The most terrible cancers, and difficult to heal are the diseases that prevent us from being witnesses of Christ [Objection reflection: "The lack of forgiveness"]

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THE MOST TERRIBLE AND DIFFICULT CANCER TO HEAL ARE THE DISEASES THAT PREVENT US FROM BEING WITNESSES OF CHRIST

[ IIIª REFLECTION: Lack of forgiveness ]

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Let's start with a trivial finding: because we feel resentment and fail to forgive? Simply because we internally relive the evil that has been done to us, mulling it over in our hearts. The memory of the offense caused - in this case - no longer works to reach a resolution but works to reiterate the offense, which over time becomes chronic and remains calcified as an obsession in our soul.

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Author
Ivano Liguori, Ofm. Capp.

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the cartoons of Gioba [John Berti, Veronese presbyter] original in gioba.it WHO

The third pathology spiritual which I will discuss is related to the tendency not to grant forgiveness easily, and it is very widespread. It does not spare the lay faithful like consecrated persons. Like this, as a priest dedicated to the ministry of confessor,I often find myself probing this aspect within the life of penitents who approach the precious sacrament of reconciliation.

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I assist like this most of the time to a kind of spiritual schizophrenia, indeed, if on the one hand one wants to obtain God's forgiveness at any cost - given the proliferation of trends merciful - this desire, however, does not correspond to an equally desired grant of forgiveness towards others. The search for forgiveness and the rigidity in granting it certainly constitutes a paradox in the life of many men and women who live the faith..

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As a confessor, I must admit that the most painful reality consists in taking note of how the lack of forgiveness is hardly perceived as a sin to confess, and sometimes it is not even understood as condition not which conforms to the image of Christ [cf. 1PT 2,23]. Every day reciting the prayer of the Our Father, we are faced with a clause of ascetic perfection that asks God to remit our shortcomings, to the extent that we make ourselves bearers of forgiveness towards those who have offended us. So let's try to be careful about what we ask in prayer, in fact, God takes seriously these words which are not of man but of Christ, this is what the version of the Our Father in the Gospel of St. Matthew that says so teaches us: "Forgive us our debts, as we also remit them to our debtors " [cf. Mt 6,12], that of the Gospel of Saint Luke instead: "Forgive us our sins, in fact we too forgive all our debtors " [cf. Lk 11,4]. The differences are minimal, but the substance does not change: the Christian is recognized by how he forgives, that is, by the way in which he exercises his own justice not according to the logic of the world but according to the logic of the Gospel [cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church n. 2838; Compendium n. 594].

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The Our Father has always been a problematic prayer - this was the case for Sant’Agostino - but this problematic nature is not synonymous with the impossibility of achieving what he asks, if anything, of resistance to grace, that is, an indication of a sick human heart.

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There are so many people who say: "I don't forgive" or "I forgive but I don't forget". They are sentences extrapolated from their context and from the emotional charge with which they are pronounced, but which really contain a profound truth. And with this reflection of mine I want to try to answer precisely these two objections.

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I. DIO FORGIVES, NOT ME: A GOAL THAT EXCEEDS L'MAN.

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That man was a disaster in forgiving the Blessed Apostle Peter understood this well [cf. Mt 18,21-22], when turning to Jesus he asks how many times it is lawful to forgive one's offender. Peter questions Jesus about the legitimacy of a moral act foreseen by the law, but the master responds by overturning the figure of Lamec's revenge in the positive [cf. GN 4,23-24]: “I don't tell you up to seven times, but seventy times seven ". With this unsettling answer, Jesus - bearing in mind all the symbolic value of the numbers seven and seventy - wants to make Peter understand that forgiveness is not a moral act that touches on legal obligation but on grace. The next parable of the merciless servant, illustrates very well the overrun problem and the correct hermeneutics of the thought of Jesus expressed to Peter [cf. Mt 18,23-35].

