XXVI SUNDAY «Anyone who is not against us is for us »
(Nm 11,25-29; Jas 5,1-6; Mk 9,38-43.45.47-48)
My dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ Jesus,
We are gathered here in His name to celebrate his memorial, the sacrament of our salvation and to listen to His Word, which is light and strength for our journey through life. In is in this context of the Eucharist that once again we have a new Salesian missionary expedition. On the 150th anniversary of the Founding of the Salesian Congregation, this missionary expedition, the 140th in our history acquires a special significance. It is a question of people who feel themselves heirs of that group of young men in the Oratory of Valdocco who on 18 December 1859 decided to always stay with Don Bosco, to set up as a Congregation and to provide continuity and progress to his “dream” and to his Apostolic Plan.
Just as in 1875, when Don Bosco sent the first Salesians to America, so today the Rector Major, in his role as Successor of Don Bosco, is sending these 37 Salesians, these 7 Daughters of Mary Help of Christians and 16 lay volunteers from Italy, Spain, Slovakia and the Czech Republic. We thank the Lord who continues to raise up in the Church men and women, young boys and girls, consecrated and lay people, who respond to the Lord’s command before His Ascension: “you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth” (Acts 1,8). We thank each one of them, because through their generous response to the missionary vocation they make possible the “missio ad Gentes”, which is an essential part of the nature of the Church, called to be Light to the Peoples, Sacrament of Salvations and to share the “joys and the hopes, the sufferings and the anxieties of the world”.
The Word of God which we have listened to and the Sacrifice of the Cross which we are celebrating, the supreme expression of the love of the One who handed Himself over totally so that all men and women of the world might have life and have it to the full, throw their light on this event.
To be a missionary is in fact a gift of the Spirit who ceaselessly calls all Christians to be disciples, witnesses and apostles of the Crucified and Risen Lord, to go everywhere, even to the furthest ends of the earth, in order to proclaim the salvation which God has offered us in His Beloved Son and to translate it into a commitment to make the life of everyone more human by giving one’s own life in the fields of evangelisation, education, human development and social action. Proclamation and witness are the two ways of continuing the revealing action of Christ who came to “bring good news to the poor, a proclaim freedom to captives and to give sight to the blind, to free the oppressed to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord” (Lk 4,18-19).
Salesian missionaries, precisely because they are “signs and bearers of the love of God”, carry out what the author of the first Letter of John wrote: “No one has ever seen God. But if we love each other, he is present in us and his love is made perfect in us.” This is the greatness of the love which leads to completeness both in the beloved and in the one who loves. The Eucharist, my dear Brothers and Sisters, therefore ought to be the most important part and moment of your life, of your day, because it will give you new strength in your mission and continue God’s revelation made by Jesus the first missionary of the Father.
Certainly, nowadays the way of understanding and being a missionary has changed a great deal, since the living and verbal communication of the faith cannot be imposed but is undertaken in an atmosphere of great freedom and of an invitation which opens the way to inter-religious dialogue among men and women of all beliefs, to ecumenism among Christians of the different confessions, to inculturation in those places where we are invited to work.
Along these lines, the Word of God which today has been proclaimed to us invites us to have a wide and welcoming heart, which accepts all those who have a love for the truth, even though they may be outside the flock of Christ: «Anyone who is not against us, is for us.»
The faith in fact, if it is not properly understood runs the risk of becoming an element of “discrimination” among people and of creating contrasting positions among them. Jesus, on the other hand, teaches us to break down fences and welcome all the “seeds of truth, of beauty and of goodness, sown in the world: every truth even a partial one is always the start of faith or a preparation for faith! Someone especially, who proclaims the Gospel, needs to know how to find points of contact with others in order to graft there, I would say almost quite naturally, the message of salvation. It is only in this way that faith never becomes “polemical” and marginalising, but only and essentially all-embracing and “charitable,” and therefore always open to intercultural and inter-religious dialogue.
Already the first reading moves along these lines of reflection. At the invitation of God Himself, Moses chose seventy men from among the “elders” of Israel, so that they might help him in leading the people. To do this, however, they needed the “spirit” which God had given to Moses. On the day appointed they gathered around the “tent of meeting” and received the “spirit” of prophecy.
To this previous event is linked the episode in the first reading: two of the “elders”, Eldàd and Medàd, who had not been chosen to be among the seventy and therefore had not gone to the tent of meeting, were themselves unexpectedly seized by the Spirit and “began to prophesy in the camp.” Hence the surprise of the people: so much so that a “young man” rather too zealous, Joshua, the son of Nun, ran at once to tell Moses. «But Moses answered him: “Are you jealous on my account? If only the whole people of the Lord were prophets, and the Lord gave His spirit to them all!”».
