June 28
Mt 10, 37-42
Matthew seems to gather, in this text, a series of aphorisms, not so much coming from Jesus, as created by his own community. Among them, the paradox that he raises about losing/finding life is especially striking.
In a concise form, it could be explained in this way: we lose Life when we identify ourselves with —and reduce ourselves to— life, that is, when we confuse our personality with our identity, when we absolutize the self, ignoring our profound truth.
Precisely in this consists our first and radical ignorance: the original ignorance to which the renowned anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss referred when he wrote: “The human being thinks itself separated. This is the true original sin that pushes humanity to self-destruction”. Another way of expressing our paradox: identification with the self leads to our self-destruction; we find Life to the extent that we are capable of seeing beyond the self.
Life is not something we have; it is what we are. What we “have” is only a concrete, temporal and impermanent form, in which the Life that we are expresses and unfolds itself. Existence passes; Life remains. On the path to recognize and live the passage from one to the other, we count on the light of our profound Longing, the sure guide that brings us to the truth of what we are.
Enrique Martínez Lozano
(Weekly Newsletter)