PRIESTS ON THE VERGE OF A NERVOUS BREAKDOWN: YOU can dismiss SERVICE AT THAT GOD'S PEOPLE SUFFERING FROM CERVICAL HARD TIMES ALREADY FROM THE OLD TESTAMENT?

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How childish conceit pretend to raise the situation in many parishes that have now become a nightmare? It is certainly not the first appaltandole ecclesial movement that passes, with the result of raising that fact, the parish a personale prelature some super secular or some seer with settarista clan following. So then you have to ban anti-Pelagian saving attitude that insists on things, on strategies and people to return to the center the grace of God that returns to God what is his.

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Author
Ivano Liguori, Ofm. Capp.

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PDF print format article.

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painting by Giovanni Segantini entitled "A Mass before" the 1885

I want to comment with you a letter from a fellow priest - appeared Sunday 29 on the well-known blog Vatican correspondent Marco Tosatti [See full text, WHO] - I thought was useful to address some issues in matters of faith, since this brother announces that it has made the painful decision to resign from the office of pastor. A gesture like that is not very common in the clergy: no priest leaves willingly she parish entrusted to him by the diocesan bishop if not for serious reasons. For this reason, analyzing point after point letter, I will focus on a few elements that I consider interesting, trying to clarify and respond to those suggestions that may arise in the heart of a believer player, avoiding the temptation to fall into easy judgments at the same time without hiding a healthy criticism of the facts as they were presented.

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"I have resigned my resignation as pastor to my Bishop: I do not feel more in tune with a service that does not feel respectful of what, as a parish priest, I should ensure: the spiritual life of the community ".

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Although it may seem strange those who do not know the laws of the Church, a parish priest can leave his pastoral office and return the parish in the hands of the diocesan bishop in accordance with canon 1740 of the Code of Canon Law. This canon states that: "When the ministry of any parish priest has for some reason, even through no gross negligence, becomes harmful or at least ineffective, the pastor can be removed from the parish by the diocesan bishop ". Among the possible causes - as we learn from the letter - you can also include those related to a crisis of conscience, also imply that the internal bore nonsacramental. This causes a problem not only in the legal but also moral. Faced with a crisis of conscience of the priest there may be reasonable doubt of seeing compromising the correct pastoral work so as to disturb the serenity of the faithful.

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The waiver from his pastoral pastor, But, does not mean abdicating to the mandate received from Christ with sacred ordination, one is always priests to serve the Church, But covering other offices. The acceptance of renunciation belongs to the diocesan bishop and, although it constitutes not an easy choice for a pastor, It is always ordered by common sense and the preservation of the spiritual health of the faithful and of the priest being removed.

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"I am convinced that today, the appeal to certain values ​​that are taught by the Gospel, in most cases it is widely disregarded: often overlooked by the shepherds themselves, which are no longer the desire, nor the urge to try a different method of announcement; rejected by the vast majority of the population, while Christian declaring, It seems to have adapted to a life often devoid of any commitment to the community and the Church; and even rejected by the Church itself (priests, bishops, pastoral workers), because no one seems to seek some solution to give a new face to this our tired Christianity that now seems a shadow of that intended by Jesus Christ: people believe in what he wants, the Gospel is no longer the center of people's lives'.

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To state the inconsistency of the Church Militant It is to reinvent the wheel. Inconsistent and surface we are a bit 'all, I was first of all the Apostles and Peter - the first pope - who was not only a denier but a fearful turncoat, according to the striking apocryphal tradition of storytelling quo Vadis. Therefore the observation of the inconsistency of the Christian community is not a new thing, rather it is due parabolic episode of the Gospel which speaks of good wheat and weeds [cf. Mt 13,24-30; 36-43]. In this parable we see good, as well as St. Augustine taught, that the Church is a mixed corporation of believers - a his body was mixed - that welcomes in itself just and sinners, consistent and inconsistent. The intentions which may occur through acts of holiness or iniquity, and this always under the guise of a professed faith in the light of the sun. This aspect of holiness and sin leads us back to the so-called the mystery of iniquity, that mystery of iniquity, we know through the original disobedience and that manifests itself through so much misery that we find it hard to list the community of believers. This can be for a reason for discouragement priest and suffering but can not be reason enough to throw in the towel and retire. I can not find a purely human reality that does not know the fragility and inconsistency, and I think of the many brothers who experience inconsistent this weakness not only in private and family life but also in the conduct of their daily work. The Church is so sinful but what matters most is holy because of the presence of the One who makes that. The holiness of the Church consists in adhering to the fidelity of Christ, her spouse, and in the desire to achieve all to bring salvation to all.

