Lk 9:51-56 (51-62)
Jesus wants to make a good scratch against the tide - and to do so he has to fight: it was not enough for him to make a career out of "combing" sheep.
He understands that it is the twists and turns and crises without stability that produce the Result of God - when the tenacity of Faith comes into play.
The young Rabbi leaves his region to severely and uncompromisingly confront the established reality of the holy city - an eternal web of interests.
It will be a fight to the death, for what is at stake is the happiness of the people.
He hardens his face without kindness [v.51 cf. Greek text] and goes, knowing full well what a cruel commitment he was taking on.
No one with a 'head on his shoulders' would have had the guts to expose himself to that mortal danger.
The opposition of the religious and cultural power that wants to perpetuate the ancient world is fierce, but the Son of God does not allow himself to be crushed by the dominant and hasty way of conceiving, nor by prudence.
The climate with which he begins his Exodus is already heavy, but he does not desist.
This means that we too must love our edgy and unshakable sides. They will come into play at the appropriate time, when it is necessary to de-cide.
In frankness, we will not lack the opportunity to make serious cuts - e.g. with the 'banking' (or qualunquist) malpractice covered in ostentation; with the good manners of official devotion [organic to perpetuating its ambiguous system], and so on.
The Lord still sends messengers [Angels] "before his face" (v.52). He does not give up spreading the life-wave of his proposal.
Divine Face, here He is partly hostile; more than resolute, for a clash with that institution that degraded humanity.
In fact, he valued the 'stable' spiritual relationships of his time as very ambiguous: they ignited inner conflicts - although (as today) they extinguished the outer ones, blunting them (only for a while).
In the Person of Christ, Apostle is one who pulls the situation in the opposite direction to the customary or fascinated, disembodied, sophisticated; however external.
By creating the disarray that solves the real problems, the Master first and foremost breaks away from qualunquism.
This is not because the conflict can then be 'brought back', 'managed', 'adjusted' - with a different winner (vv.54-55).
God has no need to reassert Himself, not even through a leader who fades the style of the old Temple, replacing one method of government with another - more or less purified and convincing.
Jesus does not present himself to the world and to everyone's heart as a mere Prophet.
He does not want to rabble-rouse the return to worship, nor the practice of the old religion. Neither does he intend to keep a safe distance, launching grand narratives, modernised, futuristic, 'à la page'.
He knows that only with an open face, the very bickering that erupts will serve to dispel the fog: to kindle souls, to generate different paths (v.56).
Then - even suddenly - new forces, new resources, and - why not - even ancient awarenesses will be created.
In short, the soporific mysticism of non-militant sloth (detached from the losing and losing ourselves that regenerates us) is false.
They do not correspond to the Gospels and do not prepare the Coming of the Lord, that is, other territories to be explored.
Those who continue to venerate securities, points of reference or new mannerisms [in themselves though plausible (vv.57-62)] are only managing a world of the dead.
Whoever welcomes Christ must open himself to a Newness that he does not know, internal and external; capable of bringing out aspects that he has not yet given space to.
In passing, Jesus is rejected (v.53) precisely because he is falsely announced by his own. Still breathless intimates.
The new Master has a practical vision that does not reflect any of the archaic cults, but supplants them.
In doing so, he disrupts a whole false identity approach: commemorative and nostalgic, or spineless.
It is the only episode in Luke in which the Samaritans (synonymous with 'heretics') dribble the Son of God. A complete failure.
This is precisely because the 'messengers' he had sent to dispose hearts had preached him as a nationalist and triumphant Messiah, not a servant.
Moreover, there is something radically unusual about Him - something that cannot be discussed or fought against in an ordinary, doctrinal, customary way.
The Master does not go to some 'holy' citadel to sterilise or perpetuate the old sectarian and intolerant ideology. But to reject it.
He incinerates (vv.54-55) and annihilates the acclaimed configurations, not the peoples removed from the precincts (venerable, fundamentalist, or hypocritical and scape-goating only imaginative).
The Lord does not proceed to the great Temple to shrug off hostilities with his own respectable proposal, which would then make everyone swallow everything.
The young Rebbe never liked that kind of elucubration or wait-and-see and regret of pious desires and good intentions that wastes the soul (generation after generation).He who ploughs a field and turns back does not plough a straight furrow (v.62).
Quite decisively, the Master goes out of his way to denounce that world of slavery, deviant and ideological; incapable of development.
Our alternatives to his reckless attitude have brought further disconnection between signs and life.
Let us not be under the illusion of intermediate stages or domiciles, heartfelt and quiet nests (v.58) of pale consolation.
Faith challenges courage, even to the point of violence towards one's own spontaneous letting go of annoyances and big things, which would torment social irenicism [of the fixed place] with inconveniences and counter appeals.
Annoyances that surprise and guide life Elsewhere.
Urges for the Exodus; a new beginning filled with Desire; a different inner knowing that ignites the outer; a tolerance in the vital diversity of characters.
Instead of the tickle of béchamel, cream-filled husbands, soft candies and sugar-and-honey confectionery, all pleasant, God acts through convulsions.
The Father uses transverse, intersecting and overlapping ways. For a Genesis of Happiness at all costs, even with a hard face.
By letting our gritty nature come out - not only in extreme cases - the Helmsman of the soul, the die-hard Friend, can steer the personal course and the journey of all.