This is a marvellous reply of Moses to the over-zealous request of the young Joshua: the “Spirit” should not be imprisoned, almost thinking to be able to control it and make it go only in certain directions, those perhaps which may seem safer!
The attempt to “imprison” the “spirit” contains in itself a two-fold sin: the first against God, over Whom one wants to exercise some sort of control, He Who is the supremely “free one! The second against one’s brothers and sisters, whose capacity to respond to God’s plan we want to measure according to the standards we determine, almost as though we were the “lords” and not rather the “servants” of others. Would it not indeed be a shared treasure if everyone in Israel, and in the Church were “prophets”, just as Moses hoped for?
It cannot be denied that more than once in the long history of the Church there has been an attempt to suffocate the “Spirit”, when it upset certain pre-conceived ideas, or put under threat a certain way of understanding and managing the “institution”, which certainly does not have a “monopoly” of the truth and even less of holiness.
The Second Vatican Council rediscovered the fundamental “prophetic” vocation of “all” the Christian people based on the one faith and the one baptism: «The holy people of God shares also in Christ’s prophetic office. It spreads abroad a living witness to Him especially by means of a life of faith and charity and by offering to God a sacrifice of praise, the tribute of lips which give honour to His name.» (LG, c. II, n. 12).
The first part of today’s gospel presents us with a scene which is not unlike the episode in the Book of Numbers we have just seen: only that instead of prophesying it is a question here of an act of “exorcism”, carried out “in the name” of Jesus by someone who was not one of His disciples.
Here too there is a young man, a little too zealous, who immediately tells Jesus something which to him seems unacceptable: «Master, we saw a man who is not one of us casting out devils in your name; and because he was not one of us we tried to stop him.» This young man was John, who also from a passage in Luke (9,52-55), seems to have been rather intolerant: in fact, with his brother James he asked Jesus to send down “fire from heaven” on a Samaritan village which had not wanted to welcome the Master, and received a very strong rebuke for his pains.
One notes the discriminatory remark of the young apostle: “Because he was not one of us we tried to stop him.”, as though Jesus were an object to be jealously possessed rather than a “gift” to be shared with as many people as possible!
The relaxed reply of the Master therefore is quite interesting: «You must not stop him; no one who works a miracle in my name is likely to speak evil of me. Anyone who is not against us is for us.»
At first sight it might seem that Jesus in his reply is just being expedient, that he is trying to create an acceptable aura around him: in fact, it is impossible for someone “who works a miracle in my name to speak evil of me.” In reality he has far more in mind: he wants to educate the apostles not to consider themselves “possessors” of the truth, but “seekers” with everyone else. This is the way to become automatically “open” to all those who have something in common with us: at least the fact of being human, and if believers in Christ, also many aspects of the truth of faith.
With the overwhelming affirmation: «Anyone who is not against us is for us», Jesus has established in anticipation the foundations for inter-religious “dialogue” among peoples and for ’ “ecumenism” among Christians, which the Church has taken up with great clarity in these recent times.
This is only apparently in contrast with another very well-known expression of Jesus: «Anyone who is not with me is against me; anyone who does not gather with me scatters.» In fact here Jesus is presenting Himself as the Absolute for everyone: anyone who knows Him for who He is, cannot but remain with Him; otherwise he would scatter and lose himself! However, this does not take away the fact that there are “portions” of truth, of beauty, of goodness also elsewhere, which are already a sign of His presence in the world: this could precisely be the way that slowly leads to Him. And it is for this reason that there is absolutely no need to wipe out even the faintest track in the desert: for Jesus this is sufficient to reach, in a mysterious manner, men’s hearts.
This obviously applies both to the Church as such, and to individual Christians: the “Spirit” of Christ is at work far beyond the confines of the Church, and even of faith itself. Precisely because Christ is the whole “truth” He can be found wherever there is a fragment of truth: in this way, I would say that Jesus is greater than his Gospel itself, proclaimed and preached.
There is no need to be jealous, as were John and Joshua, that others might have the “Spirit” of the Lord, or that they might invoke or respect His “name”: we should only rejoice in it and thank the heavenly Father for it!
Christianity is not just a label but a way of life which sometimes one finds in a mysterious way in someone who is not a Christian. Above all, this having to entrust oneself to the goodness of others demands a sense of humility and of discretion: in this way, already from the beginning, the apostle of Christ recognises that he does not have any power over other people but only a “service” to offer.
Here then, my dear missionaries, the criteria and the attitudes to cultivate so that your mission may be fruitful. May the Spirit assist you always. May Mary Help of Christians in whose house we are for this celebration be for you Mother and Teacher. May Don Bosco be for you the model and source of inspiration in his special love for the “poor and the young.” On our part we always accompany you with affection and our prayers. Go out to the world and proclaim the Good News: Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God.
Pascual Chávez Villanueva
Turin – 27 September ’09
