Decisive Encounters. Roberto Badenas

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      He must be the one sent by God, the one promised by the prophets. He is called Jesus, that is, “savior,” although people know him as “the Nazarene,” because he is the son of Joseph, the carpenter from Nazareth.

But his friend Nathanael,11 with a rough frankness typical of him, replies with a mocking gesture of mistrust:

Another Messiah? Do you not think that we already have enough disappointments? What’s more, can something good come out of Nazareth?12 How can you believe in a Galilean “savior?” Look in Scripture and you will see that no prophet ever comes out of Galilee.13

      Nathanael is an idealist, committed and serious. But even the best believers have prejudices and run the risk of being mistaken.

      Philip is hurt by his friend’s doubts, but he has no arguments to dispel them. Because he greatly cares for Nathanael, he foregoes discussing the subject with him. Convinced of its truth, he resorts to the only irrefutable reasoning, the same that was maintained by the Teacher with His first disciples, and that since then would be the principal argument of His recruitment campaign:

Come and see. Get out from under your fig tree, and follow me to Him. Convince yourself.14

      Nathanael follows him half-heartedly.

Upon meeting Jesus, his disillusionment is confirmed. The demeanor and attire of the young rabbi does not go together with the idea that he has formed about such an important figure as the Messiah. He even finds it difficult to see in Him a Teacher worthy of trust. There, he only sees a mere traveler, dressed as they are, with the humble attire of poor people.15

      But when Jesus observes Nathanael, who approaches him reticently, flaunting skepticism and self-sufficiency, he tells him with an intriguing smile:

      “Well, if it is not clear to you that I am not even a good Jew, I see you as a true Israelite, in whom there is no deceit.”

      It is like telling him:

      “I like your sincerity and frankness. But don’t trust appearances too much.”

      Surprised by these words, Nathanael exclaims:

      From where do you know me?

      The Teacher is very observant. It is not common to catch a young man praying. Healthy young people prefer to presume to be skeptical than devout. Jesus likes sincere and brave young people; that is why he confesses a small secret to him:

      “Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you. I immediately noticed what you were doing.”

      Nathanael blushes. His modesty prevents him from revealing his spirituality. He also feels that his heart cannot hide anything from the Teacher’s piercing glance. He is ashamed of his foolishness and of his unfounded prejudices. He now senses that his friend Philip could be right.

      Soon, after observing Jesus more closely and listening to His words, a strange certainty, as coming from heaven, enlightens his mind, and nudges him to confess:

      —“You must be the Son of God, the awaited king of Israel.”

      And Jesus replies, radiant, happy to have found a disciple so full of potential as that one:

      —“You believe because I told you that I saw you under the fig tree? You will see greater things than these. I promise you that from now on, if you know where to look, you will see heaven open and the angels of God descend and ascend on us.”

      Which is equivalent to saying: “my presence will put you in direct contact with heaven.”

Do you remember the story of our father Jacob? Fleeing from threats made by his brother, he found himself lost in a strange land, burdened by his anxiety, far from everything he loved. But God was there, with him, in the midst of his solitude, because he never leaves us. I assure you that here today, next to this fig tree, if your eyes of faith were to open, you could also see heaven open, and a direct path that takes us to the throne of the universe. If you open wide the eyes of your soul “you will see that the heavens are open and never close.”16Any place where God is sought is a Bethel, “house of God and gate of heaven.”17

      Nathanael, like Jacob in his flight, also believes to awaken from the torpor of a dream to a new reality in which the divine, what seems to be most inaccessible, is found, thanks to the Teacher, within reach of a heartbeat. 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, СКАЧАТЬ