"Religion of make-up" or "path of humility"? In the homily of the Mass celebrated at Santa Marta on Tuesday 11 October, Pope Francis pointed out a decisive choice for the life of every Christian: even in "doing good", in fact, one can run into a dangerous misunderstanding, which is that of putting ourselves forward and not "the redemption that Jesus gave us". The objective is to affirm "our inner freedom" by showing the world how we really are in our hearts, without easy or cunning operations of external "make-up".

The Pontiff's reflection started precisely from the concept of freedom. The starting point came from the first reading of the day (Galatians, 5, 1-6), in which the Apostle Paul invites us to "stand firm and not allow the yoke of slavery to be imposed on us again, that is, to be free: free in religion, free in the worship of God". Here is the first teaching: "never lose your freedom". But what freedom? "Christian freedom," the Pope explained, "only comes from the grace of Jesus Christ, not from our works, not from our so-called 'righteousness', but from the righteousness that the Lord Jesus Christ has given us and with which he has recreated us". A righteousness, he added, "that comes precisely from the Cross".

The Gospel passage proposed by the liturgy (Luke, 11, 37-41) also insists on this subject. Here we read of Jesus rebuking a Pharisee, a doctor of the law. He rebukes him because, the Pope recalled, "this Pharisee invites Jesus to lunch and Jesus does not do ablutions, that is, he does not wash his hands": he therefore does not perform those practices "that were customary in the ancient law". Faced with certain remonstrances, the Lord says: "You Pharisees clean the outside of the glass and the plate but your inside is full of greed and wickedness". A concept, Francis noted, that Jesus "repeats many times in the Gospel" warning certain people with clear words: "Your inside is wicked, it is not right, it is not free. You are slaves because you have not accepted the justice that comes from God". Which is then 'the righteousness that Jesus gave us'.

In another passage we read that Jesus, after exhorting prayer, also teaches how it should be done: "In your room, let no one see you, so only your Father sees you". The invitation, therefore, is "not to pray in order to appear", in order to be seen, as did that Pharisee who - the Gospel goes on to say - before the altar in the temple said: "God, thank you, Lord, for I am not a sinner". Those who acted in this way, the Pontiff commented, were really "stubborn faces" and "had no shame".

Against certain attitudes, there is the suggestion given by Jesus himself and which the Pope summarised as follows: 'When you do good and give alms, do not do it to be admired. Let your right hand not know what your left hand is doing. Do it secretly. And when you do penance, fast, please beware of melancholy, do not be melancholic so that the whole world knows you are doing penance'. In essence: what matters "is the freedom that gave us redemption, that gave us love, that gave us the re-creation of the Father. It is an inner freedom, which leads one to do 'good in secret, without blowing the trumpet': in fact, 'the path of true religion is the same as the path of Jesus: humility, humiliation'. So much so that Jesus - recalled the Pontiff quoting Paul's letter to the Philippians - "humbled himself, emptied himself". He added: "It is the only way to remove from us selfishness, greed, pride, vanity, worldliness".

Faced with this model we find instead the attitude of those whom Jesus rebukes: "people who follow the religion of make-up: appearance, appearing, pretending to appear, but inside...". For them, the Pope stressed, Jesus uses "a very strong image: 'You are whitened sepulchres, beautiful on the outside but inside full of dead bones and rot'". On the contrary, "Jesus calls us, invites us to do good with humility", because otherwise we fall into a dangerous misunderstanding: "You can do all the good that you want, but if you do not do it humbly, as Jesus teaches us, this good is of no use, because a good that comes from yourself, from your security, not from the redemption that Jesus has given us". A redemption that, Francis said, comes through "the path of humility and humiliations": in fact "one never arrives at humility without humiliations". So much so that "we see Jesus humiliated on the cross".

Here then is the exhortation that concluded the homily: "We ask the Lord not to make us tired of going down this road, not to make us tired of rejecting this religion of appearing, of seeming, of pretending to...". The commitment must instead be to proceed "silently, doing good, gratuitously as we gratuitously received our inner freedom."

[Pope Francis, s. Marta, in L'Osservatore Romano 12/10/2016]

Which road leads to the Father?

(Lk 11:29-32)

Human correspondence does not grow with the multiplication of dizzying signals. God doesn’t force the unconvinced, nor outclass with proofs; thus He earns a patrimony of love.

His authentic Church, without clamor or persuasive positions - apparently insignificant - is gathered entirely in intimate unity with her Lord.

The Queen of the South was looking for captivating solutions to enigmatic curiosities, but she could know them inside her soul and life.

Incarnation: there are no other valid signs than the events and new relationships with oneself and others - which offer the very and unheard-of Person of the Risen One, without wrappings.

The Eternal is no longer the pure transcendence of the Jews, nor the summit of the wisdom of the ancient world: the moving Sign of God is the story of Jesus alive in us.

