Mt 11,16-19 – Blessed Virgin Mary of Guadalupe – Optional Memorial
In today’s Gospel, Jesus uses an image that concerns us much more than we think: a generation that no longer knows how to cry or dance. Jesus describes us as children sitting in the square listening to a song, but not getting involved.
It is the image of a blocked heart, unable to let itself be touched by life. And perhaps this is one of the greatest dangers of our era: emotional indifference, that thin armor that we build for ourselves so as not to suffer anymore, but which also ends up preventing us from truly rejoicing. John came with the austerity of the desert and we did not listen to him. Jesus came with closeness, tenderness, shared meals, and we did not recognize him. It seems like nothing is going right for us. But the problem is not the style of those who speak to us: it is the deafness of our hearts. When a heart is hurt or afraid, it always finds a reason not to get involved.
Criticize, label, judge. So you avoid the most difficult thing: changing. However, Jesus offers us a different way: wisdom. A wisdom that is not theory, but life. “Wisdom was made righteous by her works”: in other words, the truth is seen by the fruits. Not by how we judge it. John and Jesus bore enormous fruit, yet they were misunderstood. So perhaps the question that the Gospel asks us today is simple and uncomfortable: what fruits is my life bearing? Am I becoming freer, more true, more capable of loving? Or am I sitting in that square where nothing involves me anymore?
The good news is that God does not tire of our indecision. He continues to play his music: sometimes it is a song of joy, other times a lament that calls us to conversion. But he plays for us, because he wants to touch our hearts. Perhaps today he asks us only this: to let ourselves be reached by an event, by a gesture, by a word that can still move us. Because it is from there, from a heart that feels again, that the Kingdom begins again.
