The Yoke on the Little Ones: religion turned into obsession - for "held back" people
(Mt 11:28-30)
The rabbis chose the disciples from among those who had greater intellectual and ascetic abilities.
Jesus, on the other hand, goes to look for outside the loop, the «infants» (v.25) who didn’t even have self-esteem.
He frees precisely the sick from external constraints, and allow each one to release his inner strength.
Christ does not announce a very distant God, but Close; and the effective itinerary to become intimate with the Father is to know oneself as liberated family member.
Only here can we grasp Him in the centre of His ‘unveiling’: wise, helpful, united Power; for us, as we are.
The experts of official religion - overflowing with self-love and sense of election - preached an almighty Sovereign to be convinced with sure attitudes and artificial, sharp, imperious making.
They didn’t let persons be or become. Intransigence was a sign that they did not know the Father.
The Eternal transformed into Controller had become a source of discrimination and obsession for the intimate lives of minute, vexed by the insecurity of distinguishing-avoiding-observing, and by doubts of conscience.
Bothered by living in the first person [and as class] the conversion they preached to others, the professors did not realize they had to empty themselves of absurd presumptions and become - they - students of normal people.
We are not the subordinates of a scowling and all distant but manipulative Lord, and that asks to always be alert, with effort.
The new ones, the nullities, the voiceless, inadequate and invisible, do not know how to calculate in terms of norm and code - ancient «yoke» (vv.29-30) that crushes vocations.
No one is empowered by God to force directions, to keep an eye on others in a maniacal, perfectionist and meticulous way [exasperating our failures].
The Father doesn’t want to exacerbate events by regulating every detail even "spiritual" starting from irritating patterns of vigilance that do not belong to us.
Sons prefer to let their personal paths of dealing with reality flow; thus tracing their essential and spontaneous energies.
They reason according to codes of life and humanization: nature, unrepeatable history, cultural influences, friendships of wide character. We don’t live to prevent.
Only in this way can we enrich the fundamental experience: Love - which does not come from judgments, cuts and separations, but from the Father-Son relationship. The bond that doesn't get us angry.
Root of the transformation of being into the Unpredictable of God is precisely the hiding, the concealment [‘tapeínōsis’ (‘lowering’), from ταπεινός (tapeinós, "low") [v.29 Greek text; Lc 1:48].
Only those who love strength start from too far away from themselves.
To internalize and live the message:
Do you suffer from some guide or from yourself a kind of controller complex?
[Wednesday 2nd wk. in Advent, December 11, 2024]