We trust in Christ, so no more spiritual drugs that deceive us about happiness.

It’s the meaning of the new Creation: abandonment to the Spirit, but all concrete (not in a manner) and which proceeds by dragging the alternative reality.

He is the Sign unique, who frees from the many substitutes of fears’ religion, of fetters, of consolidated roles that would like to imprison the Lord in an "ally" doer of seductive miracles, immediately resolving.

Some community members seemed to want to frame the Messiah into the pattern of normal sacred and scenic expectations.

They were already getting along with the world, starting to recede, and were proving fed up...

In these "veterans" of Lk there was no sign of conversion to the idea of ​​the Son of God as a Servant, confident in dreams without prestige.

In them? No trace of a new idea - nor change of pace that could mark the end of the blatant, dehumanizing society they were used to.

There are always those who remain tied to an ideology of power. So they don't want to open their eyes except to have their senses captured in a trivial way.

For these, the Lord never reserves impressive confirmations - which would be the paradoxical validation of ancient convictions.

The only «sign» is his living Church and the Risen himself pulsating in all those who take him seriously; eg. in recoveries, healings, and impossible revaluations.

But no shortcut lightning.

Guided by the intimate Friend, we will be a single inventive humanity ‘in the Master’.

Our free and life-giving testimony will re-nourish an experience of regenerating Faith, singularly incisive.

Far more than miracles, the appeals of our essence and reality will make us recognize the call and action of God in men and in the web of history.

The Father wants his sons to produce far more astonishment and prodigies of divine-human goodness than visions and sentimentality, or magic.

The only «sign» of salvation is Christ in us, without hysterical seams; image and likeness of the new humanity.

For authentic ‘conversion’: native power - and nothing external.

[Monday 28th wk. in O.T.  October 13, 2025]

Nothing external

(Lk 11:29-32)

Jesus comes up against unbelief. It comes from various blinders and parties taken, or (especially in the disciples) arises from carelessness.

The Lord turns away from those who test him and those who reject what is God-given, claiming to fix how he should act.

The Son of Man respects each person who follows him, but makes it clear that decisions and even before that, lack of acute perception prevent the encounter and redemption of life.

From this perspective, believers do not live to "prove". Christ himself does not wait for us in subliminal and miraculous demonstrations, but on the shore of an earthly spirituality.

Value does not need applause (a double-edged sword) - the mask of the artificial proposal, and inauthentic life.

Humanising correspondence does not grow with the multiplication of dizzying signals.

God does not coerce the unconvinced, nor does He overpower them with trials; thus He gains a heritage of Love in growth.

His authentic Church, without clamour or persuasive stance - seemingly insignificant - is gathered in intimate unity with its Firstborn: native, portentous and regenerative power - solid and real.

The Queen of Noon sought captivating solutions to enigmatic curiosities, but she could know them within her soul and in life.

Incarnation: there are no other valid signs than the events and new relationships - with oneself and others - which bring forth the very and unprecedented Person of the Risen One [the one without wrappings].

The Eternal is no longer the pure transcendence of the Jews, nor the summit of wisdom of the ancient world.

The sign of the Most High is the story of Jesus alive in us. It opens up the exciting road that leads to the Father.

We trust in Christ, so no spiritual drugs that delude us of happiness.

This is the meaning of the new Creation: in the surrender to the Spirit - but all concrete (not mannered) and proceeding dragging the alternative reality.

His Person is a unique signal, which dissolves the many ersatz religion of fears, fetters, established roles.

Tares that would like to imprison him in 'ally' doer of seductive and immediately resolving miracles.

Some into a simple temple purifier or a white-mill character - and so are we, if we allow ourselves to be manipulated.

In fact, the religious leaders Jesus is addressing are those back in his communities!

These were Judaizers who wanted to frame the Messiah in the scheme of normal expectations to which they had always been accustomed.

Or they already had it and were fed up with it....

In these 'veterans' there was no sign of conversion to the idea of the Son of God as Servant, trusting in dreams without prestige.

In them? No trace of a new idea - no change of pace that would mark the demise of the blatant, dehumanising, and even sacred society - of the outside.

The popular leaders sometimes miss the meaning of the only living Sign: Jesus the Food of Life.

Because of them, not the distant ones, the Lord "groans in the spirit" [cf. Mk 8:12 Greek text] - even today, saddened by so much blindness.

Life is indeed precluded to those who cannot shift their gaze.

Immediately afterwards Lk (12,1) in fact refers to the danger of the dominant ideology that made the leaders themselves lose their objective perception of events.

A 'leaven' that was coarse but rooted in the painful experience of the people; that stimulated puffery even in the disciples, contaminating them.

