The most terrible cancers, and difficult to heal are the diseases that prevent us from being witnesses of Christ [1st The sadness]

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

[ 1st The sadness ]

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It always affects of sad to see Christians, He was always struck. In the same way, it strikes me to see sullen priests and religious people. This is because it is a blatant contradiction in those who should announce the Easter. When he celebrates Mass, when I drive a prayer, or when you simply walk into a church, I like to stop and observe people. I observe that I too, I need encouragement from those who live a strong faith and have an intimate relationship with God. And while often orsservo, here ... long faces!

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Author
Ivano Liguori, Ofm. Capp.

 

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sad clown …

With this new article I will start a cycle of reflections on the most dangerous spiritual illnesses for the life of a Christian. As always I want to quote the Word of God, taking as inspiration a Gospel passage that I've got to also mention other times in my writings on our Patmos Island:

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"And here, in that very day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, at about eleven kilometers from Jerusalem, and they are talking with each other about all that had happened. While they are conversing and debating, Jesus himself drew near and went with them. But their eyes were kept from recognizing him " [cf. LC 24,13-16].

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In verse 16 it is evident a certain blindness heart and mind, this means that there is something in these two disciples that prevents them from recognizing the risen Lord. There are indeed some soul diseases that separate us from Christ and that prevent us from doing our novelty of the Gospel for this to transform our lives and that of others. It is therefore in these terms that I wish present the first spiritual sickness: the sadness.

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It always affects of sad to see Christians, He was always struck. In the same way, it strikes me to see sullen priests and religious people. This is because it is a blatant contradiction in those who should announce the Easter. When he celebrates Mass, when I drive a prayer, or when you simply walk into a church, I like to stop and observe people. I observe that I too, I need encouragement from those who live a strong faith and have an intimate relationship with God. And while often orsservo, here ... long faces!

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sad clown …

Let us first understand a thing: qT his kind of sadness is not given by the reverses of life that inevitably we all find support. The sadness of which I speak, It is mixed with resignation, It is a sadness that is often despair, depression, static, docility which - as we want with mystical masks and sliced ​​air holiness - always emerges afloat.

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The Christian can only be described if not within the joy, was created for the joy and the same redemption by Christ - albeit accompanied by inevitable tragedy of the Passion - it not ends with Good Friday but with the Sunday of the Resurrection expression of joy that wins over death. The vivid representation of the joy of Christ and the disciples, that the early Christians, It emerges from the Gospel of St. John the Apostle, indicated by the great Fathers of the Church and by the exegetes, also as "The Gospel of joy».

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The most credible sign of a Christian It should be just what joy, the intimate joy of living for God and his company; the deep joy of being able to present to the Father every moment of our day and be sure to feel loved, included, forgiven and healed intimately. For this mi often like to quote a passage from the homily for Christmas Pope St. Leo the Great says that: «Recognize your dignity, oh Christian». That is, we are called to re-know each other again, to become aware of our identity, realize again who we are as believers. Every Christian life - thus the mine and yours - is life in which Christ lives, opera, but, pray, hope, suffers, He relies on Father.

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sad clown …

The Christian life is a life of communion where the relationship with Jesus is present: here is my dignity, here is my joy! On the contrary, facendo however room for sadness, I put in the shade the presence of Jesus living in me and I go often with only my strength that I check to be inadequate. Moreover, This attitude of spiritual melancholy is reinforced by statements like: "We are born to suffer !», "I'm not worth anything, What can I ever do any good?», "I have zero, God is everything ", "We are in God's hands, we can not do anything ", "I deserve to suffer because of my sins, God rightly punishes me". All these ways of thought of “Christians”, pose a serious down payment on the joy that God wants for her children, Christ merited for us with his resurrection and that the Holy Spirit constantly pours into our hearts as a free gift.

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This shadowy situation it is often the result of our low spiritual self-esteem and a very bad or absent spiritual and catechetical formation. I'll explain …

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… Spiritual self-esteem is the awareness of the value which every person attaches to itself in relation to the person of God, the attitude that everyone is against it as a loved one, accepted and valued by God. This spiritual self-esteem in part depends on us and our experience of God, in part it depends on those who educated us in the faith so that we could feel loved and worthy Christians. Having a low self-esteem is also the spiritual image of God index that we have cultivated. We can perceive God as an accountant, he who marks his notebook our mistakes and flaws ready to make us pay the bill. We can perceive God as the dictator who deprives us of the joy and only asks us to sacrifices, we can get the idea of ​​God as a symbol of efficiency that wants all perfecting without the possibility of making a mistake or show weakness. Or we tested the idea of ​​God as a con man who promises everything and keeps nothing, or the idea of ​​God's vindictive judge who likes to punish and chastise the man to show his strength.

