Faith and Word: God is not bound to an external expression

(Mt 8:5-11)

"The essential thing is to listen to what comes from within. Our actions are often nothing more than imitation, hypothetical duty or misrepresentation of what a human being should be. But the only true certainty that touches our lives and our actions can only come from the springs that gush deep within ourselves. One is at home under heaven one is at home anywhere on this earth if one carries everything within oneself. I have often felt, and still feel, like a ship that has taken on board a precious cargo: the ropes are cut and now the ship goes, free to sail everywhere".

[Etty Hillesum, Diary].

Says the Tao Tê Ching (LIII): 'The great Way is very flat, but people prefer the paths'.

Commenting on the passage, masters Wang Pi and Ho-shang Kung point out: "winding paths".

The incipient faith of a pagan convert is the example Jesus sets before that of the observant Israelites.

What heals is believing in the efficacy of his Word alone (vv.8-9.16), an event that possesses generating and recreating power.

The Lord shows care, usually by touching the sick or laying his hands on them, as if to absorb what was imagined to be impurity, an alteration from normality [a 'fever' or paralysis that was thought to render the needy unworthy in the eyes of God].

In the Judaizing communities of Galilee and Syria, the question was still being asked in the mid-1970s: does the new Law of God proclaimed on 'the Mount' of the Beatitudes create exclusions?

Or does it correspond to the hopes and deep feelings of the human heart, of every place and time (vv.10-12)?

Those far away possessed a keen intuition for the novelties of the Spirit, and discovered the experience of Faith from other positions - not installed, less tied to conformist concatenations; perhaps uncomfortable.

Not infrequently, it was precisely the newcomers who stood out for their freshness of substantive insight - and they saw clearly.

It was enough to communicate face to face with the Lord, in a sense of secure friendship (v.6).

There is no need to add to this secret, to be born again. God is Immediate Action (v.7).

The personal relationship between the ordinary man and the Father in Christ is sober and instantaneous.

Starting from his simple experience, the centurion understands the 'distant' value of the Word and the 'calamitous effect' of true Faith [which does not claim 'contacts' or material and local elements: vv.8-9].

In short, the cultural heritage and ancient religious conformity remained a burden.

Both the experience of the personal Christ the Saviour and the complete discovery of the power of full Life contained in the new total and creative proposal of "the Mount" were missing here and there.

Mt wrote his Gospel to encourage community members and stimulate mission to the Gentiles, which precisely the Judeo-Christians were not yet ready to make their own.

But to say "Faith" (vv.10.13) is to advocate a deeper adherence, and [at the same time] a less strong manifestation.

Expression of personal Faith is not to repeat or sweeten a learned doctrine, nor the conviction of others.

There is no need to fear: God has gone before us; the different and distant is not a stranger, but a brother.

Therefore, what saves is not belonging to a tradition or fashion of thought and worship.

Not demanding that the Lord comes in a certain form means not imagining him bound to an external expression.

One reaches and grasps Him only intimately, by certain vision - unencumbered by indispensable imagined convictions - whatever happens.

It will reveal itself time after time in the way that best suits our limitations.

Those distant from us are totally 'worthy' creatures, albeit faltering and fallible at times.

Not autonomous, insufficient, like everyone else - for they do not realise that God is in their flesh and hearth.

Thanks to such a clear awareness in the Son, they can finally understand the supreme Love of the Father, gratuitous, unreserved; that astounds, overcomes and launches them.

The pagan is conditioned by his pyramid world, but on encountering Christ he discovers himself to be a totally adequate and fulfilled person.

Not because he has merited or granted favours to the chosen people, or fulfilled a special kind of observances (reciting imprimatur formulas).

In the Lord, he himself is taught to expand the horizon of the usual religion - made up of external vertical relationships.

Although he recognises himself as lacking [v.8 Greek text] he realises that his relationship with God does not depend on an exchange of favours.

This immediate and spontaneous personal friendship does not become subordinate to works of law, nor does it spring from fulfilled norms of purity.

Nor does it subject itself to a religious relationship with a bowed head.

The 'distant' includes love. In this way, he is already emancipated from a conspicuous, epidermal, common mentality.

In the Lord, he himself is educated to expand the horizon of the usual religion.He believes precisely that the Word of the Lord - by Way, outside of synchronised or established places and times - produces what he affirms.

And it accomplishes it even at a distance; without even resounding, peremptory signs that make a racket.

Rather, by releasing the mysterious Energy [still captive] of the "Logos" (v.7).

Unconventional Word, which does not run amok.

This, despite the fact that this Power can be found mixed with sometimes contradictory convictions:

He is already far from a magical and carnal mentality.

But he still has to take the decisive step, which will make him grow further - and it concerns us closely.