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Forgiveness taught by Christ to the disciples reaches its summit on Calvary and lives on the mystique of the encounter with the Father, author of grace and therefore of pardon [cf. LC 23,34]. Forgiveness means returning to God, allow him to make us new. The holy King David, aware of this need for conversion and renewal in the spirit that directs towards forgiveness, in the Miserere he becomes the bearer of a precise request «Create in me, hate, a pure heart renews a steadfast spirit in me " [cf. Shall 51,12].

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The use of conversion, necessary to be docile to grace and to soften the heart, it allows us to be forgiven and to forgive in turn. He who forgives, indeed, he is pardoned and is aware of having to live in a perennial desire for conversion. A generous will with a Pelagian flavor is not enough to fully implement forgiveness. Daily experience teaches that, in most cases, I can try to isolate the offender and the offender, perhaps even groped to forget, but that still does not mean forgiving.

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I usually say to penitents that to forgive is to have, towards those who have offended us, the same gaze that God the Father has towards us when we kneel before the priest confessor. It means having the authentic experience of Luke's Merciful Father [cf. LC 15,11-32], who grants forgiveness, seen almost as impossible by the younger son, without dwelling on the reasons for the return and without the constraint of a stable return to the paternal home. This is precisely the correct way to exercise Christian forgiveness, so much so as to strengthen the credibility of our faith and of the proposal that Jesus makes to every disciple [cf. (C). Theobald, Christianity as a style. A way of doing theology in postmodernity, I-II, Bologna, EDB, 2009]. I can only share, at this point, the excellent thought of Alessio Rocchi, when it states that:

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“Having a guts of mercy does not mean being spineless, but rather have an extra strength (or of grace, ed). In this sense, forgiveness is redemption, not negation or reduction of evil but his own revision. It is no miracle, no effortless action performed by a mighty magician or an almighty god, but a severe test of earthly existence, through looks that (King)they fit into a relationship, by words that (King)integrate into a story " [cf. A. Rocchi, The time of forgiveness, Aporias of forgiveness between philosophy and theology, p. 97, Just - Studies and research, 2015].

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Precisely because forgiveness is a redemptive moment which leads back to an intimate and new relationship, it is a theological place where it is possible to experience the newness promised by God through the mouth of the prophet Isaiah [cf. Is 43,19]; that is to see the birth of a road in the desert in which it is possible to follow new situations, and in which man can move in full communion with the Father without the fear of feeling vulnerable or naked [cf. GN 3,11].

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Forgiveness means building new ways, therefore the relationship that is created between the offender and the offender has nothing to do with the relationship preceding the wrong, but it is a transfigured relationship in which God reveals himself. By studying the dynamics of forgiveness to which God invites man, we are thus led back to the reflection on the eschatological dynamics of life beyond life.

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In my ministry as a hospital chaplain it is common practice to assist the dying and their families. The most painful knot that the dying patient has to cut before the definitive leave is that of granting forgiveness or accepting forgiveness. A similar test must also be faced by the patient's family. Leaving aside here, the reasons and causes for the debts to be forgiven before death, it is necessary to dwell on the need that the dying person has to die reconciled. Reconciled with God and therefore reconciled with the brothers he has offended or who have been a cause of suffering for him.

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The episode of the Good Thief dictates our in-depth analysis. The Gospels testify how Jesus was crucified between two thieves [cf. MC 15,27]: we know how the Greek term λήστοι [history] identify a political criminal - today we will say a terrorist - rather than a thief or a general criminal. The situation that arises on Calvary in the eyes of the Romans is clear: the execution of two political prisoners together with Jesus seen as a troublemaker and subversion of the people of Israel. But here we are in the midst of agony, one of these enemies of Rome, now nearing the end, he turns to Jesus and - recognizing him as the Lord and at the same time in need of conversion and reconciliation for a life of crime, hatred and grudges - he exclaims: "Jesus, remember me when you enter your kingdom " [cf. LC 23,42].

