Decisive Encounters. Roberto Badenas
Within him resonates the echo of the words of the fugitive patriarch:
“Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it.” 18
And he tells himself, without saying it, what many others who have been discovered by him have said to themselves:
“Christ saw me under the fig tree. He knows far more about me than I do, far more than I could learn from psychoanalysis.19
And it is that the Teacher has the rare capacity to see beyond appearances, to detect the presence of the divine in the human and the celestial in the quotidian. With Him, you learn to see the old things through new eyes, and to stop seeing the new things with the same old eyes. His strange capacity for love permits Him to discern radiant butterflies in the most ugly caterpillars and admirable saints in unworthy sinners. Because to really love “is to see the beauty that exists in the heart of the other person.”20
There are Teachers who teach by guiding their students like horses: step by step. The majority of us need to be guided like that, respecting our pace. There are others who teach by promoting the good that they find in the disciple, encouraging him to advance and grow, because we all learn better when we are encouraged. The new Teacher educates in both ways: keeping in step with everyone, and motivating each one, stimulating any progress with honesty.
The Teacher is further able to understand the dreams of His potential disciples. That is why He can dream of them as they are not yet and imagine the reality they can turn into. He knows that a human being grows when aware of being dreamt about.21
Therefore, these young men, like so many others who will follow, by sharing among themselves the new perspectives that their encounter with Jesus adds to their lives, gradually spread their invitation to follow Him and, little by little, cause the small group of disciples to grow. With such enthusiastic spokespersons, the work of the unusual Teacher increasingly spreads, accepting men and women where they are, just as they are, and step by step transforming them into new beings, full of incredible possibilities.
Like Nathanael, we each have our own discernments, some of them false. It is difficult for us to understand that God may propose different paths than those we know. For that reason, The Teacher baffles with the apparent simplicity of His approach.
We all tend to admire the extraordinary, the great accomplishments of humanity, the great figures from history.22At the same time, as it is clear that we cannot all be first in everything, and very few can bring to fruition their delusions of grandeur, the vast majority condemn ourselves to fitting into the category of the “masses.” This reality appears to have triggered defense mechanisms in an infinite number of human beings, which keep them in what the classicists called aurea mediocritas23 and that could be translated as “Apology of the acceptable.”
Across all societies economic hardships, ignorance, life’s injustices, the challenge of studying certain careers or finding interesting work undermines the natural optimism of childhood and the idealism of adolescence. As youth gradually passes and adulthood becomes complicated, circumstances lead the discouraged to avoidance, resignation or inhibition, often producing lives that are routine, conformist, disillusioned—doomed to failure.
Invariably, many young people quickly lose their most legitimate ambitions, as it pertains to the sphere of study, work or personal success as well as to the spiritual realm of ideals and values.24 In all areas of existence, the prevailing inertia is to be content with mediocre results or to justify them.25 Not committing, not daring to try anything new because of convenience, because of fear of exerting effort or fear of ridicule, acquiescing to the “push and pull” between improvisation and despondency, when so many could attain a highly motivating reality with a bit of effort and more will.
That’s where Jesus sets Himself apart from other Teachers.26 It is true that He preaches a simple and modest lifestyle, but He arouses noble aspirations and teaches a profound philosophy of existence. He radiates “a hidden power, which cannot be wholly concealed.”27 Even His enemies must confess that “No one ever spoke the way this man does.” 28
If there is something that is made clear to his followers, it is his desire that they achieve excellence:
What do you do that is extraordinary? — He will ask his disciples demonstrating that He does not settle for little. He even dares to encourage them to be “perfect,” that is, to develop the innumerable possibilities pulsing in their beings!29
This is how He transforms their lives, demonstrating that they are capable, and what they can become if they let in the power of divine grace.
Since the start of his ministry, the Teacher calls young and even younger people to turn their ordinary lives into extraordinary lives. To change that mediocre existence of which they do not feel satisfied, for something grand, noble and beautiful. By calling them to follow Him, He invites them to enroll in a mission committed, consecrated to a great cause. His calling removes them from their routine reality and casts them to a fabulous, risky, intense, difficult, even heroic adventure in which there is no room for either meaninglessness or superficiality.
Those who follow Jesus soon stop being ordinary citizens. His example stirs in the depths of their beings the answer to the call from the ideal, and, in that way, those young people will soon be willing to continue the impassioned journey initiated by Him.30 By giving meaning to their existence, Jesus gives their ordinary lives an extraordinary dimension.
The Teacher senses that His ministry on this earth may be very brief. For that reason, He experiences it in such an intense way. After having spent His youth as a carpenter31 building homes to dwell in, plows to cultivate the land and yokes to share the loads, He now has set His mind, as an educator, on building a more inhabitable world, devising new tools to cultivate hearts, and searching for more united ways of sharing human hardships.
Since not entirely pleased about the manner in which the majority of people live their spirituality in the religious community they were born into, He decides, rather than abandoning it, as most who are dissatisfied do, to do something infinitely better, but much easier, in other words, gradually build together with His followers a new community, which he decides to call His “church.”32
The representatives of the clergy and the leaders of the country mutter:
Do not listen to him. This carpenter is not qualified. He is an ignorant megalomaniac.
He does not know what he does.
But He does not become disheartened for He knows that, when someone decides to do something important, He must face the opposition of those who would have wanted to do the same—but do not venture to take the risks—with the criticism of those in support of something different, and above all, with the resistance of those who never do anything.
At the beginning, He relies on nothing more than His own support and already has close to 30 followers. But the passion of those first disciples won over for His cause is so infectious that they themselves gradually extend the invitation to others.
When He decides to start building the community of believers with which He dreams, the Teacher makes it very clear that He does not want to establish a religion, but a school. He already has a true religion: it is the one God has revealed. Now He wants to teach for the purpose of putting it into practice. The essence of his doctrine can be formulated in a pair of sentences:
A pure and unblemished religion in the eyes of God consists of tending to the needy in their straits and not allowing itself to be contaminated by the world.33 Or, said in a different way: being a good believer consists of living in communion with God, and in treating fellow man with the empathy and solidarity with which one would like to be treated in his circumstances.34
To Him, spirituality and education have a common objective: to teach to think, to teach to be, to teach to live and, consequently, to teach to coexist; that is, to teach to love.35
This courageous reformer has many innovative ideas and very few prejudices. For that reason He accepts in His team young and