Behold the Lamb, in the lambs

(Jn 1:29-34)

In the fourth Gospel, the Baptist is not 'the precursor', but a 'witness' to the Light Lamb who raises fundamental questions.

Alarmed, the authorities investigate him.

But it is not he who sweeps away 'sin', that is, the humiliation of unbridgeable distances - and the inability to respond to one's personal Vocation, to Life without limits.

This hindrance is even emphasised by the logic 'of the world': by false teaching, by the very structure of the ancient official institution, so closely linked to the intertwining of religion and power.

Condemned at 'midday' [the height and full light] of Easter Eve, Jesus' earthly journey coincides with the hour when the priests of the Temple began to sacrifice the lambs of propitiation [originally an apotropaic sacrifice that preceded transhumance].

As with the Lamb of the fathers in a foreign land, who had spared them from slaughter, his Blood gives impetus to cross the land of arid slavery.

The 'Egypt' of the pharaohs, devoid of warmth and intimate harmony (which lead us to premature death).

As is well known, the image of the Lamb belongs to the sacrificial theological tradition, which originated in the famous text of Isaiah 53 and in all the sacred imagery of the ancient East [which had developed a literature and widespread belief in the Messiah King].

According to the biblical conception, the sovereign united and represented the entire people. The Anointed One would have had the ideal task of carrying away and atoning for human iniquities.

But Jesus does not 'atone' but 'uproots'. Nor does he 'propitiate': the Father does not reject the precarious condition of his creatures, nor does he establish a protectorate favourable to a circle (like the God of archaic religions).

In Christ, who 'supports and removes' all our shame and weaknesses, the Father's action becomes intimate - and therefore decisive.

He does not destroy transgressions with a kind of amnesty, even vicarious: it would not be authentic salvation to touch only the peripheries and not the Core, in order to reactivate us.

An external habit does not belong to us and will never be ours; it is not assimilated, nor does it become real life. Amnesties do not educate, quite the contrary.

It is true that a little lamb in a world of cunning wolves has no chance of escape. To present it means to see it perish, but not as a designated victim: it was the only way for the beasts who believe themselves to be people to understand that they are still only beasts.

Being considered strong, capable of commanding, excellent, untainted, magnificent, high-performing, extraordinary, glorious... damages people.

It puts a mask on us, makes us one-sided; it takes away understanding. It makes the character we are sitting in, float above reality.

The Risen One introduces a new force into the world, a different dynamism, a way of instructing the soul that becomes a conscious process.

Only by educating us does the Most High-near destroy and overcome the instinct of beasts that devour each other, believing themselves to be true human beings - even spiritual ones.

A third allusion to the figure of the Lamb insists on the votive icon and archetypal category associated with Abraham's sacrifice, where God himself provides the victim (Genesis 22).

Of course he provides: he did not create us angelic, but rather unstable, transitory. Yet every divine Gift passes through our shaky condition - which is not sin, nor fault, but rather a given; nourishment and resource.

We are Perfect in the multiplicity of our creaturely aspects, even in our limitations: blasphemy for the religious man of old... a reality for the man of Faith.

The authentic Lamb is not just a (moral) reference: it is the meekness of those who are called to give everything of themselves, even their skin.

It is an image of the obvious limitation of those who would never be able to make life brilliant, so they allow themselves to be found and carried on the shoulders of others.

In this way, there is no delusional decision-making.

It will be the Friend of our vocational core who will transmit strength and devise the way to return us to the House that is truly ours: the Tent that stitches together scattered events.

A dwelling that reconnects all the being that we should have - and perhaps even could have - brought to fruition.

The different paths that lead to the founding Eros that belongs to us, intimate and superior, are authentic and at the same time unique to each person.

The Perfection that will emerge along the Way already corresponds to us.

Then the desire to improve according to an ancient or other person's paradigm will no longer be a torment that unnerves the soul, attenuating its completeness.

Incarnation here means that the Lamb is the representation of an unusual, accepted totality of the divine Face in men.

A totality that is finally solid – paradoxical, reconciled – which recovers its innocent, natural, spontaneous opposite, incapable of miracles.

The difference between religiosity and Faith.

