Miriam and Aaron: a broken fraternity

After crossing the sea, the people are restored to courage and unity. Finally Moses and Israel can sing together. "The prophetess Miriam, Aaron's sister, took up a tambourine, and all the women followed her with tambourines, dancing, while Miriam took up from them the refrain: Sing to Yahweh, for He has covered himself in glory : horse and rider he has thrown into the sea"(Ex,15. 20-21). This is a wonderful episode! Miriam is presented to us in all her dignity. She plays her role with passion and true awareness, while people join her singing. She takes the initiative of prayer and animates the people to praise YHWH with their singing, thus sorority and fraternity are re-discovered. This woman is truly an instrument of unity and joyfully lives her service to sorority and fraternity with a spirit of initiative; she intuits that a song of thanksgiving to the Lord can bring the people to unity.

A stuck journey - According to Num. 12 , Miriam is a prophetess, thus her role in the community is that of interpreting the word of God together with Moses and Aaron, her brothers; she has the task of showing the ways of the Lord to the people. One day, however, " Miriam and Aaron criticised Moses over the Cushite woman he had married. They said, "Is Moses the only one through whom Yahweh has spoken? Has he not spoken through us, too? Yahweh heard this. Now Moses was extremely humble, the humblest man of earth".

The harmony she had previously created fell all of a sudden. The pushiness, the will of reaching before the other, can cause division in the community. This is just what happens with Miriam and Aaron. They do not speak openly against Moses, but backbite him. Thus Miriam, seized by jealousy, from being a prophetess becomes a mean woman who plots against her brother, along with the priest and brother Aaron! It's truly serious: here is a case of faith and blood fraternity.

Jealousy, envy, pushiness, rejecting a person in authority or someone who is better than ourselves, can trigger off in our soul forms of murmuring and, what is worse, we do not remain alone, but try to involve other people in this situation. There is nothing more "diabolic" than this!

The narrator writes this episode with a subtle irony. On one side he seems to justify the murmuring of Miriam and Aaron: to be one, Israel must safeguard the purity of the race, thus marriages with non-Hebrew women are to be avoided. On the other side he allows us to enter the secret dialogue between Miriam and Aaron, who do not mention at all the Cushite woman, but …"Has the Lord not spoken through us, too?". They are both jealous and envious of Moses, thus the author unmasks the hidden, deep reason of their murmuring. Though it was a private murmuring .. "The Lord heard": God listens, sees and unmasks what we have within… Miriam becomes a leper!

Thus she becomes the cause of disunity and tension among the people, only because of not accepting her role in the community. Leprosy was considered by the Hebrews as a chastisement of God for sins against the truth. The leper was considered dead and, therefore, excluded from the community from the social and cultual point of view.

And "the people did not set out for seven days". Miriam is shut out of the camp, but the sin and the chastisement  of a single woman  blocks the journey of the whole community. In this episode Miriam reveals herself as a rebel woman and, with her hands, she spoils her prestige while excluding herself from the community.

These things happen also in religious communities. Remember that the breaking of fraternity on behalf even of a single person, blocks the journey of the whole community. "Seven" is the number of God: to be in isolation for seven days means to wait for the rhythms of God until we are ready and, then, to enter again the community, remaining in one's own place.

Two sons: the silences of fraternity

 The text is commonly called the parable of the prodigal son (Lk 15, 11-32), but it would be better to name it the parable of the merciful father,  the true hero, in fact, is not the son (moreover the sons are two), but the father with whom, in different ways,  both sons are related

The persons, therefore, are three: the father, the younger son, the elder son.

We notice that the two sons never speak between themselves and that the father speaks only with the elder son, while to the younger son he expresses himself with a language of love and welcoming gestures.

The younger son decides of managing his own life, of getting the goods which he, wrongly, affirms of being due to him, and of wanting to dispose of them independently from his father. His sin is in his first statement, "Father, let me have the share of the estate that will come to me. So the father divided the property between them". It is interesting to notice that in Greek the term "estate" is ton bion, that is life, all he had for his life. Therefore, the prodigal son is: he who wants his father to have nothing to do with the management of his life. His is a sin of richness, the determination of wanting to be the owner of his own life, the exclusion of entrusting unconditionally this life into the hands of his father.