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sad clown …

All these images of God They are indicative of pathological way in which Christians perceive ourselves and the way we live style of the Gospel within our religious communities. E cOn these assumptions, you create a serious risk of a problematic spiritual self-esteem.

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It may happen that as Christians we tend not to look at the positive aspects of our lives, denying or not seeing the good that God works in us. It seems more natural to consider the downsides disconsolate and cry about our miseries. Even some religious education, guided by a false and deviated concept of humility, He has led us to feel guilty every time we talk about our quality and that is beautiful and holy we are living in relationship with God.

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The confession of praise, that is, the manifestation of the nice things – and therefore of the joy – that the Lord brings into my life is essential to make the sadness disappear once and for all. That's why during the sacramental confession, even before the prosecution of sins, you need to show to the priest, the joyful reality of which I have to give thanks to God.

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The Holy Scripture and the most authentic Christian anthropology They tell us that man is not a being negative, lost and dejected. There is a deep-rooted optimism that sees positively the man and this derives from union with God who gives beauty, comfort, dignity and makes the face of the Son continually shine on every created reality. Man is created not only in the good and in the infinite love of God, but is structured as actually very good [cf. GN 1,31] and as a positive reality which has its model in Jesus Lord of the world [cf. With the 1,16-17]. Not even the first disobedience [cf. GN 3] He manages to undermine the respect and the love that God feels for man, so as to continue to evaluate its creature with a personal act of love and care. For this reason, the height of the drama of original sin, man receives also the promise of redemption and he is given a new dress that can give him dignity and value [cf. GN 3,15; 21].

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sad clown …

In the history of the people of Israel God always helps the man so that nothing detracts from its value, its certainty of being loved. Neither the arrogance of the Pharaoh of Egypt, nor hunger and thirst in the desert, or sickness, obstinacy and murmuring manage to convince God to reject and disesteem man created very good. It is not external things – good or bad – that determine our value as Christians, It's not what people say about me that makes me a better or worse Christian, it is the value I have for God that makes me lovable.

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In the wake of this thought, psychologist James Bugental states that our true identity does not lie outside of ourselves, it must not be sought in external confirmations, in external security. Our true identity, we can find our treasure by digging in the field of our soul, deep within ourselves: place where God takes up residence and reveals himself in joy.

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It is in this shrine that I can find the original image that God intended for me, the original word that God pronounced when creating me and which is capable of giving meaning and joy to an entire life, even the most ruined and apparently useless one.

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[end of Iª meditation]

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Cagliari, 20 January 2019

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Shoot, clown !

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«You will know the truth and the truth will set you free» [GV 8,32],
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Give the worst wine when everyone is already drunk at the wedding at Cana

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

GIVE THE WORST WINE WHEN EVERYONE IS DRUNK AT THE CANA WEDDING

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If we want to be honest, in the original text of John, Jesus did not specifically say: "Everyone put on the table at the start and good wine, when you are already drunk a lot, an inferior one ". The phrase translated into Italian is faithful undoubtedly, but Jesus, to be precise, He does not say "when you are already drunk a lot" but says, "When everyone is already drunk puts on the table the worst wine".

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Author
Ariel S. Levi di Gualdo.

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Jesus Christ be praised !

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The drunk in taverns Brouwer scenes [Author: Adriaen Brouwer, Flemish painter, 1605 circa]

What the Apostle John offered in this IIª Sunday in Ordinary Time [see text WHO] It is a gospel that encompasses many peculiarities. First John is an eyewitness, Active in the narrated events.

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Before that even in modern exegesis exploded a certain form of "real socialism", not afraid to call John, "the disciple whom Jesus loved", "The beloved disciple". Fondness canceled by some interpreters present in it have almost wanted to read a "divine contradiction", ruling that preference is bad, because to God we are all equal. What is not true, because to God we are all different and all unique in our precious diversity. Moreover, the preference, or healthy predilection, It is not at all a synonym of injustice, especially with careful balance we prefer those who deserve it. And God made man, we have to somehow recognize both prudence is the balance, human and divine, pace of modern exegetes and interpreters. Therefore, in preference humanly, Christian and lovingly understood, there is nothing untoward.

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What John is a particular Gospel, first of all because it comes from the story of an Apostle who had a very direct contact with the Lord, whose predilection was able to enjoy. And if anyone would still doubt the understandable human and divine predilection, divine and human of the Lord to John, one need only reflect on a phrase that leaves no room for doubt. Under the Cross, before expiring, Jesus "Seeing his mother, and beside her the disciple whom he loved, He told his mother: “Donna, here is your son!”. Then he said to the disciple: “Here is your mother!”. And from that hour the disciple took her into his " [GV 19, 26-27].

