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SUNDAY, MAY 19, 1985

I gave the second talk at our Cuban convent. There were fewer people, around 50 of them. My subject was “The Scheme of Life in Jesus.”

Jesus’ way of fulfilling God’s will was through a commitment to the scheme of life. This is made very clear in this account of St. Mark’s: “One Sabbath he was going through the grainfields; and as they made their way his disciples began to pluck heads of grain. And the Pharisees said to him, ‘Look, why are they doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath?’ And he said to them, ‘Have you never read what David did, when he was in need and was hungry, he and those who were with him: how he entered the house of God, when Abi’athar was high priest, and ate the bread of the Presence, which it is not lawful for any but the priests to eat, and also gave it to those who were with him?’ And he said to them, ‘The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath; so the Son of man is lord even of the Sabbath’” (Mark 2:23–28).

The account shows a conflict between Jesus’ group and that of the Pharisees. Jesus and his disciples picked the ears of corn, which the law of God forbade on the Sabbath, which was considered a holy day when no work was allowed. Jesus knew this, but as usual he didn’t apologize. Instead, he referred to the testimony of David, whom the Pharisees respected greatly and who had apparently behaved much worse than Jesus and his disciples, respecting neither the Sabbath nor the very house of God, the temple. He didn’t pick mere heads of grain; he took the Host, as we would say today, ate some and gave some to his compañeros. Jesus knew that David’s behavior also went against the religious rules. What strong reason led Jesus not only to justify David’s behavior but to behave in the same manner? The answer is in verse 25: “Have you never read what David did, when he was in need and was hungry, he and those who were with him?” That is, man’s material need, the basic foundation of life, was the most sacred thing for Jesus. Idolatry deprives human beings of sacredness, transferring it to liturgical observances and to the material of the cult, such as the temple. For Jesus it was impossible to speak of spiritual life apart from the material conditions of existence. There is nothing more sacred than man, the image and likeness of God. The hunger of that man was an offense to the Creator himself. A religion that cares for the supposed sacredness of its objects but turns its back on those who are the real temples of the Spirit is worthless.

In São Bernardo do Campo, a city where I work with workers, whenever there are strikes and the government takes over the union, the priests of the local parish open their doors so the metalworkers can hold their meetings. Other priests are shocked and believe that this is a profanation of the temple. They don’t understand that, to Jesus’ way of thinking, there is nothing more sacred than the right to life. And a strike, a union meeting, is a collective effort to obtain better living conditions. Hence, Jesus’ conclusion in Mark’s account: “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.” The most sacred thing that can exist — such as the Sabbath — should be at the service of human life, not the other way around. A church that places its patrimonial interests ahead of the demands of justice, life, and the people among whom it is inserted is certainly a church that considers man less important than the Sabbath and, like the Pharisees, reverses evangelical priorities.

In his practice Jesus didn’t separate spiritual needs from the material demands of human life. This is made very clear in the parable of the multiplication of the loaves (Mark 6:34–44). A multitude, “Five thousand men,” had just heard Jesus’ sermon. His disciples came to him and suggested, “This is a lonely place, and the hour is now late: send them away, to go into the country and villages round about and buy themselves something to eat.” The people’s hunger wouldn’t be a problem to one who preached spiritual life, but Jesus reacted: “You give them something to eat.” You can’t send a hungry crowd away. This, too, is a problem you should confront. It is interesting to observe that the disciples used the verb to buy, and the teacher, to give. Yet the disciples didn’t understand Jesus’ proposal: “Shall we go and buy 200 denarii worth of bread, and give it to them to eat?” There were some who thought that money was enough to meet the people’s needs. It was the bolo [cake] theory of the Brazilian military regime: first have it grow, accumulate a lot of capital, and only then begin to distribute it among everyone. Jesus replied, “How many loaves have you? Go and see.” He didn’t ask how much money his disciples had; rather, he asked how many goods, how many loaves, they had. Wanting to meet the needs of the collective’s life through income distribution, as social democratic countries seek to do, is very different from meeting its needs through the distribution of goods, as is done in Cuba. In order to amass so many resources, countries such as Sweden — where even the workers have a high standard of living — need to keep the transnational corporations exploiting the Third World countries. In order to socialize its few assets and eradicate poverty, Cuba didn’t need to exploit any other country. Mark went on to say that the Apostles checked that there were five loaves and two fishes. “And they sat down in groups, by hundreds and by fifties.” People organize themselves to solve their problems. Jesus took the loaves and the fishes, “looked up to heaven, and blessed, and broke the loaves” for his disciples to distribute. Throughout the Gospels, the distribution of bread symbolizes the Father’s kindness and the establishment of fraternity. Food is associated with life’s abundance; it appears in the marriage in Cana and the meeting of the resurrected with the disciples at Emmaus. “And they all ate, and were satisfied. And they took up 12 baskets full of broken pieces and of the fish.” If at the end, 12 baskets of pieces are left, how many extra baskets were there in the crowd? And what did they have? Now, wherever a crowd is gathered, salesmen come up with sandwiches, soft drinks, and candy. In Jesus’ time, food was carried in baskets. Moreover, five loaves plus two fish is equal to seven, and seven in the Bible means “many,” just as our number eight, on its side, symbolizes the infinite. Thus, it is said that our sins will be forgiven not only seven but 70-and-seven times. Therefore, there were many fish and many loaves. Does it mean there was no miracle? Miracle, yes; not magic. Magic would be the spectacular action of taking five loaves in one hand and two fish in the other, covering them with a cloth, saying “abracadabra” and showing a bakery on one side and a fish shop on the other. What is the miracle? It is God’s power to alter the natural course of things. That power acts mainly on the human heart. That day those who had goods shared them with those who had none; there was enough to satisfy everyone, and some was left over. At the same time, this account is the prefiguration of eschatological reserve. The 12 baskets with food are related to the 12 tribes of Israel, protagonists in God’s scheme in history, and the group of 12 Apostles, pillars of the church.