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These words that allow us to understand how

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«Forgiveness is - once again - both requested and offered. To read and reread them they sound like three graces. Thank you, of I ask thank you, I ask your forgiveness because my life hasn't been that great. Thank you, of I do thank you, I forgive you for your impotence, for your not coming down from the cross, for your don't let me go down with you. I thank you and accept you for who you are, putting aside my disappointment with you. I grant you the grace not to ask you for a miracle, not to swear - and I would have many reasons - about mine and your fate. This crucified evildoer asks to be forgiven through the question of a memory, it seems forgive through the recognition of one's punishment, decide to to forgive silencing their legitimate curses and silencing the miraculous claims of the condemned comrade " [cf. A. Rocchi, The time of forgiveness, Aporias of forgiveness between philosophy and theology, p. 95, Just - Studies and research, 2015].

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The dialogue of the repentant thief with Jesus it is placed on the horizon of life that never sets, of a very clear eschatological hope, we all need. The desire that this condemned man has to live is very evident, and it is equally evident in him the awareness that dying without asking and granting forgiveness, it affects the future life with the aggravating circumstance of the conclusion of an earthly life in an unnecessary tragedy. The only hope not to die eternally - in oblivion, among the ghosts of a personal story that speaks of violence, destruction and hatred - is the blessing that comes with forgiveness. Although death poses as a lady - as the singer-songwriter Branduardi recalls in one of his famous ballads [cf. video WHO] - forgiveness before farewell wins over death, and it can already be a deposit of eternity, redemption of a ruined existence, guarantee of healing towards oneself and towards others. Moreover, it would be paradoxical for the Christian to begin his new life in Paradise with various slopes following it. A full life [cf. GV 10,10] it is synonymous with a fully reconciled life, a half-life is on the contrary the expression of a slowdown that deprives us of communion with God and with our brothers, a friction that will have to be recomposed or atoned in some other way.

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(II). GOOD MEMORY TO FORGIVE

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We are sincere, after receiving an offense it's hard to put a stone on it. Many would like to put a stone on the offender, but this is not civilly and Christianly acceptable. Then there are people who invite us to forget and pretend nothing has happened. They end up being inopportune comforters like the three friends of wise Job [cf. Gb 3,ss], and they do us no good service. For this reason - as mentioned earlier - we need God's grace along with a constant and explicit prayer request, so that the Lord heals our wound and gives us the time necessary to be converted to forgiveness. But achieving forgiveness includes the ability to have a good memory, in fact, completely forgetting the offense - an unlikely option - would deprive us of the possibility of granting forgiveness and therefore of achieving peace and that blessing which is a guarantee for a new beginning of life.

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Let's start with a trivial finding: because we feel resentment and fail to forgive? Simply because we internally relive the evil that has been done to us, mulling it over in our hearts. The memory of the offense caused - in this case - no longer works to reach a resolution but works to reiterate the offense, which over time becomes chronic and remains calcified as an obsession in our soul.

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One of the symptoms of those who do not experience forgiveness it is the feeling of having a weight in the heart, and that feeling often carries on for years. The philosopher Paul Ricoeur said:

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"Authentic forgiveness does not imply the oblivion of the events themselves, but a different way of signifying a debt […] which paralyzes the memory and consequently the ability to recreate ourselves in a new future " [cf. R. Kearney M. Dooley, Issues of ethics: contemporary debates in philosophers, Armando Publishers, 2005, p. 40; to complete the thought cf. also P. Ricoeur, To remember, forget, to forgive. The enigma of the past, The Mill, Bologna 2004].

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This fixation of memory on the offense it is deleterious, when memory needs to concentrate on the offense it is only to initiate a liberation process that you condone, piece by piece, the wrong suffered.

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Sometimes, to overcome the obsession together with the anxiety of forgiveness not granted, there is a tendency to replace resentment with indifference, but this is a false remedy. The medicine of "the eye does not see, heart doesn't hurt ", not only is it not Christian but it becomes a subtle and terrible way to lead the brother to death by exiling him from his own existence.

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The set of processes just described they help us understand the sentence as a whole: "I can't forgive!». Really the person is unable to forgive, because this offense has hardened, sclerotizzata, traditional medicines are no longer enough but surgery is urgent. The urgent intervention consists in associating memory with the presence of God. A word that recurs a lot in the Old Testament is "remember", the verb that connects directly to people's memory, of things and events. But for the biblical hagiographer, remembering translates into memorial. Simply said, the memorial is remembering together with God.