To manage life exclusively by oneself means not to live any more. To have lost the sense,  the beauty, the strength, the essence of one's own life. Well, the younger son becomes aware of all this when he discovers his interior loneliness, "He came to his senses" and makes a journey from richness to poverty: He who has wanted richness,  to manage his own life, to be the master of himself, arrives before his father like a poor man, to confess his failure and his nothingness. Only when we become aware of being sinners we miss the Father and start our journey in search of his merciful face.

The lost son - The elder son is the last personage of the parable. He has always remained at home, in a physical nearness to the father. But external nearness does not necessarily signify nearness of the heart. One can live a lifelong time of closeness in the house of God, without loving God. One can "live together" with God like one of the many fetishes  in existence, without allowing oneself to be affected at all or to be transformed  in him. After many years of conviviality with the father, the elder son is unable to understand his logic of love and forgiveness. Prisoner of his loneliness and slave of his own interests ("you never offered me so much as a kid" Lk 15,29), this son is not less far away from his father than the one who has left home: physical nearness is not enough. What matters is the nearness of the heart, it is being internally  in love with God, since one could live in the house of the father and yet ignore him in deeds. One can continually speak with God, yet never meet him, because of not making a deep and vivifying experience of him.

Even the elder son lives his drama: he cannot forgive his father for forgiving his brother. It is the same sin as that of the younger son. The elder son, too, wants to manage his life, to make of himself the referee and the judge of the good and the evil. Even in this case the father "goes out" to convince him, goes to him almost as if he wanted to ask pardon for his love. The father invites the elder son to conversion, to quit the logic of merit and profit, so that he may enter the logic of love. The father invites the elder son to convert himself to poverty, to pass from the richness of him who presumes to judge everything and all, to the poverty of him who allows himself to be led and judged by God. The father invites the elder son to enter the logic of gratuity, of a greater love. Does the major son enter the house to rejoice with his father and his brother? It is up to us to complete the story and to give the answer. The parable, in fact, closes with this question mark, because it must continue in the life of each of us.

The paths of recognition and proximity

The imperative of making oneself neighbour  (Lk 15, 25-37) and of feeling compassion. The Samaritan is an unexpected hero: a heretic, marginalized by the cultual community of Israel, symbol of impurity, judged by the Jews, unable of an authentic relationship with God. He sees the unlucky person and has compassion for him. We are at the "turning point" of the story, the remaining is only an "operative" consequence. He is moved with compassion: shows the "seething of the bowels", letting himself be invaded by "tenderness" towards the other, sharing his situation. It's an intense experience that opens his eyes to the value of things, lets him see the needy and marginalized in the true light, and disposes his heart to charity and solidarity.

The other in need approaches me and, though tacitly, spurs the commitment of my responsibility.

To be moved with compassion: More than once the Gospel witnesses to this feeling experienced by Jesus:  before the pleading of the leper, (Mk 1,40-42), when he sees the lost crowd seeking him "like sheep without shepherd"  (Mk 6,34); the funeral of the only begotten son of a widow (Lk 7, 12). Jesus can catch the needs of others, can shoulder their situations, makes  himself neighbour to the other, and does whatever is needed by the other: heals from diseases, instructs and feeds, resurrects the dead!

Well, the Samaritan is moved by the same tenderness as that of Jesus and becomes the "neighbour of the dying", never asking himself whether he is a friend or an enemy of his, from his own country or a foreigner. What he knows is that he needs him and thus he welcomes his silent pleading and "takes care of him". He accompanies him to an inn, spends time and money for him, does not quit him to his destiny. He gets interested in his future. Indeed, he involves also the inn-keeper in this careful charity, recommending him, "Take care of him", assuring him of his own availability of following this work of charity till the end. This is a miracle of love! The Samaritan is a free man, free from prejudices from party interests, from himself. He is firmly determined to master the situation entirely, to commit himself for the good of the other, to assume the responsibility of a solidarity without frontiers. This is the journey of man accompanied by God.