To the first of the class it might have seemed that Jesus was a leader like Moses, for he had just fed the starving people in the desert [cf. Mt 15:32-39; Mk 8:1-9].

But the rejection is sharp: especially Mk (8:12) makes it sharp by emphasising the Master's sense of suffering.

Therefore, as also in Mt and Lk in the episode precisely of Jonah - his radical, peremptory denial.

To save the needy people there is no other way but to start from within.

Then proceeding towards a fullness of being that permeates, approves us, and allows us to break our lives in favour of our brothers.

There is no escape.

Only communion with the concealed source of one's eminent Self and respectful and active dialogue with others saves one from a closed group mentality.

In this way, no club is allowed - claiming monopolistic exclusivity over God and souls (Lk 9:49-50) with an explicit claim to discipline the multitudes.

The community of the Risen One abhors the competitive conception of religious life itself, if it is a sacred reflection of the imperial world and of a society that cramps and embitter the existence of the little ones.

It would be a sick life in the pursuit of even apparent prestige.

Conversely, in fraternal realities "the smallest of all, he is great" (Lk 9:48).

Therefore, it is imperative to prevent a pyramid mentality and a mentality of discard from creeping into the faithful.A spirit of competition that then inexorably ends up seeking refuge in hypocritical miraculism, a substitute for a life of Faith.

The Master does the same to educate Church members who remain [some still do] affected by a sense of superiority towards crowds and outsiders.

A feeling of chosen and privileged people (Lk 9:54-55) that was infiltrating even the primitive communities.

To those who do not want to open their eyes except to have their senses captured by phenomena all to be discerned - because in spite of the official creed they profess, they remain tied to an ideology of power - the Lord never reserves impressive confirmations coming "from heaven" (Lk 11:16) that would be the paradoxical validation.

The only sign is and will be his living Church: the "victory" of the Risen One, pulsating in all those who take him seriously.

Without fixed hierarchies - under the infallible guidance of the Calling and the Word - the children know how to reinterpret, even in an unprecedented way.

Such is the prodigy, embodied in the thousand events of history, of personal and community life; in the impossible recoveries, recoveries and revaluations.

The authentic Messiah bestows no cosmic display.

No festival that compels spectators to bow their heads in the presence of such shocking glory and dignity - as if he were a heavenly dictator.

And no shortcut lightning.

Over the centuries, the Churches have often fallen into this 'apologetic' temptation, all internal to devotions of arid impulse: to look for marvellous signs and flaunt them to silence opponents.

Stratagems for a banal attempt to shut the mouths of those who ask not for experiences of parapsychology, but rather for testimonies without trickery or contrivance: of concrete disalienation.

Not bad, this liberation activity of ours in favour of the last, and one that holds fast; not clinging to the idea of a ruffian with triumphalist or consolatory aspects.

We prefer the wave of Mystery.

We yearn to be guided by an unknown energy, which has a non-artificial goal in store - led by the eminent but intimate and hidden Friend. Exclusive in us.

We will be one humanity in the Master, on the Right Path and belonging to us. Even on broken and incomplete paths, even of bewilderment.

In commentary on the Tao Tê Ching (i) Master Ho-shang Kung writes: 

"The eternal Name wants to be like the infant that has not yet spoken, like the chick that has not yet hatched.

The shining pearl is inside the oyster, the beautiful gem is in the midst of the rock: however resplendent it may be on the inside, on the outside it is foolish and insipid'.

All of this is perhaps rated 'unconsciousness' and 'inconclusiveness'... but it bears what we are - expressing another way of seeing the world.

Within ourselves and within the Call of the Gospels we have a fresh power, approving the path different from the immediately normal and the glaringly obvious.

A Call that is enchantment, delight and splendour, because it activates us by questioning.

A Word that does not reason according to patterns.

A heartfelt plea, which is not impressed by exceptional things, by plays that suffocate the soul in search of meaning and authenticity.

Genuine Wonder, an indomitable impulse nested in the dimension of human fullness, and that does not give up: it wants to express itself in its transparency and become reality.

A kind of intimate Infant: it moves in a manner deemed 'abstruse', but puts things right, inside and out.

The free and life-giving testimony, attentive and always personally ingenious, will be innate and unprecedented, biting, inventive without shrewdness, unpredictable and not at all conformist.

It will unleash and unceasingly re-energise a convinced, singular, incisive experience of Faith - despite the fact that it may appear losing and unsuccessful, unhonourable and senseless.

Far more than miracles, the pleas of our essence and reality will make us recognise the call and action of God in people and in the fabric of history.

Invitations that can germinate other astonishments and prodigies of divine-human goodness, than paroxysmal visions seasoned with neurosis and empty sentimentality or magic.

The only sign of salvation is Christ in us - without seams or grand hysterical gestures.

The image and likeness of the new humanity; the manifestation of God's power on earth.

For authentic conversion: nothing external.

