The Intersection: The theological place as a point of breakthrough

 

 

Paolo Cugini

Traditional theology often aspires to universality, starting from abstract metaphysical or dogmatic presuppositions. On the contrary, theology from the margins insists on contextuality. Intersection occurs when the periphery questions the center about its presumed neutrality. As Gustavo Gutiérrez states in his founding text: “Theology as a critical reflection on historical praxis in the light of faith does not replace the other functions of theology... but places them in a new perspective”. . The intersection lies in the fact that both theologies use the same sources, Scripture and Tradition, but theology from the margins changes the hermeneutic perspective. If tradition reads the text to preserve orthodoxy, the margin reads it to seek the presence of the Mystery in history, in daily experiences, especially those marked by exclusion and marginality.

Intersection is not just an encounter, it is a collision that reveals how the center is actually a margin of success that has established itself as the norm. It is not just a shift in geography, from the pulpit to the street, but in method. Theology from the margins does not simply add new themes such as poverty, gender, and ethnicity, but challenges the center's claim to objectivity. While classical theology perceives itself as an often aseptic and universal view from above, intersectional theology claims a view from below. The theological place becomes a breaking point because it transforms pain and exclusion from objects of charity into subjects of revelation. If for the center, Tradition is a repository to be safeguarded, for the margins, it is a fire to be stoked. Intersection occurs in the body: the sources are not only books, but the very flesh of history. To give just one example: reading Exodus from the center means celebrating a past liberation; reading it from the margins means identifying today's pharaohs and demanding a present liberation. The intersection, therefore, reveals that no theology is neutral; in fact, what calls itself universal often reflects only the dominant culture, that is, Western, male, and affluent. The periphery, by questioning the center, forces it to look in the mirror and recognize its own contextual limitations. Traditional theology, therefore, is like a solid wall; while the experience of the margin is the crack through which, according to the intuition of many liberation theologians, the light of Grace passes more purely, unfiltered by power.

 

Mythical thinking is still within us

 

 

Paolo Cugini

Although many centuries have passed since the Greeks developed a philosophical thought based on reason and sustained by logos, it is possible to affirm that we still have a mythical approach to reality. It seems like an absurd statement, but it is not so absurd.

But what exactly is mythical thought? We think mythically whenever we resort to a narrative that abandons reasoning to rely on a sacred type of discourse foundation.

It is also important to point out that in the ancient mindset, myth is not identified with something false. The philosopher of religion Mircea Eliade reflected extensively on the mythical structure of ancient thought and arrived at conclusions worth highlighting. Unlike the modern view of "myth" as something false, Eliade argues that, for the people of traditional (or "archaic") societies, myth is absolutely true and sacred. In the origin narrative, myth always refers to a "creation," recounting how something, whether the entire cosmos or just a human behavior, came into existence. For Eliade, knowing the origin myth of an object or animal grants the individual a kind of dominion over it, allowing its ritual manipulation.

One of Eliade's most famous concepts is that of Eternal Return, which describes the religious man's desire to return to the time of origins. Through rites, man not only "remembers" the myth, but re-actualizes it, becoming contemporary with the gods or heroes in "primordial time." By living the myth, the individual leaves linear (profane) time and enters circular (sacred) time, recovering the fullness of being. Eliade uses the term hierophany to describe the act of manifestation of the sacred in the profane world. For Eliade, the sacred is the "reality par excellence," saturated with being and power. Even in desacralized and modern societies, Eliade notes that myth survives in a camouflaged form in behaviors such as cinema, literature, and certain political ideologies, which offer temporary escapes from linear history. If at the time of the birth of philosophy mythical thought had a heuristic basis, today we can clearly say that resorting to myth is a form of mental laziness, which manifests a lack of knowledge of reality.

For Paul Ricoeur, myth is not a false scientific explanation, but a symbolic narrative that reveals profound truths about the human condition, especially about fallibility and the origin of evil. He argues that philosophy must take a detour through the hermeneutics (interpretation) of myths to understand what pure, abstract reflection cannot grasp on its own. 

Ricoeur defines myth as a "symbol developed in narrative form." While a symbol is a unit of double meaning (a literal meaning that points to a latent meaning), myth sets these symbols in motion through a story. By losing its claim to physically explain the world, myth gains a function of exploring human reality, manifesting what Ricoeur calls the "language of confession" (experiences of guilt, stain, and sin). The philosopher argues that we do not have direct access to the "self" or to being; we need the mediation of cultural works, such as myths, to understand ourselves.

