Our Lord Jesus Christ King of the Universe – Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe – Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe
Homiletics of the Fathers of The Island of Patmos
Italian, english, español
OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST KING OF THE UNIVERSE
The title of king referring to Christ emerges with strength and frequency precisely in the Gospels of the Passion. It will be the Johannine Gospel that will make this theological theme one of the decisive arguments for understanding in depth the meaning of Jesus' saving death on the cross and its universal value.
Author
Hermit Monk
.
.
Pope Pius XI, on December 11th 1925, with the encyclical What a first established the feast of Christ the King. One of the purposes set by the institution of the solemnity was to counteract secularism, defined by that pontiff: «plague of our age». He saw the exclusion of God from society as the main cause of the evils that afflicted the world of the time:
«And so that the fruits are more abundant and last more stably in human society, it is necessary that knowledge of the royal dignity of our Lord be disseminated as much as possible. To this end, it seems to us that nothing else can be more beneficial than the institution of a particular feast dedicated to Christ the King.".
However, as almost always happens in the Church, also this pronouncement of the pontifical magisterium, for the topics covered, it favored both the exegetical study of Scripture on those themes, as well as the consequent theological reflection. Thus new horizons have opened up, and useful and in-depth reflections were offered to the faithful on Christian testimony and spirituality. But here is the evangelical passage of the Solemnity:
From the Gospel according to Luke - «In that time, [after they had crucified Jesus,] the people were watching; the leaders instead mocked Jesus saying: “He saved others! Save yourself, if he is the Christ of God, the chosen one". Even the soldiers laughed at him, they approached him to hand him some vinegar and said: “If you are the king of the Jews, save yourself". Above him there was also a writing: “This is the king of the Jews”. One of the criminals hanging on the cross insulted him: “You are not the Christ? Save yourself and us!”. The other instead rebuked him saying: “You have no fear of God, you who are condemned to the same punishment? We, rightly, because we receive what we deserved for our actions; but he didn't do anything wrong.". And said: "Jesus, remember me when you enter your kingdom". She answered him: “Truly I tell you: today with me you will be in paradise" (LC 23,35-43).
For this year's Solemnity a passage taken from the passion of the Lord is proposed in the liturgical proclamation, According to Luca, which we had previously already encountered during Holy Week. In fact, the compilers of the Lectionary could have also drawn on other texts to highlight the idea of the kingship of Christ. For instance, that of Jesus' entry into Jerusalem, where is that, According to Luca, He is proclaimed king:
«Blessed is he who comes, the king in the name of the Lord. Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!» (LC 19,38).
But it is equally true that the title of king referring to Christ emerges with strength and frequency precisely in the Gospels of the Passion. It will be the Johannine Gospel that will make this theological theme one of the decisive arguments for understanding in depth the meaning of Jesus' saving death on the cross and its universal value.
Who, in the Lucanian narrative of the passion, we are inside the section that describes the culminating phase of Jesus' execution, or his crucifixion, which includes vv. 32-49, a portion, so, broader than that proposed by the Liturgy of the Word. The lectionary focuses on two frameworks: a) The derision of religious leaders and soldiers; b) The dialogue of the two thieves, where again appears a derision and Jesus' response to one of the two that only Luke reports among the evangelists. Not only, Saint Luke is also the only one to record and offer readers the extraordinary words of Jesus on forgiveness:
"Dad, forgive them, for they know not what they do " (LC 23,34).
They are absent in some prestigious manuscript manuscripts, like «B», The Vatican, perhaps eliminated by the copyists due to anti-Jewish controversy or to underline that the subsequent fall of Jerusalem will be the work of divine punishment, according to the words of the Lord:
«Daughters of Jerusalem, don't cry over me, but weep for yourselves and for your children […] Because, if this is how you treat green wood, which will happen to dry wood?» (LC 23,28).
For those who don't know, in the Bible it sometimes happens that the most beautiful expressions are also those with the greatest problems from the point of view of the witnesses of the text who pass them down, so much so as to become a "cross" for textual critics, the scholars, that is, who dedicate their time and knowledge to offer us that text closest to the original, which is then reported in the critical editions which are the basis of the translations of the Holy Scripture into modern languages. Returning to the dialogue between Jesus and the thief, it was said that it is not found in the oldest text of the gospels, Marco's, nor in the two other lessons, that of Matthew and Saint John. On the contrary, in Mark it is clearly said that both those who were crucified with Jesus insulted him:
«And even those who were crucified with him reviled him» (MC 15,32).