To internalise and live the message:

What is the nature of your search for evidence?

How does your sign making believe differ from gimmicks, acts of force, or what others would have you spread?

2) The book of Jonah announces to us the event of Jesus Christ - Jonah is a foreshadowing of the coming of Jesus. The Lord himself tells us this in the Gospel quite clearly. 

Asked by the Jews to give them a sign that would openly reveal him as the Messiah, he replies, according to Matthew: "No sign will be given to this generation except the sign of Jonah the prophet. For as Jonah remained three days and three nights in the belly of the fish, so shall the Son of Man remain three days and three nights in the heart of the earth" (Matthew 12:39f). 

Luke's version of Jesus' words is simpler: "This generation [...] seeks a sign but no sign will be given to it except the sign of Jonah. For as Jonah was a sign to those of Nineveh, so also the Son of Man will be a sign to this generation' (Lk 11:29f). We see two elements in both texts: the Son of Man himself, Christ, God's envoy, is the sign. The paschal mystery points to Jesus as the Son of man, he is the sign in and through the paschal mystery.

In the Old Testament account this very mystery of Jesus shines through quite clearly. 

The first chapter of the book of Jonah speaks of a threefold descent of the prophet: he goes down to the port of Jaffa; he goes down into the ship; and in the ship he puts himself in the innermost place. In his case, however, this threefold descent is an attempted escape before God. Jesus is the one who descends out of love, not in order to flee, but to reach the Nineveh of the world: he descends from his divinity into the poverty of the flesh, of being a creature with all its miseries and sufferings; he descends into the simplicity of the carpenter's son, and he descends into the night of the cross, and finally even into the night of the Sheòl, the world of the dead. In doing so, he precedes us on the way of descent, away from our false kingly glory; the way of penitence, which is the way to our own truth: the way of conversion, the way that leads us away from Adam's pride, from wanting to be God, towards the humility of Jesus who is God and for us strips himself of his glory (Phil 2:1-10). Like Jonah, Jesus sleeps in the boat while the storm rages. In a way, in the experience of the cross he allows himself to be thrown into the sea and thus calms the storm. The rabbis have interpreted Jonah's word "Throw me into the sea" as a self-offering of the prophet who wanted to save Israel with this: he was afraid of the conversion of the pagans and of Israel's rejection of the faith, and for this reason - so they say - he wanted to let himself be thrown into the sea. The prophet saves in that he puts himself in the place of others. The sacrifice saves. This rabbinic exegesis became truth in Jesus.

[Pope Benedict Card. Ratzinger, Lectio in st Maria in Traspontina, 24 January 2003; in "30Days" February 2003]

4. In fact, Jesus invites us to discern the words and deeds which bear witness to the imminent coming of the Father’s kingdom. Indeed, he indicates and concentrates all the signs in the enigmatic “sign of Jonah”. By doing so, he overturns the worldly logic aimed at seeking signs that would confirm the human desire for self-affirmation and power. As the Apostle Paul emphasizes: “Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles” (1 Cor 1:22-23).

As the first-born among many brethren (cf. Rom 8:29), Christ was the first to overcome in himself the diabolic “temptation” to use worldly means to achieve the coming of God’s kingdom. This happened from the time of the messianic testing in the desert to the sarcastic challenge flung at him as he hung upon the cross: “If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross” (Mt 27:40). In the crucified Jesus a kind of transformation and concentration of the signs occurs: he himself is the “sign of God”, especially in the mystery of his Death and Resurrection. To discern the signs of his presence in history, it is necessary to free oneself from every worldly pretense and to welcome the Spirit who “searches everything, even the depths of God” (1 Cor 2:10).

[Pope John Paul II, General Audience 23 September 1998]

Here is the syndrome of Jonah, which "strikes those who do not have the zeal for the conversion of the people, they seek a holiness - allow me the word - a holiness of dyeing, that is, all beautiful, all well done but without the zeal that leads us to preach the Lord". The Pope recalled that the Lord "before this generation, sick with the Jonah syndrome, promises the sign of Jonah". He added: "In the other version, that of Matthew, it says: but Jonah was in the whale three nights and three days... The reference is to Jesus in the tomb, to his death and resurrection. And this is the sign that Jesus promises: against hypocrisy, against this attitude of perfect religiosity, against this attitude of a group of Pharisees'.

To make the concept clearer, the bishop of Rome referred to another parable from the Gospel "that represents well what Jesus wants to say. It is the parable of the Pharisee and the publican praying in the temple (Luke 14:10-14). The Pharisee is so sure before the altar that he says: I thank you God that I am not like all these people from Nineveh, nor like the one who is there! And the one who was there was the publican, who only said: Lord have mercy on me who am a sinner".

