The cure
Who is forcing Matthew to sit and the tax collectors’ desk? Tradition? Prestige? Duty? No, what is keeping Matthew nailed to that desk and that life is avidity. Who generates avidity? It is generated by the ego. It is Matthew’s ego who’s keeping him behind the bars of his avidity and chained to the tax desk. What is keeping the Pharisees stuck in the tradition’s and laws’ labyrinth, nailed to their chairs? Religion? Justice? The love for God? No, what is keeping then forever trapped in the eddy of their prejudices is their thirst of power. And who generates the thirst of power? The ego does. The Pharisees’ ego keeps them chained to their chairs and their prejudices. And the sick people, who are they? And the healthy ones? The sick ones are those who do not want to get rid of their ego, the healthy ones are those who want, with all their strength, to be free from their ego. Jesus is clear. He did not come for the ones who do not recognize in themselves the ego’s lordship and arrogance and do not wish to get rid of that. Jesus is the most powerful and skilled doctor for the ego’s pathologies, He is the most effective and winning medicine against the ego’s poisoning. There is no cure in the world, in heaven and on earth, more powerful than Jesus’ word and His evangelical procedures. Jesus can heal man from any disease, because He is able, first of all, to relief man from the pressure, deception, distortions, disharmony coming from the ego. Jesus proposes his cure: I desire mercy, not sacrifice. Jesus’ cure is love, distilled love in the form of mercy, the mercy of compassion and understanding. The ego lives and feeds on ambition, in any form, and ambition can be everything and in everything, but the subtlest and more dangerous kind is the one of the vanity than comes from feeling right before duty, law and God. It is that perverse and absurd ambition that pushes man to sacrifice himself to feel righteous, superior, appropriate to circumstances, correct and honest, suitable, impartial, lawful, legitimate, moral, regular, corresponding, precise, well adjusted, spot on, conform, uniform, worthy. Ambition phagocytes law to create injustice, becomes strong with belonging while preaching equality, feeds on morals until it seeds division and misery, engulfs duty until it spreads its dominion and power. I desire mercy, not sacrifice, this is Jesus cure for any economical, social, political crises, this is the gospel’s drug against desperation and fear epidemics, God the Lord’s medicine for man’s misery and fear. I desire mercy, not sacrifice, this wins ambition and disarms the ego, whichever space it has taken in man’s heart and spirit. Mercy to be asked to God, for the monstrosity of the damages our ego did to our common and personal goods, to earth and all the living beings; mercy to be offered to our brothers for all the wounds their ego inflicted to our being and our heart. I desire mercy, not sacrifice, this is Jesus’ cure for who wants to heal.