(Mt 8:23-27)
Our adventure proceeds like on a boat tossed by seisms. We go hopeful, but sometimes adversities threaten drowning us, and with us seem to drag down all life.
Using paraphrases from the book of Exodus, Mt tries to help his communities understand the Mystery of the Person of Jesus.
Not a few converted Jews considered Christ a character all in line with their mentality and tradition, in agreement with prophecies and figures of the First Testament.
Elsewhere, some pagans who had accepted the Lord advocated an understanding with the worldly mentality - a kind of agreement between Jesus and the Empire.
But Who could appease the storms?
The situation of the tiny Christian families of Galilee and Syria was still dark. Christ seemed not entirely present, and the sea rough, the wind against.
Could the Exodus be re-created?
Precisely in the condition of tossed pilgrims, in approaching his Person, a strange and different stability was experienced: the against the current enduring.
A crossing towards freedom that came from clinging to Jesus alone, in the chaos of security. For a discordant permanence.
As the disciples caressed nationalist desires, the Master began to make it clear that He’s not the vulgarly awaited Messiah, restorer of the late empire of David or the Caesars.
The Kingdom of God is open to all humanity, which in those times of upheaval sought security, acceptance, points of reference. Everyone could find home and shelter there (Mt 13:32c; Mk 4:32b).
But the apostles and church veterans seemed averse to Christ’s proposal; they remained insensitive to an overly broad idea of fraternity - which was crowding them out.
The teaching and call imposed on the disciples is that of passing to the other shore (cf. Mk 4:35; Lk 8:22), that is, not to hold God’s treasures in favour of themselves.
The Apostles have the task of communicating the Father’s riches even to the pagans, considered impure and infamous.
Yet it were precisely the intimates of the Master who didn’t want to know about risky disproportions, which would actually the wide-meshed action of the Son of God bring out.
They were willingly calibrated to habits of common religiosity, and an (circumscribed) ideology of power.
Already in the 70s, resistance to divine proposal as well as the tearing internal debate that had ensued from it, had unleashed a great storm in the assemblies of believers.
«And behold, there came a great agitation into the sea, so that the boat was covered by the waves» (Mt 8:24).
The storm were concerning the disciples, the only dismayed; not Jesus: «but He was asleep» (v.24c) [it’s the Risen Lord].
What happened "inside" the little boat of the Church was not the simple reflection of what happened "outside"! This is the mistake to be corrected.
Emotionally relevant situations make sense, carry a meaningful appeal, introduce a different introspection, the decisive change; a new 'genesis'.
Trial in fact activates souls in the most effective way, because it disengages us from the idea of stability, and brings us into contact with dormant energies, initiating the new dialogue with events.
In Him, we are therefore imbued with a different vision of danger.
[Tuesday 13th wk. in O.T. July 2, 2024]