The Lamb is not an ego that already has its own path; equipped, self-confident and able to find its way in the world. Perhaps to be accepted, to be on a par with others, to always be in the foreground.

It is the passive virtues and weaknesses - not the artificial ones put on display - that activate the best, most fruitful parts of ourselves, enabling us to look within.

All this, in order to journey through ourselves and our brothers and sisters, overcoming our secret sides and anxieties; transmitting life.

Lamb: not wanting to be there at all costs and as protagonists, always at ease, with certainties on display; too exposed to projections, to other desires for protagonism - and not losing positions.

When we put ourselves on display, we remain completely external and shift our faculties, the other capacities of the heart - such as the need to yield, to let things flow in order to prepare for something else that we do not know. And to turn our gaze, discover new directions, or symbiosis with the different.

This is why we speak of a 'revolution of tenderness' [see below] - which cannot be a guided cultural mask or an expropriating conditioning.

In the end, we realise that people are artificial: they act out holiness - some only to gain spiritual superiority over the naive and innocent who are caught up in an authentically interior and fraternal gaze.

The Lamb is an image of stability in goodness, first and foremost received as a gift and perhaps not even invoked, but recognisable - which therefore reveals both the innate silence and the unexpected colours of the soul and of events.

Step by step, it becomes a deep knowledge of ourselves, a figure of orientation and solid dialogue to rely on, activating that singular hope full of intensity that tears us away from infatuations.

We hang on his universal and simple words.

They open our consciousness - overcoming both our demons and the shrill resonances of those who stand beside us to feel important (and govern relationships).

Incorporated into the Lamb, we enter into the right spirit of the inner journey. Then we continue willingly - never alone and orphaned; as Together - in the search for our own unique way of completing ourselves and becoming Food.

The Tao Te Ching (xv) asks:

'Who is capable of being restless in order to gradually clarify by resting? Who is capable of being placid in order to gradually live, removing over time?'.

Master Wang Pi comments:

'The man of supreme virtue is like this: his omens are not scrutinisable, the direction of his virtue is not manifest. If he perfects creatures by remaining obscure, he illuminates them; if he makes creatures rest by being restless, he clarifies them; if he removes creatures by remaining placid, he brings them to life'.

Christ the Lamb is definitely the beneficial therapeutic image of the soul seeking nourishment - and of our energetic destiny, even during normal occupations.

Then they will seem almost like a song, vibrating around us.

To internalise and live the message:

What does the expression 'the Lamb who takes away the sin of the world' mean to you?

Healthy tenderness: selfishness without reduction

The saint is the one who, following his own path in the wake of the Risen One, has learned to 'identify with the other, without paying attention to where [or] where from [...] ultimately experiencing that others are his own flesh' (cf. FT 84).

No plant lives only in the light: it would die. No animal: it would perish - if it did not have its den in the shade.

The man who denies his dark side is lying. And he would never enjoy Joy, the fruit of the Alliance between our multifaceted aspects.

Biblical spirituality is not empty; on the contrary, it is very sober and linked to concrete and multifaceted life, sometimes opposed - not at all inclined to sentimental consolation or unilateral retreats.

In Deuteronomy 6:4-5 [Hebrew text], the love owed to the Lord involves 'all your heart', that is, all your decisions, 'all your life', that is, every moment of your existence, and 'all your very being'. That is, the sharing of goods, which the Son of God understands in a universal sense.

Jesus' proposal evolves decisively towards overcoming barriers, freedom, and awareness.

It tends to recover the entire creaturely being - and is not inclined towards the liturgy of fulfilment, nor towards valuing performances.

The Son of God defines the coordinates of true Love towards the Father in terms that surprise us, because to the ancient criterion he adds questioning oneself in the understanding of the things of man, God and the Church.

Realising, trying to understand, dialoguing to enrich oneself, updating oneself, examining everything... these are not cerebral and individual trappings, but decisive steps towards communion with others and with the Father [Mt 22:37; Mk 12:30; Lk 10:27].

In pagan religions, it made no sense to speak of love for the gods.

They lived a capricious life and decided by lottery who among men should be favoured and who should endure a life of hardship and insignificance.

