The poor – but every person is poor – can live only if they are accepted. The apostle needs acceptance because he has made himself poor out of love. Love implies the need to be loved: in the same way that it gives everything, it also receives everything from the others, even its very self. The apostle, wherever he may enter, doesn’t impose culture, habits or ideas. He is free in order to witness, on behalf of everybody, to what is necessary: to be welcomed and to welcome. His lifestyle is so beautiful and humane – the only one that is beautiful and humane! – that it is divine. He doesn’t crave for wealth, power and prestige. He only carries Jesus’ Good News: God is Father, not master. And we are called to be what we are: children and brethren. This is the only life that can be viable and makes of every limitation, even an extreme one, a place of compassion and communion.
The poverty of the cross, God’s foolishness and weakness, is love’s wisdom and strength: it freely “compels” the other to accept – as we do with a child whose life is entrusted to the adult who meets him.
The one who is sent, like the Son of Man, puts himself into the hands of people: he has the cunning of the God of love who makes Himself small in order to be welcomed. If I introduce myself by means of wealth and violence, I “provoke” (i.e. call-out) a craving for wealth and violence in others. They will admire and hate me. If they can, they will destroy me. If not, they will take me for their model, in order to become like me: free to colonize as I am colonized. If I am poor, I will “provoke” in others acceptance.
The apostle does not perform good deeds like the various NGOs (that, in some extreme cases, can also create false expectations and spoil the people’s dignity). He only carries the poverty of his love. Those who welcome him are already “evangelized”: they have become God’s children because they have welcomed the apostle as a brother.
“Whatever house” – For us people, the house is not like an animal den: it is a place of relationships, love or selfishness, joy or unhappiness, life or death.
“You enter” – The messenger is a poor person. He enters at the other’s not in order to impose himself, but because he loves him as a brother. Love is a guest: it lives where it is welcomed. In our life, we are all guests: we live because we are loved by others. Hospitality is always mutual: to accept is to surrender ourselves; our surrender is when we accept and welcome others.
“First say” – In relationships, the primacy belongs to the words by which I communicate myself to the others.
“Peace” – The messenger proclaims what his host has already done: he has obtained peace, he has entered the Kingdom. In fact, by welcoming the messenger as a brother, he has become God’s son: he is like the Father who welcomes all. The further proclamation and the “narrative” of Jesus’ story will be for him “the mirror of the Word,” that makes him know God’s true face and his own.
“Whenever you enter a town” – The witness enters what is private and what is public: brotherly relationships have value both for the home and for the city. Even in the public realm, the witness doesn’t behave as a master, but as a guest, accommodating himself to others’ lifestyle, on tiptoes so as not to disturb.
“And they receive you” – Every culture, remaining what it is, is called to live out fraternity.
“Eat what is set before you” – Food is, at the same time, sustenance and lifestyle: it is “nature and culture.” The apostle lives the same way as those who host him, “eating” everything. This is inculturation. Good and evil are not in the things: good is what we live in the freedom of loving, evil is what we live in the slavery of egoism (Cf. Acts 10:1ff and 1 Corinthians 9:1ff). “What is set before you” is a Eucharistic offering: everything is pure, God’s gift, object of a Eucharist.
“Heal the sick” – Making ourselves the same as the rest, we are taking care of them. The infirm are no more falling or creeping: they stand erect in their dignity in front of God and their brothers and sisters. © Popoli – www.popoli.info