The historical question also intrigued the Church Fathers, including Origen, Saint John Chrysostom, San Girolamo. They provided a simplified solution by imagining that both criminals initially attacked Jesus, as Marco reports; but then one of the two understood and then changed his opinion, while the other one continued to insult. The other solution instead, maybe more logical, is to believe that Luke drew the news from a different source and therefore consciously distances himself from Mark, knowing of the change of one of the two thieves.
But who are Luke's "thieves".? This evangelist does not use, like the other gospels, the term thief, but rather that of a malefactor, literally "who has caused damage through fraud or deception". In Mark and Matthew they are instead two bandits, weighted in Greek, a term that was also used to indicate rebels, as is the case with Barabbas, in the gospel of John. But as one commentator writes: «On every page of his story, Luke avoids any possible confusion between the Christian movement and the rebels who rose up against Rome" (François Bovon). An 8th century Latin manuscript. he also gives us the names of the two criminals: Joathas e Maggatras, while in the apocryphal Acts of Pilate we find different names: Weaning and Gestations. In short, at the end we notice that Jesus finds himself between two evildoers; rather, in v. 32 Luke writes that "two other criminals were also led to the gallows", making it clear that Jesus was assimilated to criminals.
The dialogue, in is beautiful and moving, it starts from the criminal who turns to the other crucified, rebuking him and admitting his sin. He makes a real act of repentance and by claiming to have made a mistake he demonstrates his conversion. Then he turns to the Lord, repeatedly. CEI translates «e disse», while in the Greek text we have an imperfect, as if to indicate an action repeated in the past: «And he said», maybe several times. Calling the Lord by his proper name, "Jesus", the crucified criminal turns out to be the only one in the gospels who addresses Him in such a direct way. It's a sign of confidence, perhaps because on the cross, while dying, there are no more formalities. The criminal continues: "Remember me", asking what the person praying asks of God in the Psalms, but we can also remember Samson dying in the book of Judges:
«Then Samson called upon the Lord, saying: “Lord God, remember me! Give me strength just this once again, oh God" (Gdc 16,28).
In the end, here is the reference to the Kingdom, the evildoer says: «in your Kingdom»; demonstrating that he understands which kingdom it is, of that of Jesus and not of any one of this world.
Jesus' response shows the typical Lucanian trait, thanks to the adverb «today», which occurs many times in the third gospel. He says that salvation is now, from now and it won't be until later. Jesus then expresses an extraordinary relationship if we think about who his interlocutor was, using the companion complement: "with me"; and finally he speaks of a "paradise", a term of Persian origin, which means garden and which recalls the book of Genesis. In fact, in an ancient Syriac translation we read that Jesus promised the criminal to stay with him "in the garden of Eden".
We have mentioned the importance of the theme of Jesus' kingship in the fourth Gospel, that of San Giovanni. But what is Luca telling us on this topic? We must consider that while telling a story, the evangelist Luke does not offer us a chronicle of what happened: «it does not describe the procedure of fixing the condemned man on the cross, rather it illustrates the theological and soteriological significance of what happened", which has to do with God and salvation. In fact, it is in the extreme moment of weakness that the kingdom and kingship Jesus has chosen is most evident. God carries out his will precisely in the moment of greatest weakness of his Son. It is with his death that the true liberation that Jesus spoke about and for which he came occurs, as Luca says in Blessed:
«To give to his people the knowledge of salvation in the remission of their sins» (LC 1,77).
The prophecy about the life of Jesus also comes true on the cross, engraved in the very name it bears; Jesus means "God saves", as the angel explains well to Joseph in Mt 1,21: «Ella (the Virgin) she will give birth to a son and you will call him Jesus: in fact he will save his people from their sins" This word is realized above all by the cross, on which the same name is engraved, accompanied by his royal title. Even from there, even from the cross of the Son, God is capable of saving. On the contrary, it is Jesus himself who, with the little breath he has left in that circumstance, announces salvation to one of the many sinners he encountered during the time of his ministry: "Today you will be with me in Heaven" (LC 23,43).
