Jesus and the moral precepts
by Athos A. Altomonte
© copyright by Esonet.it - Esonet.com

Q : What is the esoteric meaning of Christ's statement: ‘Shall the last be first and the first last'? Does the Karmic interpretation give a satisfactory answer? Are there any other interpretations? Thank you.

A : I will be honest. I distrust, or become very cautious, in front of ‘reported' quotations, which in fact I consider ‘reported culture' not always reliable. Therefore in the instance of unverified and unverifiable quotations doubts are legitimate. The Catholic Church has demonstrated that it can retract what for centuries had claimed to be absolute truths.

I am referring to what Pope John Paul I said and his successor unwillingly confirmed: ‘ God is at the same time Father and Mother '. This statement has broken forever the ancient dogma of a male God.

Just writing such a phrase my heart is offended, because when they talk about a male or female God, they mean it in a literal sense; and they say it shamelessly.

Extraordinary.

Not less interesting is another quotation from the ‘Pater Noster' where, I suppose with involuntary irony, the Fathers of the Catholic Church wrote: ‘(God), and lead us not into temptation' perhaps confusing him with the ‘competition', namely Satan.

However it is an absurdity that lately has been deleted, after many centuries of being a dogma of faith.

In other words, dear friend, I am always very careful before ‘blindly believe' the words written on ancient papers. We never know exactly who wrote them; besides they have been manipulated time and time again according to the social needs or the political convenience of the time.

Since I can't claim to be among the beholders of a ‘blind and absolute faith', I simply try to understand what I read. If what is written is inconsistent I can only ‘hold judgment' and remain doubtful. As a reader I have thousands of doubts and I have often expressed them on Esonet.

Don't be surprised, then, if once again I admit I don't understand the mechanism that allows the poor in spirit from last to become first.

But the fact that I can't understand how the last can become first and overtake all the others doesn't mean anything. Nevertheless, nothing stops me from thinking about a plausible alternative , viz. that this statement hasn't been pronounced by Jesus either. It may only be a posthumous transliteration of a present moral precept which, like many others, has been put in Jesus' ‘mouth' to give it more weight and more credit.

If this is the plausible alternative, the moral precept is the virtue of humbleness.

This doesn't mean devotional swoon, to cover our heads with ashes or to wallow in the dung with pigs. It is rather the intelligent modesty which, on the contrary of the whining hysteria, is the sign of a great advancement of conscience considered an initiatory virtue.

The man who knows a lot but decides not to appear to the profane world is probably the last one who we are talking about. But it all depends on the point of view. Indeed, the last to the eyes of the profane world can appear as the first to the eyes of a true Initiate.

Fraternally.