Energy
An exemplification. Rescue groups find a man who was lost in the mountains after a two day search. The man was nearly frozen to death, had a broken leg, and was dehydrated when they found him. Taken to the hospital, he was cared for with great attention and, thanks be to God, the clinical exams confirmed that his health condition was satisfying: he was exhausted, dehydrated, worn out, but his vital functions were normal.
To compensate for the dehydration and to favor his recovery he was given a synthetic oil produced for the new generation of diesel engines to drink, a bowl of broth made from gasoline with small, selected, well-polished stones to eat together with soft filaments of jute rope. He was also given oxygen through a mask with particles of arsenic-contaminated dust to potentiate his repiratory function.
Unexplainably, the man died shortly thereafter due to unexpected complications.
Even if no one could question the love, dedication, care, and the attention given to rescuing and caring for that man, nonetheless dangerous, harmful substances not at all indicated for his metabolism were administered to him.
If the series of events described above were carried out in complete good faith it would have been no one’s fault, but the damage was certain and proven: the man died due to the very care that should have saved him.
If man does not nourish himself with appropriate energy, he dies and this is not blackmail: it is an objective, indisputabile, incontrovertibile fact. Man needs congruous energy to furnish himself with Energy to stay alive. He needs food, drink, and air full of energetic substances appropriate to his particular metabolism. If a man who is forced to take refuge inside a shelter due to a snow storm begins to eat the leather of his shoes, he will survive; but if that same man eats the soles of his shoes at his birthday party where all of his favorite foods are being served, it is dangerous madness.
That is how man’s spritual and affective dimension functions. The spirit and the heart need Energy for human beings to live happy and to be healthy; they need appropriate and not just any kind of Energy. It is not blackmail, as the mind could conclude, nor is a question of being worthy, as Peter seemed to think. It is, rather, a questtion of Energy - of appropriate Energy.
Jesus reveals to the world a fundamental piece of knowledge about existence without which ignorance, stupidity and death would reign sovereign.
House and everything that it represents such as attachments, preoccupations, ties, interests, past and future projects; brothers or sisters with all their emotional, social, hereditary implications; mother or father with all that they imply as far as relations, reponsibilities, ties, umbilical cords are concerned; chilldren with all their responsibility, planning, affectivity, relationship implications; or lands with all that they represent such as property riches, personal realization, work, economic security, goods management. All of these things Jesus says do not have appropriate Energy to offer man’s spirit and heart. No matter how beautiful, sacred, compelling, determining they are for human beings, these realities cannot furnish the spirit with even the smallest particle of appropriate Energy, and they are therefore perfectly useless. Are these realities wrong? Absolutely not, but precisely in view of their consititution they are only able to assorb Energy from the tank of the spirit/heart but are unable themselves to refurnish spiritual and cardiac fuel.
Now if man who is alienated, frightened, hungry, thirsty, spritually imprisoned nourishes himself with these realities he will survive one way or another. But when we wake up and we approach the metanoia, the change Jesus proposed, at that point the things of the world will be lived as realities that are indeed a part of our marvelous lives, but they will no longer be realities upon which we will invest all of our beings as they do not have appropriate energy to furnish our spirit. An hour of intimate adoration of Jesus in the Eucharistic bread will furnish more appropriate Energy than a professional commitment; an act of charity or of forgiveness will furnish more appropriate Energy than 50 years of affective ties; a selfless gesture of sharing and charity in the name of God will furnish more appropriate Energy than a lifetime of gestures carried out in the name of duty. The time spent in praying and studying with love and affection the word of Jesus in the attempt to put it into practice furnishes more aprpriate Energy than any type of school, course, meeting, affective tie, responsibility, preoccupation, job.
If, after having understood this marvelous truth, man continues voluntarily to eat only and solely the ties described above to have spiritual Energy, that can only be considered dangerous madness.
That is why Jesus says that those who have the courage to decentralize their lives with respect to those realities, and to center themselves on God and the realization of the Gospel, will be able to furnish themselves with such an elevated level of appropriate Energy as to have a hundred times more strength and energies in all the other aspects of their lives.
It is not by chance that Deuteronomy 6:5 literally recites: You will love the Lord, your God, with all of your heart-mind, with all of your soul-body and with all of the best of yourself (literal translation from the Hebrew text).