Gnòsis
Woe to you, scholars of the law! You have taken away the key of knowledge. You yourselves did not enter and you stopped those trying to enter, literally: woe to you, scholars of the law, who have taken away [Greek: àiro] the key of knowledge [Greek: klèida tès gnòseos]: you did not enter and prevented [Greek: kolùo] the ones who were entering. One thing is certain: the scholars of the law, the theologians of the Torah, the most observant and religious ones, the rabbis, the teachers who were studying and teaching the Scriptures, did not embrace knowledge, they did not know and do not know wisdom, they did not participate in His grace, nor did they intellectually enjoy His light or honour His divine beauty. No knowledge or wisdom came from them; the knowledge and the wisdom revealed in chapter six of The Book of Wisdom that they should have offered to humanity as the intellectual and cardiac foundation for building life, cities, an economy, wellbeing, evolution and man’s progress as God desired.
The verb used in the Greek text to describe what the scholars of the law did, “take, take away”, is àiro, “take away, get rid of, eliminate, destroy; lift, lift up, hook, hang; pick up, take away, kill; be in charge, take on the shoulders, undertake”. The Akkadian etymology ba’aru means “get hooked, ensnare”. Klèida tès gnòseos or “key of knowledge” is a very peculiar expression, but what does it mean? What does key of gnosis means? Gnòsis is knowledge; it means not only an intellectual but also an intuitive activity, because it means understanding, it is the intelligence applied for the purpose of attaining truth. Gnòsis, biblically, is a penetrating, effective knowledge, it is entering into unity with a reality, entering into it to become part of it. Leading to gnosi means setting man free from the greatest, most powerful halter which is strangling man’s mind and life: ignorance. Waking up the gnosi means liberating man from fear and confusion, from the slavery of not being able to perceive what is vital and what is mortal by oneself. Knowledge that does not lead to social freedom and, at the same time, from freedom from disease and death, is not knowledge. Gnosi which does not generate happiness is not gnosi, it is not wisdom coming from God. Woe to you, scholars of the law! You have taken away the key of knowledge. You yourselves did not enter and you stopped those trying to enter. Woe to you, said Jesus to those ones, because they got humanity in serious trouble, because for thousands of years they snatched from the hand and heart of people the key of knowledge which could have opened the gates of happiness and peace. Those people have stolen and hidden the key of happiness from the world, as if it were one of their personal goods, and they used it only to their advantage, completely denying it to humanity. The enemy of gnosi is spiritual ignorance, and spiritual ignorance cannot be overcome by academic or theological knowledge, or by continuous arguments, but only and solely by loving contact with God, and by trying to practice the evangelical procedures. Nothing better than a silence pregnant with love before God can reveal reality and overcome the ignorance of the spirit and the mind.
One day Peter received the key, the key of the kingdom of heaven, with the task of using it to open the gates of a wonderful, serene life, already here on this earth, and to prepare every man for the encounter with the heaven’s endless life. The scholars of the law had the same task but, instead of offering it to the world, they smuggled away the key of knowledge; they did not use it and they prevented others from using it.