Today many of us crucify Jesus with the nails of indifference on the cross of oblivion. The very name of this character – Jesus Christ – sounds like an indiscretion when we write it in the pages of this newspaper. Let it be noted that there is no particular cruelty in this forgetfulness and in these nails of ours. This is the same indifference that we dedicate to those dying of hunger or curable diseases on distant continents. The same one that allows us to close our eyes to serious social problems that affect many who cross paths with us on the streets of our cities.
The curious thing, however, is that our maps of time continue to be based on Jesus: we celebrate his birth, profusely illuminating our winter streets, we have finished celebrating his death and his resurrection, and we count the years and centuries from his appearance on earth. Our children receive gifts brought by magicians who went to see it and it is difficult for our children to forget the hypermarket of happiness whose display case is the nativity scene.
We must confess: whenever we have tried to change this temporal structure it has not gone well. And what happens with time, happens with space. If we created an atheist association in Barcelona, its headquarters may be located in Plaza Sant Felip Neri or Ronda Sant Pere.
And, since we are in Barcelona, how can we explain that in this free-thinking city, in the best sense of this word, that immensity continues to emerge from the Sagrada Família basilica? We Westerners forget faith, felt as an antique, but many of the people who only see Holy Week as an epiphany of tourism and, consequently, have come to Catalonia around this time have queued up to visit this construction. religious. It seems that we are like the Visigoths: we have defeated the Roman empire of Christian belief, but then we live in the society that the Christians created, with their calendars and their geographies.
In fact, materialist philosophies tend to be narrow and cannot, nor do they want to, encompass the entire dimension of humanity. They look at us and comment: “Those legs with which you walk your dreams do not exist” or “those hands with which you draw your fantasies are not real.” It is as if they cut out the photograph of our reality and reduced it to the rectangle of our image on the DNI or passport. Crucifixion, at least, gives us our entire body or even all our bodies, real and imaginary, and, for me, I consider it preferable to the brutal amputations of the most ferocious materialism, which places us forever in a biographical wheelchair.
It is undeniable that many have taken advantage of this cross, which is a bird ready to fly everywhere, to dominate and oppress others. May God forgive those who have given the cross, the diagram of freedom, the shape of prison bars. And let it be known that I admire those who have put their existential vigor before this religion in the form of a miserable prison. Blessed be, then, this Christianity of our contemporary, so fragile, so unofficial, that it can no longer impose anything on anyone.
Even if Christ had not existed, life would continue crucifying us. Old age, for example, functions as a progressive Golgotha. And the last bed of a sick person represents, in reality, a strange fluffy cross. But, before that, we are crucified by destining ourselves to economic hardship and, on many continents, to pure misery. Slave labor or poorly paid work, carried out as an infinite sentence, are also crosses. We are crucified in the deserts of loneliness to which many are condemned. In fact, the cross is not an archaism, but something deeply current.
By climbing the cross and resurrecting, Jesus saves us, telling us that the darkness of our lives will never have the last word. By subjecting himself to barbaric injustice and coming back to life afterwards, he showed us that human oppression will not triumph. Therefore, he told them that, in effect, the cross is a bird about to fly. We understand nothing about it if we look at it as a macabre business, in which someone has to die brutally to pay, with his blood, for the sins of humanity. This is transforming the beauty of Jesus' gesture into a horror movie.
And, knowing that the evil of the world cannot chain us, each one then finds his way of rebirth, his personal resurrection: be it through the fight for political changes, rebellion against everything that is wrong or gentle surrender to others. Be, likewise, valuing art and science as great spiritual adventures of humanity. Faith should not close the doors to thought and creativity, but quite the opposite: it should open new horizons to our ideas and our imagination. Never let faith lock you in a fearful, intimidated existence, in a narrow and intolerant mentality.
We do not believe, but we live in the times and places of belief. Our cities are extremely secular, and enormous religious temples are born in them. We deny the cross of Christ, at the same time that we are crucified on it. We immerse ourselves in the sadness of materialism, and our initial youthful smiles lead, over time, to tears that nothing consoles. While this happens, Jesus always rises, inviting us to the beyond of our pain. He does not want to chain us to anything, but rather to free us from everything. He is there, right next to us, perhaps precisely where we do not see him. Sometimes it is enough to light an illusion match to feel his presence.