Taking into account the reflections of Eliade and Ricoeur, we can affirm that mythical thought still lingers in culture, not only in the West. Furthermore, the thought that develops in Christianity is not mythical, but philosophical. It is not a coincidence that the Church Fathers of the first centuries, in trying to resolve the problems that the identity of Jesus brought to the daily reflection of the first communities, used many concepts from Greek philosophy. Following Jesus demands a rational, logical choice, more than a mythical one. It is not a coincidence that the first community of John identifies Jesus not with myth, but with the logos. “In the beginning was the Word” (John 1:1).

Jesus gave a definitive rational answer to our human questions. Despite this, even today, most Catholics enter the religious sphere not driven by reason, but by feeling; not through rational and philosophical reflection, but through mythical thought—not in the sense that Eliade and Ricoeur pointed out, but as an irrational approach, bringing unsustainable arguments into the debate. When mythical thought identifies with our irrational side, religion becomes a space of intolerance, because one no longer adheres to the divine through a path that involves the totality of the person, but adheres to a religious form, identifying with it and defending it tooth and nail, not participating with love and tenderness. When religion becomes a space of intolerance,  of opposition to science, God disappears from the map, and elements that only psychiatry can resolve come into play.

I WAS HUNGRY

 

Paolo Cugini

 

I was hungry and you gave me food (Mt 25 35).

Listen, O people, for the time of the superfluous has come to an end and the hour of the essential knocks at the gates of history. Let us seek no further, let us not accumulate rivers of words or treatises that weigh like stones on our consciences. It is all here, and nothing will be added that is not already written in the beating of the human heart.

The days will come, and these are already here, when the great cathedrals of thought will crumble to pieces before a single fragment of humanity. The Gospel is not a doctrine to be learned, but a path of exodus. It is the forced exit from the desert of selfishness, the mastery of that instinct that whispers to us to survive alone, enclosed within the confines of our petty problems, blind to everything else.

The Mystery of Mysteries is not hidden in impenetrable heavens, but is contained in a gesture that shakes the foundations of the world: feeding the hungry. Let us look to the Son of Man: He did not reveal His divinity in the brilliance of lightning, but in the dust of the ground, washing the feet, embracing the wounded flesh of the leper, becoming a caress for the sick. This is the prophecy we must embody: the path of humanization is the only true path to divinization. There is no God without man, without woman; there is no divine light that does not pass through our bowed hands.

Here is the great revelation that the world does not want to hear: In every hungry person who meets our gaze, in every persecuted person who knocks on our door, in the refugee who has no country and in the stranger who has no face, the Mystery dwells. Jesus cried out to the centuries: "I was hungry, I was thirsty, I was naked." Every time we bend down to the outcasts of the earth, we will not only touch human flesh, but we will encounter the Mystery. And that encounter will leave a mark that no forgetfulness can erase.

Let us abandon theologies of detachment. Let us embrace the only doctrine that saves: the experience of the Mystery occurs in welcoming the stranger. May our worship be truth, not smoke; may our liturgies be a listening ear that opens the heart. Because the truth of what we celebrate on the altar will only be seen in the way we walk alongside the least.

He who has ears to hear, let him hear: the light of the Mystery dwells within us, but it will shine only when we become bread for the hungry.

 

STILL DON'T UNDERSTAND?

 

 

Paolo Cugini

 

And he said to them, Do you still not understand? (Mk 8:21).

It must not have been easy for the first disciples, both men and women, to follow that man from Nazareth. We often imagine their "yes" as a linear path, but the reality was one of enormous psychological and spiritual toil. They followed Jesus, they had abandoned their safety nets, yet the gap between the Master's proposal and their own experience was abysmal. It wasn't just a matter of intellectual understanding; it was a matter of dismantling an entire symbolic universe constructed over centuries of history.

The legacy of a rigid cultic paradigm weighed heavily on the minds of Jesus' contemporaries. Faith was understood as a system of sacrifices, prescriptions, and duties. At its center sat the image of a demanding God, a sovereign who did not forgive transgressors and threatened eternal punishment. In this context, religion had become an instrument of social control. Religious leaders had built a wall between the sacred (relegated to the temple) and the profane (the daily life of the people). This deformed God was, in effect, an antagonist to man, an entity who served to justify the power logic of the temple lords. The risk of reducing God to a harsh judge is a constant temptation in the history of religions.

