The greatest Witness

(Jn 5:31-47)

"Christians are a priestly people for the world. Christians should make the living God visible to the world, bear witness to Him and lead it to Him".

"Jesus loved men in the Father, from the Father - and so loved them in their true being, in their reality."

[Pope Benedict].

Jesus does not love catwalks. The Son remains immersed in the Father: he does not receive support and glory from fashionable men or ancient perimeters, because he is not imbued with normal human cultural religious expectations.

They prevent the perception of what we do not know, therefore they conceal the exceptional nature of the particular name; they drench the head and the gaze with current and pedestrian normality, which condition, dissociate, plagiarise, make external.

Predictable expectations delay the germination of the Kingdom of God and its alternative character - in the living experience of further exchanges; of other interpersonal qualities, in the completeness of being that belongs to us.

The specific weight of this unprecedented present and future, which corresponds because it is part of our intimate essence, otherwise remains in the hands of obvious opinions and the usual cheap dragging, which does not expose.

The pathology of reputation, of accredited convictions and the concordant praxis on the side, precludes winging it. But every short, rigid hope rejects God for God's sake.

Only that which is not petrified and conventional bears witness to Christ the Lord, the likeness of the Father who does not reject our eccentricities: he wants to make them grow - recovering their flourishing opposites.

The same 'no moments' that crumble prestige are also a spring to activate us and not stagnate in the same old situations; regenerating, moving forward elsewhere.

Failures that put fame in the balance serve to make us realise what we had not noticed, thus deviating from a conformist destiny.

In short, our Heaven is intertwined with our transmuting flesh, our earth and our dust: it lies within and below, not behind the clouds or in the manners.

In the paradoxical deification of the coming God, the all-worldly mentality of every purist or conformist circle experiences a reversal. Cipher of the great Wisdom of nature.

This is how Master Lü Hui-ch'ing comments on a famous passage from the Tao Tê Ching (LXXVI): "Heaven is on high for ch'ì, Earth is on low for form: ch'ì is soft and weak, form is hard and strong".

The trial-religious aspect to which the story of Jesus [even his intimates] was subjected often appears in John.

The aspirations of the pious men of old are strangely hinged on the need to make a body and recognise one another. Hence always 'those from before'.

Their world, centred on the honour one receives: the theme is Glory - which, however, becomes a dialogue between the deaf. 'Doxa' in the Greek world means manifestation of prestige, honour, esteem.

In Hebrew, the term Glory [Kabôd] means specific, qualitative weight (and manifestation) of the transcendent.

Thus the glory that man gives to God - so to speak - is the opposite of the Hellenist criterion: the principle and evaluation typical of the strutting, 'free', independent and self-confident hero [because of the prestige around].

Conversely, here is 'glory' as humble and grateful recognition, but weighty in the Christian sense: familiar and humanising.

The woman and man called to a particular mission discover in themselves and in reality the conditions of perfection and imperfection.

They lead us to innate fulfilment - not volatile - and the common good, according to specific, personal contribution.

No one is called to artificial prestige and strength, adding something to the honour of what is already in one's vocational essence - sometimes in paradoxical completeness, for a conviviality of differences.

The Glory of Jesus himself was only the awareness and confession of being the Father's Envoy.

That is all that is due to us - also in the sense of growth, of importance in itself, more than "those who become aware".

The devout groups unfortunately not infrequently moved to a level of worldly aspirations - just with a strange mixture of criteria.

So they ended up appreciating each other in circles, patting each other on the back.

Thus - content to be confirmed - they still tend to accentuate the characteristics of what is normally identified as the spiritual dimension, and that easily becomes tainted with the compromise of the artificial external look.

Instead, the inner balance of the Called by Name is re-established through dreams and congenital character - rather than through weighing and the raw influences of conscious life, which distract and level the soul. 

On such a slope, in fact, everyone tends to adopt attitudes that do not fit the very original vocation; on the contrary, they expose the conscience to dissociations and conditioning that distort it.

The Way in the Spirit of Freedom, Love, Newness, is inspired by a dimension of Mystery and spontaneity all to be discovered: Exodus.

Such a character proceeds beyond compartments, denominations filled with established solutions, with conformist thinking hooked on an univocal way of reading the Scriptures and testimonies.

Cages, even 'spiritual' ones, guilt every different, inculcate brooding, curb the most fruitful eccentricities.

In order to ensure 'ecclesial' compactness, the various stigmas everywhere play on the inadequacy of the majority interpretation - and guilt typical of the particular 'container'.

Such frameworks do not awaken creativity, rather they anaesthetise it according to internal clichés: where precisely they take "glory from one another" (v.44).

Frames do not teach one to launch oneself personally and at the right time.

The rhythm, too, does not descend on dissimilar inclinations, on their atypicality - a unique richness that prepares the unrepeatable and extravagant New that we do not already know.

Instruction booklets harass us with other people's progressions and goals to reach, all of which turn out to be yet to be surpassed - and outside our own taste and intimate sense; projected into the future, impersonal.

The 'spiritual' path of the pack reflects the life, judgement or idea of the leader and his 'magic' circle; the forma mentis of a generation or a class.

In this way, established trajectories do not announce changes and authentic encounters, which take place in the propulsive, transversal simplicity of the concrete unpredictable.

Stubborn models do not make us aware of a God Person: He calls to life through impulses that would be new blood for transmutation.

The Eternal One communicates Himself in what He speaks within.

Precisely in the needs - not obsessing energies known only to the soul, of conflicts over useless duties, which neither solve anything nor transmit happiness.

The 'egocentric' religious ideology and all directed thought brand crises as inadequacies to collective purposeful action - thus condemning instincts.