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When the priest reached the limit of endurance and he has exhausted its patience, seeing that his work carries a few fruits [cf. LC 5,5], he is called to move forward, conscious that the Church - hence the parish - is in the hands of Christ, remains his body and forms with him a single entity, participant in the mediation of grace which acts despite weak, evil and sin. You should always remember this mediation of Christ's grace on the Church otherwise you may succumb to evil and falling victim to a sort of Pelagianism that shifts the focus from God to facilities, by God to pastoral planning, by God to the person of the priest. And on the practical pelagianism risk can make other clarifications precisely from that part of the letter, which states that no longer exists in pastors the desire to proclaim the Gospel through proper methodology and pastoral strategy.

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It's true, There is a certain spiritual indolence in the clergy, but that is no different from that which we find also in the lay faithful. In this mediocrity there are no winners, alas we are all tied, but above all we are all losers. This laziness is prompted by the fact that we have deliberately lowered the bar of kerygma presenting it not as a salvific action of God through His Son but as a universal brotherhood in which the Church is identified in a large common hippy all peace and love and where the sacraments are rites of passage that accompany newcomers to the Liberal maturity that can easily do without the salvation and her savior. To this effect we are responsible priests for fear of seeing the empty churches - those that remained - and to be more digestible to the world we recycled and we have allowed our faithful to go over all, even on the most sacred things. But after that pearls have been trampled by the pigs and the dogs have devoured the holy things [cf. Mt 7,6] what can you do more? Nothing, only contemplate the rubble.

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How childish conceit we expect to raise the situation in many parishes that have now become a nightmare? It is certainly not the first appaltandole ecclesial movement that passes, with the result of raising that fact, the parish a personale prelature some super secular or some seer with settarista clan following. So then you have to ban anti-Pelagian saving attitude that insists on things, on strategies and people to return to the center the grace of God that returns to God what is his. Because exclusively reaffirming kerygma native to, the apostolic, without gloss it is possible to apportion, making this announcement, the only means of salvation authentic, through which is predicated, and educate, it teaches, It acts and raises the welcome prayer to God.

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Another important thing to know It is that the apostolic work proceeds in stages, as well as a relay race: I reap what others have sown earlier [cf. GV 4,37-38] or I sow what others after me will be called to pick up. As a priest I can not claim to lead all by himself, both sowing the crop. Wisdom wants me to recognize my place, doing in the parish what is right to do in the time that I was given by the Lord. If I do my share knowledge and belief I will not have nothing to reproach myself. The vineyard is not mine but the Lord, and he whom the faithful must feel, or perhaps think that the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit have not come to see - from the origin of the world today - with hard heads and rebels, perhaps even worse than those who now crowd our community? According to the facts, I am not aware that the Church is still missing or that priests are left to despair so much to desert en masse this stiff-necked people.

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Sometimes a subtle narcissism which it is expressed through the ecclesiastical personalism leads to corruption of the figure of the priest causing it to become the owner of the vineyard rather than the humble workers. As a result frustrations reveal how the man - including a priest - is not omnipotent and that what was assumed to be able to know the reality of defeat.

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"Religiosity is changed, It is plain for all, but we continue with the same patterns of the past and we are not aware of not being able to affect the consciences: there is little room for God, if not a vague God up there in the high, to keep good with a mass and the end of it ...!».

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Religiosity has not changed but it is missing because it changed the perception of the sacred that there was underlying. And thanks to that narcissistic tendency, present even among churchmen, who have stopped worshiping God finally to worship his own person and live like a outsider without duties, as eternal adolescents. So that, retracing the outdated cliché is a deceptive way to get busy, that leads nowhere, because it continues to be idolatry to his own person, their ideas, their schemes, to their stubbornness.

