A CAPITE AD CALCEM

 Encountering the Magister’s face, now mirrored in other faces, challenges us to re-assess our self-understanding as we proclaim His presence. When we are unwilling to renew our faith “from top to bottom” (a capite ad calcem), an unnoticed dichotomy between our affirmations and practice accompanies. Somehow, it does not worry us: confined to an ornate subjectivity, we convince ourselves otherwise by wearing particular garbs or evoking particular devotions, overlooking our perfidies. Some claim innocence seeking truth, but “light, seeking light, doth light of light beguile; so ere you find where light in darkness lies, your light grows dark by losing of your eyes” (William Shakespeare, Love’s Labor’s Lost, I.1). 

Carefulness is required, because blinded, our subjectivity dressed up as objectivity is confined by prejudices, self-gratifications and claims whose purpose is our comforts, not our discipleship. Despite claims to being Minorem, our choices speak otherwise because serving Christ in others no longer guides our steps. Cacooned in our exclusiveness, protected from the world beyond the cloister, embraced by darkness, there is no way to see the light (John 8,12). 

Reinforcing our presence, God is reduced to the aggregation of our identity. Hence, despite our protests, others are perceived as a means to satisfy our needs. This blindness influences projects that intend to witness the Magister but actually serve to justify our pretences.

Lacking an understanding of the cross, the narrow door to understanding our discipleship, personal emotional impositions prevail. We prefer to write books about those we admire as models of spirituality. Taking refuge in our traditions and historical identity, we are confined to a darkened cave, subjected to fear, so that we are unwilling to risk and embrace evangelical hope. 

Our resistance to evangelical hope prevents us from grasping faith’s true significance, so that, subjected to “Kronos” (consuming time) we are no longer able to perceive faith in terms of ‘Kairos’ (opportune time) to interpret the evangelical dynamism as an invitation to mature our understanding of the Good News. Instead, we retreat to safety, claiming that our numbers are incapable to sustain our services: refusing to live, we accept death as the natural outcome. This attitude inhibits our creativity to deal with the difficulties encountered so that darkness seals the heart, limiting the Magister’s healing power, which sustains our ability to read the signs of the times.

The inability to deepen our faith from top to bottom either results in rigid impositions whereby legality rather than the ‘Good News’ dominates, or a laissez-faire attitude, anarchistic in its application. If there is an answer to this dilemma, it is not found in the numerous meetings but in a renewed conversion of our heart focused on the Magister: “For the LORD your God is gracious and compassionate. He will not turn his face from you if you return to him” (2 Chronicles 30,9). 


Martin


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