(...)A tall, good-natured woman calls Lucius. The boy leaves Jesus while shouting:
-It's my mom! - and to the woman he shouts: "Look at the friend I have! He's big! He's a teacher!
The woman does not leave with her son, but approaches Jesus and asks him:
-Hello! Are you the man from Galilee who spoke yesterday in the harbor?
-It is I.
-Wait for me here then. I won't be long. And he goes off with his little boy. In the meantime, the other apostles, except Matthew and John, arrived and asked, "Who was that? -Who was it?
-A Roman, I think," answered Simon and the others.
-And what did she want?
-She said to wait here. We'll find out.
In the meantime, some people, curious, approached and began to wait too. The woman returned with other Romans:
-Then are you the Master? - asks one who looks like a domestic of a stately home. Having been confirmed, he asks: "Would you feel aversion to cure a little daughter of a friend of Claudia? The child is in agony. She is drowning. The doctor does not know what she is dying of. Yesterday evening she was healthy, this morning she was already in agony.
-Let's go.
They walk a little way along a street that leads to yesterday's place. They arrive at the doorway of a house that looks like it was inhabited by Romans and is wide open.
-Wait a moment.
The man enters quickly. Almost immediately he looks out again and says:
-Come.
But, without even giving Jesus time to enter, out of the house comes a young woman of stately appearance, though with more than evident distress.
more than evident anguish. She is carrying in her arms a little creature of a few months old, as if dead, already fleshy, like a person who is drowning. I would say that she has fatal diphtheria and is in the last moments of her life. The woman seeks refuge in the bosom of Jesus like a shipwrecked person on a reef. Her weeping is so great that she is unable to speak.
Jesus takes the little creature, who shows small convulsive movements in her waxy hands, with her little fingernails already purplish. He lifts it up. The little head is hanging backwards without strength. The mother, having lost her Roman pride in front of a Hebrew, has slipped to the feet of Jesus, to the ground, and cries with her face raised, her hair half disheveled, her arms outstretched, wringing her tunic.
arms outstretched, wringing the robe and cloak of Jesus. Behind and around, watching, are Romans of the house and Hebrew women of the city.
Jesus dips his right index finger in his saliva and sticks it into the gasping mouth. He inserts it downward. The girl struggles. Her complexion blackens even more. The mother screams:
-No! No! - and she struggles as if pierced by a dagger. The people hold their breath...
But Jesus' finger comes out along with a mass of purulent membranes. The girl stops struggling. Then, she emits a tender whimper of crying and calms herself with an innocent smile, flapping her hands and moving her lips like a little bird when it chirps and flaps its wings waiting for the bait.
-Take it, woman. Give her the milk. She is cured.
The mother is so disturbed that she picks up the little one and, just as she was, on the floor, kisses her, caresses her all to herself, breast-feeds her, alienated, forgetful of everything that is not her little daughter.
A Roman asks Jesus:
-But how did you manage it? I am the Proconsul's physician, I am learned, I tried to remove the obstruction, but it was too low, too low.... And you... so...
-You are learned, but you do not have the true God with you. May He be glorified in this! Farewell!
And Jesus made a gesture of wanting to leave. But a small group of Israelites felt the need to intervene:
-How have you allowed yourself to approach foreigners? They are impure, they are corrupt, whoever approaches them is defiled.
Jesus looks fixedly, severely, at the three of them, and says:
-Are you not Ageus, the man from Azotus who came here last Tisri to negotiate with the merchant at the foot of the walls of the old fontanar? And are you not Joseph of Rama, who also came here - and you know, as I do, why - to consult the Roman physician? And then? Do you not feel yourselves impure?
-A physician is never a foreigner. He cures the body, which is the same for everyone.
-The soul is all the more so. But then, what have I cured? The innocent body of a child, the means by which I hope to cure the non-innocent souls of foreigners. As a physician and Messiah, therefore, I can deal with anyone.
-You can't.
-No, Ageo? -And why do you deal with the Roman merchant?
-My contact with him is only through merchandise and money.
-And then, since you do not touch his flesh, but only what his hand has touched, you do not seem to be contaminated?
O blind and cruel ones!
Listen, all of you. Precisely in the book of the Prophet whose name this is written: "Put to the priests this question about the Law: 'If a man who is not a priest, he shall not be defiled by the Law.
If a man wears sanctified meat on the fringe of his robe and then touches food, bread or oil or other foodstuffs with it, will these things be sanctified?" (Haggai 2:11 and following). And the priests answered, "No." Then Haggai said, `If one, unclean because of a dead man, touches one of these things, shall it be defiled?' And the priests answered, `Yes."'