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I'm not saying anything new when I say that many liturgies have become idolatrous exaltation of the celebrated priest or the parish community. When the place of God puts man, the faithful are no longer able to believe, worship and pray and all becomes logical pursuit of immediate well-being and personal irenicism widespread that it does not touch the conscience but embraces the sentiment. So we end up having so many emotional child in the faith who claim to follow Father Tom or dad Caio because they feel something or because they feel a certain comfort.

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"Our society is characterized by a giant form of individualism locked up on itself, even in the pastoral field: You do not feel the need to live the commitments "in the community": someone does and strives, but does so alone! And the Church, The Christian community, where? Church means assembly, family: But where? The life of a community that embodies the Gospel is all and only in the Mass? The Christian commitment is exhausted in those 45/50 minutes per week ... and then everyone at home?».

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Today, many are unaware that what the Church and what it means to be Church and to live in the Church. The very idea of ​​ecclesiology is being questioned and the different models are in crisis revealing those well-known contradictions that pastors know and which give rise to those pitiful representations of Church and parliamentary partitocratica. The Church is fine as long as you are small, as adults we can alienate and make all the decisions necessary, even those that contradict a faith journey lasted years, without anyone being able to say anything. The Church is a bride from which divorce unless it meets and follows the desires, It is to blame when a mother does not allow me to implement my truth. In short, the Church is the synthesis of all evil, so much so that people turn away from it, if they live a faith to live apart from a church community, proclaiming the modern mantra: "God yes, Church no ". Like this, at best, ecclesiology in vogue today is the one that sees the Church as a parallel state where you can buy the goods better defined and where you can obtain the certificates and documents relevant.

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"The pastoral work of our Western Church is what I call a pastoral" kangaroo ": big jumps from one to another sacrament, without anything in between that gives momentum and continuity to a serious commitment ».

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Let's start off by a truth: there is no good without a good pastoral dogmatic, or in our specific speech the sacramentary dogmatic that is the basis of the discipline of the sacraments. It can not be properly act without believing correctly. Under the guise of ministry we priests have justified the unjustifiable, we have accepted the unacceptable, We sacrificed what we hold most sacred. For pastoral reasons we celebrated the wedding without validity, granted to godparenthood declared atheists, given the sacraments to people who did not have the minimum required in order to view them, invented new liturgical gestures without having the slightest men authorities. For pastoral reasons we have left to do many things that at the time we repent. But no one ever, bishops in the first place, It was able to enter into the merits of these choices reckless statement and asking reason to pastors. We kid ourselves that bring the faithful to do would have also led to believe, but it did not happen. We wanted l believer and we ended up with l Gonzato. Instead of faithful we had a community maintainer for the church, the maid to clean the parish house, of village animators holiday for the oratory, Of baby-sitter for catechism and the list could go on and on. When we complain that the ecclesial style resembles that of an NGO ... remember the pastoral grounds.

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The pastoral true is another matter. It goes through the revelation and faith education; feeds on the Catechism and life in common; It is exercised through listening carefully to the shepherds and the confrontation with them so that they learn, and learning is believed. In faith there are no jumps, you can not go too fast or accelerate progress, the knowledge of God takes time, indeed a lifetime.

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"It gives baptism to small, with some meeting with parents before, but after, For years, there is absolutely nothing; shooting for the preparation for First Communion, often without any family involvement. End the Communion and often attends almost total abandonment of all religious practice by the child (that of the family many times already occurred several years before, with the most unimaginable excuses!)».

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When a couple asks Baptism for their child is good to realize that the subject of the sacrament is not the baptizing but the family ie mother, Pope, brothers etc. Since the sacrament of Baptism supposes a strong desire and a journey of faith, You need to ensure the good one and the other, not be shocked if you were to find flaws or shortcomings. It would be an excellent thing then proceed to a Christian accompaniment of the family in view of Baptism, explaining well the seriousness of the gesture that you want to establish, relocating the catechesis from the parish to the child's home and built in that place a house church as a nucleus of the faith and in order to arouse the desire to meet the Lord.

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When parents have a living faith and witnessed, Accompanying this strategy serves as a reminder to consolidate and strengthen the Christian life. But when it does not, you have to take time and remember the ancient practice of baptism whose preparation involved a journey of at least three years, in which was expected to The study of faith, that is, a faith occurred denoting a real change of life and a serious conversion to Christ. In fact the faith discriminated to receive the sacraments, if no priest may differ quietly receiving sacraments waiting for a more mature response, conscious and generous.

