Antonio Villarino – Comboni Lay Missionaries

The blind man who became able to see

24 October, 2015 by Antonio Villarino

A commentary on Mk 10, 46-52 (Sunday XXX O.T., October 25th 2015

On his way up to Jerusalem, Jesus arrived at Jerico, a town with a long history in Israel. In this town, Mark places an interesting dialogue, quite different in nature from de one He had with the sons of Zebedee that we read last Sunday.
While the sons of Zebedee put up the question of power and their ranking as followers of Jesus (showing how little they had understood), the son of Timeo, Bartimeo, stands before de “son of David” as he really is: a blind man who wishes to see, somebody who has lost the meaning and feels lost in life.
Let us not forget that, in Marks’s intention, the son of Timeo, as the sons of the Zebedee, real persons as they might be, are brought here, to this story, as personalities that represent all of us, disciples of any time, who search for la light that sometimes we confuse with the glimpses of money, power, prestige or any other blinkering reality.
Let us stop a bit on this story and the dialogue between Bartimeo and Jesus, bearing in mind that somehow we are also taking part in it:
1.- At the road side, out of the town. Bartimeo was seating at the road’s side, marginalized from social life, unable to be among the human community.
Do we know in our experience such people as Bartimeo, people marginalized, not taken into consideration, despised because of a physical defect or otherwise? Remember that in our Christian communities there should not be any one discriminated.
But it may happen that we are the marginalized ones; it may happen that ourselves suffer despise in our own family, in the working place…or we may experience problems that seem bigger than what we can cope with. In that case, we should remain in contemplation of this Bartimeo and try to follow his steps as “blind” disciples.
2.- He shouts: “Son of David, have mercy on mi”. What a marvellous prayer! We all are in need, in one or other moment in life, of mercy, understanding, forgiveness… Only a stupid and false pride can lead us to think that we do not need God’s and our neighbour’s mercy. Bartimeo is teaching us one of the best prayers ever: “Lord, have mercy on me, help me, since I alone cannot overcome my troubles”. It’s a prayer to say with humility but without feeling of shame or false vanity. Somebody has said that never a human being is greater than when he kneels down. The opposite is just lie or hypocrisy.
3.- “What do you want me to do for you? To see again”. Physical blindness is a drama, but many blind people show that it’s not the end of the world and that worse than physical blindness y the spiritual one, to which Mark refers in this story; the blindness of so many people unable to understand God’s love, closed up in their own world of self-content and “self-reference”. This is also a precious prayer: “Lord, let me see your light, so that I may understand your love”.
4.- Your faith has saved you. The Italian theologian Bruno Forte says: “ Following a suggestive medieval etymology, “to believe (“credere”) means to give your heart (“cor-dare”), to put your heart into the hands of Somebody else… To believe is to trust in Somebody, say “yes” to his call, to put our own life in His hands, so that He is the Unique and true Lord” (B. Forte, Piccola introduzione alla fede, San Paolo, 1992, p. 16).
This faith-communion with the Other One is always healing, because it helps a person to come out of herself, out of her self-centrality and stablish links with other persons; that link becomes a sign and a means to be in touch with Reality ns, in the end, with God, the Reality that is backing all other reality. That link makes us true to ourselves and to other, healing our loneliness and vulnerability.

As I celebrate the Eucharist today, I enter into communion with the Son of David and, as the blind man, I pray: Lord Jesus, have pity on me; make me see and understand your great love, that love that gives colour, truthfulness and sense to what I am an live.

Fr. Antonio Villarino
Roma

It’s not power but service

17 October, 2015 by Antonio Villarino

A comentary on Mk 10, 35-45 (XXIX Sunday O. T.; October 18th 2015)

With the help of Mark, we follow the steps of Jesus already approaching Jerusalem. On the way, as members of Jesus’s group of disciples, we take part in an interesting dialogue between Jesus, the sons of the Zebedee and their mother about power and service. On the other side, today we celebrate the International Day for Missions, which is giving us a special reading perspective: the missionary service that all disciples of Jesus are called to do in favour of humanity.
Let us reflect briefly on this story of the sons of the Zebedee and their mother:

– They want to occupy the most important places on the project of Jesus. And who doesn’t? We all wish to be considered as important, to be applauded, and to have authority… And on my view, that’s all right, that’s part of our nature and, surely, a certain ambition is positive for us and the community. What we have to do is to transform that need to be important into a positive energy that pushes us to do good and to do it well.

– They seem unconscious of what that really implies. On one side, they do not know well the project of Jesus, which consists in giving life to the poor an sinners; and on the other, they are not aware of the sacrifices that their wish is leading them to.

