The man of the full granaries
The heart of the man is a mystery, and one of the characteristics of this human heart is the radical dissatisfaction it suffers from. It is never totally satisfied; this is why it has been considered a restless heart. It is Saint Agustin’s definition: Our hearts are restless until they rest in You. And from that restlessness, we have tried to understand Jesus constant invitation to “be born again.”
Christians, more than any other man, are never satisfied with their achievements. It is not necessary to go back to the mother’s womb in order to be born again, as Nicodemo used to think. Neither is the effort for novelties, of the new for the new, necessary. Christianity is urged by the responsibility of the future.
The new man is that who, having reached certain height, discerns who is awaiting him; and when he is over him, he glimpses a new peak. There are always new peaks awaiting and calling us. But the man who stays still in his achievements becomes fossilized. We are referring to Christians who always walk towards the best. It is not about the effort for novelties, but about a constant search. A real man is that who is never pleased with what he has and makes progresses from his current achievements to the new ones.
There is a meaningful example in the Gospel; Jesus Christ clearly explains: «There was a rich man whose land produced a bountiful harvest. He asked himself, ‘What shall I do, for I do not have space to store my harvest? And he said, ‘this is what I shall do: I shall tear down my barns and build larger ones. There I shall store all my grain and other goods and I shall say to myself, «Now as for you, you have so many good things stored up for many years, rest, eat, drink, and be merry! But Jesus said to him, ‘You fool, this night your life will be demanded of you; and the things you have prepared, to whom they will belong.” (Lk. 12. 16-20.) That man stayed still, thinking it was enough. Christ reacts before that attitude: – You are dead, this night you will be judged. He is referring to the Christians who, installed in their Christianity, think they know everything. The world is full of old Christians who hinder, as Saint Paul said: “For them, the name of God is blasphemed,” they hinder.
The same was said by the Pope Benedict XVI not long ago in the opening mass of the Synod on the Eucharist: those who convert God in an empty devotion are actually expelling him of their lives, as well as those who deny him. An atheist with worries is much better than a Christian with no worries. A new man is much better than an old Christian.
The man is the core where God lives, and God is the God of the alive, not of the dead. So, we do not follow novelties, we follow this endless and interminable illusion as trying to hunt a butterfly that always escapes… And it will always be like this. This is our destiny and our glory: to walk.
We know that the texts of the Gospel are always surprisingly new, and will still be new in ten millions years time. And we are surprised due to the fact that, this old man we are, functions thanks to paradigms, and inherited outlines. A paradigm is a system of thought that filters the information you receive, some information is kept and other is overlooked.
For instance, if somebody tells you: -God died today at seven forty-five in the morning… you reject the news. Why? Because you know that God is immortal… Every day and every moment, we filter the information we are interested in from that we do not care about. Right now, you rejected many of the things we are saying, probably because you do not care. When referring to the religious paradigm, the problem becomes quite serious because, if you teach a child that God punishes those who do not behave, it will remain in the child’s paradigm and he will automatically think: -God is waiting for me at the corner to punish me.
Let’s make it positive. To the child that has been disturbing for one hour, we should say: -God is pleased when you are a good boy, and the boy interprets that “good” means “being quiet.” This is the meaning of “good” we instill into the child: do not disturb! Let’s apply it to religion: -God is pleased when you go to mass, God is pleased when you receive Holy Communion, etcetera. Here we have one paradigm: being a good Christian means going to mass, and the world is full of Christians who think that, once they have gone to mass and received the Holy Communion, they are able to devastate the Amazons or anything that were before them, they do not care.
This is the old and aged Christian who ignores Jesus Christ talking about the new man. This is due to his desire of having the same (as the man of the granary), of keeping things unchanged to have everything under control. Christians are always new and happy, despite being 80 years old. Christian faith is not a list of things to believe or commandments to put into practice; it is a free and loving response to God’s will. Friendship with God never distorts the man; we are distorted by our desires of keeping in the past. God never distorts the man.
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