Antonio Villarino – Page 2 – Comboni Lay Missionaries

Who is Jesus?

13 September, 2015 by Antonio Villarino

A commentary on Mk 8, 27-35 (XXIV Sunday O. T., September 13th 2015)

Today’s Reading places Jesus in a roman town in the north of Israel, far away from Jerusalem. There, precisely before he starts walking towards the Capital, He poses a question about his identity. And to that question three answers are given:

1. The majority of people see in Jesus one of the big prophets of the past. In fact, he teaches, heals sick people, liberates from bad spirits, proposes a conversion, and announces the kingdom of God…

It seems to me that this answer is similar to the one given today by many people: They see in Jesus an interesting teacher and a fascinating personality, one among the big personalities of human history.

2. The disciples see what Peter says: “You are the Christ”, that is, you are the Messiah, the Anointed by God to come and free his people. The disciples were quite happy to see the powerful presence of God in Jesus and hoped to find in Him a powerful leadership, to overcome so many frustrations, humiliations and defeats.

It seems to me that this is our vision. In front of so much abuse of power and so much corruption, in front of so many superficial words shouted from our means of communication… we think that Jesus is the envoy of God and that He is the word the world needs. We would like Jesus to be recognized as master by everybody… and the Church as a recognized power.

3. Jesus’ vision: What the mases say, it’s true: Jesus is a prophet; what de disciples say it’s also true true: Jesus is the Messiah of God. But Jesus adds: Attention! I do not come as a Powerful Messiah who imposes himself to the world or even the Church by force. Rather, I go to Jerusalem, to the centre of Israel, not as conqueror or a winner, but as the Servant of Yavhe, as a brother and as a Son ready to obey the Father and to offer my live out of love.

It seems to me that this is what distinguishes a true faith from a false and superficial one. Peter found it quite difficult to accept that Jesus was going to be tortured and to die. But to become a true disciple we have to pass through this experience of cross, obedience and free love.

Let us pray to the Lord, who is coming to us in today’s Eucharist, to help us to understand his true identity as a Messiah Servant and to grow in our own discipleship, even when in the moments of sacrifice and when the way to Jerusalem becomes steep and difficult.

F. Antonio Villarino
Roma

Free to listen and to speak

5 September, 2015 by Antonio Villarino

A commentary on Mk 7, 31-37 (XXIII Sunday O.T., September 6^th 2015)

Mark, in today’s reading, portrays Jesus in “pagan” country, where people were not following Jew religion. But, beyond the religious differences between those people and the people of Nazareth or Jerusalem, there it was a concrete, real man with a concrete, human problem, that is the same for believers and unbelievers, rich and poor, educated and illiterates. That man was deaf and could not speak properly, something that affected his human condition at a very fundamental level.

Moreover, it seems clear that what Mark intends with the narration of this experience is to explain to us what the real mission of Jesus is:

Jesus’ mission consists in using the power-love of God (symbolized by the continuous touching with fingers and hands) to liberate humanity, not so much from our physical deafness, but, more important, from our deep inability to understand God and our neigbours, closed up in our own sterile pride. From that deafness comes up also our inability to say meaningful words to others.

When I was a young priest, I have known a ten years old boy, whom everybody thougth he was both deaf and mute, till young nun started to give attention to him, accompanying him with a great, continuous and constant love. After some time, she discovered that the child had a physical problem with his ear and took him to the doctors. Solved that problem, the child began to hear the words spoken to him and to repeat them, learning how to listen and how to speak. I was then very much impressed by the power of love, able to start off processes of liberation and healing.

Certainly, not always happens that way, rather in most cases deaf people have to learn how to do without spoken words. But, again, as in the Gospel, the reference is not so much the physical deafness, but that close heart that leads us to close the channels of communication and loving relationship with the members of our family or our community, with people of other cultures, political ideas or religious practices…

Quite often we become “deaf” and “mute” in the deepest side of our personality: we refuse to listen to what other people have to tell us… and for that same reason we are not able to say any “relevant” word to tem or to others: we do not have a sincere, meaningful, liberating word to say, because we do not listen.

We remember the story of Emmaus: Jesus approaches the disciples, walks with them and listen to them. Afterwards he would say clarifying and meaningful words.

Sometimes, it seems that our Christian communities have become deaf and mute: They do not listen to the cries of our humanity (Migrants, refugees, young people, women…, nor to the prophets or our time, those people who can help us to understand God’s ways for today. And because of this deafness they become also “mute”, unable to announce any meaningful message to today’s humanity.

A missionary Church is a church that listens, free from the deafness of his pride and arrogance. Only after that liberation, can it become truly missionary, messenger of the good news of God’s love for people.

In the Eucharistic celebration, Jesus “touches” our body. Let us pray that He heals our deafness and liberates our tongues so that we can become true missionaries, healed and instruments of healing, while we continue walking in life towards a fuller communion with God and our fellow men and women.