But instincts manifest themselves as escapes of the individual heart that seeks a new hearing, desires to surface and realise; it wants to integrate in its own way, or chart paths that prepare for the future.

Not infrequently, the evocation of the usual delimited rituals - e.g. of 'charisma' - as well as the concatenation of normative constitutions, deaden the character in a levelled atmosphere, which drinks of recollected attunements.

They are not our land.

The barnyard of the 'system' operates according to directives and roles.

But compartments limit the range of action, although they seemingly dilute it.

Trivial inclusions 'teach' us to be content with half-steps already chiselled into the little and not over the top.

This is so as not to allow one to enter the regenerations that count.

The self-referential clan often takes away space from any possibility that moves from there.

This makes one dependent on applause. It slows down, when conversely we could dare....

Lest we continue to perceive healthy restlessness. Differences that would redeem us from subordination.

In fact, the one-sided imprint does not respect nature, so it reinforces what it says it wants to banish.

A disaster for a life of meaning and witness in Christ.

The Lord had as his only daily worship - precisely - the emptiness of social support (which did not accept his deviations) and the fullness of beginnings in the Father.

"But I have a greater witness than John, for the works that the Father has given me to do, the very works that I do, testify of me that the Father has sent me" (John 5:36).

To internalise and live the message:

How do you safeguard community living and your transpositions of Faith in Christ?

What is the point of homologation in satisfaction, and where do you place your Preciousness?

Finger pointing: provisional but sure and strong

The commitment of all Christians is to "be witnesses of Jesus", to fill life with "that gesture" that was typical of John the Baptist: "pointing to Jesus". A common "vocation" on which Pope Francis dwelt in his homily during the Mass celebrated at Santa Marta on Friday morning, 16 December.

Following the liturgical path that over the past three days has made us reflect "on John, the last of the prophets, the greatest man born of a woman", the Pontiff delved into the Gospel passage (John 5, 33-36) in which the forerunner "is presented, is shown as the witness". It is Jesus himself who speaks clearly: "You sent messengers to John and he bore witness". Precisely this, Francis emphasised, "is John's vocation: to be a witness".

A vocation made even more comprehensible by some concrete examples. Jesus in fact, the Pope recalled, said that John 'was the lamp'. However, he explained, "he was the lamp but not the light, the torch that indicated where the light was, a lamp that indicated where the light was, a witness to the light". Likewise, John 'was the voice', so much so that he himself 'says of himself, "I am the voice crying out in the wilderness"'. But he was not the Word, in fact "he was the voice but who bears witness to the Word, he points to the Word, the Word of God. He only voice'. And so the Baptist who "was the preacher of penance" says clearly: "After me comes another who is stronger than I, he is greater than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to lace. And this one will baptise you in fire and the Holy Spirit'. To sum up: 'Lamp pointing to the light, voice pointing to the Word, preacher of penance and baptiser pointing to the true baptiser in the Holy Spirit'. John, the Pope concluded, 'is the provisional and Jesus is the definitive. John is the provisional who points to the definitive'.

But precisely this provisionality, this 'being for', is 'the greatness of John'. A man 'always with his finger there', pointing to another. In fact, in the Gospel we read that "people wondered in their hearts if John was not the Messiah. And he, clear: "I am not"'. And even when the doctors, the leaders of the people asked him: "But are you or must we wait for another?" he always repeated: "I am not. Another comes', again reminding him that one would come to whom he was not worthy to lace his shoes: 'I am not. Another, who will baptise you'.

It is precisely this, according to the Pontiff, the most eloquent image that tells us who John the Baptist was, his "provisional but sure, strong witness", his being "a torch that did not let itself be extinguished by the wind of vanity" and "a voice that did not let itself be diminished by the force of pride". John, the Pope clarified, is "always one who points to the other and opens the door to the other testimony, that of the Father, that which Jesus says today: 'I, however, have a testimony superior to that of John, that of the Father'. And, the Pontiff added, when we read in the Gospel that "the voice of the Father was heard: 'This is my Son'", we must understand that "it was John who opened this door".

Therefore John "is great", because "he always leaves himself aside". He, Francis explained, is great because 'he is humble and takes the path of lowering himself, of annihilating himself, the same path that Jesus will take later'. And also in this 'he offers a great witness: he opens that road of annihilation, of emptying himself' that was also Jesus' later.

A role that the Baptist incarnated, one could say, even physically: "to the disciples, to his own disciples, once Jesus passed by" he would point with his finger: "That is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. That one, not me". And in the face of 'the insistence of the leaders, the people, the doctors' John always repeated: 'It is necessary for Him to grow, for Him to grow, for me to diminish'. In humility, the Pontiff said, "is the greatness of John". So much so that he "diminishes, he annihilates himself, to the end: in the darkness of a cell, in prison, beheaded, for the whim of a dancer, the envy of an adulteress and the weakness of a drunkard".

Several times the Pope, to underline the concept, repeated the expression "Great John!". A great one who, he added, if we were to depict him in a painting, we should simply draw a finger pointing.

At the conclusion of his homily, the Pope brought his meditation, as usual, to the concrete reality of people today. Seeing that there were a number of bishops, priests, religious, and couples celebrating their fiftieth anniversary in the chapel of Santa Marta, he told them: "It is a beautiful day to ask oneself" if "one's Christian life has always opened the way to Jesus, if one's life has always been full of that gesture: pointing to Jesus". It is necessary, he continued, to 'give thanks' for all the times this has been done, but also to 'begin again'. Always begin again, with what the Pontiff called "youthful old age, or youth aged, like good wine!" and always take a "step forward to continue to be witnesses of Jesus". With the help of John "the great witness".

[Pope Francis, S. Marta homily, in L'Osservatore Romano 17/12/2016].