Our History in His History
Simone Riva - Often, engaging in a thousand activities makes us forget our origins—Christ alive and present—the permanent meaning of our work. But He waits for us and surprises us.
The hike in the mountains is challenging. We're on our way back, immersed in the breathtaking landscape of one of the most beautiful valleys in the Orobie Alps. In the distance, the bleating of a huge flock of sheep is drowned out only by the sharp whistles of the shepherds, a mysterious language instantly understood by their dogs, who direct the sheep toward the top of the mountain.
A single sheep resists and won't move. She just gave birth to a dead lamb. No call can make her rejoin the rest of the flock, which has moved away in the meantime. Suddenly, the dogs stop surrounding her, and the shepherd, interrupting his climb, stops and sits down to wait. Our path passes through the middle of the scene, and everyone stops in amazement.
One cannot help but think of that ancient passage, unfortunately often clouded by sentimentality, in which Jesus describes the Father's merciful heart: "Which one of you, if he has a hundred sheep and loses one, does not leave the ninety-nine in the desert and go in search of the lost one until he finds it? When he finds it, he is filled with joy and carries it on his shoulders, goes home, calls his friends and neighbors, and says to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost’" (Lk 15:5–6).
The desert in which one can get lost can take on various connotations, including that of pain. But the protagonist isn't the desert. When we come across that scene, at a certain point, everyone's gaze shifts from the painful bleating of the sheep to the shepherd to see what he will do. And him? He sits waiting. Never has waiting seemed so tense to everyone: on the one hand, the whole large flock walking toward the summit; on the other, a single sheep fiercely close to its lifeless lamb.
There is no effective move except waiting—and often dramatic waiting, as intensely expressed by Alda Merini in her poem, "Ti aspetto" ("I wait for you"): “I wait for you and every day / I fade away little by little / and I have forgotten your face. / They ask me if my despair / is equal to your absence / no, it is something more: / it is a gesture of certain death / that I cannot give you.”
How far removed from the mania of doing and scheming, of being noticed and recognized, of always coming out on top, described in today's Gospel: “We ate and drank in your presence, and you taught in our streets” (Lk 13:26). As if to say: “What, you didn't notice us? We were always in the front row so as not to miss a word, and we repeated what you said to everyone we met…”
“You, I don't know where you are from” (Lk 13:27) is the reply they hear. “I noticed you very well: you lost your origins along the way. You have involved yourselves in a thousand undertakings, but you have hesitated to offer me your ‘fixed death’; you have forgotten that you are the first in need, believing that I would not wait for you, content with the ninety-nine sheep.” With all their zeal, they are even called “workers of injustice” and invited to go away.
What loyalty to oneself is needed to admit that one has even forgotten His face, asking Him to use this forgetfulness for His work, as only He knows how to do. This radical dependence builds more than many words because it allows us to move in a truly original way, amazed at the method of the Shepherd who is always waiting and who isn't discouraged when he sees us as persistent procrastinators, because, as Leo XIV reminds us in his Message for the Rimini Meeting taking place these days, “God chose the humble, the little ones, the powerless, and from the womb of the Virgin Mary, He made Himself one of them, to write His story in our history.”
Seized by this story, every recovery is always possible; every forgetfulness is filled by His waiting; every construction is solid and without need of the “protectors” of the moment.
