Free of charge: the Near Kingdom and Incarnate Prayer
(Mt 9:35-10:1.6-8)
Jesus distinguishes himself from the Rabbis of his time, because he doesn’t wait for the exhausted and prostrate people (v.36) to go to him: he seeks it.
And the group of his intimates must be involved, both in works of healing and liberation - fraternity motivated by luminous disinterest.
The Lord enters the prayer assemblies with pastoral concern: to teach, not to discuss. He does not give lessons in logical analysis, but he does bring out Who inhabits him.
He proclaims a Kingdom totally different from how it was instilled by the manipulators of consciences - overflowing with detailed convictions, producing intimate coercion, anonymity, loneliness, passivity.
Still today we are looking for a God to experience, loveable, ‘not invisible’.
Thus the Gospel (v.35) announces Grace: the face of the Father - who doesn’t want anything for himself, but gives everything to transmit us his own Life.
A Friend who Comes, who doesn’t force us to "go up" [in the abstract] nor imprisons in guilt, exhausting already submissive creatures - making them even more desolate than before.
Here a Heaven is revealed that makes us feel adequate, doesn’t punish or impress, but promotes and puts at ease.
The Prodigal Father welcomes people as the Son does in the Gospels - as they are; not by inquiring. Rather by dilating.
His Word-event not only reactivates: it replenishes imbalances and enhances them in perspective of real person paths - without judging or disperse, nor break anything.
For such a work of wise recomposition of being, the Master invites to Prayer (v.38) - first form of disciples’ commitment.
Access to different tunies in the Spirit teaches us to stimulate the gaze of the soul, to value and understand everything and everyone.
Therefore - after making them less unaware - Jesus invites his disciples to get involved in missionary work; not to do the learned, nor moral lessons.
They would be scripted without love, which make the sick people feel yet more desperate.
Mission grows from a small but boundless dimension - that of inner perception, which is aware of the needs and mystery of a favourable Presence.
New configurations of understanding, in spirit: fully discovered only in deep Prayer (v.38). Incarnate Prayer.
Prayer does not want to distract us from our deep realization; on the contrary, it guides us - and relocates the soul scattered in the many common practices to be carried out, to its center.
It makes us feel the struding of desire and of understanding the perfect condition: the Father doesn’t intend to absorb our attitudes, but to empower them. Because everyone has an intimate project, a Call by Name, his own place in the world.
It seems paradoxical, but the outgoing Church is first and foremost a problem of formation and internal consciousness.
In short, we recognize ourselves and become aware of things through the Prayer-hunch, unitive.
In Christ it’s not a performance or a devout expression, but an understanding and above all a Listening to the God who in a thousand subtle forms reveals himself and calls.
Thus the fight against infirmities (Mt 9:35-10:1): we recover and win by sharpening our gaze and reinvesting the energy and character even of our own still blurred sides.
All the Free of charge (Mt 10:8) that may spring from it to build life in favor of the brothers, will not sprout as a childish exchange.
The sense of closeness (v.7) to oneself, to others and to reality, will be an authentic - neither programmatic nor alienated - contribution of the Kingdom that reveals itself: Beside.
[Saturday 1st wk. in Advent, December 7, 2024]