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Remember those situations and of those events in which God revealed himself - and still reveals himself - in his power, enough to work wonders for the benefit of man. The memorial is therefore more than just a memory, it is remembering through faith, restore a well-defined theological identity, who sees in God the redeemer and in man a creature to be redeemed and redeemed.

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To forgive as a Christian I have to memorialize, that is, remembering together with God, see clearly the offenses and wounds, so that a providential gaze is formed within which the Spirit of God - living memory of the Church [cf. GV 15,26] - work so that every offense and wound is translated into an occasion for praise. As a memorial, I see the person who hurt me, the positives, the good intentions realized, the shipwrecked good intentions, the inevitable contradictions and inconsistencies. I can see in the offender no longer an enemy to fight but a person in need of help because he too is wounded and thirsty for redemption. In the memorial I also perceive my responsibilities well, I take the awareness that perhaps I have facilitated certain behaviors in the other and reduce the tendency to see myself as a scapegoat.

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The memorial is an examination of conscience with which, as for Abraham, God allows me to become an intercessor towards those who have made themselves hostile [cf. GN 18,20-32], without closing one's eyes to the evil inflicted and received and with the tendency to make God's merciful justice triumph.

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[end of IIIª meditation]

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Cagliari, 10 March 2019

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If the demon who dared groped even Christ the Lord is able to take in ambition, We can do what he wants

L'Angolo di Girolamo Savonarola: Catholic homiletics in lean times

IF THE DEMON who dared GROPED EVEN CHRIST THE LORD CAN take ambition AND THE VANITY, IT CAN DO WITH US WHAT IT WANTS

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If the devil manages to catch us in the weak point of ambition and vanity, he can do with us what he wants and get what he has wanted since the dawn of time.: to prostrate ourselves before him and worshiping him call him Lord, if anything, after saying, before the evil that sometimes seems almost suffocate the Church itself: "... but who am I doing this to me against the powerful and domineering acolytes of the Devil? What good is getting life bitter, when to live in peace, within the Church today, I just do not see, Not to mention, and above all make your business more rigor and its?».

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Author
Ariel S. Levi di Gualdo.

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Jesus Christ be praised !

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Jericho, Mount of the Quarantine or the Mount of Temptation of Christ

In the Gospel passage This Iª Sunday of Lent [see text of the Liturgy of the Word, WHO] we are faced with a paradox: really it happened that the devil has tempted God Incarnate, the Word was made flesh? It may be that the devil attempted to play God in his humanity, pretending to be unaware of what Jesus was divine in his humanity and his divinity in human?

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The blinded by pride and megalomania always start overestimating the most of themselves and underestimating others, why they are doomed to defeat. It may be that they do not fall in the near, but inevitably fall at the first change of season, with the wilting of wildflowers.

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In the Gospel of the temptations, one would think that the Devil overestimate himself and underestimate God. In the early centuries of the Church, with the reason we were able to grasp and define the revealed mystery of the Person of Christ: two natures in one person, the human and the divine. Thanks to the minds and the wisdom of the heart of the great Fathers of the Church in the first eight centuries of the history of Christianity he came to define the mystery of the Person of Christ, which first called for the establishment of appropriate terminology, taken through entries drawn from philosophy and greek lexicon, modulated and applied to our first great theological speculation: before being able to perceive and then to define what was meant primarily, with the words "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God ..." [GV 1,1]. Introduced by the intellect of the mystery of Christ, true God and true man, the reason must give way to faith [CF. S.S. John Paul II, Encyclical Faith and Reason], because the problem is no longer either the lexical or philosophical. When you open the portal of faith that goes beyond the human logic, the reason must give way to other categories, for example the gift of perception laid in every man by the gifts of grace of the Holy Spirit. With human reason we have to read the lines of this Gospel, with faith, fruit of our freedom blessed by the grace of God, we must penetrate, because word after word we first introduced and then taken to feel as real and was the perfect human nature of Jesus.