One becomes neighbour - The doctor of the law has asked Jesus, "Who is my neighbour?". Now it is Jesus who, at the end of the parable, asks him, "According to you, who, out of the three, has been   the neighbour of the one who had fallen into the hands of the brigands?" With this parable Jesus revolutionises the concept of "neighbour": this does not exist as yet; neighbour is not the addressee of my charity and of my careful attention, but the Samaritan the moment in which he is  moved to compassion , the moment in which he shares the suffering of that unhappy man, goes close to him and offers him a radical, gratuitous friendship. I myself become neighbour the moment in which, even before the foreigner or the enemy, I decide to "go near", to be in meaningful solidarity with him. Today, as in his time, after provoking us with the same word, Jesus repeats the same and unique imperative, "Go, and do the same yourself".

The transmutation of relations in the welcome:
the provocation of the "third" person

Two disappointed disciples quit the eventful place, somehow flee away from the city of grief and from the lost community. "It happened that, as they were talking and discussing, Jesus himself came up and walked by their side; but their eyes were prevented from  recognising him" (Lk 24,15-16).They go on with their conversation and Jesus invites them to remember the facts, to take into consideration everything, never detaching themselves from what had happened. "He said to them, 'what are all these things that you are discussing as you walk along?' They stopped, their face downcast. Then one of them, called Cleopas, answered him, 'You must be the only person staying in Jerusalem who does not know the things that have been happening there these last few days'. He asked, ' What things?'(Lk 24, 17,19). The "third one" is the foreigner, the stranger: he is the other who breaks into my existence arriving like and adventus, like a coming to me. The "third one" is the newness that provokes me, challenges me, changes me because he speaks with me. He breaks the monologue between two, into an authentic dialogue.

To be there by listening - The two are clever chroniclers: they narrate events without understanding them. This is what makes their dialogued monologue dramatic. They are very precise in telling the events, but they have not let themselves be understood by the event. The two are walking. We always walk … the journey of the two disciples shows that life does not come to a standstill, even when pragmatic options of self-clinging are made. The language of the two disciples is not that of understanding, but of division. There is a context of quarrel, of anger, of anonymity. A "third one", a stranger, becomes their neighbour and synchronises his steps with theirs; these two verbs sum up all their mission: in Jesus, God comes close to men, enters their history and revives their daily existence. Hope has died in the two disciples, they are in crisis: "their faces were downcast". The two disciples had their own projects and hopes, they desired a Messiah according to their ambitions. The death of Jesus, condemned as a wrongdoer, was not compatible with their projects: this is the very cause of their deep disappointment. Just a little hope was left: the resurrection, but this also had failed: "Two whole days have now gone since it all happened" (Lk 24,21) and nothing had happened that would help their faith.

Walking along the road with the two wayfarers, Jesus listens to their story and invites them to listen to what they were living. Meanwhile he is silent: it suffices to be with them, along the road. He will speak only when they will have finished, to reveal and to break the limits of their faith, manifesting whatever happens in the life of each person, and that can be "recognised" , if we only knew how to listen to.  How to listen to?

 Word and discernment - The two disciples knew the Scriptures very well, just as all other Hebrews even today. Yet, they have not been and are not for them a means to recognise in the "third one" the face of Jesus. What actually costs to be understood is the Passion, it is the Cross. "Then he said to them 'You foolish men! So slow to believe what all the prophets have said!" Well, the word of Jesus is focussed straightaway on the argument and says that from the Scriptures one can learn that Christ has to suffer to enter his glory (Lk 24,26). His suffering has sense if it is understood as "passover" namely as an "exodus" , a passage from this world to the Father, an exaltation to glory". Those Scriptures are read in the light of a fullness: showing whatever concerns them. This is the moment of the listening to the Word, it is the exalting moment in which the Word is no longer a cold religious information and not even poetry.  By now it is a message of faith that enters the cochlea of the heart and not only the cochlea of the ear. It is a gradual conquest of the disciples: it is the moment of the lectio or the liturgy of the Word.

