“MORE THAN ME”

The prerequisite for discipleship is love for Christ; a love that goes beyond the authority of family ties (father, mother, son, daughter), beyond the expectations, authority, and moral and religious obligations of the family, and even beyond oneself. This love extends all the way to the cross, simply because it is a radical love and therefore involves effort, struggle, and hardship. And all this in view of Christ, as we were saying, and therefore of a true, full life, in which the ordo amoris then educates us in the authenticity of relationships toward the Highest and the other, toward God and humanity. Certainly, not without the death of oneself, of one’s own selfishness, as we also read in rabbinic literature: “What must a man do to live? Kill himself. And what must he do to die? Give life to himself” (Tamid 66a). It must be said that Jesus was a truly original rabbi. Of those who wished to follow him, he asked them to leave everything behind, to live in community, to enter into a relationship of friendship, of sharing, and of full participation in God’s plan. What was striking was the priority he gave to the marginalized, then elevating them—something truly unusual—to the status of the blessed (makàrioi). What kind of happiness was he speaking of? That of those who are happy because of their own achievements (in classical Greek, makàrios was used in reference to war heroes). In short, he implied that beatitude is actively earned and is not merely a recognition bestowed from above. While the poorest began to smile, the middle classes began to sigh, and the powerful began to fear. Indeed, those words that resounded in Galilee reached—as a powerful echo—Judea, all the way to Jerusalem, into the halls of the religious and political establishment. To those who watched him with curiosity (among them Nicodemus, an important member of the Sanhedrin), he demonstrated, without any weapon or army, the subversion of the powers that be. These, however, would take their revenge on him by hanging him one day on a cross. And on Golgotha, a bare, treeless hill, a new tree sprouted, one that no botanical book had ever cataloged. It was thought, even among the close circle of his disciples, that that death was the final word on that curious rabbi from Nazareth. But it was not so, for they saw him risen. And first of all the women, the least trustworthy in that separatist and strongly patriarchal culture. But those who had been with him understood that love cannot die, that love triumphs over death. It was a light from above. And things were never the same again, for from petty and self-serving disciples they became witnesses to a new humanity. This is where the “more” that Christ asks of us today leads us.

Commentary by d. Sandro Carotta, osb
Abbazia di Praglia (Italia)