-Jesus takes the opportunity to make them progress in their discipleship. Starting from their request and sincerity, Jesus helps them to grow in their awareness and generosity. To be disciple is not to a matter of occupying the first or the last places. It’s a matter of being ready to “drink the chalice”, that is, to assume a service with all the consequences: good and bad, glad and not so glad. It may happen that people recognize your service, but it may happen the contrary and you have to be ready for it, as Jesus was.

-In any case, they and the other disciples learn that in Jesus’ kingdom authority is not power but service. The service of authority (necessary in the family or in the community) is not to be considered as a right to impose one’s views or privileges over the others, but a service to people who are equal to those in authority. Who should have the command over a city, a family, a community? The one who is ready to serve better.

All of us have authority in one or another way. So, once we red this Word as disciples, we are reminded that we are called to do it in Jesus’ style: being servers, not dictators. And this is precisely the missionary vocation of the Church: to serve Humanity with the Word of Truth and Actions of love, made concrete in actions of help to any one in need: charitable help, schools, health centres, brotherly communities… Celebrating the Eucharist, we pray to the Holy Spirit to enable us to be true disciples of Jesus by way of serving our spouses, our brothers and sisters, our neighbours, the members of our community, especially the most needed.
P. Antonio Villarino
Roma

It’s not richness but love that matters

10 October, 2015 by Antonio Villarino

A commentary on Mk 10, 17-30, XXXVIII Sunday O. T. (October 11th 2015)

We go on Reading Mark, who shows Jesus approaching Jerusalem, where there’ s going to be a life or death confrontation between Jesus with his Kingdom of God’s proposal and the Political-Economical-Religious System of that time. Then, as it happens now, the power of the world was in the hands of corrupted people who used to deride any ethical value and, even more, despising may simple people who were exploited and abused in a culture based on the divinization of money and richness.
In this social context, Mark makes us assist to a dialogue between Jesus, one “somebody” and the disciples. Let me make a few comments on this dialogue:
– What to do to reach the fullness of life? (or “eternal life”, as it was put buy the one who knelt down before Jesus). We all make that same question, even if not always use those same words. What shall I do to be happy, to feel “alive” and to enjoy the fullness of sense for my life?
– A basic honesty. On that time, as in ours, there were, among corrupted people, also many honest people, persons that were trying to live their lives with honesty, following the commandments of the Old Testament or those of their own religion that, on my view can be reduced to one: “Be honest to yourself and to others”. And that is not a little matter.
– The call to do a step more and to trust in God. Jesus respects and admires this person who was able to live with honesty, but He discovers in her look and attitude a deeper desire for something else. Is she is coming to see Him, it means that she has had a glimpse of a “pearl of great value” (the Kingdom of God). I think that we go sometimes through a similar experience: We try to live honestly, trying to do as much good as we can. But we are aware of our limitations and, deep in ourselves, we wish something more; in that case, Jesus is telling us: Do not be satisfied with a moral of the minimum, dare to “sell” what you have (it may be an excessive trust in money, or your pride or your image before others), trust in God and “buy” the “pearl of great value”, that is, allow yourself to live fully in God’s love.
– The uneasiness. The person that went to meet Jesus and the disciples remained bewildered by His proposal. They think that they had already done quite enough and that what Jesus is asking, apart from being impossible, is unnecessary. If you allow me, I share briefly a personal witness; I remember that, when I decided to leave my family house to become a missionary, my parents asked me: Why do you have to do that? It’s not enough to be a good person here? … In fact, one can be good enough in many ways and places. But the point is not to be just “good” or to “do enough”, but lo love without measure and to “live fully”.
– A jump into the emptiness. Well, all that we are saying in the previous paragraph seems “too much”, “exaggerated”, “impossible”… And really such it is, till God acts and “makes everything possible”. He has made it possible for a group of fishers to leave behind their fishing nets and go around the world preaching the newness of the Gospel; He has made it possible for Ignatius of Loyola to abandon his military career to become a Christ’s “soldier”; He has made it possible for Daniele Comboni to go far from his little village in Italy and enter into the wild dessert of Africa…
– The fullness of life. The secret of so many disciples that followed Jesus on that journey is that, trusting in the Master and in God, “everything becomes possible”, they were able to reach an unsuspected fullness of life that is not only “religious” but fully human. I think that many of us have mete people like that in our own time.
Today, as we celebrate the Eucharist, I renew my trust in the One who calls me to a higher standard of life, knowing that He will never be won in generosity.