By this surreptitious, deceitful, incoherent way of acting you hinder the Good and condemn it and only accept that which brings you some benefit; in that case indignation, disgust and aversion cease. You distinguish - if it does not cause you personal harm - what is impure, which makes one impure, from what is not. How are you able, lying mouths, to profess that what has been sanctified by having touched holy flesh or a holy thing does not sanctify what it touches, and that what has touched an impure thing can make impure what it touches?
Do you not understand that you contradict yourselves, deceitful ministers of a Law of Truth of which you take advantage?
You twist it as if it were a rope, as your desire to obtain some profit from it demands it of you. Ye hypocritical Pharisees, who under religious pretext give free rein to your spiteful human envy, entirely human; desecrators of that which belongs to God; insulters and enemies of the Messenger of God. Verily, verily I say unto you that every act of yours, every conclusion of yours, every movement of yours has at its base a whole cunning mechanism made up of wheels, springs, counterweights, suspenders, which are your selfishness, passions, insincerity, hatreds, longing to impose yourselves on others, envy.
You should be ashamed of yourselves! Greedy, cowardly, spiteful, who live in the proud fear that someone, even if he is not of your caste, may overtake you, deserve to be like him who instills fear in you and makes you angry! As Haggai says, out of a heap of twenty bushels you make one of ten, and out of fifty barrels twenty, and keep the difference, whereas, both for the sake of setting an example to others and for the love due to God, you should not take away but add of your own to the whole of the bushels and barrels for the sake of the hungry; and so you deserve that the scorching wind, the rust and the hail should make unfruitful every work of your hands.
Who among you comes to me? these, these who to you are dung and refuse, these supreme ignoramuses who do not even know that the true God exists, come to the one who bears in words and deeds this God. Yet you... Ah, you have made yourselves a niche and in it you are! Dry, cold as idols awaiting incense and worship. Since you believe yourselves to be gods, it seems useless to you to think of the true God in the proper way, and you see it dangerous for others to propose to you what you do not propose to yourselves. In truth, you cannot propose it to yourselves because you are idols, and because you are servants of the Idol. But he who tries can, because it is not he who works, but God in him.
Go! Tell those who have sent you to tread on my heels that I detest the merchants who judge that selling merchandise, homeland or Temple to those who offer them money does not pollute. Tell them that I am disgusted by the degenerates whose only worship is their own flesh and blood and who judge that dealing with the foreign physician for the cure of these does not defile. Tell them that the measure is equal, that there are no two measures. Tell them that I, the Messiah, the Righteous One, the Counselor, the Wonderful One, the One on whom the Spirit of the Lord will descend in His seven gifts, the One who will not judge on whom the Spirit of the Lord will descend in his seven gifts, he who will not judge by what appears before the eyes but by the secret of the hearts, he who will not condemn by what he hears with his ears but by the spiritual voices he hears within each man, he who will take the side of the humble and judge the poor with justice, he who is I, for this is I, is already judging and punishing those who in this world are only earth; the breath of my breath shall cause the wicked to die and devastate his den, while for those who, desirous of justice and faith, come to my holy mountain to be satisfied with the Science of the Lord, it shall be Life and Light, Freedom and Peace. This is Isaiah, is it not true (11:1 ff.).
The people of my property! Entirely they come from Adam and Adam comes from my Father; all of them are, therefore, the work of the Father, and I must gather them all around the Father. I lead them to you, holy, eternal, powerful Father; I lead to you the wandering children after gathering them with the voice of love, under my pastoral staff, similar to the one Moses raised against the serpents of death. That Thou mayest have Thy Kingdom and Thy people. And I make no distinctions, because in the depths of all the living I see a point that shines brighter than fire: the soul, a spark of You, eternal Splendor. Oh, my eternal desire! Oh, my untiring will!
This is what I want, this is what I burn for: an earth that entirely sings your Name, a humanity that calls you Father, a redemption that saves all, a strengthened will that makes all obedient to your will, an eternal triumph that fills Paradise with an endless hosanna.... O multitude of Heaven..... Yes, I see the smile of God... and it is the reward against all human hardness.
But the three Israelites have already fled under the hailstorm of reproaches. The others, all of them, Romans or Hebrews, were dumbfounded. As for the Roman woman, with her little one already satisfied with milk and sleeping peacefully on her mother's lap, she is there, in the same place as before, almost at the feet of Jesus, and she weeps with maternal joy and spiritual emotion. Many weep for the overwhelming clasp of Jesus, who in this ecstasy seems to flame.
And Jesus, lowering his eyes and spirit from Heaven to earth, sees the people, sees the mother... and, as he passes, after a gesture of farewell to all, he brushes the young Roman girl with his hand, as if to bless her for her faith. And he leaves with his own, while the people, still stupefied, remain on the spot....
(The young Roman girl, if it is not a fortuitous resemblance, is one of the Romans, Valeria and her daughter Faustina, who were with Joan of Cusa on the road to Calvary. But, since no one here has called her by name, I cannot say for sure).