Antonio Villarino

A commentary on John 6, 1-15 (XVII Sunday of O.T.: July 26^th 2015)

Let us remember that in the Sundays of this liturgical year we are reading the gospel of Mark and that we have reached chapter six. Last  Sunday we saw Jesus deeply moved before a crowd of people that were like “sheep with no shepherd”. Today we should go on reading from the same chapter of Mark what is known as “the multiplication of bread”.

But, for this episode, the Liturgy has preferred to offer, for this and the next four Sundays, the reading of John chapter six, that is quite rich in theological references. This Sunday we start off with the first fifteen verses. We can read them personally and try to get its meaning for each one of us today. On my part, I put forward make two points of meditation:

1.- Jesus as the new Moses

John begins his story in quite a solemn way. It’s evident that he means that what he is going to say is very important.  There are at least three elements that mark this “solemnity”:

– Jesus from the lake climbs up to the mountain.  We all know that the mountain, in biblical language, is much more than just a geographical incident. To go up the mountain reminds us, among other stories, of Moses going up the Sinai, where he had that extraordinary revelation of God as liberator and “chief” of his people.

-When He is on the top of the mountain Jesus “sits down” with his disciples.  The gesture speaks of Jesus as the Master with an authority that nobody else ever had. As Moses received on the Sinai Mountain the Law for his people, Jesus teaches on the mountain the new Law, the Word received from the Father.

-The Passover, the feast of the Jews, was near. We know that the Passover, Easter, was the feast in which the memory of the liberation was made, the identity of the people was strengthened and hope was renewed for a new and definitive liberation.

What John is going to tell us in this chapter six of his gospel has to be placed in this solemn set of theological references.

For he disciples, and for us now, Jesus is not an ordinary “rabbi”, nor one of many prophets or somebody who wanted to purify and renew the ethical levels of society… He is the Eternal Word of God that enlightens like a lamp in the night; He is the bread that nourishes us in the dessert of life; He is the new Moses, who, coming down from the mountain, leads the people and sustains it on the way to freedom and full life. He is the centre of the new Passover, the new alliance with the Father for the life of all.

2.- The impossible made possible

John says that Jesus asked Philip how to do to nourish so many people in an isolated place. And Philip gave him the only possible answer: it’s no possible. All of us would have given the same answer, as we really do in front of so many difficulties and problems with no apparent solution.

Philip was right, but it seems that he has forgotten the history of his own people: to nourish a crowd in an isolated place is impossible, as it was impossible that a tiny people could have been liberated from the power of the Pharaoh; or that this same people would be able to cross the dessert and not die on the intent… But the experience of Israel is that God made all this possible, so that indeed it was liberated, it did cross the dessert, and it did reach the Promised Land.

But we should not think that God acted as a kind of “magician”. It is something more simple and deep: When we allow God to go with us and we do our own part, the powerful give way, waters divide themselves, bread is enough, injustice is overcome, conflicts give way to reconciliation and new levels of brotherhood are possible, till the will of God is fulfilled “on earth as it’s on heaven”.

When we confront problems with faith, hope and charity, the impossible becomes possible, as it has happened so many times in universal history and in our own personal life. When we take part in the Eucharist all this is celebrated and made actual.

Fr. Antonio Villarino

Roma

A commentary on Mk 6, 30-34  (XVI Sunday, O.T. July 19^th  2015)

We read today five verses from Mark’s chapter six, verses that are a transition between two big stories: the martyrdom of John the Baptist (a painful experience for the disciples and for Jesus himself) and the multiplication of bread (a clear sign of a God that sustains his humble people in the desert).

Theses verses are a transition text, but not for that less meaningful. In fact, the text is full up with deep and clear feelings in two directions: the community of disciples and the crowd looking for a better life quality. In Jesus we can contemplate a double movement, similar to the double movement of the physical heart, from the community to the crowd and back. As it happens with the physical heart, the same happens with community and mission: one movement cannot be without the other, community and mission go together. Let us meditate for a while on those two concrete movements of love:

1. Tenderness towards the members of the community

Mark tells us about the way Jesus receives the disciples returning from the mission: he welcomes them, listens to their stories and invites them to rest, as he used to do in Bethany.

Maybe you remember a fil by Pier Paolo Pasolini, some time ago, on the gospel according to Matthew. It was a very interesting and moving film, but –if I remember it properly- in it Jesus was a prophet quite severe, with a long face and severe words… Certainly, Jesus was quite clear in his denouncing a false religiosity. But what we read today shows us another Jesus: tender, welcoming, giving attention to the needs of his disciples. This is a human attitude that I feel we need so much in our everyday life: in the family, in the Christian community, in the apostolic group. Quite often we wish so much to do well, we try to be so perfect, we wish the best for our family or our Church. So much so that we risk becoming hypercritical, intolerant, angry, negative… Let us pray that we imitate Jesus and learn from him this tenderness that makes us able to be welcoming to people near us and to care for one another.