Education to the welcoming - "He made as if to go on". Why this "pretending"? This is the turning point of the narration: the two disciples come out of the private sphere, out of their personal problems and open themselves to pay attention to the "third one", to the foreigner. Their conversion is there. The two are no longer what they were before : disappointed, quarrelsome, sad, upset. Unknowingly, they call him by his name "Lord".

            It happens as in Gen 18 and following, when Abraham saw before his tent three unknown men. It is a lightning of intuition that causes within an upside down of things: he stops them, invites them , hosts them. But, while Abraham soon sees the presence of God in the three unknown guests, the two of Emmaus are still there with shut up eyes, blinded by their own visions: they are unable to recognise the apparition of their Lord. Yet a simple invitation is enough to release in the lightening of an encounter the journey of recognising him.  It was just in the shelter of a country inn that Jesus reveals himself in his "disappearing". The two become "great" because they learn how to host: the recognition and the welcoming of the other open to the "proximity".

The bread of friendship -  The last aim is reached by entering that house and by sitting at table.. Christ  breaks the bread. The expression "breaking of bread" is used by Luke in  Acts 2,42 to describe the community of Jerusalem: "They remained faithful to the teaching of the apostles, to the brotherhood, in the breaking of bread and to the prayers".

The breaking of the Eucharistic bread suddenly generated the revelation, "Their eyes opened". The narration of Luke is, then, a revelation of the risen Lord to a welcoming and hospitable community, within the liturgy of the Word and of the Eucharist.

This is what Luke wants to say to all the Christians who will come, you may be full of nostalgia for not being able to know the Christ in his flesh, well you will meet Christ  every time you open your heart to the recognition of the other and bend yourself to a gratuitous hospitality,  every time you quench your thirst with the Word of God, every time you celebrate the Eucharist.

But it is just an instant: once again Jesus makes himself invisible, yet the two disciples are not left sad. They know what they are supposed to do: they must go back to Jerusalem, and basing themselves on their own experience of faith, they have to rebuilt the community along with the other disciples.

"Which one of us does not know the inn of Emmaus? Who has never walked on that road some night when all seems to be lost? Christ had died for us. They had taken him away from us … We were following a way. But here is one who flanks us. We were alone, and yet not alone, it was evening. Stay with us since the day is almost over!" (Francois Mauriac);

As they reach the village Jesus does not impose his presence, but accepts the risk of their welcoming capacity. And the disciples invite Jesus to stay. Once entered the house, everything goes on in the most absolute silence: words are no longer needed. Jesus has broken with them the bread of the Word of God and now he breaks with them the bread of friendship and of communion. No sooner do the disciples open to the intelligence of faith than he disappears. His presence is no longer necessary, they are now able to walk by themselves.

With its breaking,  the bread opens, frees the invisibility of the mystery and refracts a light proportionate to the eyes, which in fact open to a vision never seen before. The broken bread revives the memory in the heart. Yet it is not a nostalgic memory, but a "fire" memory that enlightens the past journey towards the present one and enlightens the night path that is to be walked on.. The two from Emmaus go through the darkness of the night because they have gone through the light of hospitality. The return journey takes place in the night, but it is now a night full of light: now they "see". Their destination was not Emmaus, but Jerusalem where they now return in a haste to open the eyes of the others. They don't mind whether the others understand or believe; what matters is to help them understand and believe by sharing the joy and hope which they had been restored to, in a pedagogy of recognition and proximity.

"All this happens in the utmost silence. The breaking of bread, the opening of their eyes, the mute recognition, the disappearance have lasted but an instant. Just an instant to see the disappearing apparition and then the whole life to wipe their eyes and to speak of it! The man who has recognised just once in his life, though for the space of an instant, the long misunderstood purity and innocence, can say: yesterday in the inn an unknown wayfarer had something mysterious in his gaze. His face was sweet and tired, one could still see the dust of the journey on his sandals. This unknown person was God. And this unknown person was God!" (V.Jankèlèvitch).

