Crisis of the titanic spirit
(Mt 11:2-11)
«What did you go out to contemplate in the desert? But what did you come out to see?» (vv.7.8.9).
The Lord wants to help us to become deeply aware of the stretch of road travelled and of what is still ahead of us.
We are not already in possession of Salvation. We have to reflect on the true Exodus still to be done.
Baptist and Jesus never attended court palaces. This is clear (v.8).
The spirit of hedonism or of domestication persuades and attracts us, but it softens and weakens the frankness, the vitality of every path.
Instead, Christ proposes another movement of Conversion: a further excavation, which distinguishes his proposal from that of the Precursor.
«Truly, I say to you, one greater than John the Baptist has not arose among the born of women; but the smallest in the kingdom of heaven is greater than him» (v.11).
For a journey of authentic and finally mature growth - sons in the Son - it is appropriate to free ourselves from every model of perfection.
Adopting a one-sided way does not lead to any blossoming, rather to making things worse.
In the positive (and intimate) itinerary there is no single road. Life is variety, change, resurrection experience.
At that horizon, the greatest obstacles in responding to the personal Call by Name arise precisely from identifications.
Resolute recognitions is always artificial. They do not awaken us from swampy situations, nor do they let us find the gold of mysterious, intimate, wise inclinations.
Existence and the people themselves are in fact not “either/or”. And the path of Life in the Spirit accepts the shades of typeface.
They can sometimes appear as confusing notes, typical of personalities to be corrected. This is how it was imagined until not so long ago; a situation that, however, tended to impoverish and level us.
The ancient devout idea - which has conditioned us so much - was in fact linked to the primacy of external moral "coherence" [correspondence between ideas and actions].
Christ replaces this banal thought with a completely different focus: the correspondence between inner states and their manifestation.
In short, a «little in the kingdom of the heavens» can also be a misfit and disturbing, an eccentric and reprehensible restless - but who would like to grow.
So he does not cover his own internal struggles.
Not infrequently circumstance smiles, moralisms, or the same good manners, veil ideas, impulses, opposite habits that somehow, sooner or later, will find their way to become protagonists.
Not to mention - even in religion - of the dirigiste attitudes, which we do not know well which "double" they hide.
They are not true linearity, authentic order; much less "discipline".
The Master dreams that his apostles turn away from rash judgments and abstract ideals. Too easy. They do not make us perceive clearly.
In short, we must suspend clichés about love for God and others, and the think coarse about ourselves - as well as absorbed opinions.
Contrasts are natural.
Discomfort is the primordial language of the soul that calls us to displace our gaze, to activate the spirit towards new trajectories to explore.
Only in this Exodus will we dock at the Promised Land, a virgin territory to be discovered. To be redone every day.
Not by cutting the Roots horizontally, but starting from them.
[3rd Sunday of Advent (year A) Gaudete, December 14, 2025]