Self-esteem must be the attitude of even remote children, no matter what.

Not by vague or emotional recondite sensation, but by Presence guaranteed regardless - even already operative, though sometimes unconscious.

Internalising it will be the work - and the "more" - of mature Faith, which sees, grasps, penetrates the preparatory energies at work.

And actualises them, anticipating the future.

"I am not worthy" is, together with "Have mercy on me" or "Son of David" - one of the most unfortunate expressions of spiritual and missionary life.

Formulas that Jesus abhors, although they have become customary in some expressions of the liturgy.

The prodigal son tries with the same rambling expression ["I am no longer worthy"] to move the Father, who precisely does not allow him to finish his absurd tirade.

Rather he prevents him from considering himself "one of his servants" and getting down on his knees before Him [Lk 15:21ff].

This would really be the only danger that endangers the whole of life; not just a small stretch of existence.

By Faith in Christ, from incomplete we become not only worthy, but we are so here and now Perfect to fulfil our Vocation.

Of course, some ideologues or white-mill purists might consider us unfashionable, or even paganising.

Our great and only risk is precisely that of absorbing such oppressive views from the environment, and allowing ourselves to be conditioned.

Every contour works not infrequently with the logic of hierarchies and power relations, whereby e.g. the inferior should not consider himself on the same level as the superior.

But at this rate, one can no longer perceive the divine Conspect.

The Face of the Eternal One is within us and in our homes; not in the chain of command with conditioning influences, but in our environment and in those who stand beside us - even across borders.

Family, friends, loved ones and others are on the same level. It is also true with God: we are face to face.

Not even the 'I and Thou' scheme with the Son counts any more: because - widely incarnated - he has planted his Heaven as well as his own therapeutic [even self-healing] capacity 'in' us.

Thanks to the Master, we are no longer within an ideology of the submissive - identical to that which prevailed in the empire - nor in a well-disciplined barracks, with distinct roles and confined areas.

External propriety does not belong in the Gospels.

In short, the Father no longer asks anyone to obey 'authorities', but to 'resemble' Him.

This is achieved simply by corresponding - each one of us - to this kind of superior Presence that dwells in us and loves us.

It is the end of the empty rigmarole: we are intimate and consanguineous with our own innermost Self, the super-eminent Face.

There is absolutely no need to "avert" God (v.5) as if we were "underlings" (v.9).

Our work is to unearth and acquire a new 'eye', not to submit to organisation charts.

The reborn eye is intuitive of other virtues - it does not submit to nomenclatures incapable of immediate fruitfulness.

Enough with the senses of shortcomings!

They end up introducing us into hoods and spire dynamics (v.9) typical of any stagnant feudalism.

Swamps that annihilate the new power of love - chronicling arrangements.

Configurations congealed by too many boring concatenations and local monarchies [such as we see in the provinces].

In natural listening to oneself and events, genuine esteem and divine Gratuity guide us wave upon wave towards a new way of living and exchanging gifts.

Impassable road for habit; for the obviousness that does not move thoughts, and does not perceive.

A path inaccessible to those who act out of duty - an enigmatic, opaque, devious and very 'tortuous' path.

To internalise and live the message:

How do you understand and cultivate the certain and free Coming of Jesus in your House?

Catholic

The Church is Catholic because Christ embraces all humanity in his mission of salvation. While Jesus' mission in his earthly life was limited to the Jewish people, "to the lost sheep of the house of Israel" (Mt 15:24), it was nevertheless oriented from the beginning to bring the light of the Gospel to all peoples and to bring all nations into the Kingdom of God. Confronted with the faith of the Centurion in Capernaum, Jesus exclaims: "Now I tell you that many will come from the east and the west and sit down at table with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven" (Mt 8:11). This universalistic perspective emerges, among other things, from the presentation Jesus made of himself not only as "Son of David", but as "son of man" (Mk 10:33), as we also heard in the Gospel passage just proclaimed. The title "Son of Man", in the language of the Jewish apocalyptic literature inspired by the vision of history in the Book of the Prophet Daniel (cf. 7:13-14), recalls the person who comes "with the clouds of heaven" (v. 13) and is an image that heralds an entirely new kingdom, a kingdom supported not by human powers, but by the true power that comes from God. Jesus uses this rich and complex expression and refers it to Himself to manifest the true character of His messianism, as a mission destined for the whole man and every man, overcoming all ethnic, national and religious particularism. And it is precisely in following Jesus, in allowing oneself to be drawn into his humanity and thus into communion with God, that one enters into this new kingdom, which the Church announces and anticipates, and which overcomes fragmentation and dispersion.

[Pope Benedict, address Consistory 24 November 2012].