The faithless lower self, the thespian
Mt 6:1-6.16-18 (.19-23)
"Beware of practising your righteousness before men in order to be admired by them" (Mt 6:1). Jesus, in today's Gospel, reinterprets the three fundamental works of piety in the Mosaic Law. Almsgiving, prayer and fasting characterise the law-abiding Jew. In the course of time, these prescriptions had been marred by the rust of outward formalism, or had even mutated into a sign of superiority. Jesus highlights in these three works of piety a common temptation. When one does something good, almost instinctively a desire arises to be esteemed and admired for the good deed, that is, to have satisfaction. And this, on the one hand, locks one in, on the other hand, takes one out of oneself, because one lives projected towards what others think of us and admire in us. In re-proposing these prescriptions, the Lord Jesus does not ask for a formal observance of a law extraneous to man, imposed by a strict legislator as a heavy burden, but he invites us to rediscover these three works of piety by living them in a deeper way, not out of self-love, but out of love for God, as means on the path of conversion to Him. Almsgiving, prayer and fasting: this is the path of the divine pedagogy that accompanies us, not only in Lent, towards the encounter with the Risen Lord; a path to be travelled without ostentation, in the certainty that the heavenly Father knows how to read and see even in the secret of our hearts".
[Pope Benedict, homily 9 March 2011].
"But you, when you pray, go into your chamber and shut your door [Is 26:20; 2 Kings 4:33] and pray to your Father who is in secret" (Mt 6:6).
The Tao says: "He who tries to shine, obscures his own Light" and "If you worry about people's opinions, you will be their prisoner".
The disciples are called to a higher righteousness of intention (perfection) than the scribes and Pharisees - who performed according to appearance, public opinion, and retribution.
Jesus does not question religious practices per se, but their purpose and manner.
Aim: [among the still Judaizing veterans, from his communities in Galilee and Syria] to unmask the insistents of outward fulfilment.
Because shrewdness and the recitation of holiness manage to fool the imagination of many... at least for a time.
But the wiles that we are skilled in setting up to beg for recognition do not possess the step of Wisdom.
Fasting, penance and prayer are fundamental works, yet utterly worthless and meaningless if they are not made alive by charity and accompanied by righteousness.
Life in the Spirit is detached from the practice of 'spiritual' things - to show off... to delude even oneself.
Finally, the (all incidental) artifice of holy duplicity becomes vague; sooner or later a boomerang.
At that time, the commitment to the Alms was held in high regard, but the custom of announcing the most important initiatives - in the synagogue and even in the streets - had become general.
For Jesus, publicity undermines that which belongs to us deeply [let not your left hand know what your right hand is doing] and is honourable.
Even 'devoutly' tightrope walkers, or career politicians who begin to lack the cue, like to make themselves out to be benefactors of humanity. But their real goal is to show off - not the spreading of a spirit of selflessness.
They intend to be recognised and acclaimed again - for this they use an absolutely showy, exhibitionist and tawdry manner.
Having reached their true opportunist and individualist goal, they would plant everything there in spite of their selflessness.
Every convinced fulfilment should flourish spontaneously and hiddenly, instead of in overload - but imagine the taste, not to make it known [...].
In reality, renouncing façade propaganda to promote contrary dimensions would extinguish intimate lacerations and conflicts; hidden energies would be released. It would spread the most fruitful awareness.
A similar orientation applies to Prayer, much better if inapparent. The inner life is not unnatural acting.
The prayer of the sons is not reduced to a repetition of dirges, nor to a request for favours; much less is it an exhibitionist and affected parade, in order to be considered pious, 'proper' and 'proper' people.
In the Temple, sacrifices were accompanied by public formulas. To this effect, even the synagogues were considered an extension of the Temple. And at the appointed times, prayer was also said in the street.
Those who were able to recite long litanies from memory could thus flaunt their virtue and be admired.
But Dialogue with God is not performance, but essential Listening: root of renewal; distinguishing criteria and action.Understanding and empathy, intimate perception and profound intelligence of things restore us to the sense of personal life - the discriminator of our growth and love for our brothers and sisters.
Why do we thirst for this knowledge, which is only grasped in its exclusive purity in a space of solitude?