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A speech like the previous It can also be done in preparation for the First Communion. Involve the family in preparing the party is also to take it up with the family catechesis on the Body of Christ and the Day of the Lord and go to heal and recover those cracks that occur during the time. I believe that children are used by the Lord as a means of grace for the rapprochement of their parents, because unlike the large, the little they still have the ability to do things seriously and be guided by grace.

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"Starting over again to prepare for Confirmation and, once received, we are witnessing an effective and practically definitive detachment from everything. If it goes well then discussed again at the wedding, normally at a distance of more than 10/15 year old. And we celebrate marriages, They spread a veil: They are hardly a sign of the "faith" of the couple who are the ministers, but simply an opportunity for a beautiful and photogenic party. The last big jump, what the final takes place on the occasion of death!».

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Even for Confirmation follow the advice cited for Baptism and First Communion, if there is no faith in the young it is better to wait. The decision to defer the sacraments of Christian initiation must be evaluated very well with the bishop that he should talk to his priest, endorsing it and defending it in this responsible choice. The sacraments are not a right, and no one can expect to receive them by force or against the will of the Church who sees in function consacration one of the most delicate and precious mandates.

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As for marriage, having ascertained from the time a crisis within the family, it is necessary to give a rule and start a serious discernment string that the meshes of that sacrament of conjugal consecration which must be prepared with the same seriousness with which we are preparing to sacred ordination. There is no point pushing uncritically young to contract hastily religious marriage because of tradition, of habit or fear of living together. Even with them we need a The study of faith, when marriage is not the end of a process but the completion of a stage in the knowledge of Christ.

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It is good that young people arrive a marriage sacrament only after knowing the love of Christ, which it is the only love can explain and give meaning to the love of the spouses. Otherwise knowledge only of themselves will live marriage as closed, selfish and alien to any otherness. Consumed between two individualities that will never be completely united because they can give themselves totally. This is one of the graces of the sacrament of marriage: the willingness to be unite to Jesus and learn to die one another as Christ died for the Church his bride.

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"These our times are proving too detached from what is a minimal responsiveness to the Gospel, it would be necessary ".

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Our Western society It is a fluid society, a large primordial soup where everything and its opposite. If we leave distrare this liquid modernity and not vigilant we risk our faith mistaken for gospel what it is not; and the Good News for ideology. Today the good word of Christ has to deal with the mantra of “in my opinion”, must come up against the ethical individualism that does not allow competitors and that evens everything under the same aspect, eliminating the differences and leveling hierarchies.

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"That's why I knew I continue to be a parish priest would be a wrong choice: I do not feel more to give baptism to small, I do not feel more to ensure that children are ready to make their First Communion, simply because I think, almost always, they are not at all. A survey carried out (I believe in America) He gave dramatic results: beyond the 70% Catholics do not even know what it means to "Christ's real presence" in the Eucharist. I do not feel more than preparing for Confirmation, when I know that for the boys more often, is the last act of what appears to be a farce, orchestrated for them by adults since baptism ".

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This is perhaps the most delicate part of the letter, which highlights the fragility of the feel of this dear brother but which at the same time reveals the mistake of attributing to itself the misuse of the freedom of. I'll explain. I can set an example in my priestly ministry and in spite of this see my parishioners to do the opposite of what I say or what I do. This wrong attitude in the use of free will does not invalidate my intentions as pastor, from which will emerge my pastoral action.

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A pastor is not defined based on the success He elicited among his parishioners or within his community, because sometimes it is not so. If this were true, the well -kept saint of Ars should have considered a failure after a few months from his entry into that village of the Rhone region which was defined by Giovanni Maria Vianney himself as an outpost of hell. It is therefore necessary to change the point of view, and admit that I'm not to the success of the faith of my parishioners. dissatisfaction, exhaustion and defeat in the ministry practice are elements that cut across a human discomfort that not a forgery guilty for their actions Ministerial.

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"This is not to judge anyone, because everyone has his conscience and must answer for it before God. But since I have my, I do not feel to be complicit in this "game" which I think has become the life of Christians and of the community ".