The sign that Jesus promises "is his forgiveness," Pope Francis pointed out, "through his death and resurrection. The sign that Jesus promises is his mercy, the one that God had already been asking for some time: mercy I want and not sacrifices". So "the true sign of Jonah is the one that gives us the confidence of being saved by the blood of Christ. There are many Christians who think they are saved only by what they do, by their works. Works are necessary, but they are a consequence, a response to that merciful love that saves us. Works alone, without this merciful love, are not enough.

So "the Jonah syndrome strikes those who trust only in their personal righteousness, in their works". And when Jesus says "this wicked generation", he is referring to "all those who have Jonah's syndrome in them". But there is more: "Jonah's syndrome," said the Pope, "leads us to hypocrisy, to that sufficiency that we believe we achieve because we are clean, perfect Christians, because we do these works we keep the commandments, everything. A big disease, the Jonah syndrome!". Whereas "the sign of Jonah" is "the mercy of God in Jesus Christ who died and rose again for us, for our salvation".

"There are two words in the first reading," he added, "that connect with this. Paul says of himself that he is an apostle, not because he has studied, but he is an apostle by calling. And to Christians he says: you are called by Jesus Christ. The sign of Jonah calls us'. Today's liturgy, the Pontiff concluded, helps us to understand and make a choice: "Do we want to follow the syndrome of Jonah or the sign of Jonah?"

[Pope Francis, St. Martha, in L'Osservatore Romano 15.10.13]

Foreign glory, or religiosity giving birth to models and slaves

(LK 17:11-19)

According to the encyclical Brothers All, the custody of differences is the criterion of true fraternity, which does not annihilate the extrovert peaks.

In fact, even in a relationship of deep love and coexistence «we need to free ourselves from feeling that we all have to be alike» [Amoris Laetitia, n.139].

It will be surprising, but the meaning of the Gospel does not concern the thanks to do!

Jesus is not saddened by a lack of gratitude and good manners, but by the fact that only a stranger gives «glory to God» (v.15).

That is: he recognizes Him as his personal Lord - in a relationship, in fact, without mediation.

That personal «make-Eucharist» [...] «and fell on his face at his feet» (v.16 Greek text) has a strong, spousal meaning, of perfect reciprocity in the Way.

All within the horizon of a crucial - decisive - choice between exclusive quality life, or death.

Although marginalized by the "sacred precincts" of the Temple in the Holy City - the distant and rejected (considered bastards and enemies) immediately understand what does not disfigure the face of their humanity.

On closer inspection, in the third Gospel the models of the Faith are all "foreign": centurion, prostitute, hemorrhoid, blind; and so on.

They immediately perceive the signs of Life, signs of God!

Others more settled or attracted by normalities are content to be reintegrated into ancient and common religious practice, returning to the usual impersonal things, and to mass worship.

But those who allow themselves to be enslaved, lose track of themselves and of Christ (v.17). They become again a slave of the aligned, conventionalist mentality, not examined - and subject to ‘permanence’.

Instead, if recognized [as in the case of the Samaritan] a Presence in our favor makes us find, discover, and understand.

It proceeds unparalleled through all our moods - without remorse for duties that do not belong to us.

This Friendship makes us recover the fixed points of truly intimate human codes, strengthening - out of the line - both the system of self-recognition and the authentic and unrepeatable way of honoring God in our brothers and sisters.

In short, as we walk our very own Way with optimism and hope, we come to meet the living Christ; not to the hubbub of the [ancient or fashionable] Temple.

It no longer sends precious messages; it only notes down. It beats in the head, but does not touch us inside.

It will trap each one in a web of predictable thoughts, of enemy surveillance, induced customs; so on.

Regarding the essential divine readiness to grasp differences as wealth, we recall the teaching of the Sufi master Ibn Ata Allah, who upheld the unparalleled immediacy of the personal Colloquium - where wisdom of analysis and experience of mystical vertigo unite:

«He makes the enlightenment come upon you so that through it you may come to Him; He makes it come upon you to remove you from the hand of others; He makes it come upon you to free you from the slavery of creatures; He makes it come on you to bring you out of the prison of your existence towards the Heaven of the contemplation of Him».

New, full, and definitive Life.

People of Faith detach themselves from external religious identity: they dream, love and invent roads; they deviate and do not follow an already traced path.

[28th Sunday in O.T. (year C), October 12, 2025]

Foreign glory (or religious culture that produces models and slaves)

(Lk 17:11-19)

The impure had to stay out of the way: anything that differed from the dominant thinking was undermined.

According to the ancient religious scheme, the places of the 'infected' were considered equivalent to cemeteries.

Diseases were imagined as punishments for transgressions.

But leprosy - a disease that corrodes from within - was the very symbol of sin [yet here it seems that it is the observant who are the walking image of death].

Any recovery was considered a miraculous resurrection.

