In the dark cloud

Hope is dead. This is what they say in many Christian communities who measure the pulse of their adherents' faith live. Hope died after two years of pandemic, followed by a war in Eastern Europe, on our doorstep. Yet there were pandemics in the world even before: in 2014 Ebola in Congo and Sudan, with a mortality between 50% and 90%, in 2009 swine flu, in 2003 SARS, since 1981 HIV , never finished, which has so far killed about 25 million people and for which a real cure has never been found, only the possibility of reducing the viral load.

What about wars? Last March 59 were counted, of which, according to the ACLED (Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project) ten could get worse: in Ethiopia, Yemen Sahel, Nigeria, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Sudan, Haiti, Colombia, Myanmar. The death of hope in many Western Christians seems to be the answer to a dangerous situation close and full of threats, identified with the silence of God. For many it resembles his absence.

God is silent, does not intervene, seems indifferent to the prayers multiplied by fear. God does not show himself as a Father who runs to the rescue of his children, as human mothers and fathers do. But if hope fades at night, perhaps we need to question our faith. On the shore of the Red Sea, faith is represented by the cloud that separates the children of Israel from the Egyptian army. A black cloud, which precisely because of its darkness illuminates the night (Ex 14:20). Darkness, silence.
On his journey to Rome and to the martyr's death that awaits him, Saint Ignatius of Antioch, first century, writes that salvation is in faith in Jesus and in love for Jesus, "the Word that came out of the silence of God". Only those who continue to believe in darkness and silence can decipher the secret word of the inner master who is Jesus. His silence is as powerful as his word: «Whoever has the Word of Jesus inside is capable of understanding his silence ».

And Origen, writing to Ambrose in Milan, insists on Jesus' silence: «Jesus condemned, is silent. And do we have to talk about it?” With the radicalism that characterizes him, he distinguishes three categories of believers: the first, the inedible fish, which quickly slip out of the Church's net, the second, the good fish which stop at the literal sense of the Scriptures, the third, the fish which go beyond the literal sense, beyond the dark, beyond the silence: and they are transformed into spiritual beings.
It is a Gnostic vision, it is true, but it has something to tell us. What do we want by looking for Jesus? As Jesus anxiously asks especially in the Gospel of John: what are you really looking for? The bread? The solution to your problems? The carreer? Why are you following me? Only twice does he ask “who” you are looking for, not “what” you are looking for. To the soldiers who come to arrest him, and to a woman. In both cases, to someone who seeks him and only him, out of hate or out of love for the Truth about God. And he, with his silence crying out his faith in us, awaits our response.


Flaminia Morandi
NP December 2022