Foreign Glory, or religiosity that gives birth to models and slaves

(Lk 17:11-19)

The impure had to stay out of the way: everything that was different from the dominant thought was shunned.

According to the ancient religious scheme, the places of the 'infected' were regarded as cemeteries.

Diseases were imagined as punishments for defaults.

But leprosy - a disease that corrodes within - was the very symbol of sin [yet here the observant seem to be the walking image of death].

The eventual healing was valued on a par with a miraculous resurrection.

And all (supposed) sins had to be atoned for before being readmitted to society.

Jesus replaces the nerve-wracking globality of these arcane-superstitious rigmarole with a very simple outward path.

Thus he destroys archaic, superstitious idolatrous devotion, supplanting it with a real-life proposal.

The passage is exclusive to Lk but in all the Gospels the term "village" has strongly negative connotations.

"Villages" are the places where the Lord is not welcomed. There is no place for the new there, and if it takes root it becomes an obligatory tradition.

They are territories and swamps of reduction, of stubborn confirmation, of wanting to reproduce established thoughts and impose more or less seraphic customs on anyone. We know them.

In the Church, the 'village' mentality is that of certainty at all costs.

A hypical conviction of those who consider themselves sacredly correct and empowered to marginalise, cast out, reject, keep away, disregard.

The passage has several levels of reading.

The Master walks with the Apostles and addresses them (Lk 17:1-11) but suddenly seems to find himself alone (v.12). As if the 'lepers of the village' were none other than his own [at that time no one afflicted with the disease could dwell in residential places].

The uncleanness contracted by the confirmed disciples, and also by us today, depends precisely on the spoiled, decaying and corrupt condition of the reduced and infected environment.

The latter makes regeneration impossible - because in it the followers themselves (who appear to be intimates) sometimes shut themselves away, all huddled together.

The ten lepers represent us.

The number itself indicates a totality (like fingers).

But right here, if we are at least made aware of the separation from the realisation of our face, here is the first step to a personal involvement with the Lord.

We all have signs of non-life.

Those who think they have arrived and are unharmed by pathologies put up fences to protect themselves and their world, but they remain there, clumsy.

When, on the other hand, they see that development has not yet blossomed, a sense of tolerance towards others is triggered, and the personal spring that overcomes empty, intimist, or coarse adhesions.

Even in the first assemblies of those called to be sons and brothers, there was sometimes a self-congratulatory and isolationist mentality towards the pagans who appeared at the threshold of the communities.

The new ones - x-rayed by the veterans who could not stand different specificities - cried out by appealing directly to Christ himself.

The question was triggered - all topical:

"You who stand at the head [v.13 Greek text], You who lead the church, what do you think of your own? What do you say about this village mentality?"

"The first ones who think they have the right to shun others, do they really have the right to do so?"

"Has the Father you proclaim become exactly like the sullen God of religions again?"

In fact, the 'lepers' do not ask for healing, but for compassion.

In short, the Call is 'internal'.

This means that it is precisely the phenomena of the acquired - perhaps colonialist - role or ministry that should be healed.

Conditioned by false guides, we also not infrequently approach Christ in an abstruse, wrong way: asking him for 'mercy'.

A Friend or a Father is not asked for 'Mercy'.

That is why Jesus is clear. Those who consider themselves unclean or want to be pitied must go elsewhere, turn to the official religion.

Everyone is complete, and this is seen in the choice of the stranger who alone understands and returns to Christ.

No one needs to chastise himself by submitting to conformist protocols.

But back then it was the Temple priests who checked and decided whether the already healed (!) could be readmitted to society.

In short, all of us sinners are made pure not by miracles that descend like lightning, but in the Exodus.

It is the journey that moves us out of the putrid, diseased environment - well before anyone checks, makes trivial recommendations, and dictates the pace of posthumous practices.

It is only the 'village' that makes us - and considers us - unclean... because we do not look like it!

We need only step out of ghettoising thoughts and customs to gain serenity and motivation: we will no longer feel rejected and pointed at.

We will discover ourselves and the God-with.

He made us this way for a special Mission; not modelled on prototypes to be copied as if we were idiots: but supremely lovable children.

