The useless superfluous

One day Jesus said that if we want the life that he gives us and if we want to follow him, we must know how to calculate well what our strengths are and how we can start the fight against temptations, against everything that distracts us from the purpose of living a life that is worth it.
He does not say this by suggesting that we accumulate strength, to seek guarantees of success or to seek powerful allies; on the contrary, he suggests that we strip ourselves as much as possible of riches that are not useful, of possessions that embarrass us on the journey, of ties that anchor us to a piece of land, taking away the freedom of the race and the fight necessary for the fight against everything that takes us away from the desired goal.
The example of David who, as a boy, shows up to fight the giant Goliath, and for this is dressed in armor worthy of apparently great battles, but who refuses everything to be freer and surprise the enemy with speed, teaches us a lot for our spiritual and human journey.
The Gospel teaches us, in fact, in all its pages, to seek this freedom from apparently powerful and safe things, to find instead in the decrease the strength to be ourselves and to be disciples of the Lord, the true master. And to fight with trust.

It is not a question of giving up what is truly useful to us, but of overcoming the anxiety of having, which deceives us, making us believe that, having a lot, we are more protected. Perhaps in the world's gaze this is true, but in the gaze of God it is the small, the weak who win the real battles: those against the evil that continues to threaten us.

We know how to look at the world, we see its wounds, its poverty, its deep wounds, but generally we do not know how to draw a true lesson from them; we limit ourselves to making judgments, perhaps to implicating ourselves in solidarity, but we do not always draw a lesson for our life. The parables of Jesus instead want to lead us to learn to read in the history of men the path that God traces to meet us and give us his life. We feel like we need the “new”, but in the end we don’t know what to do with it, because we soon know its uselessness. We should also know its harmfulness, because in seeking useless things we enter the circle of the need to free ourselves from such apparent goods and fill the world with “garbage”.
Only the essential makes us live, the rest drags us into the arms of sleep, decay, death. We only need to make a minimal move to discover with dismay how many useless things we thought we needed and that have been absorbed into oblivion.

All this leads us to reflect on how much the anxiety of having takes away our freedom, instead of giving it to us and, if we pay attention, we discover that every time we get rid of something kept as precious in any corner, we feel the breath of freedom within us.

Not all the world lives in waste; perhaps only a small part of it, but we have a great responsibility, because in waste we harm our brothers. If we step out of our circles and set foot in societies that are different from ours, it is to be hoped that we will blush with shame for how we live and how we treat the goods of this earth. Not only those of primary importance, but also a toy that we throw away can pose the question: why do you throw away? To get a new one? And what is the point? These questions must remain within us. They will save us.

Cesare Falletti
NP February 2025