church possesses this special privilege, which no other religion has: that of knowing that, having been founded at the first coming of Christ, it will not disappear before his return. In every generation, however, it seems to succumb and its enemies triumph. The struggle between the Church and the world has this peculiarity: the world always seems to win, but in fact it is she who wins. Her enemies constantly triumph, claiming victory; her members often lose hope. But the Church remains!" (Cf. Sermons on the Themes of the Day, No. 6, Faith and Experience, 2.4)

XIV Sunday in Ordinary Time B (7 July 2024)

1. On these Sundays with the evangelist Mark, we followed Jesus who, having left Nazareth, travelled through villages and towns, after being baptised by John the Baptist at the River Jordan.  Preaching throughout Galilee, already accompanied by his disciples, he went beyond Lake Tiberias to the towns of the Decapolis and then came to Capernaum, which was to become his favourite town. In today's gospel we see him return for the first time to Nazareth where he immediately enters the synagogue preceded by the fame that was rapidly spreading to the point that people wondered where he got such wisdom and the ability to perform miracles. The reception he received was negative to say the least from some of his relatives, who even considered him a madman, yet many people were fascinated by his preaching and the miracles he performed. The Pharisees and scribes repeatedly show increasing hostility and some even meditate on how to eliminate him. What is his crime? Healing the sick, forgiving sins and performing miracles even on the Sabbath day. So strong is the opposition that we could consider it a real failure that he cannot perform even one miracle in Nazareth. St Mark dwells on the reaction of his sceptical and hostile acquaintances who recognised Jesus simply as the son of Mary and the carpenter Joseph. If he were a prophet,' they said, 'we would have known it and then when he proclaims himself the Messiah he is blaspheming because it is inconceivable that God could have human origins and moreover such modest ones. And Jesus comments: 'A prophet is not despised except in his own country, among his relatives and in his own house'.   This expression, which we find throughout the gospels (Mark 6:4; Luke 4:24; Matthew 13:57, John 4:44) has become common to emphasise that a person's merits are seldom recognised in his own environment where envy, jealousy forces the deserving to seek success far from their country.

2. The reaction of the people of Nazareth makes one think of those who, even in our time, find it hard to accept Jesus and his true prophets, because fixed on their own ideas and prejudices, they are incapable of grasping the novelty of a God with a human face and accessible to all. And so the admiration of many for Jesus true God and true man becomes for others a fake news or even a scandal. St Mark purposely uses the Greek term "skandalon", which evokes the stumbling stone of which the prophet Isaiah writes. When the humble search for truth disappears in the heart, wonder gives way to unbelief and Jesus true God and true man becomes a scandal, an obstacle that prevents even people who claim to be believers from recognising and loving him. This happened in Nazareth where people did not imagine such a Messiah and in the face of prejudice there is little one can do because one is too sure of oneself and one's convictions. The risk of closing oneself off to God's grace is always possible for everyone. Today, the gospel helps us understand that the impediment lies in the attitude with which we relate to prejudice. Only if we look at reality and people with a free spirit are we able to see the richness that dwells in the hearts of everyone, even those we underestimate because we are convinced we already know them well enough.  In life we can be amazed by positive realities, by experiences that change our way of thinking and acting, but we can be scandalised by certain encounters and events that we consider negative when preconceptions dominate in us. Jesus invites us to always grasp the positive in everyone rather than focusing on the negative that exists and which unfortunately always makes more news than the good.

3. If we try to live consistently with Christ's teachings and without compromise, we attract the admiration of some, and at the same time the hostility of others because we become a "stone of scandal", that is, a provocation to those who believe and those who do not want to believe. Those who remain faithful to Christ must prepare themselves to suffer misunderstanding and hostility because the Gospel is salvation for those who accept and follow it, but scandal for those who do not want to accept it. And beware!  It often happens that it is precisely those closest to us who close their eyes and hearts to the word and the wonders that Christ continues to perform in our time. To become an image of Jesus, one risks incomprehension and isolation. It happened in the Old Testament where prophets were often misunderstood, rejected and even tried to kill them, while false prophets had an easy hold on the people. Certainly Jesus did not expect such behaviour from his own and Mark notes his amazement at the lack of faith and hardening of heart of his fellow citizens. Like Jesus, it can also happen to any of his disciples today to be misunderstood within one's own environment. One is confronted not so much with the overt hostility of one's enemies, but rather with the indifference and opposition of those we consider friends. Despite the hostility, Jesus does not stop, and even in Nazareth he performed some healing. He thus helps us to understand that we must never give in to discouragement and the temptation of abandonment, but from trust in God we draw the strength to continue in our prophetic and missionary vocation. This is the testimony of the prophet Ezekiel that we read about in the first reading and also of the Apostle Paul that he recounts in the second reading. Ezekiel will experience all kinds of hostility and will even face exile in Babylon with the king and almost all the inhabitants of Jerusalem. He will persevere in his difficult mission, clashing with the harshness of the people, but without becoming discouraged, because he had understood that when God entrusts a mission he also gives the strength needed to carry it out. Full of contrasts is the experience of St Paul.  Like Ezekiel, he had visions and extraordinary revelations along with numerous setbacks that made him mature in humility and trust in God. He always carried, as he himself communicates, a 'thorn' in his flesh, a constant reminder of his frailty - as he writes: 'So that I might not be exalted in pride, a thorn was given to my flesh, an envoy of Satan to strike me' and he adds that although he repeatedly begged God to deliver him, he was answered: 'My grace is sufficient for you, for strength is fully manifested in weakness'. No one has understood what this 'thorn in the flesh' was that martyred him, nor does St Paul specify; although many hypotheses have been put forward. One thing is certain: Paul even gloried in his own sufferings and his example becomes an encouragement to us: our frailties and even sins do not constitute an obstacle to evangelisation, on the contrary, they can help us to better fulfil our mission because they make us aware that our fragile humanity is supported by the power of Christ, if we let him act in us. 

+ Giovanni D'Ercole 

To continue the reflection:

"Faith is not a delicate flower, destined to wither at the slightest hint of bad weather. Faith is like the mountains of the Himalayas, which cannot change in any way. There is no storm that can move the Himalayan mountains from their foundations'.

(Mahatma Gandhi)