And before being readmitted into society, all (supposed) sins had to be atoned for.

Jesus replaces the nerve-wracking complexity of these arcane and superstitious procedures with a very simple path to recovery.

In this way, he destroys archaic, superstitious idolatrous devotion, replacing it with a proposal for real life.

This passage is exclusive to Luke, but in all the Gospels the term 'village' has strongly negative connotations.

'Villages' are places where the Lord is not welcomed. There is no room for the new there, and if it takes root, it becomes an obligatory tradition.

They are territories and swamps of reduction, of stubborn confirmation, of wanting to reproduce consolidated thoughts and impose more or less seraphic customs on anyone. We know them.

In the Church, the 'village' mentality is one of certainty at all costs.

It is the typical conviction of those who consider themselves sacramentally correct and entitled to marginalise, chase away, reject, keep away, and disregard.

The passage can be read on several levels.

The Master walks with the Apostles and addresses them (Lk 17:1-11), but suddenly he seems to find himself alone (v. 12). It is as if the 'lepers of the village' were none other than his own [at that time, no one affected by the disease could live in residential areas].

The impurity contracted by the disciples and also by us today depends precisely on the damaged condition, decay and corruption of the reduced and infected environment.

The latter makes regeneration impossible - because in it the followers themselves (who seem close) sometimes close themselves off, all grouped together.

The ten lepers represent us.

The number itself indicates a totality (like fingers).

But right here, if we are at least made aware of the separation from the realisation of our face, here is the first step towards personal involvement with the Lord.

We all have signs of non-life.

Those who consider themselves to have arrived and to be free from pathologies put up fences to protect themselves and their world, but remain there, awkward.

When, on the other hand, they realise that development has not yet flourished, a sense of tolerance towards others is triggered, and the personal spring that overcomes empty, intimate, or coerced adherence.

Even in the first assemblies of those called to be children and brothers, a self-satisfied and isolationist mentality sometimes manifested itself towards the pagans who presented themselves at the threshold of the community.

The newcomers - scrutinised by the veterans who could not tolerate differences - cried out, appealing directly to Christ himself.

The question arose - still relevant today:

'You who are at the head [v. 13 Greek text], you who command the church, what do you think of your own? What do you say about this village mentality?

"Do the first ones who believe they have the right to shun others really have the right to do so?"

"Has the Father you proclaimed become exactly like the grim God of religions?"

In fact, the 'lepers' are not asking for healing, but for compassion.

In short, the Call is 'internal'.

This means that it is precisely the phenomena of the acquired role or ministry - perhaps colonialist - that should be healed.

Conditioned by false guides, we too often approach Christ in an abstruse, wrong way: asking him for 'mercy'.

One does not ask a Friend or a Father for 'mercy'.

This is why Jesus is clear. Those who consider themselves unclean or want to be pitied must go elsewhere, to the official religion.

Everyone is complete, and this can be seen in the choice of the stranger who alone understands and returns to Christ.

No one needs to punish themselves by submitting to conformist protocols.

But then it was the priests of the Temple who verified and decided whether the already healed (!) could be readmitted into society.

In short, all of us sinners are made pure not by miracles that come down like lightning, but in the Exodus.

A journey that moves us away from a putrid and diseased environment - well before anyone checks, makes trivial recommendations, and dictates the rhythm of petty practices.

It is only the 'village' that makes us - and considers us - impure... because we do not resemble it!

All we need to do is break free from ghettoising thoughts and customs to gain serenity and motivation: we will no longer feel rejected and singled out.

We will discover ourselves and God with us.

He made us this way for a special Mission; not modelled on prototypes to be copied as if we were idiots: but as supremely lovable children.

The Father sees us as perfect, and in his own time he will bring forth amazing pearls from our supposed or intruding unworthiness.

Inadequacies in the 'village', which make up and complete the baggage of our precious personality and unique Vocation.

Coincidentally, we only realise ourselves spiritually by crossing local 'cultural' barriers.

Even by disobeying orders, but transgressing them (vv. 14ff.)!

In this way, Jesus does not contemplate inquisitors.

We must allow ourselves to be controlled solely by the Spirit, who already animates us.

This is a decisive issue. In fact, the meaning of the text does not concern the thanks that must be given!

Jesus is not saddened because he sees a lack of gratitude and good manners, but because only a foreigner gives 'glory to God' (v. 15).

That is, he recognises him as his personal Lord - in a relationship, precisely, without mediation.

That personal 'Eucharistic act' [...] 'and fell on his face at his feet' (v. 16 Greek text) has a strong, spousal meaning of perfect reciprocity on the Way.

All within the horizon of a crucial choice - not peaceful, nor calm and do-gooder, but decisive - between a life of exclusive quality or death.