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Part of this ineffable mystery It is also enclosed in another reality: As in Jesus - true God and true Man - divine perfection could coexist with human frailty; because it is quite clear that the Devil does not attempt the Christ of God, but the Jesus-Man, trying to hit the fragility of his perfect humanity. The devil tries to corrupt the divine perfection of humanity as it used bribed our originally created mankind as perfect by God.

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Then the devil aimed at those tender and human frailties Jesus himself will show one by one during its entire existence, during which weeps [cf. GV 11, 35] and deeply moved [cf. GV 11, 33], It is emotionally troubled [cf. Gv11, 33], She suffers and feels scared to death: "Dad, if you want, away this cup from me. Nevertheless not my, but your will» [LC 22, 41-42]. Jesus chose to remain silent when questioned authority [cf. Mt 27, 12] and while he is accused, instead replicate starts writing with his finger on the ground [cf. GV 8,6], so to say the least provocative. He rebels repeatedly injustice perpetrated in the name of God by the religious rulers of the time and does so even with harsh words, at times deliberately offensive, for example calling "brood of vipers" zealously religious observant [cf. Mt 12, 34], devoted more to the tradition that the Word of God; and the apostrophe repeatedly "hypocrites" [Mt 23, 13-29]. I don't pay for this, place in the language of Jesus called "race" or "tribe" of vipers was offensive not only to the individual concerned but also for her entire family tree, It considers it appropriate to add to the burden dose also calling "snakes" [Mt 23, 33], knowing full well that era in Jewish culture - and not only in the Jewish one - the snake was a symbol of evil. It ignites passion and gravely says, and accuses it on Moses sat hypocrites who are not what they preach [Mt 23, 1-3], equates many church zealous era to "whited sepulchres", take care to point out what these tombs are beautiful outside but full of putrid rot inside [cf. Mt 23, 27]. Do not hesitate to get angry and to lead hands, or accuracy ropes [cf. Mt 21, 12-13. MC: 11, 11-15. LC 19, 45-46]. Jesus is filled with pain and perhaps intimate disappointment when he turns to his apostle with a dramatic question: "Down from, with a kiss you betray the Son of Man?» [LC 22, 48]. Regarding the latter two sentences would be the things to which we should pay attention, first of all the question posed as a question which is also found in the original Greek version, just to say than it is a formulation or a random translation: Jesus addressed a question to the traitor listening for an answer, but never come, because in practice the traitors do not respond, because they are inherently evil nature cowards; because the strength from God, the weakness of the Devil. That's why the man of God is intelligent, while the man of the Demon is just smart. And while today we continue to review the episode and the figure of Judas, We do not always say the true dramatic query: As the man Jesus suffered before the betrayal by Judas? Or maybe, even more than the betrayal, for the failure to reply on his part? there, we try to think only those who today, even in the most senior echelons of the Holy Church, They refuse to respond to Christ the Lord who continues to question them through the voice, often deep pain, of devotees believers of Christ Priests and faithful.

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In these deeds, actions and words is enclosed and manifests the humanity of Jesus, who continues to call all of us when necessary, its modern priests, doctors of the law and religious zealous folded into the idolatry of human forms and traditions, with the titles of our legitimate right: race of vipers … hypocrites … snakes … whitewashed sepulchres … Current words yesterday, but perhaps even more so today. Because of this, when the Liturgy of the Word obliges us to preach some of these evangelical passages, we always do it in the past tense, as if the breed of vipers, the hypocrites, the serpents and the whitewashed sepulchres weren't us, but only the members of some religious currents of Judaism of the Jesuit era, now dead and buried in history.

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These words lit with passion, sometimes even pedagogically aggressive, they sum up the historical mystery of concrete humanity and the virile floor gesuano, which if not collected and penetrated will make it impossible to reach perfect communion with the Christ of faith: the incarnate God, dead and risen.

