No flaunting, no showing off

IT’S quite intriguing that Christ would often tell the beneficiaries of his miracles to tell no one about them except to those who need to know. And in these cases, they were often told to go home or to the report to the priests. Obviously, many of these beneficiaries, deeply amazed at what they received from Christ, could not help but to proclaim to the whole world the great news about them.

We are reminded of this fact in that gospel where Christ was approached by a leper who was cured of his leprosy. (cfr. Mk 1,40-45) “See that you tell no one anything,” he told the cured leper, “but go, show yourself to the priest and offer for your cleansing what Moses prescribed; that will be proof for them.”

Although Christ performed miracles to show proof of his divinity and of his mission as mankind’s redeemer, something that should be worth publicizing everywhere, he must have wanted that everybody got to know about who he really was mainly through faith. The miracles were just peripheral items that would show his compassion more than anything else.

I believe that this way of acting of Christ was his way to telling us that he wanted to be known both as God and man, and as our Redeemer, not out of idle curiosity or for merely practical purposes, but rather really out of faith. We need to know him as he is even if we do not receive any special favors from him.

This detail in Christ’s behavior somehow tells us also that we should try to pass unnoticed while doing a lot of good. We should avoid flaunting and showing off the good deeds we do. We should avoid attracting glory to ourselves, since all the glory belongs to God. “Deo omnis gloria.”

Our problem often is that our belief in Christ is often corrupted by merely human motives. It’s not faith, but some mixture of idle curiosity and other practical purposes that make us follow him.

And when these idle curiosity and practical purposes would already have their fill, or worse, are not met as expected, then that belief in Christ falls apart. The apostles themselves were not exempt from this phenomenon. Many times, Christ would lament over their lack of faith.

Same with the crowd. Those who welcomed him at his entry to Jerusalem were also those who shouted, “Crucify him” a little later.

Christ wants us to approach him with faith. He wants us to consider the spiritual and supernatural character of his life that should also be reflected in ours. He does not want us to get stuck with his merely material, natural and human aspects.

Not that these material, natural and human aspects are bad or are a hindrance in our proper attitude toward Christ. They are important and indispensable, but they should conduct us to, not prevent us from knowing his real nature and role he plays for us. These aspects should in fact help us to enter into the very life of Christ who is both God and man.

But given our wounded human condition, prone to see only the partial and the immediate and to miss the whole picture, Christ must have been playing it discreetly when performing those marvellous miracles of his. He was careful that his work would nourish the faith of the people, and not just to meet their immediate needs.