The Father sees us as perfect, and in his time he will raise astounding pearls precisely from our supposed or intruded unworthinesses.

Inadequacies to the "village", which make up and complete the baggage of our precious personality, and unrepeatable Vocation.

As it happens, we only fulfil ourselves spiritually by crossing local 'cultural' fences.

Even not by obeying orders, but by transgressing them (vv.14ff.)!

In this way, Jesus does not contemplate inquisitors.

We must allow ourselves to be controlled solely by the Spirit, who already animates us.

This is a decisive question. In fact: the meaning of the text is not about thanksgiving!

Jesus is not saddened by a lack of thankfulness and good manners, but by the fact that only a stranger gives "glory to God" (v.15).

That is: he recognises him as his personal Lord - in a relationship, indeed, without mediation.

That personal "making-Eucharist" [...] "and fell on his face at his feet" (v.16 Greek text) has a strong, spousal meaning, of perfect reciprocity in the Way.

All in the horizon of a crucial choice - not peaceful, nor calm and good-natured, but diriment - between life of exclusive quality, or death.

Although marginalised by the 'holy precincts' of the Temple in the Holy City - precisely the distant and rejected (considered bastards and enemies) immediately understand what does not disfigure the face of their humanity.

Here Lk quotes the term alloghenès (v.18) carved in large letters in the tablets affixed to the first of the inner parapets of the Jerusalem Sanctuary [the one that under penalty of death prevented pagans from participating in the Jewish cultic sacrifice].

But on closer inspection, in the Third Gospel the models of Faith are all 'outsiders': centurion, prostitute, hemorrhoid, blind man, and so on.

They immediately perceive the signs of Life, signs of God!

Others who are more settled or attracted to normality are content to be reintegrated into old-fashioned and common religious practice, returning to the usual impersonal things, and mass worship.

And yet, those who re-adapt to the way of all, become enslaved; they lose track of themselves and of Christ (v.17).

He who becomes a slave again to the aligned, conventionalist mentality; unexamined - and subservient to 'permanence'.

According to the encyclical Fratelli Tutti, the custody of differences is the criterion of true fraternity, which does not annihilate extrovert peaks.

Indeed, even in a relationship of deep love and coexistence "there is a need to free oneself from the obligation to be equal" [Amoris Laetitia, no.139].

Pope Francis again:

"While Solidarity is the social planning principle that allows unequals to become equals, Fraternity is what allows equals to be different people" [Message to the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, 24/04/2017].

In short, by optimistically and hopefully walking our very own Way, we come to meet the living Christ; not the hubbub of the Temple [ancient or fashionable].

It no longer sends precious messages; it only notes. It knocks on the head, but does not touch inside.

It traps us in a web of predictable thoughts, enemy surveillance, induced customs; so on.

Domestics devoid of affinity with events of specific weight - without the allied step of people of a particular culture and sensitivity.

Those who are healing the world.

Despite the exhibited belonging, behind sacred official scenes, relationships often loosen; they do not regenerate.

Models and prototypes, codes and patents, the obtuseness of petty primitives - figurines of narrowness - are often birthed there.

Instead, when recognised [as e.g. in the case of the Samaritan] a Presence in our favour makes us find, discover, and understand.

It proceeds unparalleled through all our states of mind - with no more remorse towards duties that do not belong to us.

Such Friendship makes us recover the fixed points of truly intimate human codes, enhancing - outside the lines - both the system of recognising ourselves and the authentic and unrepeatable way of honouring God in our brothers and sisters.

No longer the exclusive privilege of the elect and the best ... all non-decisive.

Regarding the essential divine readiness to embrace differences as richness, let us recall the teaching of the Sufi master Ibn Ata Allah, who advocated the unparalleled immediacy of the Personal Colloquy - where wisdom of analysis and experience of intoxication come together:

"He brings enlightenment upon you in order that through it you may come to Him; He brings it upon you to remove you from the hand of others; He brings it upon you to free you from the bondage of creatures; He brings it upon you to bring you out of the prison of your existence to the heaven of contemplation of Him."

New, full, definitive life.

People of Faith break away from external religious identity: they dream, love and invent paths; they deviate and do not follow a path already mapped out.