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Jesus entrusts to this young man, little more than a boy, the one who allowed the Word became flesh, the Vergine Maria; and entrusts to him, not least because, Meanwhile, others had fled, keeping at a prudent distance from the cross.

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So are the facts, narrates the historicity of the Gospels, I'm not a collection of "metaphors" to interpret beyond the facts "merely symbolic", or as some scholars say: by de-mythologizing carefully. The Gospels contain true events, to read and understand. The Gospels are not symbolic tales, because internally they contain a precise and at times flawless historicity.

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Much could be said about images of the wedding at Cana, where the true bridegroom is Christ and where Mary, sitting at the banquet, It is the mother of the Church which wed with the Lamb Immolated. And in this feast Jesus, changing water into wine, offers man a true and full transformation through the action of divine grace of the Holy Spirit. It's still, the nectar of the vine, then end up becoming blood of Christ, which will be with the Eucharistic Sacrifice element bread, alive and holy memorial.

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At the end of this Gospel passage, Giovanni specifies: "This, in Cana of Galilee, It was the beginning of the signs performed by Jesus ». In John's Gospel abound "signs" narrated and used to guide the people to faith in Christ. That accomplished in Cana of Galilee was the first of the signs, or rather a prototype that anticipates in its own way the whole series "signs" following, to grasp, read and interpret the wake of the sign at Cana in Galilee: healed the paralytic by the pool of the Sheep Gate [cf. GV 5, 19], healing the sick son of the royal official at Capernaum [cf. GV 4, 46-54], the healing of the man born blind [cf. GV 9, 1-40], the multiplication of the loaves [cf. GV 6, 1-13] Jesus walking on rough waters to the disciples on the boat [cf. GV 9, 16-21], the resurrection of Lazarus [cf. GV 11, 1-44].

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Obviously we are used to read the Gospels in our current language. But this should not lead us to forget the fact that the languages ​​in which we listen to them today are translations of the original texts of the Gospels, in which are often scattered words are not easy to translate from the original writing language to our modern languages. We have to note that what John - who writes in Greek twenty centuries ago - does not use, like other evangelists, the term tέraton, which means prodigy, or better wine miracle; John uses the term shmeίwn, which means sign. Then if we want to be honest, in the original text of John, the man who ran the banquet, to be exact it does not say to Jesus: "Everyone put on the table at the start and good wine, when you are already drunk a lot, an inferior one ". The phrase translated into Italian is faithful undoubtedly, But, to be precise, He does not say "when you are already drunk a lot" but says otan mequsqwsin ton elassw, which literally means: "When everyone is already drunk puts on the table the worst wine".

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In the Gospel of John the “sign” is an act of grace clearly visible that Jesus fulfills the pedagogical purpose to lead the faithful to the gradual penetration of a higher reality that the senses can not perceive, but that can seize.

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John uses the term “signs” the plural because it does not intend to be limited to the miracles performed by Jesus, because all the actions of Christ are signs that lead to faith and in their own way they want to lead us to faith. An example is the miracle of miracles summed up by John in the monumental prologue of his Gospel, which begins with the words: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God". Then to come through this crescendo of truth of faith to the announcement of the most unthinkable of miracles: "And the Word became flesh", the mystery of God made man. Mystery before which the author of the Letter to the Hebrews says that "Faith is the assurance of things hoped the conviction of things unseen" [CF. EB 11,1]. For John, the sign is thus a visible element that leads to the invisible, because faith is a sign of the invisible world, the reality of God. This is why the Gospel of John ends with these words: "Jesus did many other signs … these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ " [GV 20,30-31].

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No one today, directing the eternal wedding feast of Christ with his Church can never say: "You have kept the good wine aside so far", because after the incarnation, the life, the death and resurrection of Christ, we have been given good wine until his return to the end of time, because "The groom" Christ "is the one to whom belongs the bride» [GV 3, 29]. The bridegroom is Christ head of the body which is the Church [cf. With the 1,18], and every day, through the mystery of his body and his blood alive, real presence among us, we celebrate the marriage of the lamb, Christ, with his bride, the church.

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the Island of Patmos, 19 January 2019

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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
risks but also the costs. Help us supporting this Island
with your offers through the secure Paypal system:



or you can use the bank account:
They were IT 08 (J) 02008 32974 001436620930
in this case, send us an email warning, because the bank
It does not provide your email and we could not send you a
thanks [ isoladipatmos@gmail.com ]

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