Although marginalised from the 'sacred enclosures' of the Temple in the Holy City, it is precisely those who are distant and rejected (considered bastards and enemies) who immediately understand what does not disfigure the face of their humanity.

Here Luke quotes the term alloghenès (v. 18) carved in large letters on the tablets affixed to the first of the internal parapets of the Sanctuary of Jerusalem [the one that, under penalty of death, prevented pagans from participating in Jewish cultic sacrifice].

But on closer inspection, in the third Gospel, the models of Faith are all 'strangers': the centurion, the prostitute, the haemorrhaging woman, the blind man, and so on.

They immediately perceive the signs of Life, the signs of God!

Others who are more settled or attracted to normality are content to be reintegrated into the old and common religious practice, returning to the usual impersonal things and mass worship.

Yet those who readjust to the ways of the world become enslaved; they lose track of themselves and of Christ (v. 17).

They become slaves once again to a conformist, conventionalist mentality that is unquestioned and dominated by 'permanence'.

According to the encyclical Fratelli Tutti, the preservation of differences is the criterion of true fraternity, which does not destroy extroverted peaks.

In fact, even in a relationship of deep love and coexistence, 'there is a need to free oneself from the obligation to be the same' [Amoris Laetitia, n.139].

Pope Francis again:

'While solidarity is the principle of social planning that allows unequal people to become equal, fraternity is what allows equal people to be different' [Message to the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, 24/04/2017].

In short, by walking our own personal path with optimism and hope, we come to meet the living Christ; not the clamour of the Temple [ancient or fashionable].

It no longer sends precious messages; it only takes notes. It beats in our heads, but it does not touch us inside.

It will trap us in a web of predictable thoughts, hostile surveillance, induced customs, and so on.

Domestications devoid of affinity with events of specific weight - without the allied step of people of a particular culture and sensitivity.

Those who are healing the world.

Despite their ostensible belonging, behind sacred official scenes, relationships often loosen; they do not regenerate.

In those territories, models and prototypes, codes and patents, the obtuseness of petty prima donnas - figures of narrow-mindedness - are often born.

Instead, if recognised [as in the case of the Samaritan], a Presence in our favour allows us to rediscover, discover and understand.

It proceeds unrivalled through all our states of mind - without any more remorse for duties that do not belong to us.

Such Friendship allows us to recover the fixed points of truly intimate human codes, enhancing - outside the lines - both the system of recognition of ourselves and the authentic and unrepeatable way of honouring God in our brothers and sisters.

No longer the exclusive privilege of the elect and the best... all of whom are undecisive.

Regarding the essential divine willingness to embrace differences as riches, we recall the teaching of the Sufi master Ibn Ata Allah, who advocated the unparalleled immediacy of personal dialogue - where the wisdom of analysis and the experience of intoxication come together:

"He brings enlightenment upon you so that through it you may reach Him; He brings it upon you to remove you from the hands of others; He brings it upon you to free you from the slavery of creatures; He brings it upon you to bring you out of the prison of your existence towards the heaven of contemplation of Him."

A new, full, definitive life.

People of faith detach themselves from external religious identity: they dream, love and invent paths; they deviate and do not follow a path already traced.

Dear Brothers and Sisters, 

This Sunday's Gospel presents Jesus healing 10 lepers, of whom only one, a Samaritan and therefore a foreigner, returned to thank him (cf. Lk 17: 11-19). The Lord said to him: "Rise and go your way; your faith has made you well" (Lk 17: 19). This Gospel passage invites us to a twofold reflection. It first evokes two levels of healing: one, more superficial, concerns the body. The other deeper level touches the innermost depths of the person, what the Bible calls "the heart", and from there spreads to the whole of a person's life. Complete and radical healing is "salvation". By making a distinction between "health" and "salvation", even ordinary language helps us to understand that salvation is far more than health: indeed, it is new, full and definitive life. Furthermore, Jesus here, as in other circumstances, says the words: "Your faith has made you whole". It is faith that saves human beings, re-establishing them in their profound relationship with God, themselves and others; and faith is expressed in gratitude. Those who, like the healed Samaritan, know how to say "thank you", show that they do not consider everything as their due but as a gift that comes ultimately from God, even when it arrives through men and women or through nature. Faith thus entails the opening of the person to the Lord's grace; it means recognizing that everything is a gift, everything is grace. What a treasure is hidden in two small words: "thank you"!

Jesus healed 10 people sick with leprosy, a disease in those times considered a "contagious impurity" that required ritual cleansing (cf. Lv 14: 1-37). Indeed, the "leprosy" that truly disfigures the human being and society is sin; it is pride and selfishness that spawn indifference, hatred and violence in the human soul. No one, save God who is Love, can heal this leprosy of the spirit which scars the face of humanity. By opening his heart to God, the person who converts is inwardly healed from evil. 

