242. Ninth Sunday of Ordinary Time (B)

Meditations no. 575 (unofficial computer-aided translation)

The Lord has called us to a life of charity and freedom.

THE LORD took advantage of all events and circumstances to instruct the disciples. He formed them in the temple, in the houses, in the marketplaces, in the synagogue, and even as they walked, as the Gospel of today’s Mass shows us.

One Sabbath He was passing through some fields, and His disciples, as they walked, began to pluck ears of corn. They were hungry and, having nothing else, they eat what they found on the way. The Pharisees also followed the Lord, but in order to twist His teaching or catch Him at fault: they watched Him closely in case He healed on the Sabbath, in order to accuse Him. They said to Him: Why do you do on the Sabbath what is not lawful? Their eagerness to find faults in the actions of others makes them incapable of understanding the needs of people and the reason for the divine commands. The Law forbade doing work such as harvesting on the Sabbath; and, for the suffocating casuistry of the Pharisees, plucking ears of grain was its equivalent, and rubbing them between the palms was like threshing. They clung to a purely material interpretation of a prescription, without considering its purpose and its meaning in the Law as a whole.

Jesus comes to the defense of the disciples and answers the Pharisees, “Have you never read what David did when he was in need, and he and those who were with him were hungry? How did he enter the house of God in the days of Abiathar the high priest, and ate the shewbread, which is lawful only for priests, and gave them also to those who were with him? He reminds them that the Old Testament praises this action of David, because it is God’s will that there should be an order in the precepts, so that those of lesser rank yield to the principal ones. In both cases, in the case of David and in that of the disciples of Christ, a ceremonial precept-such as the Sabbath rest-yields to the inclination to one’s own subsistence, which is of natural law.

But the teaching of Jesus Christ does not end here; he takes advantage of the circumstance to establish a broader principle: both the social order and the order of things must be subordinated to the good of people. And he said to them: “The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath. Therefore the Son of Man is lord even of the Sabbath.

To please God, it is necessary to fulfill all the commandments and precepts, but in an orderly manner, according to their importance in relation to the good of the person. At the top is charity, the supreme law of Christian life and the foundation of the right use of freedom to which the Lord has called us. When charity presides over all actions, then, Don Álvaro wrote, “a wonderful thing happens, which seems a contradiction but is not: whoever truly gives himself to God and takes that yoke and that burden of love, walks freer than anyone else.” That is why our Father taught: I cannot explain freedom without self-giving, nor self-giving without freedom: one reality underlines and affirms the other (…). For the love of that freedom, we want to have a good bondage. That is, moreover, the greatest sign of freedom; to say to the Lord: put iron handles on me, bind me to you, for I only want to serve you and love you.

Our Christian vocation is a call to total self-giving and a call to the fullest freedom. There is no contradiction but perfect harmony, because freedom and self-giving merge in charity. Saint Augustine summed up the Lord’s teaching in a graphic phrase: “Love and do what you will”. If we love with God’s love, we will seek together to please the Lord and to do good to others. This is always the right way.

The order of charity.

SHORTLY afterwards the same scene was repeated. Again he entered the synagogue. There was a man there whose hand was dry. On this occasion too, the Pharisees watched him closely in case he healed him on the Sabbath, in order to accuse him. He asked them, “Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do evil, to save a man’s life or to take it from him?” The Lord asks them about the scope of the obligations that the Law imposed on the Sabbath, with two questions whose answer seems obvious. However, the Pharisees do not give in; they stubbornly remained silent. Jesus condemns their attitude. Then, looking angrily at those around him, saddened by the blindness of their hearts, he says to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He stretched it out, and his hand was healed.

This is one of the very few occasions on which the Gospel speaks to us of the wrath of Jesus. I think that the Lord, when he healed the man with the withered hand on the Sabbath, our Father commented, looked with anger at the Pharisees who were spying on him, contristatus super caecitate cordis eorum (Mk 3:5), saddened by the hardness of their hearts, monopolizers of regulations.

The look of deep irritation of the Son of God must have been impressive because of its exceptionality, the disciples accustomed to his constant gaze of mercy towards human weakness. This anger shows the Lord’s disgust at the lack of understanding with the situation of others. The hardness of heart of the Pharisees made the reproach of Jesus Christ ineffective since as soon as he left, the Pharisees with the Herodians reached an agreement against Him, to see how to lose Him.

