Change the way
Why did Pilate kill all those pious men while they were sacrificing animals in the temple in celebrations time, why did he mingle their blood with the one of their sacrifices? And the ones killed when that tower fell on them, why them? And why under the tower? Why the evil? Why misfortunes, hunger, wars, casualties? Who’s responsible? God, destiny, accidents, fate, misfortune, chance? By no means! But I tell you, if you do not repent, you will all perish as they did! literally: No, I tell you, but if you do not change thoughts you will all die the same way. Jesus’ answer is crystal clear. Jesus is very clear and there are no possible interpretations: it all depends on the way we think, that is why Jesus gently invites us to change it.
It is the way we think that steers events, creates situations, starts actions and reactions’ chains that can bring either favourable or unfavourable results for man’s life. Thinking that we are having a hard time in our life means not only that we wish that time to be difficult, but also to remain difficult. Thinking about an exam with anxiety is like wishing it to go wrong, it is like wishing that we will be asked questions we are not able to answer, it is setting up some muscular contraction in our face muscles, a sad look, a depressed gait, an unlucky tone of voice. It is the way we think that reveals the way we wish, the way we have faith, the way we believe.
Reading the horoscope is like wishing that a person we do not even know, writing in a magazine, in some other city, will be able to steer our life, our interests, our affections with his perfectly random rubbish.
Which kind of life could result from spending so much passion, thoughts, desires, money in making our favourite football club win? Which kind of wellbeing, wealth, quality of life can possibly come from wishing someone else’s victory, wealth, happiness? What happens is that millions of people live in a state of misery and distress to pay millions of euros to make someone else play chasing a ball, getting rich, living in fabulous villas and tasting life in utter wellbeing. It is a cosmic stupidity.
God wishes with all his heart that we may be happy, and in turn we spend all our life wishing and trying not to delude someone else’s expectations. Could we ever be happy this way?
Trying to become rich winning the lottery is a certain kind of wish, it is wishing to not ever be in charge of one’s own life, it is wishing to not be in touch at all with one’s own way of building one’s own happiness, it is wishing not to participate at all in one’s own wellbeing. How we think is very important, it is absolutely fundamental.
Wishing to live in wellbeing and joy does not mean a life full of surrogate and hedonistic gratification. Desire has meaning and power if it is directed towards wholeness, if it is in harmony with the direction of the all and the One, if it is according to the desires of God.
Wishing to live in wellbeing and joy means changing the way we think, it is thinking according to God who wants us beautifully busy and happy in this amazing and beautiful world where everything is rich, gratuitous and lust. It is speaking a grateful interior dialogue in every occasion in life, even when things do not go the way we wish. Being always endlessly grateful to life even through failures and difficulties shows us how things go exactly according to the power, the grace, the divine nature of our thoughts. Immensely grateful to life and to God Father’s Providence that give us always new chance and time to learn to make our wishes greater and more powerful, our faith doubtless. Immensely grateful to the grace of the Holy Paraclete that moment by moment is preparing us, training us, teaching us to change our thoughts and our heart to be ready to wish every good for this earth, because only if we really wish it the Father will be able to fill us with every kind of good. Immensely grateful to Jesus who, even when he cannot find any good fruit in us, he insists not to cut down the tree, even if it seems a useless tree, he rather insists with patience and tenderness to cultivate, water, feed the field of our wishes and of our thinking.