(Mt 23:23-26)
When leaders of an equivocal religiosity want to be accredited, they insist on abstract ideas or details, and pretend not to see the abnormal.
In ancient times, the duplicity between what they showed and what they cultivated was proverbial.
To cover up their despicable spirit of robbery (v.25), here they are to make sprout all sorts of legalistic subtleties, overshadowing the substantial demands.
Even in Israel, they were never on the line of the Prophets: they calculated to make Jesus suffer who exposed them, to discourage him with mocking insults and accusations - in order to undermine his boldness.
Yet the new Rabbi continued in the lashing condemnation of religious formalism, which created barriers to any profound motivations’ search for action.
However, his story makes us understand that even the harsh conditions and ambiguous attitudes of the authorities themselves can be an opportunity and a starting point.
Perhaps a gift, to act.
The inner person also enlivens by breaking a mask, a role, a formal task, a character; a consolidated icon of wanting to appear and not to be.
However, today it is also up to us to take the greatest risk with Christ, in favour of a long adventure of the soul.
Here we touch those spaces where the Call by Name does not resemble anyone else.
Where we meet ourselves, our profound vocational identity, the unexpressed talents, and the divine Author’s signature, in Uniqueness.
If we do not keep it quiet, then the vocational Seed that does not lie and guides us emerges; the present Risen Christ who reveals himself to be understanding, delicate, attentive, absolutely personal but clear.
Attention to details and minutiae is good and propulsive (v.23) only if it joins this intimate discovery of one’s singular Mission.
Here the reference to substantial values does not imply carelessness or contempt for what seems secondary: this appeal can conceal an unrepeatable character.
Devoid of extreme solicitations, the motive of our actions would perhaps remain the benefit and concern of our own fame; so on.
This would pervade the soul from not doing or not saying anything, making arid and discredited the experience of Faith.
In this way, even an internal or external contradiction can contribute to giving birth to our deepest side.
Even anger at a disorder can activate development, so that we correspond to our Name.
And so we sink our roots, strengthen the trunk, to stimulate inner youthfulness. With our sights set on the hidden Seed, before raising “branches”.
The Master proposes an ascent to essentiality - also so that we can follow the «one specific path that the Lord has in mind for us» [Gaudete et Exsultate n.11].
All in a great desire to be born again, in the small and the big, to give birth to our deepest side.
[Tuesday 21th wk. in O.T. August 25, 2026]
