Will is power, says an ancient proverb and, in this case, it is not wrong: if we were capable of recovering the impetus of the first Christians, if only we if we learned to cherish that little seed that is hope, then we would be capable of accomplishing great, very great things.
My (usual) comment to:
Go into all the world and proclaim the Gospel (Mark 16,15-20)
Reading these lines from Saint Mark we cannot help but tremble. Impossible things are written there (at least things that in our times we consider impossible). Had Christ really granted his disciples the ability to heal the sick, the possibility of being immune to poisons, the gift of communicating in unknown languages, the power to cast out demons? According to the Gospel and the testimonies of the first Christians, yes. Do you think they are falsehoods or literary devices? I assure you not. Not in this case. This Gospel is truly authentic and recounts facts also witnessed in other texts. So why is no one nowadays capable of equaling the works of the first disciples?
Saint Mark gives us the explanation: «These will be the signs that will accompany those who believe: in my name they will cast out demons, they will speak new languages, they will take serpents in their hands and, if they drink any poison, it will not harm them; they will lay hands on the sick and they will recover” (vv. 17-18). These are the signs that will accompany those who believe. Believe. This is the root of the problem. Will is power, says an ancient proverb and, in this case, it is not wrong: if we were capable of recovering the impetus of the first Christians, if only we if we learned to cherish that little seed that is hope, then we would be capable of accomplishing great, very great things.
We have lost the ability to believe, we have lost the desire to dream and we are even losing the possibility of living a happy existence. Because the darkness of evil is attempting to envelop the entire world, plunging it into a period of darkness. But we must not give up believing in a great truth: not praevalebunt. The gates of Hell will not prevail (see Matthew 16,17-19). Darkness will not come, but light is and will always be capable of triumphing.
Digging deeper we realize that alongside our disbelief there is another reason: our boundless narcissism. We are so full of ourselves that we no longer find room for God. We believe that “superpowers” are our innate abilities. We are convinced that the fate of the world and perhaps even that of the entire universe depends on us. Nothing could be more wrong. It is not we who have supernatural abilities, but it is God himself who works through us: “Then they went out and preached everywhere, while the Lord acted together with them and confirmed the Word with the signs that accompanied it” (v. 20). It is God-with-us who acts within us and, through us, allows miracles to happen. This also happens with the saints who we pray to obtain some grace: the miracle is not their direct work, but they are always a means of God’s action, a sort of bridge that brings God closer to man, which facilitates his action. .
Therefore we must believe. Believing that God is beside us and, if necessary, he intervenes in our lives and in those of our family, friends and colleagues through us. Because that’s how miracles happen.
If I haven’t bored you yet, let’s discover together the third level of reading this Gospel passage: “Go into all the world and proclaim the Gospel to every creature” (see v. 15). When we have rediscovered this faith that will allow us to bend existence to ensure that even the impossible can happen, when we have understood that this ability is not our “skill”, but that it depends solely on God, then we will still be entitled to a task: to sow hope. Make ourselves a mirror of that immense light that is God and chase away the darkness from the world. Because darkness is nothing more than the absence of light and, when good comes, even the deepest darkness dissolves.
Source: La Buona Parola, Alessandro Ginotta’s blog https://www.labuonaparola.it
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