Favouring the achievement of stubborn and liberating goals.
No matter how much one may be conditioned by surrounding expectations, sooner or later one realises that one's heart beats elsewhere than in convention.
It no longer wants to submit; it begins to deviate from the transmitted idea of integrity or social (and ecclesial) cynicism - which rhymes with local respectability.
This also happens to priests, for example, when they realise they have entered a gear that sacralises habits and does not make them grow. Or when they feel they have become the pivot of ephemeral, and anxiogenic, instead of liberating practices.
A stagnant employee instead of a shepherd, an opportune and silent situationist instead of a missionary; the coryphaeus of an inherited situation with the task of keeping the bell tower happy...
In the provinces, also placed in the trenches, but only to act as a filter - to protect 'central' nuisances and affairs, as opposed to peripheral needs or pressures.
He then realises that he is losing himself, his identity of character - the reason why he is in the world.
In spite of material security, he feels anguish and frustration coming on in his conscience (crisis of 'character' in the way: an unmistakable sign that this is not the way).
Tedium or aversion comes to his heart so that he resets the same malaise, and relies on a solidity quite different from inheritance; from the stalemate and rhetoric of the forces in the field.
There is a different way to feel close to people, like Jesus: to be oneself, so that others may also be; setting everyone on paths of inner freedom.
Freedom that sustains the particular essence, making a dam against the established ways, and the pressing reality - only to be confirmed, indeed blessed (at best, repackaged).
Communion here will be a conviviality of differences, made authentic by innate forces.
It is the space granted to the Mystery that makes us independent and fraternal - because we now derive our attraction from the common, hidden but abundant Source.
And what happens moves us, but no longer oppresses or destroys the living Vision before each one's eyes.
The bride-soul's obedience is not lacking, but it becomes an immediate relationship with the Lord who calls and guides to full life. Helping to recognise what instinctively corresponds, and distinguishing what is not important and should be dropped.
The inner gaze and Christ within will sustain, so that we become autonomous and develop a new heaven - whose features we have perceived from the beginning. They that have led us not to act to preserve the old world.
Our innate Echo will constitute such a call that it will assume decisive power over calculations, fears, anxieties, bitterness, persecutions.
The result will be happily educational, even in favour of the adversaries, who will at least begin to presume the meaning of our going out into the world.
With open hands - not full.
"Woe to you, sheep combers" - would say the Pontiff, who gladly added to some of those in charge: "Be fathers, not masters, nor princes". And not even 'administrators of cordatas'!
Calculation and common sense would lead towards the safest and most tested direction, but the vocational fire within unceasingly can recover the instances of the Ideal Core.
Too much disorder? As Pope Francis reiterated: "for the Spirit, disorder is a beautiful sign.
The torn soul, which no longer recognises itself, if it is too mortified by accommodating banalities and half-choices, then attacks us. And it itself exacerbates suffering.The resulting imbalance is an indication of the unconscious re-emergence of the desire to recover the authentic Calling; as opposed to programmed quietism.
We may have allowed ourselves to be dragged into such a swamp of summateness out of convenience - and the latter has displaced us from ourselves, as well as from the wonder of our personal Work.
Resemblance to forms and customs - even of agreed trivial improvement - becomes the prison of the Creator's design. He wanted to lead us to Him, into ourselves.
Conversely, the role has domesticated us according to matrices to be absorbed uncritically, to the point of making our essence sick.
The dismay then is an alarm: we have entered the 'role'. The heartbeat provokes us; the breathlessness comes to revive us; the panic attacks so that we awaken.
The soul thus wants to realise our dormant and stifled Dream. A desire that would change our lives.
It demands in us that we unhinge the locked doors of 'task' - which precludes the only Happiness: to feel established in one's Centre.
Every scheme (whether acquired or fashionable) annoys the worlds to be discovered, deforms the image of our destination; it violates the journey towards the dwelling that is ours, in order to make it 'equal', hence fictitious.
So an unbalanced, introverted, irascible and fearful character meets perhaps better than others the dreams he did not know, the guide-images that hide a task elsewhere configured, and the best of himself, of Mystery itself.
Repairing, 'setting things right' and 'optimising' are the typical clichés of a stagnant world. So is not confronting; repairing and balancing.
Instead, one must be reborn, not go back to the way it was before, in the common resilience.
The focus must be on the energy that gives birth to us again, on the unknown road that opens up and we had not thought of.
No one spoils us, even if they intended to.
Rather, we are urged to bring out the hidden resources, uncovering the still hidden world.
Opening up an entirely singular story that will change habitual existence.
A quiet mind does not project further, because it loves repetition and the fake securities of yesteryear.
The non-dual mind does not let us discover inner forces. The soul, on the other hand, wants to give birth, to express its creative power.
Unforeseen situations and unforeseen relationships lay it under siege, but in a state of gestation - not first 'marked'.
Those who do not leave the road already beaten, those who do not put it behind them (even seizing the opportunity of adverse conditions such as the global crisis) are forced into a cause-effect chain that does not make exponential leaps.
If history has already been written and the path remains external, the experiences are always the same.
Life does not give birth to other forms; only reductions.
To internalise and live the message:
What is the style of your testimony?
Are you indignant, irascible and furious, or simply assertive?
