Among corpses and vultures: different in Depth
(Lk 17:26-37)
There is a very simple essential discernment: where life is extinguished, is not favored, not rejoiced or promoted, the earth becomes an early cemetery, and the "sky" is populated by flocks of vultures.
It is the bitter result of a culture from which unfortunately the clear Presence of the One who has clothed the world of Beauty does not emerge.
Mentality that appears totally inert: unable to make us recognize - we without a voice - as the real Reason and End of God’s initiative. Even the only authentic Sanctuaries.
We should be like Relationships that fill the heart with dreams. And centers of irradiation, icons of full satisfaction; places of not static passions, but respectful of the intimate nature of things.
But these convictions and the pastoral approach do not seem to hold up. And perhaps they fail to make an impact because they have lost their inner magic: that which connects with what stirs within each person’s journey.
Here there is a more subtle discernment - feature of today’s Gospel passage: Judgment is presented in the form of surprise.
The slightest problems of daily existence can become so absorbent that we lose the very meaning of imperfections - and, in general, the dimension of depth.
The frontiers of the Kingdom are in the world, in the people, in their laments and joys, in the events. The place of ‘judgment’ is everywhere.
Jesus' invitation is not to let oneself be distracted, not even by the minutiae of religiosity.
The manifestation of the last times - that is, the possibility of starting a new world - continually comes: it must be received and brought aware.
Kept alive personally.
The decisive Encounter does not happen in dedicated spaces and times: it is re-proposed in a thousand channels, moments and places, but - here is the other salient datum - there is someone who notices, others do not.
The "division" between those who are associated with divine life and those who cannot be, does not concern the etycisms on capital vices, but the living discernment.
It is also about the minute reality (vv.31.34-35) and its message.
Faith in the turns and the union with Christ that pulsates in the soul and dreams - intimate Brother of each one and shining measure of many other things - wants to open up the Vision to us.
We also read it in our hearts in revolt, which want to awaken us from the loculi and the dictatorship of pre-packaged thoughts.
The hidden Self thirsts to understand the appeal of what is daily and precarious, of the "defects"; the call of the bifrontality nature of situations.
The "symmetries" that seemed so reassuring do not make virtue grow, within the weaknesses.
Here then we reach the sting of the troubles, even epochal: the idea of perfection would not make us move the gaze, to make exodus, to grow, and bloom.
The active ‘Judgment’ in Christ instead conveys the ability to grasp a scenario that we did not know.
The advent of the «Son of Man» (vv.26.30) calls into question, and his Judgement looms over those who are distracted, those set in their habit.
On the contrary, it captures the very essence of existence: we shall be recognised as different… not so much in morality, but in terms of Depth.
[Friday 32nd wk. in O.T. November 13, 2026]