For the soul - overwhelmed with fracas - would not otherwise grasp the guidance of the innate Friend, nor its own essential quality.
There are inescapable questions, beyond the reach of our lower selves, i.e. our cerebral or practical activities.
What is our Way? How do we welcome that which has specific weight and character?
It is not worth solving problems hastily, at all costs, in a conformist or exaggerated manner.
Of course, we do not always get along with God who wants us to flourish. What is the antidote?
Open prayer establishes people in this intimate, secret, hidden atmosphere that radically belongs to us,
In the Spirit it is woven into the deepest, ancestral fibres - and gradually brings to the surface the hidden path and destiny.
Personal prayer is creative.
It not only erases the idea we have formed of life, of sorrows, goals, relationships, defeats, judgements...
(Bitterness does not seem to make life fly by - but it does invite the eye to shift).
And Attention Listening conveys a new Reading; it brings us out of the confines. It makes contact with other energies and virtues.
A higher level of humanity comes to us only in the amazement of such different advice, of unexpected intuition; of a reality that disorients.
Principle of Liberation that lets us encounter our own deepest sides, and reminds us of them, making us tread the kindred territory - that we do not yet know.
We need to understand more deeply than the action-reaction mechanisms allow, filled with distracted tension - absent from our own Calling by Name, which would give us enthusiasm.
Not infrequently, the soul itself - which detests certain outcomes that the society [also ecclesial] of the outside world would like to let us live with - revolts, attacks and leads to the failure of all too normal goals.
Even discomforts come because we are not on the Path of deep attunements: "point" that bends its contractions towards us, for having chosen the wide but artificial path of compromises.
There are fundamental inclinations for everyone: it would be constructive to yield to them - and to allow ourselves to be guided.
Our complete existence is not a path laid out by 'where we should go'.
It is appropriate not to persist, and to learn to accommodate the activity of metamorphosis that wants to live; to express itself in us - to guide us and sometimes deviate from 'how we should be'.
The woman and the man who gather in prayer are torn from the homologation of interpretative codes, and from the disease of the society of appearance - all sitting in the opinions and time of the minimal.
Identical viewpoint for the theme of Fasting: a practice considered a manifestation of conversion to God.
But to our surprise, we note that Jesus' call applies especially to religious people with a forcibly pensive and undone air.
Not a few devotees of all creeds use extravagant posturing - a tawdry expression of their emotional problems.
Indeed, here and there, even in youthful circles, there seems to be some regurgitation of artificial asceticism.
But in this way believers only tread the path of mannered renunciations [those that God does not ask for], artificial ones. And for the exact opposite, making the life wave hysterical.
Instead, we are called to be in company: with ourselves and with our brothers. Even renunciation is for the sake of harmonious coexistence, without forcing one's personality lines out of alignment.
Here too, the discernment of spirits becomes a propitious occasion to create space for the humanising vocation.
Already the prophet Isaiah had distinguished between authentic and false fasting [Is 58], that is, not aimed at a life of righteousness and communion, hence at feasting and joy.
It is useless to undergo practices that do not change the heart.
Along the unspontaneous or trickery - abnormal, or grown-up (of plagiarism suffered or imposed of one's own accord on the soul) the lamb's bleating will sooner or later become a roaring or braying. A matter of time.
In the discernment of spirits, it is the attitude that reveals the fiction of those who in reality only think of power (in greed) and great things, precisely those of megalomaniac superiors, or the elect.
All this using the poor Jesus and the little ones, or any creed whatsoever, as screens - precisely, for the other way round.
Almsgiving, fasting and prayer are attitudes, not knowable practices outside the unrepeatable language of God himself and his exceptional way of communicating with each person.Dialogue of an eccentric, precious, ineffable, fantastic, unsurpassed uniqueness, which does not allow itself to be attracted by window-dressing externality, nor by herd-like levelling, or crab-cassing.
Set against the backdrop of ambiguous noise.
"Precisely because it is great, my Way seems to be like nothing [...] I do not dare to be first in the world, so I can be chief of the perfect instruments" [Tao Tê Ching, Lxvii].
To internalise and live the message:
Is your spiritual life a time of noise... or a time and fertile ground, a propitious occasion to internalise, to encounter oneself, one's essence, and God in one's brothers and sisters?
