Whoever sees in Jesus' teachings a democratic religion, only exoteric, destined to be vulgarized and accessible to any profane, is deeply mistaken. There is nothing more hierarchical and esoteric, that is, little understandable by the common mortals than the Gospel in certain respects. For example, it is true when Jesus refers to “many are the called ones”, the exoteric, but it is also true that “few are the chosen”, the esoteric, for many human beings still walk on the horizontal of ethics, but few rises to the vertical heights of mystics. Incidentally, the Greek term ekklesía itself (in Latin ecclesia, the church in English) is an eminently mystical-esoteric word, because it is derived from ek (outside) and kaléo (calling). The ekklesía consist of those who have been "called out", transferred from within the great mass of the "called ones" into the minority of the "chosen ones". Also, the "called ones" are candidates for the ekklesía, but only the "chosen ones" are in fact in the consciousness of the ekklesía.
"To you, it has been given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven - Jesus says to the small group of his apostles - "this is why I speak to them in parables because seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand."
All the major religions have these two groups, not under arbitrary division, but as a result of the varying degrees of spiritual evolution of their followers. Paul of Tarsus writes to the Corinthian Christians that to some of them gave only milk to drink because they were still “infants in Christ”, while to the “adults in Christ” gave them solid food.
The material world is essentially hierarchical, and not democratic at all. There are beings in every degree of perfection, for the Universe is immense graduation of potentialities. Its unity is maximum because the Infinite Cause of all things is one - and its range is also maximum because the finite effects of this Infinite Cause are all original and unprecedented. The Creator makes no copies, repeats none of its works; they are all absolutely original.
Some see “injustice” on the part of the Creator because they run under a false premise, the error that some creature has "rights" before the Creator. However, such right does not exist, nor in the material neither in the spiritual world. Would a white violet under the shade of a tree feels humiliated and treated with injustice because on top of that same tree blossoms an orchid of dazzling colours and shapes, and will be the orchid feels full of vanity in the face of its own perfection?
Neither the violet feels humiliated nor the orchid is proud because neither has the right to be what they are; both know - in the intimacy of their mysterious biological consciousness - that all they have is grace, little or much; nothing is deserving, because no finite being can deserve anything from the Infinite. The Creator distributes gifts as it wishes, for free, and each creature must fully energize what is contained in its potentialities. There is nothing objectively small or large - small and large are made subjectively. A street sweeper who performs its task with 100% of purity and perfection does much more service to the community than the ruler of a people who perform its statesmanship with only 10% of purity and perfection. Everything consists of doing greatly all things, small or large.
Objectively, all things are neutral, neither small nor large, neither good nor bad; he who gives them form and colour, greatness or littleness, goodness or badness, is the man who performs them in this or that way.
Non-human nature, apparently unconscious and not free, can perform its task only in one way, the one assigned to it by the spirit of the Creator, who has infused this or that potentiality. Man can vary the measure, thanks to his conscious freedom; but greatness always comes from the free and active subject, not from the passive and not a free object.
"Much will be required of those who have been given much - and little will be required of those who have been given little." This rigorous equivalence between what was "given" and what "will be required" reveals a Cosmic Law no less glorious than dangerous. A free being endowed with great potentialities is much more responsible than another whose maximum potentiality represents little. With the value of the donation received from the Creator, grows, proportionally, the obligation of man to present results. The greater the potentiality, the greater must also be his dynamics - under penalty of a man losing his own potentiality left without results.
So those "chosen" to "know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven" are burdened with greater spiritual responsibility than those who were "called" to hear the great truths only in parables.
One who prides itself by the fact of being "chosen" shows by this that it is not really chosen because no one can be proud of something that is not his, but of the Creator; spiritual gifts, however, does not come from the human ego, but the Divine Self.
It is for man to intensify his spiritual receptivity to "know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven"; but this receptivity, however accurate, can never be an intrinsic cause of this knowledge, but only an extrinsic condition. The true cause is always the Creator, so grace is and always will be a gift, never human worthiness - just as lighting a room with sunlight is not the result of opening the closed window - it works only as a condition - but of sun activity.
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