Going up and down, to go further or back
(Jn 3:13-17)
One of st Francis' first companions - fra' Egidio - said: «The way to go up is to go down». We ask ourselves: what’s the meaning of this paradox?
Today’s feast has the title of Exaltation. The Gospel speaks instead of «Elevation».
Of course, synonymous with being seen and noticed, but under a «contrary species». So, how to elevate life by staring at Jesus crucified?
Nicodemus’ passage suggests an answer.
The doctor of the Law, a Pharisee and member of the Sanhedrin is «in the night»because he’s disinducated to the normal idea of a ‘successful’ man, according to the attributes of possession, power and glory.
However, the moment comes when even the costume is shaken by doubt, by the alternative of Christ.
The Cross no longer takes anything for granted. It’s a new Judgment, from which other possibilities emerge, precisely in the ons of unregulated vacillations.
Misadventures, upheavals, the adversities of life, the context of chaos... bring out a better relationship with actions and our destiny.
Uncertainty guide us closer to our essence - it invokes resources, pure air, relationships.
In short, scaffold situations can get creative.
Compromising «reputation» reshapes our soul, our point of view; it calls into question the idea we made of ourselves.
It opens up stunning new paths, sudden - otherwise suffocated achievements at the start.
Of course, for those who choose to be themselves, the fate of persecution, misunderstanding, mockery and slander, lack of credit and laurels, is marked - as if we were failures.
But in the Judgment of the Crucified One, this is the «right position» to become ‘sons’ who find human completeness, and give birth to corresponding fruits: often the best time in their story.
The Cross is a free Gift, for a Life as Saved persons. The Cross redeems from the attractions that extinguish our growth.
The Cross is the best opportunity for development.
In fact, realization and completion emerge from sides of ourselves [and situations] that we don’t want. Even from deep wounds, which invest a whole way of being, doing and appearing.
‘Trial’ is not the end of the world. It annihilates our powerful appearance, yet it lets out the virtue of the fragile side, first overshadowed for social catwalk needs.
Here is the Crucified One, who bleeds not only to heal, soften and remove ballasts, but to overthrow, replace horizons and supplant the entire system of addicted conformisms. And even (self-styled) alternative aspects, ways of thinking that seemed like who knows what.
Thus the embraced Cross saves us.
It seems like a sabotage to our "infallible" side, instead it’s the Antidote to the city dormant on the same paths as before - in the usual ways of being and taking the field [now without a future].
Raising the Cross goes far beyond resilience capacity.
[Exaltation of the Holy Cross, September 14, 2024]
