This Sunday’s Gospel,
among the most intense and profound of Gospel
passages, has 3 parts: a prayer -- "I bless you,
Father" -- a declaration of Jesus about himself --
"Everything has been given to me by my Father" --
and an invitation -- "Come to me all who labor."
I will limit my remarks to the first element, the
prayer, because it contains a revelation of
extraordinary importance: "I bless you, Father, Lord
of heaven and earth, because you kept these things
hidden from the wise and intelligent and revealed
them to the little ones. Yes, Father, because this
was your good pleasure."
The Pauline Year has just begun and the best comment
on these words of Jesus is what Paul says in 1
Corinthians: "Consider your own calling, brothers.
Not many of you were wise by human standards, not
many were powerful, not many were of noble birth.
"Rather, God chose the foolish of the world to shame
the wise, and God chose the weak of the world to
shame the strong, and God chose the lowly and
despised of the world, those who count for nothing,
to reduce to nothing those who are something, so
that no human being might boast 11 before God"
(1:26-29).
Christ’s and Paul’s words shed a singular light on
today’s world. It is a situation that is repeated.
The wise and the intelligent keep their distance
from faith, they often look with pity upon the
crowds of believers who pray, who believe in
miracles, who crowd around Padre Pio. Not all
scholars do this, certainly, and perhaps not even
the majority of them, but undoubtedly the most
influential ones do, the ones who have the most
powerful microphones, the group with the access to
the major media.
Many of them are honest and intelligent persons and
their position is more the fruit of education,
environment and life experience, than of resistance
to truth. So, I am not judging individuals. I know
some such persons and I hold them in great esteem.
But this should not stop us from pointing to the
heart of the problem. The closure to every
revelation from above, and thus to faith, is not
caused by intelligence but by pride, a special pride
that refuses all dependence and claims an absolute
autonomy.
They entrench themselves behind the magic word
"reason" but in reality it is not the famous "pure
reason" that demands it, nor is it demanded by a
"sovereign" reason. It is demanded rather by an
enslaved reason, by wings that have been clipped.
Consider what certain philosophers who cannot be
accused of a lack of intelligence and dialectical
ability have said on this score. Blaise Pascal
observed: "Reason’s supreme act is in recognizing
that there are an infinite number of things that
surpass it."
Soren Kierkegaard wrote: "It has always been said
that science, which seeks to understand, is not
satisfied when it is claimed that this or that thing
cannot be understood. Here is the mistake.
"The opposite must be said: if human science does
not want to admit that there is something that it
cannot understand, or -- to put it more precisely --
that there is something that it can clearly
‘understand that it cannot understand,’ then there
are problems.
"Therefore it is the task of human knowledge to
understand that there are things that it cannot
understand and what these are."
Those who do not admit this ability of going beyond
are putting limit on reason and humiliating it. But
this is not what the believer does since he is open
to this possibility of transcending.
What I have said explains why modern thought, after
Nietzsche, no longer values "truth," but rather the
"pursuit" of truth and thus sincerity, which has
replaced truth. Sometimes this attitude is taken to
be one of humility -- being content with what
philosophers like Gianni Vattimo call "weak thought"
-- but this is a superficial judgment.
So long as the person is seeking, he is the one who
is the protagonist, he is the one who sets down the
rules of the game. But once truth is found, it is
truth that takes the throne and the seeker must bow
before truth and this requires -- when it is a
matter of transcendent truth -- the "sacrifice of
the intellect."
Jesus’ statements in John’s Gospel -- "I am the
truth"; "No one comes to the Father but through me";
"Come to me all you who labor and have heavy burdens
and I will give you rest" -- are provocations to our
contemporary culture. But these are invitations not
reproofs and they are also addressed to those who
are tired of seeking and finding nothing, to those
who have gone through life knocking up against the
rock of mystery.
The psychologist C.G. Jung, in a book of his, says
that all patients of a certain age to came to him
suffered from something that could be called an
"absence of humility" and could not be healed until
they acquired an attitude of respect in the face of
a reality greater than them, that is, an attitude of
humility.
Jesus also repeats to the many honest intelligent
and wise people of the world of today his invitation
full of love: "Come to me all you who labor and have
heavy burdens and I will give you rest and that
peace that you seek in vain in your tormented
reasoning."
