"Reality is superior to ideas", writes Pope Francis in Evangelii Gaudium (n. 231): once again a call to live in the present, almost a renewed appeal to religious – in the Year of the Consecrated Life - to let oneself be shaken and put into action by the Spirit, who always speaks to anyone who decides to open himself to listening in history. At heart the certainty that Jesus belongs to humanity, and not just to Christians. It is no use to bewail the contradictions of the 'world' nor those of oneself. We are simply in a one period and we expect another. One senses that one cannot move forward like that. The mechanism of our history - in which the human being disappears into the prevalence of things and finance - is 'wrong'. So much the more does it need  gospel voices which are therefore free; of a faith that is told in everyday life, within one's own  community and in small insignificant encounters with brothers and sisters one 'accidentally' meets; it needs those who don't adapt to stepping on others and who in their activities  refuses to condone all those who wound the dignity of other human beings; of the one who is ready to commit, in concrete acts and with more than words, to the attempt to live passionately every trace of life that God gives to his children.

... Between scandal of 'facts' and the light from the Word

If the behavior of people today is nothing new, our society, however, in many respects is without precedent. It corresponds to one's own trying out the path of oppression and accumulation. It automatically reaps, often without qualms and limits, the futile and luxurious. Impelled by the notion with more or less awareness of being able to deal with any threat to their lives, it deludes itself that it can find in money, in power, in the ability to inspire fear ... a semblance of immortality. But it finds that illusion is not enough to be brave. A blatant lack of hope and of prophecy in short has nestled once again in the abyss of the human heart (cf. Ps 64.7), making it dry; and that void is easily filled with anger and hatred.
The only rock we have to not lose ourselves is the Love of God the Father for humanity and the look of tenderness with which he follows the path of his children, even the most twisted. The "mystery of faith" remains the only path entrusted to mankind to live a truly human life. Along its path Life itself points to the truth and is light for the one who walks it.
And the consecrated - children of a culture centered on the cult of the self – where do they really  place their own safety? Are they not also perhaps in some way infected by the seduction of power, the worship of things, from always being on the side of the winners? ... What they say and announce leads to a decentralization of self, to quitting of thinking about oneself (Mark 8:34), but if the center remains the I? ...

 
'Beyond' the affirmation of faith

What the Lord Jesus asks the one disposed to follow him 'more closely' is to offer his or her own eyes to the abundance of His tears, because "certain truths of life are seen only with the eyes of tears," suggests Pope Francis. In the current bulimic desire for power and possession it is perhaps these tears which will save the world. Certainly we need an intelligent and prophetic analysis of the current reality, along with the witness that people come before things, and that love, tenderness, affection ... always come before force, the market, even justice ... Re-starting today from 'reality' requires in the first place the simple and humble acceptance that the way to understand being 'human' has changed dramatically, even within the Christian community. And it is also necessary to recognize the gospel aspect of the world today in the great interest that people have for truth and freedom (... despite the tendency to restrict its breadth in a purely utilitarian subjectivity!). Exposure to reality involves a continual going out of oneself and asks each person to be cured of the illusion of being healthy. The challenge is more demanding and difficult than facing without rancor conflicts with the outside world; but once accepted it becomes the bearer of the revolution so necessary today. The real challenge - reflects Brother M/ David- is to begin again "from the hurt hearts and wounded minds that are first of all our own". The fact is that the face of evil is within man, in his heart, but since it is quite difficult to get there, it is not always easy to seek it. So that evil is under one's eyes begging attention, but its voice is feeble and humble: if the person remains 'closed' in following an idea of ​​his own mind apparently more 'reassuring', then he certainly will not be able to discover it; he will end up instead convincing himself that, as a living and present reality, evil does not pertain to him and that is exists always and only in the ... the other.

This road turns out to have no way back, and with very dangerous consequences ... Do not all abuses, murders, all the wars in the world arise  from here? And in Christian communities: where does a certain sadness, gossip, indifference, sometimes even judgments sharp as daggers come from? Nevertheless, there exists always and for everyone the possibility to live any situation in a human and Christian way, because the Word became flesh not following the model of a human winner, but in the 'nakedly human'. This therefore cannot be destroyed, and it remains even when all seems lost; there are, for the Father who created us, the children were successful and others who turned out 'wrong'. The Spirit guides history and wants to illuminate whatever darkness and life in trouble that there is. And a faith that does not take care of others is not true faith.

Along the transformation ...

Two centuries ago, Goethe wrote: "What you have inherited from your fathers you have to conquer again, in order to possess it again." Words that weigh and show the way also for today. For the disciples of Jesus it is impossible and ruinous to evade the present era of new challenges. For new questions, old answers (venerable and glorious), but perhaps a bit too corsetted. For the consecrated, as for every Christian, it is a question of rethinking evangelical perfection itself not in terms of blamelessness, but as the ability to walk towards the Truth passing through the "trueness" of oneself. By accepting the challenge of personally re-conquering what constitutes each one of us, we will become truly able to encounter each person, overcoming the fear which causes resistance in those who seem to love death more than life.

In each person's path of each the horizons are moving, there are no safe zones achieved once and for all and therefore indisputable; pain itself is part of the continual transformation, as an unceasing novelty. What unexpected bursts into the everyday, sometimes even dramatically, calls one to go on an inner journey and to overcome the tendency to withdraw from continuing the search for fear of suffering. One thus experiences that the omnipotence, which supports the Kingdom, is that most fragile love which welcomes the other. And is this not perhaps the lacking thing which ravages our time? ... Without relationship, humanity dies and hope itself is doomed. Sartre was wrong: the others are the salvation, not hell. Hell is retreating from the mystery that every encounter promises. And the Jesuit F. Scalia sums it up: The truth is, 'I are [plural]', the happy destination of a journey never concluded.

... Towards truth and freedom of Love

A cultural change is possible starting from the believers. The religious are perhaps asked today to make a more serious and more consistent effort to know our time and to love it. An evangelic critique, if concrete and experienced first-hand, allows you to read prophetically on the face of the world – beyond the possible wrinkles and the always arduous journey - the expectations and hopes of all the children of God. These are the unwritten law that everyone carries within himself, even when he leaves it there, forgotten. The only revolution that arouses one to a real loyalty to Christ the Lord in history is to accept His challenge gathering His challenge that we  become siblings, recognizing that happiness is found in the relationship with Him and with all, none excluded. Love is the source, norm and end of human life. Along the paths illuminated by such a certainty, life, which is called compassion and desire to live, circulates and heals. It is the one and only way to say 'yes' to the human.

Luciagnese Cedrone
usmionline@usminazionale.it

traduzione prof. Emilio Chávez

Director of Theology at South University