Fr. Antonio Villarino

Roma

The heart is what matters

29 August, 2015 by Antonio Villarino

A commentary on Mk 7,1-8.14-15.21-23 (XXII Sunday O. T. August 30th 2015)

After five Sundays reading John’s chapter sixth (Jesus, the Bread of Life), we come back to the ongoing reading of Mark; five Sundays ago we left Jesus in Galilee, praying over the mountain, walking over the lake, healing sick people… announcing the Kingdom of God, the kingdom of God’s nearness, mercy and truth.

In today’s reading we see Jesus in a clear confrontation with a group of people coming from Jerusalem –Pharisees and scribes- that confused human rules and traditions (even religious) with the true cult to God. It’s not a new theme, since the prophets used to recall it from time to time. In fact, Jesus quotes Isaiah, whose words cut through hypocrisy as sword with a cutting edge:

“This people honours me with the lips,
But their hearts are far from me.
In vain do they worship me
Teaching as doctrines human precepts” (Is 29, 13)

And Jesus insists:
“Nothing that enters one from the outside
Can defile those persons,
but what come from the heart”.

It’s not that Jesus despises human rules and laws (even religious ones); the may be very useful and needy for social living. Jesus, in general, was quite respectful and obedient to these laws and to the rules of his human and religious community. But what he says is that we should not confuse these human laws and traditions with the “true cult to God”, especially when behind them there’s a wicked, arrogant and insincere heart.

The cult to God is truthful when proceeds from a heart that is right, truthful and merciful. The tree does not giver better fruits just because somebody paints nicely the leaves, but when its roots are “rooted” in a good and fertile land. In the same way, people are not changed with external rites but with the Word of God accepted and received in a heart that is open, sincere, and rightful. That’s what the heart of Jesus is, the same we identify ourselves with when we go to communion. From this heart many good fruits come out: good works, new rules, new traditions, and new forms of cult… Where there’s life, life is generated.

Give me, o Lord, a heart that is rightful, sincere, and open to the Holy Spirit, who makes everything new.

Fr. Antonio Villarino
Roma

The big crisis: The scandal of human fragility

22 August, 2015 by Antonio Villarino

A commentary on John 6, 60-69; XXI Sunday of O.T., August 23th, 2015

We read today the last part of John’s chapter sixth, the same we have reading for five Sundays. The chapter somehow has a dramatic ending, with a big crisis, that leads the disciples to abandon Jesus. That is why I think it very important for us to meditate on this reading, since most of us pass, in a way or another, through similar crisis. On my side I offer two reflections:

1.- Where does the scandal stay?
The disciples accuse Jesus of say “hard words”. For long time, this “hardness” was explained as the difficulty to accept Jesus’ words understood in a literal sense of “eating his flesh and drinking his blood”. But we know, by now, that Jesus speaks in the context of Hebrew culture and biblical language. In this context, it’s clear that to “eat his flesh” means to believe in the divine presence in his humanity and to “drink his blood” means to accept his life given up on the Cross, out of obedience and love.
But it’s precisely here where we find the scandal that became the big crisis. Many could not accept the image of God as it was revealed in Jesus. For them God is powerful, owner of everything, always triumphant, somebody to be afraid of… And that should be the same with His Messiah. But Jesus presented Himself as the human incarnation of a different image of God: Someone that welcomes sinners gives priority to the healing of a sick man rather than to the sacredness of the Sabbath, someone that appears as fragile and looser on the Cross, someone that shares the experience of death…

Many good people found this totally unacceptable. They were happy with Jesus as a marvellous teacher, they agreed with his plan to renew religion, they were moved by his power over sickness and bad spirts… But now Jesus was going too far. He was proposing a deep change in their image of God. Now He was proposing to leave aside all hypocrisy and falsehood, to accept that they themselves were sinners and fragile, and to allow God to become their companion, someone that wanted to share their fragility and from that deep solidarity to heal the root of their stupid pride. That was the real scandal.

2.- What about us? Where does our scandal stay?
We all pass for experiences that scandalize us. I think that what really scandalizes us it’s not something theoretical or an intellectual “mystery” that we do not understand in our mind. Certainly, there are aspects of the revealed truth that sometimes we do not understand and that we should try to understand better through studying and spiritual deepening. But, on my opinion, the real scandal that prevents us from believing and accepting Jesus totally is our own fragility (personal and social); what scandalizes us it’s the reality of sin (in the Church and outside it); we are scandalized by our own sins and failures, by the failures of the Church, by the failures of society. We are scandalized by a God that does not act as magician to resolve our many problems; we are scandalized by this Jesus, poor and humble, who fails on the cross and at the same time trust in the Father, in solidarity with so many poor, sick and sinners.

