(Mk 4: 21-25)
Mk's is a narrative and popular catechesis, which reflects the problems of a very primitive community of Faith - compared to those of the other Gospels.
His way of expressing is correlative to these unsophisticated origins.
At the time, still in Rome there was a strong debate within the churches on essential issues.
Some believers clung to the mummified mentality of the mighty Messiah, who should have descended like a bolt of lightning and remained to himself.
A glorious King, comparable to the emperor, who ensured victories for his own. Solving every problem in a disruptive and immediate way.
Those who read the Scriptures with such criteria - or even as a scarcely popular text (v.22), to be interpreted in small doses, mysterious, cerebral, moralistic; typical - they made it difficult to internalize the meaning of the new Teaching. And to be well disposed in the real confrontation with the inevitable risks of the evangelical truth.
The Message of Christ, on the other hand, opens up to the uninterrupted apostolate; also troubled. And it must be proclaimed at the face of the world, otherwise the Spirit does not let loose within the disciple, nor does it work outside of him..
The Proclamation brings with it the awareness of having received much, and of having been introduced without conditions of perfection into the Secret of God; therefore, with the desire that everyone be part of it.
In Mc the language of the parables and of the images that the Lord uses to make his teaching explicit convey the sense of a non-esoteric or difficult to decipher reading of the things of the Kingdom of God - always lead back into the normal elements of life.
By transmitting Christ also in the new way that the Magisterium [practical and broad] is teaching us, we open up the secrets of the Father (v.22) - no longer tied to glosses, nor bound by fashions and reworked opinions on customs, or pious advice.
Of course, those who update and remain attentive, push forward.
No one will be surprised that the tacticians, the unwilling, or the nostalgic who linger and remain entrenched in their positions [ancient or latest] end up extinguishing their impact and gradually disappearing from the scene (vv.24-25).
The «lamp» that Comes and 'orients in the darkness of the evening' is only the Word of God, which is not to be smothered with customs or à la page ideas.
In the dark it must always be on, that is, it cannot remain closed in a book (v.21).
It is a ‘lantern that lights up’ only when it is combined with life - and with a non-triumphalist reading key, nor with a fixed circuit (v.21).
If not, it remains ambivalent (vv. 23-24). We must pay close attention to the codes with which we interpret Scripture, and our own impulses or prejudices.
Often entrenched [or spineless] ideas deflect the understanding of the meaning of events, the emotions they arouse, and the very Person of the Son of God.
Hers is an ‘outSize Light’ - which break in with the inevitable risk of the evangelical fragrance.
«Measure» that has no “limit”. Disproportion own, of the Announcement.
[Thursday 3rd wk. in O.T. January 30, 2025]
