The other part of the picture

There are many types of silence. One is the silence of those who have no words left in the face of the suffering that goes through the world. These are the moments when the darkness is so unbearable that it even takes your breath away, says Ernesto Olivero, sensitive as tissue paper. It is the silence of Aaron in chapter 10 of Leviticus: before the fire that devoured two of his sons, "Aaron was silent". It is the silence of someone who has no words left, petrified by pain, but also the silence of someone who, despite not understanding, declares his faith by accepting what he does not understand, because God's judgments are all faithful and just. We can ask ourselves a thousand questions in the face of suffering, but the answer cannot come to us now, says a rabbi from the last century, Joseph Soloveitchik. We are inside a picture of which we only see the detail that hurts us, the pain, but not the whole picture, which only God knows. This annihilated, unanswered silence is actually a question that God asks us: trust in the dark, your faith will give you the light to see, says Ernesto.

See what? Let us then try to move to the other side of the picture, because the divine-human Jesus, mysterious God and man like us, gives us the possibility, and we look at his silence full of pain. The prelude is already in chapter 54 of Isaiah: «For a brief moment I abandoned you... in a fit of anger I hid my face from you a little, but with everlasting affection I took pity on you». Sorry, Zion, I will never do it again, says God. Yet it is not God who has abandoned Zion, it is we who have abandoned him. But it is he who apologizes to us, takes our faults upon himself, loves us with an eternal love that wants to cover all our sins. Or in chapter 11 of Hosea: "How could I abandon you, Ephraim?... My heart is moved within me, my inmost being trembles with compassion." How do I get angry? I cannot: because I am God and not man, I am the Holy One among you, I cannot come to you with my anger.

In the gospels, God's pain melts into tears. Jesus cries for the death of Lazarus just as we cry when we feel halved by the loss of someone who has passed away. And here God is there, inside that desolate feeling of abandonment and he cries with us and for us. Jesus tells Nain's mother not to cry. Don't cry because I cry for you and resurrect your son. In front of Jerusalem Jesus weeps for the terrible days that will come upon her. He doesn't cry because the days of our history of evil will fall on him, who is here among us precisely to take them upon himself. He cries in pain because we didn't notice. Because we have not understood the gift that he wants to give us: he, the God who is poor and humble like the donkey he rides. He cries like the child in a great little rabbinical story, who plays hide and seek with another boy, but the boy doesn't go looking for him. The child runs to his grandfather in tears and the grandfather cries with him: «This is what God also says: I hide, but no one comes to look for me».


Flaminia Morandi
NP December 2023