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The man Jesus cannot be changed into a de-virilized holy hybrid with feet off the ground and eyes rolled up to heaven, because that is offensive, rather: this is a blasphemy against his humanity and his divinity. To read this passage on temptations it is therefore necessary to start from the fact of faith that everything really happened, that it is not a parable or an allegory; then focus on concrete historical humanity, physical and palpable of the Divine Word: the man Jesus.

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The first temptation that the devil addresses is the invitation to change stones into bread, to which Jesus replies with a phrase taken from the book of Deuteronomy: «Man shall not live by bread alone» whose continuation is «... but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God» [Dt 8,3]. We are faced with the temptation of the immediate, completely and immediately in a concrete and superficial way, while instead our concreteness is what comes out of the mouth of God, because that alone is a bread of life that bears fruit and eternal nourishment, it cost even to suffer a whole life, given that before eternal bliss human life is only a breath, and in this breath also salvific pain deserves to live [cf. S.S. John Paul II, Saving pain], to thus pay the price of our redemption.

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The second temptation is perhaps the most terrible: "I will give you all this power and the glory of these kingdoms". It is the temptation that encompasses ambition and the desire to dominate others. It is the desire for command, of government understood not as a service to the brothers and members of the People of God, but as power for power's sake leading to the perfect diabolical reversal: using the Church for evil purposes in the lust of being someone, or to "become an important figure through the priesthood" [Homily of the Supreme Pontiff Benedict XVI for the ordination of 15 deacons, Vatican Basilica IV Sunday of Easter, 7 May 2006], better through the episcopate, even better through the cardinalate; instead of serving the Church with love and always seeing in her the palpitating Body of Christ, our mystical bride towards whom we run towards with the passion of the couple in love on their wedding day, as depicted by the Evangelist John through the poetics of his pages.

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If the devil manages to catch us in the weak spot of ambition and with vanity he can do with us what he wants and get what he has longed for since the dawn of time: to prostrate ourselves before him and worshiping him call him Lord, if anything, after saying, before the evil that sometimes seems almost suffocate the Church itself: "... but who am I doing this to me against the powerful and domineering acolytes of the Devil? What good is getting life bitter, when to live in peace, within the Church today, I just do not see, Not to mention, and above all make your business more rigor and its?».

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To address to man Jesus the last desperate temptation Satan becomes theologian, perhaps even an ecumenist, maybe even politically correct progressive, if anything speaking in German and Dutch rather than in Aramaic. Satan begins to speak with biblical mastery as if he had just graduated from a doctorate in sacred theology from our pontifical universities: "If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down; indeed it is written: “His angels will give order for you, because they keep you”» [LC 4, 9-10].The Devil, as St. Jerome said: «He apes God and wants to create another reality» [The exact phrase then also taken up by St. Augustine is: The devil is the ape of God, the devil is the monkey of God], because he is the master of reversal; also of the reversal of the Word of God used in a deviant way to do evil deeds. The man Jesus, who thank God had never studied in our pontifical universities and who by nature was politically incorrect, he knew the Torah better than the devil, then he replies without hesitation with another Bible quotation: "Thou shalt not test the Lord your God" [Dt 6,16]. And a warning clearly emerges from this sentence: the man Jesus reminds the Devil that he is indeed a true man, but also true God.

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Finally "The devil departed from him..." we read at the end of this page of the Gospel, ending with the sentence: «… to return to the appointed time», that is, to return to us and among us.

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Satan exists today more than yesterday. It is not a symbolic image, it is not — as some theologians of the 1970s defined it, whose theories are sadly still used today to train our future priests — "a mythical and allegorical depiction of man's ancient ancestral fears". Satan exists, it is real and wants to rob us more than ever of our image and likeness to God; he wants to rob us of our amazement and our love in front of God incarnate dead and risen, who in his one person contains the perfect human nature and the perfect divine nature, teaching us to be real men to be real children of God in the way God intended us, created and loved before the beginning of time.

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From the island of Patmos, 10 March 2019

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And available Book of Masses for the dead of The Island of Patmos [see WHO]

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«You will know the truth and the truth will set you free» [GV 8,32],
but bring, spread and defend the truth not only of
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thanks [ isoladipatmos@gmail.com ]

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