The fortunate (materially blessed) gave thanks by fulfilling prescriptions, e.g. obligations of worship; the others did the same - at least to keep the heavenly hosts happy and not be the object of retaliation from above.

Fear creates hierarchical pyramids. Love puts everyone on an equal footing.

Obviously, with the burden of many duties to observe (in order to win their favour), it was impossible to have much passion for the inhabitants of Olympus, or demigods, nymphs, heroes - in short, for anyone who towered above them.

The invisible and landless were obviously subject to personal and social contempt - sanctified by the indisputable will of the gods, identified with their destination in the slums; in this case, punitive. In any case, swampy.

[Far from the 'bowels of mercy': a maternal expression, common since the First Testament!].

Then the archaic idea of punishment or blessing (even endless) for merits accumulated in life has formed the fabric of religious mentality throughout the ages.

This was the case until recently, even in the civitas christiana in which we live.

Thus, the 'theology of retribution' has effectively destroyed all personal passion, with the hypocritical idea of exchange. As well as meritocracy projected even to the rank of Paradise - worse than selfishness.

Levelling us all to the point of 'ticking boxes'.

The complex procedures of 'weighing the heart' and 'divine judgement' on the souls of the dead are well known, even in the sarcophagi and the Book of the Dead of ancient Egypt.

Forensic-style concatenations that have humiliated the idea of divine justice, which establishes fair conditions and relationships where they do not exist. But these opinions and procedures have become common to all beliefs in the Mediterranean basin and the ancient Middle East.

Now detached from the invasion of obsessive catechesis about the terrible final judgement populated by acolytes armed with pitchforks, we finally feel understood in a personal way, with an exclusively vocational, non-massified criterion.

By virtue of our creaturely nature, we are souls called and activated to a path that can bear unique fruit - a decisive and non-homogeneous contribution to the entire history of salvation. Each one of us.

In the Vision-proposal of Jesus the Lamb, our being is not omnipotent in good; this does not bring any condemnation, not even to the incapable.

We are shaped by the need to receive love - as if we were children in front of parents who raise their children to be healthy with an abundance of initiatives that lead them to surpass themselves.

This is despite their whims; indeed, because of them: a magma of opposing yet malleable energies that see beyond easy identifications and are preparing for subsequent developments.

The experience of evangelical Tenderness does not come from good character and social meekness. It comes from having experienced first-hand the value of eccentricities - and having developed an understanding of one's own dark sides, or reworked and brought into play deviations that at a certain point in life have become amazing resources.

In fact, we can see the same evolution and transmutation in the aspects of ourselves that we do not like and would like to correct... then, as the days go by, they surprise us, and we discover that they are the best part of ourselves: our true inclination and the reason why we were born.

The deviant and unbalanced character of each person contains an essential secret of the Calling by Name and of one's destiny.

From this we start to recognise the specific weight of the differences and the very dissonances of our sisters and brothers, which are equally enriching.

The Lambs' approach is not one of do-goodism (which fluctuates according to the situation and is linked to artificial ways, subtle interests or partisanship): quite the opposite!

As Pope Francis said: 'Lambs, not stupid; but lambs'.

In personal and communal life, evangelical tenderness is real understanding and authentic inclusion of the 'different' - starting not from an erratic, momentary and (volatile) ideology, but from one's own experience of intimate and relational life.

It will lead us to experience a Father who provides well for us, just as we rejoice in the lives of others - enriching our own! - in the confluence and reharmonisation of our many faces.

All-round tenderness, truly convinced; without the standardised masks of the usual 'fixed points' of banal (recited) 'tenderness', perhaps obligatory and activated by a weakened conformist identity.

This is the wise contagion that will make us reborn from the great global crisis: indulgence that does not become hysterical indolence.

And that does not remain sectorial - because it does not start from manners or external knots, but from being oneself and recognising the You here.

Thus, the Dove, an icon of modest, non-aggressive energy; an example of attachment to one's «own» Nest.

Healthy Tenderness, which starts with self-knowledge.

Lamb and Dove: the peaceful differences - between strong-willed, improper, irritable religiosity, and personal Faith.

Together, brothers all, seeds of the Logos.

For a Tenderness of Dialogue without neurosis.