2.- Sensible to the needs of the crowd

The attention to the small group of people near him does not make Jesus indifferent to the need of the crowd; rather it’s the opposite: together with the community he becomes more sensible to the needs of the crowd of people that are like sheep with no shepherd; they are hungry of bread, understanding, love… The attitude of Jesus has been imitated by so many disciples, among which Daniel Comboni, who arriving at Khartoum (Africa) said to the people: “I want to make common cause with each one of you”.

Before so many people that today, as in the times of Jesus, are looking for a better health, a better and more just food, a real dignity, a sense of life, real love, the answer of the disciple missionary it’s not indifference, it’s not look  away, but to “make common cause”, to share the problems ,expectation and possible solutions.  This making common cause will give way to many initiatives of solidarity, but the first thing is not to be indifferent, to allow the situation touch our heart, to move our feelings, to share with the people; from that sharing will come out our concrete help, knowing that if everyone does its best, the miracle of brotherhood will take place.

Fr. Antonio Villarino

Roma

A commentary on Mk  6, 7-13 (XV Sunday O. T.: July 12^th  2015)

After being refused by the people of Nazareth, Jesus, according to Mark, set up a new stage of his Mission involving in it the Twelve, the seed of a new people who accepted the Kingdom of God and made it flourish in villages and towns. In the text of Mark that we read this Sunday, we can find many points of meditation useful for our live as disciple missionaries. I just reflect a bit on four of them:

• He called the Twelve and started sending them

The Mission is not a fruit of a personal initiative, but of a call. On the way of missionary discipleship there are moments in which it seems that it is us that take the initiative, it is us that have a project for humanity, an interesting ideology, our clever way to look at things. But real discipleship only starts truly when, passed the stage of a self-centred mission, we come to realize that it is the Lord that calls us and sends us.

Moses and other important prophets have gone through this experience: Mission usually ends up in complete failure when it is taken as a personal way to become somebody in society, while it becomes fertile when it is taken as an answer to a call from God.

Even artists tell something similar to that prophetic experience.  Poets, for example, often say that it’s not they that look for words, buts it’s words that look for them; in fact, poetry reaches a special forceful expression when somehow it “imposes” itself to the poet, who has maybe worked hard with the words, but at the end he feel that the inspiration came as a gift. On the same way, in our missionary discipleship there must be a moment of surprising grace, an awareness of being freely called, breaking our barriers and our desires of self-control and personal ideologies or pretentious self-made projects… Only then Mission becomes really the Mission of the Lord, fertile, even if it has to go through failure and cross.

• Two by two

Sending the disciples out “two by two”, Jesus follows the Hebrew tradition, according to which, messengers are sent two by two, so that the message conveyed by the spokesman will be confirmed by his companion. Going on mission two by two the disciples sustain each other on their witness giving more credibility to the message of the new brotherhood.

Moreover, mission “two by two”  is no longer an individual, private mission, but it becomes a social, public proposal. Certainly, Jesus used to pray for hours alone, but his mission was always public: in synagogues and streets, in towns and villages, in private houses and public places. Jesus’ mission was not a private but a public and social affair. This does not mean that it makes mission easier, but a more authentic and credible one.

• To enter peoples’ homes

In the missionary practice of Jesus there are no reserved places: he preaches and heals everywhere.  Jesus’ mission does not exclude the Temple, but neither remains limited to it. Looking at that, we are sure that the Church’s mission today cannot be confined to parishes; it has to come out of parish’s premises and go to meet people wherever they are and live.

• To announce the nearness of the kingdom

Nearness: this is a key word in Jesus’s experience and mission. Jesus announces, with words and actions, that God is near to people and He performs actions of healing, liberation, forgiveness and love that makes people rise up and walk. This is the power Jesus has, the power that shares with his disciple missionaries, the power that make people rise and walk as free children of God.

Fr. Antonio Villarino

Roma

A commentary on Mk 6, 1-5 (XIV Sunday O.T: July 25th 2015)

Mark shows Jesus as a travelling master, who, after some time in and out of villages and towns near to the Galilee Lake, goes back to Nazareth, where He grew up and where He was not accepted by his neighbours, because He was just one of them. Mark explains this refusal with the well-known sentence: “No prophet has ever been accepted by his own people and at home”. And he concludes saying that Jesus was astonished at their incredulity.
It seems to me that Jesus’ experience – his refusal by his own people- is quite common and on my view reflects two errors that very often we make:

1) We imagine God as someone far away from our everyday life.
It happens all the time in history and in all religions; many people think that God has to be looked for in extraordinary events: in wonderful places, big cathedrals, special sanctuaries, in a very important person, over the clouds…. As if God would have nothing to do with what we are and do in our simple and ordinary lives. But Jesus teaches exactly the opposite; He teaches that God becomes one of us (Emmanuel): He is born as a displaced person, works as a carpenter, goes to the synagogue every Saturday, drinks, eats, and makes friends… And in all that He is and acts as the loved Son of the Father.
One way to explain this experience of God’s presence in our ordinary life is the famous sentence by Saint Theresa of Avila: “God is also among the kitchen pots”. That’s it: Do not look for God in extraordinary events but in the simple facts of your everyday life: in the working place, in the family, in friendship, in the honest fight for justice and peace… Certainly also in the simple and sincere prayer (with not so many words or gesticulation)… “Among the kitchen pots”.

