Today we started reading the letter of James, one of the seven so-called “Catholic” letters. Catholic, in the Greek language, means universal. This letter is addressed to the Church dispersed or rather disseminated throughout the world. The presence of Christians in different places is sowing and producing fruit everywhere. The letter of James is a pastoral letter and therefore deals with many spiritual themes with which a spiritual retreat could be preached.

I dwell only on the first theme, the first we find that of all joy. St. James affirms that we experience perfect, full joy in trials because when faith is tested, it produces steadfastness, patience, determination and this determination leads us to perfection: we will be happy, we will lack nothing. Many times at the beginning of the homily, on Sundays, we priests ask you, people of God,  if you are happy. You always answer yes but we, priests, also hear your confessions and it is not always true that you are happy. We always seem to be missing something. What do I need to have to be fully happy? What do I lack to have a joy that nothing and no one can take away from me?

In one of the so called Little Flowers, Saint Francis of Assisi, after having demolished some reasons why a friar should be happy, says that perfect joy is when Fr. Riccardo, the superior of our community arrives at the St. Jerome Emiliani House after traveling all day, extremely tired, cell phone dead, rings the bell and the doorman – I won’t tell you who he is – doesn’t recognize him. Fr. Riccardo continues to ring and the doorman goes out and beats him with sticks and lets him sleep outside. This, according to St. Francis, is the perfect joy. Anyone would get angry. However, if you do not get angry, if in that moment you are capable of living communion with the Lord well, that is perfect joy; not in suffering, but in the ability to face suffering. It is not true that when you suffer you are happy, faith is not masochism that draws merits from suffering, but one verifies one’s ability and the consistency of faith precisely in the difficulty.

Even St. Jerome, in the second letter, tries to justify the problems and sufferings that the communities are experiencing due to his absence: “… He wants to test you as gold is tested in a furnace: the dross and impurity that are in the gold are consumed in the fire, while the good gold is preserved and increases in value. So it is for the good servant of the Lord who hopes in Him: he remains steadfast during tribulations and then God comforts him, giving him both a hundredfold in this world for the things he leaves behind out of His love, and eternal life in the next.”

It is not easy to live this word of perfect joy. Sometimes I lose my patience and do not read what happens to me as a reason for perfect joy. As St. James suggests, we ask for the gift of wisdom to better understand how to reach this awareness.

The Gospel we have heard today immediately follows the second multiplication of the loaves. Jesus crosses the lake and suddenly some Pharisees appear. Other times they had challenged Jesus on the field of the law of Moses and Jesus had always silenced them. They certainly didn’t like Jesus very much. This time they are asking for a sign from heaven, that is, they want a miracle, right there, at that moment, on command. As if Jesus hadn’t given other signs! Jesus sighs, that is, he snorts, gets impatient and says: there is nothing to be done with you, you will have no signs.

Indeed, Jesus himself will be a sign, the sign par excellence. Think of those broken loaves, they are a sign of a broken life, given and shared like those loaves. For those who want to understand this is the sign.

We are used, even from the common images that depict him to a Jesus, handsome, blond haired, tall, charming, with a beautiful smile, with his heart in his hand. Well, know that Jesus was not always so captivating, he was also angry, he scolded, he glared at someone, he overturned the tables of the money changers in the temple. There are moments in which, we could say, he really lost patience, especially when his interlocutors did not listen to him or did not understand anything despite the evidence (today’s Gospel).

Asking for miracles just to test Jesus, as the Pharisees did, is profoundly wrong. It is the same attitude that Satan uses in the desert when he tempts Jesus. Make the stones become bread, feed all humanity and everyone will believe you, throw yourself from the highest point of the temple so that the angels will support you and you will become famous. Jesus replies: “You shall not put the Lord, your God, to the test.” So does that mean we cannot ask for miracles? Of course we can ask for them but not in the way of the Pharisees, we can ask for them with humility, with profound faith, leaving the freedom to God to act in the way he deems appropriate.

Sometimes I read on billboards in Enugu of programs called Season of Miracles. Obviously I never participated at that kind of events. I think people who go there expect a miracle and this is normal, but with what attitude? What I don’t understand is that words “season of miracles”. What does it mean: that there is a special time in which God violates the laws of physics, takes away all diseases, takes away poverty? Does it mean that on that occasion he is obliged to perform miracles? Poor God! He is not even free to intervene when he wants.

How many times have we too asked, even with deep faith, that God fixed things. Sometimes we felt fulfilled, others not. How many times in Italy have we prayed for God to stop the pandemic? But this miracle did not happen. What can we conclude, that God is punishing humanity (as someone has said) and therefore he does not want to remove the pandemic. Or can we say that God cannot do it? And even if he did it today, why hasn’t he done it so far? These are all questions that even those who have faith wonder about and to which it is not easy to answer. Perhaps there is an answer: in asking God for miracles, let us ask that he support our doctors in the fight against disease, that he guide the intelligence of our scientists, that he inspire our rulers to peace and justice, that so many men and women can meet him and change their lives. Perhaps it is necessary to ask God to help us perform some small miracle which, added to the other miracles, will make a great miracle. May God give us the gift of faith, may he help us to overcome our divisions, may he help us to live our lives in love and in care of neighbour. And then it will be the true, full, perfect joy.