But, against our scandal, this is the biggest gift that, according to John, makes the disciples who believe become children of God. This faith liberates me, so that I do not have to “demonstrate” nothing to anybody, I do not have to lie to myself and to others as if I never made a mistake. People obsessed to be always wright end up by being hypocrites and to live in falsehood. On the contrary, Jesus accepts the human fragility, the failure and even the death. And, in doing so, He acts as what He really is: the SON, unconditionally loved and able to love unconditionally.

To believe this is to enter into communion with Jesus, to “eat his flesh” and with him find the way to the fullness of the Father’s love and live. Do not believe it’ s not to “eat”, not to enter in communion with him and to remain in the lie and falsehood of the one that tried to deceive Adam as if He were a God by himself and not in obedience to the Father.
All of us, in a moment of our life, have to go through this crisis: Do I pretend to be like Adam, a false “god”? Do I pretend to be like the prodigal son thinking that I am going to be more autonomous and happier away from the Father? Or do I accept myself, in my fragility, and accept the solidarity of Jesus, who descends with me into the river Jordan of this my fragility and with me rises to the communion with the Father?
To go to take communion regularly means to say yes to the last question and to renew our trust in Jesus and his Father, in spite and through the continuous experience of the many sins and fragilities in ourselves and in others.
P. Antonio Villarino
Rome

The true Bread of life: beyond the outward appearance

31 July, 2015 by Antonio Villarino

A commentary on John 6, 24-35: XVIII Sunday OT: August Second 2015

We go on Reading John’s chapter sixth, which we began to read last Sunday about the sign of abundant bread. Well, from one Sunday to another we jump over a part that speaks about Jesus who disappears from the view of the satisfied crowd, crossing over to the other side of the Lake, and people looking from Him feverishly. What we read today is precisely the answer Jesus gives to people’s search. And in that answer John explains to us the faith of those first disciples in Jesus as the true living Bread.

To understand this answer, I propose a few brief reflections on the various and inter-connected meanings of bread the biblical tradition:

1.- Bread (nourishment) sustains our physical life

There’s an experience among the first ones to mark the history of Israel: that they were able to feed themselves in an extraordinary way and in one of the most difficult moments of their march towards the Promised Land, when in the desert there was no food around. We all know the story of the “mana”; we do not know what exactly happened, though scholars have their theories about its physical feasibility. But the important thing is that whatever happened allowed the people to survive physically and that Israel always saw in that extraordinary experience the presence of the providing God.

I think that something similar happens to us many a time, even if not so extraordinary: When in despair, we find a job that allows to keep up the family, our business starts to go well, we receive an unexpected help, overcame a serious sickness… On those cases we may think that fortune has smiled to us or that we were smart enough to merit that positive outcome… Or we may think that God is guiding history in our favour, using even fortune and our own hard work. This is what the Hebrews thought and what many simple people continue thinking today, with a faith that takes them beyond superficialities and appearances.

2.- From Bread to the Word-Law

When Moses brought the Law to the people in the Sinai, then Israel made the experience that the Law was as big a gift as the physical nourishment in the desert. With the Law the people could organize themselves, make progress, find a way forward in the many moments of doubt, and find harmony, happiness and sense. So little by little Israel began to apply to the Law the same meaning of salvation that had given to the bread in the desert: “not only on bread do human beings live, buy also on any word that comes out of God’s mouth”.

I think that we make an equal experience, individually and as communities. Sometimes we seem to despise the value of laws, but we know that a good Law makes a nation better. Without laws, a nation falls down on anarchy and usually that situation favours the powerful and violent against the poor and peaceful. So to have a good law (or a personal project of life) is as important as to have nourishment.

3.- From the Law to the Word-Wisdom

But Law is not the unique manifestation of that divine wisdom that was guiding the people. There were also the prophets, psalmists, and poets, philosophers from other cultures, religious and political, leaders, wise old men and women… Every manifestation of wisdom was considered, together with the Law, as BREAD for the spirit.

We too need to be nourished by every type of wisdom that humanity produces through science and philosophy, religions and arts…Every positive thinking, every luminous word can help us to live better.

4.- From the Word-Wisdom to Jesus Christ

The disciples’ experience with Jesus is wat is explained in today’s gospel: The bread that nourishes in the desert is no more than an image of Jesus as the true Bread that nourishes our spiritual life. His words, his nearness to sick people and sinners, his entire person is like the Bread in the desert, the Law of Moses, the highest Wisdom of humanity. In Him we find the fullness of that Life that God wants for all his children.

Certainly, we all want our basic need (bread, dress, and roof) covered and Jesus –as the Church today- worries and cares about these basic needs, but He does not remain there; He invite sus to eat the true Bread of Word-Wisdom-Love of God made flesh in Jesus of Nazareth.

To accept this, to “eat” it and make it be part of our life, it’s to open ourselves to a deeper life, able to overcome whatever desert we’ll have to cross.

Fr. Antonio Villarino

Roma