 Returning the other to himself - The Pharisees have denounced and will denounce again Jesus who eats with " the sinners" (Lk 7,39). This, according to the culture of the time, means to become a sinner. To allow oneself to be touched by a sinner, as in our case, it means to become impure and to share his very condition of sin.

The attitude of Jesus  is a cause of perplexity for the so called "righteous" and even John the Baptist, who was in jail, sent his disciples to ask Jesus, "Are you the one who is to come, or are  we to expect someone else?" (Lk 7,10). It is in this context that Luke puts the encounter between the presumed righteous and the public sinner known as such by the whole village. Jesus, therefore, finds himself between two types of humanity: the impure woman and the pure man. Thus he accepts the invitation of Simeon and also the unexpected one of the woman sinner. Both of them, in fact, invite him, though only Simon offers him an official invitation. But the one who truly invites him is the woman.

The situation in the house of Simon- It is an ambiguous situation. There is a man, Simon, who feels to be important, who keeps the situation in his hands and who does not risk anything: he  receives Jesus, but with a minimum of courtesy , thus thinking of pleasing everybody! To share the meals in the East was the symbol of communion of life and friendship. Here the climate is not one of friendship; the Pharisee shows no gesture of appreciation towards Jesus; he has not given him any tiny possibility of refreshing and perfuming himself, not even the traditional kiss to be given to each invitee.

By welcoming Jesus he reveals himself as an open, broad-minded person, capable of facing the new ideas; however, by not rendering  the honours due to him, he can always defend himself by saying of having kept him at bay. This way of saving oneself anyhow, without committing oneself is exactly an image of the political acting, which is always threatening; yes, we do something, but in such a way as nobody may have the chance to criticise. This is a way of sailing with an extreme balance in between the two parties, without ever falling to compromises.

At a certain moment a woman enters and breaks all the formalities thus creating an enormous uneasiness for everybody. The appearance of this woman presupposes non only the fact that she knew of the Jesus' presence in the house of the Pharisee, but also that she had previously met him and had been left very much impressed by him, probably also forgiven. This can be deducted also from the use  Luke makes of  the verb in the perfect tense, afeontai ai amartiai autes ai pollai, oti egapesen polu,, "Your sins have been (in the past and continues in the present)  forgiven, because truly you have loved much".

The woman, in a gesture of public confession, makes towards Jesus such signs of affection, gratitude and veneration as nobody had thought of making. At this moment Jesus reveals an immense capacity of setting the positions upside down: with an opportune parable he makes all understand that the really embarrassed intruder, the one who has shown of not knowing how to behave, is actually Simon; the person,  instead, who has behaved in a way worthy of the situation, the true, really human person,  is the woman; it is she who has understood, it is she who has lived this reality.

The Pharisee in us - It is we who are Simon when we do not understand the situations, evaluating them according to external criteria, without making any effort to penetrate them: It is we who are Simon whenever we judge others unremittingly, thus creating so much suffering. Simon absolutely does not even think that the sinful woman might have a history: that she is a woman with problems, with anguish, perhaps never helped by anyone, a woman that could even have moments of rising from her sinful state. He doesn't even think that this woman is making an effort of commitment. According to Simon, this woman does not belong to the category of people who can become better.

Simon has not died: he lives in us, he lives in our community, in our society with his virtues, his nobility and even with his non- evangelical nobility and dullness, the presumption of wanting to dictate   laws to Jesus: if he knew, if he were truly a prophet! It is we who are Simon every time we, in a haste, judge the others instead of accusing and asking ourselves what is wrong in what we do.

Recognition and neighbourhood … without calculations - This woman does what she can and  she knows. She does it  with all her being, beyond the mere reasoning. What she does is surely excessive if seen in itself: it touches the limit of convenience. But she wants to express what

she thinks to have been missing and what Jesus actually deserves. She acts beyond any calculation. She has understood the transcendence of Christ for which nothing of what we do is ever enough: there are no rules or limits because the totality asks for totality!  The disconcerting thing is that this woman feels already forgiven the moment she comes to know of the arrival of Jesus, the moment she starts thinking of how to reach him, the moment she starts thinking of changing. In fact, she knows who she is before God, understands her own sin and wants to abandon it at any cost. But to succeed she needs to be welcomed,  she feels unable to come out of the situation all by herself. Thus, she goes to Jesus trustfully, since she feels already welcomed and forgiven.