Fr. Antonio Villarino
Roma

Three “sayings” of Jesus

26 September, 2015 by Antonio Villarino

A commentary on Mc 9, 38-48 (XXVI Sunday O.T., September 26th 2015)

The gospels, besides narrating episodes of Jesus’ life and reproducing his parables, contain also collections of “sayings”, small sentences that He surely pronounced in different times and places and the first disciples retained by heart and repeated to the new disciples that were entering the communities. In the verses we read today, we find three of these sayings that I understand as follows:

1.- Goodness has no frontiers. The exact saying of Jesus is “whoever is not against us, is with us” and He pronounces it because somebody wanted to forbid people who did not belong to the group of disciples to act in the name of Jesus. It would be like forbidding someone to help the poor because he or she is not a member of the Church. Any act of goodness belongs to God; it’s a sharing in God’s goodness. We are invited to acknowledge it, be grateful and glad for it.

2.- A glass of water may have an infinite value. Jesus says: “Whoever gives a glass of water in my name, will not lose the reward”. Sometimes, not much is needed to put joy in a persons’ life, to make her or him feel respected, to offer a sign of hope in the middle of difficulties. To give a glass of water is a sign of welcome, respect, availability to “give a hand” if needed. Who gives a glass of water to someone in need, is open to the other and who is open to the other is open to God. What is the “glass of water” that I could offer to the people around me?

3.- Be careful, do not become a stumbling stone for the little ones! Mark puts here three sentences with a common reference to the “scandal”. We know that this word means really “stumbling stone”, trip up somebody who is defenceless, so that he falls down. Jesus, who is full of goodness and tenderness, becomes quite angry when someone lacks respect for the house (temple) of his Father or when somebody wants to trip the little ones, those who have only God to trust. You should not “joke” with the little ones of God. At the same time, Jesus tells us something that to my ears sound like that: “Do not trip up yourself; if something is doing any wrong to you, cut it, do not indulge, choose the way to righteousness with decision and clarity”
Every Sunday, as we celebrate the Eucharist and listen to these words of Jesus, we say to Him: Amen, thank you, I wish these words to illuminate my life. Help me to make them true in me.
Fr. Antonio Villarino
Roma

Jesus’ secret

20 September, 2015 by Antonio Villarino

A commentary on Mk 9, 30-37 (XXV Sunday O.T., September 20th 2015)

Mark, the gospel we continue to read every Sunday of Ordinary Time, presents Jesus as an itinerant prophet who walks from village to village and from town to town preaching to the crowds and performing liberating actions as signs of God’s love towards the poor, the sick and the sinners.
But, from time to time, Mark says that Jesus “did not wish people knew He was there”. In those times of public silence, Jesus would “instruct his disciples”, given them some teachings that many (even the intimate ones) were not able to understand.

In today’s Reading Jesus announces, for the second time, his “secret”, that is, “that the Son of Man is going to be given up in the hands of men, but on the third day He will rise”.

We have heard so many times these words that they no longer impress us, though we do not understand its meaning, as it happened with the apostles: They understood nothing till they passed through the experience of His death and resurrections.
In fact, Jesus is not a brilliant but superficial prophet. Rather, He confronts death and wins over it, thanks to His radical trust in the Father. This is His great Secret. And this is the secret of many of His best disciples, who are able to confront death trusting totally in God’s secure love.

I remember, for example, St. Maximilian Kolbe, who, during the Second World War, offered himself to be assassinated in place of a father with children; Or I remember St Daniel Comboni, who, at the age of fifty, destroyed by sicknesses and enormous difficulties, while he feels he is dying, he says: “I die, but the project (of Africa’s salvation) will not die. Very few really believed that at the time, but he was right.

It’s in this line of thought that we can read the second part of todays’ gospel: “If someone wants to be the first one, let him become the servant of all”. We have read this sentence also many times and we do not really believe in it. Also this is a secret that not many understand. We all wish to be important, to be considered as the best ones; we are afraid to be despised, not taken into consideration. We feel certain “anguish” and a need to be the first ones. But Jesus says that to reach the first place we have to accept to be the last one. In my own words, I understand Jesus message in this way: “Be calm, relax, look at this little child, be grateful, think first of the God’s Kingdom and of its Justice, give out with generosity… and you will receive plenty”. It seems to me that, deep in our heart, we all feel the truthfulness of Jesus’ teaching, but we do not trust enough.
Let ask the Lord, in the Eucharist, to open our hearts, so that we can understand his “secret” and be ready to be the last ones, the servants, ready even to die to ourselves trusting in God as Jesus, Kolbe, Comboni and many others did.
Fr. Antonio Villarino
Roma