"Repent, and believe in the Gospel" (Mk 1: 15). Jesus began his public life with this invitation that continues to resonate in the Church to the point that in her apparitions, the Virgin Most Holy has renewed this appeal, especially in recent times. Today, let us think in particular of Fatima, where precisely 90 years ago, from 13 May to 13 October 1917, the Virgin appeared to the three little shepherd children: Lucia, Jacinta and Francisco. Thanks to radio and television link-up, I would like to be spiritually present at this Marian Shrine where Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone has presided on my behalf at the concluding celebrations of this most important anniversary. I cordially greet him, the other Cardinals and Bishops present, the priests who work at the shrine and the pilgrims who have come from every part of the world for the occasion. Let us ask Our Lady for the gift of true conversion for all Christians, so that they may proclaim and witness consistently and faithfully to the perennial message of the Gospel, which points out to humanity the path of authentic peace.

[Pope Benedict, Angelus, 14 October 2007]

“Mga kaibigan” (Dear friends)  

“Maraming salamat sa inyong lahat” (I warmly thank you all).  

I would have liked to visit you at your homes, but it was not possible. I thank you for coming to meet me instead. I thank you for representing others who wanted so much to come but were unable to do so. Being with you today brings great joy to my heart. I greet you with affection and hope you know how much I have looked forward to this meeting.  

During my previous pastoral visits to Africa and Brazil, I met other men and women suffering from leprosy. These encounters left a deep impression on me, because I was able to appreciate the loving patience and courage with which they live despite their trials and adversities.  

1. I am here in the name of Christ Jesus to remind you of his extraordinary love for all his brothers and sisters, but especially for each one of you. The Gospels bear witness to this truth. Think for a moment how often Jesus showed his concern by transforming situations of need into moments of grace. In the Gospel of Saint Luke, for example, Jesus is approached by ten lepers who ask to be healed. The Lord commands them to show themselves to the priests, and on the way they are healed. One of them returns to give thanks. In his gratitude, he demonstrates a faith that is strong, joyful and full of praise for the wonder of God's gifts. Clearly, Jesus touched the very core of this man's being with his love.  

2. Again in the Gospels of Matthew and Mark, we are presented with a leper who asks Jesus to heal him, but only if it is his will. How grateful the man is when his request is heard! He sets out to spread the joyful news of the miracle to all those he meets. Such great happiness comes from the man's faith. His words, "if you are willing, you can make me clean," reflect a willingness to accept whatever Jesus desires for him. And his faith in Jesus was not disappointed! Dear brothers and sisters, may your faith in Jesus be no less firm and constant than the faith of these people in the Gospels.  

3. I know that your affliction involves intense suffering, not only through its physical manifestations, but also because of the misunderstandings that many people in society continue to associate with Hansen's disease. You often encounter very old prejudices, and these become a source of even greater suffering. For my part, I will continue to proclaim before the world the need for even greater awareness that, with appropriate help, this disease can indeed be overcome. For this reason, I ask everyone everywhere to give ever greater support to the courageous efforts being made to eradicate leprosy and to treat effectively those who are still affected by it.  

4. I pray that you will never be discouraged or embittered. Wherever and whenever you encounter the Cross, embrace it as Jesus did, so that the Father's will may be done. May your suffering be offered for the benefit of the whole Church, so that you may say with St Paul: "Therefore I am glad in my sufferings... and I fill up in my flesh what is lacking in the sufferings of Christ, for the sake of His Body, which is the Church..." (Col 1:24).  

Three days ago, I beatified sixteen martyrs of Nagasaki in your country. Among them is Blessed Lazarus of Kyoto, who was a leper. How we rejoice at the help that Blessed Lazarus gave to the missionaries as a translator and guide. Ultimately, his commitment to spreading the Gospel cost him his life; he died shedding his blood for the faith. His love for Christ brought him much suffering, even excruciating pain! He experienced misunderstanding, rejection and hatred from others in his service to the Church! But with the strength of God's grace, Blessed Lazarus bore witness to the faith and merited the precious gift of the crown of martyrdom.  

Dear friends, I invite you to imitate the courage of Blessed Lazarus who is so close to you. Share the convictions of your faith with your brothers and sisters who suffer with you. Recall the love of the doctors, nurses and volunteers who care for you so generously. Work to build a living community of faith, a community that supports, strengthens and enriches the universal Church. Here is your service to Christ! Here is the challenge for your life! Here is where you can manifest your faith, your hope and your love!  

May God bless you, dear brothers and sisters! May he bless all those suffering from leprosy in this country! May he bless your families, your friends and all those who care for you! “Ai higit sa lahat, inihahabilin ko ang aking sarili sa inyong panalangin, sa inyong pagmamahal” (And above all, I commend myself to your prayers and your love).

[Pope John Paul II, Address at the Tala Leprosarium, Manila, 21 February 1981]