The source of Jesus’ spirituality, of the force that impelled him to struggle determinedly for the scheme of life, was his intimacy with the Father, which was nurtured through prayer. The Gospels refer to Jesus’ prayers and transmitted his teachings in this regard. They teach us the Our Father and encourage prayers of petition and of praise. However, the texts speak of the great amount of time that Jesus spent praying. As I see it, this is one of the critical points of Christian spirituality in the West and of the superficiality of our faith. We don’t pray deeply. We ask, praise, and meditate, but that’s merely the threshold of the life of prayer. Only farther on can we attain the mystic vigor that inspired Jesus. During this learning period, the best thing is to refer to the experiences of the Christians who lived intensely in intimacy with God and described the route they took.

St. Augustine said that God was more intimate for us than we were for ourselves. Thus, the deepest prayer is the one that springs from the silence of the senses and of the mind and swells the heart for the Spirit to manifest itself. St. Paul said, “Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words. And he who searches the hearts of men knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God” (Rom. 8:26–27). This letting the Spirit pray within us requires gratitude in the relation with God, as happens in the relations of a couple. We then attain moments of inner silence in which we experience that unutterable presence that fertilizes our faith. From thence springs Christian life rooted in theological experience. At that level, we go beyond Christian life as mere sociological conditioning, as a kind of ideology of faith that, in principle, is opposed to an ideology of atheism. We are all born atheists. As Vatican II says in Gaudium et Spes, atheism is also present in the lack of testimony of Christians. I don’t think it should cause us as much concern as the idolatry that exists in various expressions of faith that have nothing to do with the God heralded by and embodied in Jesus, as in the case of those who call on God in defense of capital, colonialism, social and racial discrimination, and repression against the workers. The dialogue between Christians and Marxists should be held not at the level of truths of faith but rather at the level of the practice of liberation, of the demands of justice, of selfless service to the life of the community. That is the level of love, the fundamental criterion of our realization and our salvation. St. Paul even says that though we have the faith to remove mountains, if we don’t have charity, it serves no purpose: we would be as a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal (I Cor. 13:1–13). In the practice of liberation, those who struggle in the name of God for the scheme of life will be separated from those who join the party of death. That practice brings together Christians and atheists who are committed to building a society of fraternity in which the bounty of life will be shared equally. However, the possible opening of those atheists to the call of faith will undoubtedly depend on the testimony and coherence of the Christians, so the gift of God, as a seed, may find tilled soil.

There were few questions. One of the young people complained that the lecture hadn’t been well advertised. A man replied, saying that a lot of announcements had been made. Perhaps this approach to Christianity was unheard-of for an audience such as that one. The blockade that the United States imposed against Cuba also in a way isolated the Christians on the island. Many remained on imperialism’s side against the socialism and communism that were established and which proclaimed their atheism. Nevertheless, in recent years, new winds have been blowing in the Cuban church. In mobilizing all of its forces to review its pastoral practice and establish new lines in its evangelizing activity, the Cuban church is now experiencing a new Pentecost.