Jesus bursts into this landscape with subversive force. He defines the Pharisees' understanding of religion as bad leaven, a negative ferment capable of contaminating the entire mass. His response is not a new law, but a revelation: God is Father and infinite mercy. While the temple imposed precepts, Jesus opened paths of liberation. With Him, the separation between sacred and profane collapses definitively. In Christ, the sacred enters time and the flesh: everything is sanctified and nothing must be sacrificed. It is the victory of life over death and of love over hate.

Why did the disciples struggle to understand? The answer lies in what we might call a colonization of the imagination. For too long, they had assimilated the poison of religious leaders, mistaking human traditions for the Word of God. Exposing this mystification was Jesus's most courageous act, but it also sparked the hatred of the established powers. A God who forgives everything and everyone is not suitable for those who seek to subjugate the people through fear.

Mercy is not cheap do-goodism, but the strength that destroys the logic of power.

Entering the Gospel journey today means accepting the same suffering as the disciples: the effort to shed the old religion of fear and bargaining with the divine. The transition is radical: from the God-Tyrant to the God-Love. Only by accepting this stripping can we be clothed in the light of the Mystery of Mercy, transforming faith from a list of obligations to an experience of authentic freedom.

 

AGAINST THE SACRED SCAMMERS

 

 

 

Paolo Cugini

 

Thus you make the word of God of no effect by your tradition which you have handed down. And many such things you do (Mk 7:13).

It is one of the most striking verses in the Gospel for its clarity and lucidity. It is a verse that contains a very important revelation, because it shows what has happened over time: the replacement of the Word of God with human traditions. This is the drama. Without a doubt, those who lived in search of an authentic meaning to life could not help but realize that something was wrong with Israel's religious system. The relationship with God, instead of being free and lived in an atmosphere of freedom, was conditioned by money and an unbearable network of precepts. How can one exploit the dimension of life, which has to do with personal and communal sensitivity, as well as the delicate thread that binds us to the Mystery? Yet, what was impossible even to imagine happened. This was Jesus' great discovery, which, once publicly manifested, caused his death. It is a great temptation for all those in religious power: to manipulate the sacred, by manipulating consciences. After all, it's easy to manipulate a conscience when it's in a delicate moment of life and, therefore, turns to God and his mediators. One must be truly rotten not to respect the soul of a desperate person, or one experiencing great anguish. One must have one's conscience completely shrouded in evil, to act like jackals, ready to pounce on those who are clearly in a state of weakness, incapable of defending themselves and, therefore, easily preyed upon by unscrupulous people. That all this can happen in a religious context is utterly despicable, because personal conscience is at stake. Exploiting a person who comes asking for help, who feels the full weight of their own fragility and therefore pleads for mercy, and instead receives orders, rules, and the imposition of money, is truly unforgivable. This is why Jesus uses harsh words, leaving no room for misunderstanding. Jesus knows full well the price he will have to pay for these accusations, but he also knows that his example will serve to free religion from those who defraud the sacred.  

Unfortunately, as we know, history has repeated itself, even in more serious forms than those identified by Jesus. There is no end to human misery. The religious sphere, precisely because it deals with the Mystery of God, lends itself, for those who reach the highest echelons of religious power and are people without any sense of shame, to the greatest forms of exploitation of consciences. This is the paradox: the most sacred space of the human person, namely, its religious dimension, becomes, at the same time, the most vulnerable place for every form of manipulation. How many psychological, sexual, and power abuses have occurred and continue to occur in the sacred spaces of our churches? How many exploited, massacred, and humiliated people, who, after opening their souls to the unscrupulous mediator of the sacred on duty, have felt abused? In these situations, it seems there is no remedy for evil. Instead, the hope that dwells in our Gospel-filled hearts shows us the great love manifested in the cross of Jesus, a love that conquered hatred. A hope that transcends all negative sensory perceptions. 

 

BEYOND THE BLOOD

 

Paolo Cugini

 

Here are my mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of God is my brother, and sister, and mother (Mk 3:35).

Truly I say to you: do not make one flesh and one name your eternal idol. The walls of your father's house are not the boundaries of the world, nor is the blood that flows in your veins a chain that binds the spirit to immobility. Hear the voice crying out in the wilderness of the present: family relationships are not absolute.

The time will come, and this is it, when you will have to invest only in what generates life here and now. Don't be fooled by the myth of lineage: blood ties are not a destiny written in the stars. They become sacred only when cultivated in the garden of care and meaning, but what has remained barren, what has become a prison, can and must be let go. Without guilt, without looking back.