This woman personifies the self-oblation. He who loves gives up all he possesses. This woman has her perfumed ointment, her own capacity of paying attention. With extreme simplicity she gives what she has, without thinking too much over it. Jesus, on his part, gives his appreciation, his attention, his favourable judgement, his acceptance in a particularly difficult time. There is an exchange of gifts. To donate means to communicate whatever we really possess, whether little or much. The gift is a declaration of importance. The woman who goes to the house of Simon, in fact, considers Jesus more important than her own reputation, than all the conveniences. Jesus considers the woman in her dignity, in her authenticity, more important than those who expect to be gratified by him and who would have criticised him: he exposes himself without minding the others.

The gift implies an unbalance, a risk! It enters and digs from the mystery of the person. The gift is something absolutely gratuitous and undeserved. The word that better expresses this gift is forgiveness, namely an utmost perfect gift, it is the gift of Jesus to the woman: "Your sins are forgiven".

To know of being forgiven generates the capacity of the gift: "…because you have loved much…". The Pharisee cannot share the dance of love because he has not shared the recognition of his sin! The sinful woman is in the optic of love. Simon is not: he is in the optic of formal religiosity. If we think of being close to God, in reality we are far from him, like Simon. To believe in God, indeed, is to discover how far we are from him, to have the courage of acknowledging our sins. The woman who was a sinner knows how to go out of her house in order to go towards a new life, trusting in a joyful relation of love. At the end Jesus says to the woman, "Your faith has saved you". By her love, the woman sets on a journey of faith, "Go in peace". Jesus grants to her the gift of the shalom, of a restored peace. No longer torment, fears, but the heart dilation, the experience of an encounter that changes her life.

I love you in you

"It was in August that I met him again. He was sitting in the shadow of a cypress, there in the garden …

I looked at him  and my soul thrilled, because he was beautiful …

Was it my loneliness or his fragrance that won me? Was it the hunger of my eyes longing for beauty? Or was it his beauty to seek the light in my eyes?

Even today, I would not be able to say it.

I moved towards him with my perfumed garments, with my golden sandals on, the sandals which had been donated to me by the Roman commander, these very sandals you can see. When I was before him, I said, "Good morning to you".

And he said, "Good morning to you, Miriam".

And he looked at me, and his night eyes looked at me as no other man had ever done before..

All of a sudden I was almost naked, and felt ashamed.

Yet he had just said, "Good morning to you".

The voice of the sea was in his words, as well as the voice of the wind and of the trees. When he pronounced them, life spoke to death.

Because, o my friend, I was dead, you must know it. I was a woman who had divorced from the soul.

I was living separated from this being that you now see, I belonged to all men, and yet to nobody.

Prostitute, they called me, a woman possessed by seven demons. I was cursed, and was envied. But when his eyes of dawn looked at my eyes, all the stars of my night faded away, and I became Miriam, only Miriam, a woman now lost for the earth she had known, and that had found herself in a different world.

He, then, looked at me, and the noonday of his eyes was on me, while he said, "You have many lovers, but I alone love you. When they are close to you, the others love themselves: I love you in you. Other men can see in you a beauty which will whither away before their own years. But I see in you a beauty that will never whither away, and in the autumn of your days this beauty will not fear to mirror itself, and will not know outrages.

I alone love the invisible in you".

Then he got up and looked at me just as I imagine the season from the height of the garden towards the field: he smiled. And said again, "All men love you for themselves. It is for you that I love you".

Then he left.

No other man ever walked as he did. Was it a breath from my garden, which blew towards the East?  Or was it a storm that would upset all things from their foundations!"

I did not know, then, but that day the setting of his eyes killed the dragon in me, and I became a woman, I became Miriam, Miriam o Mijde!".

(Kahlil Gibran, Jesus Son of God)

* Bishop of Caltanisetta : Biblist   and essayist