2) To let a heavy heart grow in us and become cynics and hard with our neighbours
There’s a saying that goes more or less like this: “the person with les respect within a temple is the one who works in it”… That may happen to all of us with the people we live with: the members of our family or community, co-workers, parish priest… Living near them, we are in danger of seeing only their limits and defects, overlooking the many good deeds that they probably are doing. So far from taking the opportunity of our nearness to love them and understand them, we end up in a hipper-critical attitude that makes it difficult for us to discover the message that God wants to give us through tem, in spite of their limits and defects. God will not come to us in the dress of a perfect person, but in the concrete reality of people around us.
As I meditate on this text form Mark, I pray to the Lord to acquire that humility that makes us able to recognize Jesus in the humble prophet of Nazareth and in the people that live with me and are for me a sign of God’s presence in my concrete reality, with its opportunities and problems, its rights and wrongs, its successes and failures.
Lord, do not allow me to become arrogant or cynic like the people of Nazareth. Let my heart be always open to acknowledge your humble presence around me, in spite of my own limits and the limits of others.
Fr. Antonio Villarino
Rome

A commentary on Mk 5, 21-43 (XIII Sunday OT: June 28th 2015)

We read today Mark’s chapter five, in which we continue watching Jesus on both sides of Galilee lake with a clear message of God’s nearness to the poor and those with a “broken heart”; a message that is conveyed, not only in inspiring words, buts also in concrete gestures that confirm the words and give them a kind of “physical” consistency. Jesus performs what we can call “messianic signs”, that is, concrete actions that reveal God’s presence among his people from both “sides” of the lake: Gerasa and Capharnaum

From “impure” to God’s children
In today’s Reading we are told about the story of two women (a twelve year old girl and a grown up woman who has been sick for twelve years). In spite of being impure (as a dead body or as someone loosing blood), both are touched by Jesus and they are restored, not only to live, but also to their dignity as God’s children, able to rise up (“Get up”), to believe (“Your faith has saved you”), and to share in the banquet of life (“Give her something to eat”).
Some people may look at this episode as if Jesus were a magician, with special powers, able to produce magic effects… Certainly I have no doubts about Jesus’ power. But I do not think that this is the right perspective to understand what happened in the river of Galilee Lake or what it continues to happen with many believers today. The right perspective is to consider this and other episodes as “messianic signs”, that is, actions and gestures that flow out of two fundamental elements:
–The extraordinary capacity that Jesus has to love and be in communion with people in their concrete situations, beyond and in spite of traditional taboos; to be in deep and close relationship with people, taking very seriously the reality of each person; to communicate to others his own experience of the Father’s loving nearness. As Benedict XVI says, only love redeems. When somebody is loved, he or she recovers the dignity and becomes able to rise up and have full live.
– The faith of humble people, who, threatened by sickness and death, raise their hearts and their hopes to God as their last refuge. In my missionary live in Africa, Europe and America, I have met quite often people like the dad of that twelve years old girl o that woman in despair because of a humiliating sickness.
Before such situation of distress, people look for any kind of possible help: medicine, prayer, advice… anything that can be a ray of hope. Many people rebuke them, scoff them, pity them… But they need to be taken seriously and respected in their anguish and hope. This is precisely what Jesus does: from his deep experience of communion with the Father he is able to be in communion with those God’s children who are crossing a sea of difficulties and despair and having doubts about their own value and dignity.

Word and action
All human beings, included those who appear most self-assured, are feeble creatures exposed to sicknesses, suffering, despise, dangers and, after all, death, even if a miracle expands our limited time of existence. That’s why I do not think that the objective of Jesus’ miracles was to extend for a while our live, but an altogether different live, marked by the confidence in a real, dignifying and fruitful God’s love. After Jesus “sign” to them, the two women we see in today’s reading could say truly: “I am important for Jesus, I am important for God, I am important for the community of Jesus’ friends. What is important for me is not that I am sick, but that I am a GOD’s CHILD.
This is the central message given by Jesus. And to pass it out to people, He uses words and “messianic signs” that appear in a double quality:
–They are quite concrete and practical, related to the real life of people; they are a concrete help to solve a concrete problem of people’s life.
–They go beyond their concrete effect: even if they are quite material, they are more than that: they communicate something very especial about the person, empowering her to get up, enjoy life and become a helper to others
That is why the Christian mission, following the steps of Jesus, walks always on this double principle: word and action, faith and charity, material and spiritual. Both dimensions are essential and recall each other: word without action degenerates in lie; action without word misses its saving meaning.
Fr. Antonio Villarino
Roma