Whoever walks in search of the Mystery must wear the sandals of freedom. You cannot scale the summit of the Infinite if you are weighed down by obligations that no longer have a soul. At a certain point on the journey, the prophet within you will demand the courage to step out: abandon the hearth that no longer warms, break the seals of bonds that were necessary for your birth, but now prevent you from becoming.

Here is the new alliance: a brotherhood born not from the womb, but from the direction of your steps. You will meet brothers and sisters along the way, not because you share the same last name, but because you gaze at the same Horizon. They will be traveling companions for a season or a moment; relationships as intense as flames that will then, gently, fade away so that the journey can continue.

Don't necessarily seek truth on the path home. The Light of Mystery does not dwell in the past, but guides your steps toward the unknown. It demands radical freedom, for only those who are truly free can discern the direction.

Go, then: let the dead bury the dead, and follow the luminous trail that calls. For your true family is made up of those who, like you, have had the courage to lose themselves in order to find themselves in the Whole.

Yes, listen: the day has come when the Spirit blows where it wills, and those who have ears to hear must drop their old armor. Do not be afraid of being wayfarers without a homeland, because the Kingdom is not reserved for those who stay, but for those who dare to leave. The promised land is not found by grasping one's roots, but by spreading the wings of the heart over unknown depths.

Don't be like those who, out of fear of loneliness, build ever thicker walls around bonds that are no longer there. True blessing comes to those who, in the night, have the courage to leave safe harbor to chase a flash of lightning on the horizon. Remember: Abraham too was called to leave his father's house, and only thus did he become the father of multitudes.

Be bold in welcoming brothers and sisters born not from blood, but from the same dream. Be mothers of every gesture that generates life, fathers of every word that opens paths. In this time, when the desert seems to advance and certainties crumble like sand between the fingers, sowers of meaning will recognize their fellow men in the smile of a stranger, in an unexpected embrace, in the compassion that transcends every boundary.

And when you feel alone, remember: those who trust in the Invisible are never abandoned. In the twists and turns of the path, the echo of the Spirit will reach you, and you will understand that no chain is strong enough to restrain those called to freedom. For the true bond that binds is that of shared hope, of burning faith, of love that knows no bounds.

So be bold pilgrims, bearers of a new fire. And when all seems lost, there, beyond the blood, you will discover the family of open hearts, the communion of seekers, the house without walls, where the Mystery awaits those who recognize the voice calling from the future.

 

THEY THROWN THEMSELVES ON HIM

 

 

Paolo Cugini

 

He had healed many, so that those who had any ailment pressed upon him to touch him (Mk 3:10).

 

Hear, O earth, the word that resounds from ancient times. In an age of confusion, a prophet arises to proclaim what is already written deep in our hearts, but which humanity, corrupted by time and selfishness, has tragically forgotten. It is the call to original purity, to the source of that Life that once walked among us.

It was not a harsh judge who walked the dust of our streets, but the Word made flesh: the manifestation of pure goodness. He did not bear laws written in stone, but a body pulsating with the energy of love. He was an inexhaustible source, capable of healing every evil, every deep wound, and every sore of the soul. Before His gaze, every resentment and every lie melted away like snow in the sun; His essence was authentic life, a light that revealed the illusion of human corruption.

All humanity, marked by the Fall and burdened by sin, was drawn to Him as to an inextinguishable beacon. Everyone flocked to this source, seeking that energy of infinite love capable of recharging and renewing, day after day, anyone who had the courage to drink from it.

The Shadow and the Sea: The Unfinished Gift. Today we turn our gaze toward the sea, where the Master retreated in quiet with His disciples. In those moments of silence and contemplation, He poured out His deepest existential and spiritual essence. Yet, history presents us with a bitter paradox: His closest followers failed to fully grasp the immensity of that gift. What has come down to us through institutions is often only a shadow, a faded reflection of His true spiritual stature.

The Alabaster Vase: Mary Magdalene But in this landscape of oblivion, there is no room for despair. There exists an "alabaster vase" that has preserved intact the essence of the Master. It is in the style, the exquisite sensitivity, and the profound love of Mary Magdalene that we find the most faithful reflection of Him who was Love.

She, the beloved disciple, did not stop at the surface of doctrine, but understood the mystery of redeeming love. In Mary Magdalene, that one way, that one truth, and that one life that the world desperately seeks, lives again. Listening to her testimony, rediscovering her sensitivity, means returning to the beating heart of the Gospel. In her, the Master's energy is not a memory of the past, but a living presence that still calls humanity to reawaken today.