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The duty to answer before God with his conscience it is sacrosanct, and it is true that the intimate consciousness can know and judge only God, it is also true that that certainty does not remove the duty to groped alternative solutions, ask for help to the bishops, confreres, the holy people of God and search through the use of those remedies grace that God suggests. All this before the malaise turns into drama, the drama in depression, The evolves depression burnout with the distinctive signs of emotional exhaustion, cynicism and declining staff performance. All things that are going poor parish on the verge of a nervous breakdown and perhaps beyond.

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"The Gospel, we must admit, It is no longer the center of our lives. Our churches are increasingly empty desolately and always will be more: in a few years there will be only the tourists who come to see how beautiful! We must have the courage to ask ourselves a very serious question: the gospel we still interested? He says something to our hearts? Because, if it does not say anything, then we can close all our churches; if he says something, then it is necessary that we roll up our sleeves!».

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They are legitimate questions that I share, However, I wonder: their applications should be primarily placed in us priests in such a way as to arouse a healthy crisis and repentance. The gospel to me is Christ, or is the pretext for the sustenance clergy? I celebrate Mass more and because the world needs Christ or because I have to give a service to the patrons who paid me? I love going to church and waiting to welcome the faithful or make me wish I prefer staying at home to do my own? After the closure of the church, my heart stays open at night, or entrenched behind me working hours where I do not have to be bothered? I believe it is the first priest to have to make a public profession of faith in front of a world deprived of God, without fear of misunderstanding, the sneer and persecution. Only later did the parishioners will follow me, after looking at my faith and how I live it. I can not ask others what I do, and I can not pretend holiness on the other hand if we do not do anything for my.

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As pastor that I must be convinced of Christ, others exercising their freedom in the baptismal offspring they will follow in due course, according to its own path, according as the Lord will have disposed. This is the attitude that convinced the inhabitants of Ars to see in their parish priest a man of God and a holy pastor, which he allowed them a slow but steady conversion.

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"It's not a matter of inventing a" different evangelization ", changing some content; giving a few small tweaks here and there: a riverniciatina that might bring up something new, while underneath it all remains the same, encrusted with ... nothing! Instead, it must realize that the Christian practice, as well as it decreased in recent years, has come to an end and you have to start everything from scratch. Just the Gospel tells us to not put new patches on old dress: is useless, indeed ripping everything, the illusion that the fabric can still serve it as it is, patched!».

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I take advantage of this outburst to say that in the Church we have lost the habit of praying the Holy Spirit so that both he silent animator of our communities. Too often charismatic omit this element which formed the core of the First Apostolic Church and allowed the proclamation of the Gospel to all peoples with the sole availability of twelve men. The Holy Spirit is still the novelty of God which allows you to start from scratch, is the new wine which revives those without life and reinvigorates who is debased. Of course we must constantly ask, and just the pastor should be the man of the Holy Spirit, It should invoke it often and do it often invoked by believers. Without the power of the Spirit is nothing in man, nothing is free from the contagion of guilt that makes all things vain.

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"But why this new journey can be successful, necessary that all are convinced and ready to start ".

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In front of this statement I would urge caution, indeed, It does not need a granite conviction if it remains only a human belief. It is serving a conviction resulting from the Holy Spirit. Sacred Scripture teaches us how this is possible according to what Jesus tells us of the Paraclete: "When he comes, show the guilt of the world of sin, righteousness and judgment. With regard to sin, because they believe in me; from righteousness, because I go to My Father and you see me no more; in reference to judgment, because the prince of this world is already condemned " [cf. GV 16,8-11]. The Christian walk can be a convincing way only when I'm convinced of the ugliness of sin that alienates from Christ; only when I take conscience of justification obtained through the Paschal Mystery of Jesus; only when I can show the victory of good over evil through the cross that still much fear.

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"It's really like this?»

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Not for us to prepare a final answer, but it is up to us to prepare the ground so that the Lord operates.

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Laconi, 31 March 2020

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To stay as close as possible to the faithful in this time of crisis and emergency, the editorial staff of The Island of Patmos informs readers that our author Father Ivano LIGUORI, Order of Friars Minor Capuchin, Care on Facebook the heading 'THE WORD NETWORK ", offering of three times a week meditations. You can access the page prepared by our Father clicking on the logo.

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