The supernatural life requires knowing how to combine understanding and demands with ourselves and with others, holy intransigence and freedom of spirit. Everything has its hierarchy. Even within charity itself there is an order, as St. Josemaría clearly pointed out: this is the order of charity: God, others and me.

In the first place, there is God whom we must love above all things. Then comes love of neighbor, beginning with those closest to us: those who belong to our supernatural family, the family - especially parents - friends, neighbors, etc. Finally, there is love of self - holy and dear to God - which makes us prefer our own spiritual good to that of others: we can never give in, even in the hypothetical case that it is the good of a soul, if it endangers grace or our vocation, because in reality it would not be a true good.

This concern for others will prevent you from personal worries. Sometimes scruples may come, foolishness that God allows, but they disappear if my children who go through this situation pray, are obedient and care for others. Do you see it? Proselytism is not only to love those outside, but first to love those on the inside; it is not only to love those who have separated, but first those who do not want to separate; and then those who are separated, with all your soul. If you live the order of charity, you will do and receive fraternal correction well, you will help one another, and you will learn that the best mortification is to know how to annoy each other - even if it is noticeable, but better if it is not noticed - in order to make God’s way on earth more pleasant to others.

The order of charity also demands that, in all areas, we always place spiritual goods above material ones. In the face of a higher good, all obligations that could hinder its fulfilment are postponed. All for Love! This is the way to holiness, to happiness.

We have to combine understanding with demand.

FREEDOM of spirit is a characteristic of the interior life of God’s children. A Christian knows that he is bound only by the love of God, to whom he directs all his efforts. The purpose of his life is to love God above all things, and he does not allow concrete means to attain this goal to become ends. On many occasions, however, “man lives with the suspicion that God’s love creates a dependency and that he needs to get rid of this dependence in order to be fully himself. Man does not want to receive from God his existence and the fullness of his life. He wants to take for himself from the tree of knowledge the power to shape the world, to make himself god, to rise to its level, and to overcome death and darkness with his strength.”

There is a great error in this reasoning. “Love is not dependence, but a gift that makes us live. The freedom of a human being is the freedom of a limited being and is therefore limited in itself. We can only possess it as a shared freedom (…). We live as we should, if we live according to the truth of our being, that is, according to God’s will. For the will of God is not for man a law imposed from without, which binds him, but the intrinsic measure of his nature, a measure that is inscribed in him and makes him the image of God, and thus a free creature.”

There are demands to which we cannot yield, because in themselves they are a necessary expression of our love for God. The precepts of natural law, those of Christian morality, our particular law - which shapes the life of the Prelature of Opus Dei - and the Norms and Customs that God gave to our Founder, which will always be valid. When we truly seek the good of souls, we know how to strike a balance between demand and understanding. “The witness of our dedicated life, the atmosphere of our Centers, of our homes - an atmosphere of joyful austerity, of demand and understanding at the same time, without concessions to ease - becomes like a magnet that attracts the noblest, the most sincere, the most desirous of great things.”

The variety of character and personality, of tastes, of health conditions or of professional work that exists in the Work, will lead us to treat people differently, like a good father or mother of a family who behaves unequally with the children, according to the needs of each one, but loving everyone equally. Thus, for example, what may be a whim in one, may be an obligation of justice in a sick person; or, in some periods, one’s work schedules may be difficult to reconcile with those of the Center.

Christ’s energetic gaze on the Pharisees is a wake-up call to all his disciples, so that we may treat each person with affection, always bearing in mind his or her particular circumstances, his or her concrete needs, and his or her very personal situation in the world. It is not possible to offer ready-made formulas, or rigid methods or regulations, to bring souls closer to Christ. God’s encounter with every person is ineffable and unrepeatable, and we must collaborate with the Lord to find-in each case-the right word and the right way, being docile and not trying to set the rails for the always original action of the Holy Spirit.

Understanding will lead us, for example, not to ask for everything at once in the interior life, but to lead souls along an inclined plane, little by little, according to what they can give; and not to omit a kind gesture, of trust, when it must be corrected. Our Father taught us that holiness has the flexibility of loose muscles. Those who want to be saints know how to function in such a way that, while they do something that mortifies them, they omit - if it is not an offense to God - another that also costs them and thanks the Lord for this comfort. If we Christians were to act otherwise, we would run the risk of becoming stiff, lifeless, like a rag doll.

Holiness does not have the rigidity of cardboard: it knows how to smile, to yield, to hope. It is life: supernatural life.

We end the prayer by turning to the almighty intercession of the Blessed Virgin, so that she may teach us to live always according to the freedom of the glory of the children of God.