What salvation is Jesus capable of?? Naturally of a global salvation, which embraces the entire life of the criminal crucified with him, liberation from his sins, but also the promise to let him enter his kingdom. To do this, Jesus also expresses power, but not as the powerful people of the world exercise it, because it is disinterested as only the grace that entirely saves man can be, because its horizon is the ultimate good. Today's celebration thus helps us to put things back in the right order and to have a typically Christian vision of life and history. Even if everything around us is shaking, Governments and powerful people change and what happens sometimes scares us, Christians know that it is they who hold the reins of history, mysteriously, the Providence of God. On the contrary, precisely in moments when reality seems to deny the presence of God, as Pius XI underlined in the Encyclical mentioned above, Christians have a model that explains how things work: through the kingship exercised by Jesus Christ in the folds of history.
From the Hermitage, 22 November 2025
.
______________________________
OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST, KING OF THE UNIVERSE
The title of King, applied to Christ, emerges with peculiar force and frequency precisely in the Passion narratives. The Johannine Gospel will make this theological theme one of the decisive keys for understanding in depth the meaning of Jesus’ salvific death upon the Cross and its universal significance.
Author
Hermit Monk
.
Pope Pius XI, on 11 December 1925, instituted the feast of Christ the King with the encyclical What a first. One of the purposes he intended in establishing this solemnity was to counteract secularism, which that pontiff described as “the plague of our age”. He perceived in the exclusion of God from society the principal cause of the ills that afflicted the world of his time:
“And that the fruits [of the Jubilee] may be more abundant, and may last the more securely in human society, it is necessary that the knowledge of the regal dignity of our Lord should be spread as widely as possible. To this end it seems to Us that nothing would be more efficacious than the institution of a special feast in honour of Christ the King”.
Yet, as so often happens within the Church, even this pronouncement of the pontifical Magisterium — given the themes it touches — fostered both a deeper exegetical study of Scripture on these subjects and the consequent theological reflection. Thus new horizons opened, and useful and penetrating insights were offered to the faithful for Christian witness and for the spiritual life. And here is the Gospel passage of the Solemnity:
From the Holy Gospel according to Luke — “At that time, [after they had crucified Jesus,] the people stood by watching; but the leaders scoffed at him, saying, ‘He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Christ of God, his chosen one.’ The soldiers also mocked him, coming up to offer him sour wine and saying, ‘If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself.’There was also an inscription over him: ‘This is the King of the Jews.’ One of the criminals who were hanging there reviled him, saying, ‘Are you not the Christ? Save yourself and us!’ But the other rebuked him, saying, ‘Have you no fear of God, you who are subject to the same condemnation? And we indeed justly, for we are receiving what our deeds deserve; but this man has done nothing wrong.’ And he said, ‘Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.’ He replied, ‘Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise’” (Page 23:35-43).
For this year’s Solemnity, the liturgical proclamation presents a passage taken from the Lord’s Passion according to Luke, a text we had already encountered during Holy Week. Indeed, the compilers of the Lectionary might have drawn upon other passages to highlight the theme of Christ’s kingship. For example, the account of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem, where, according to Luke, He is acclaimed as King:
“Blessed is he who comes, the King, in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven and glory in the highest heavens!” (Page 19:38).
Yet it is equally true that the title of King, applied to Christ, emerges with peculiar force and frequency precisely in the Passion narratives. The Johannine Gospel will make this theological theme one of the decisive keys for understanding in depth the meaning of Jesus’ salvific death upon the Cross and its universal significance.
Here, in Luke’s Passion narrative, we find ourselves within the section that describes the culminating moment of Jesus’ execution — namely, His crucifixion — which spans verses 32–49, a portion therefore broader than that offered by the Liturgy of the Word. The lectionary focuses on two scenes: a) the mockery of the religious leaders and of the soldiers; b) the dialogue between the two criminals, in which mockery appears once more, together with the reply of Jesus to one of them — a detail recorded only by Luke among the evangelists. Not only so: Saint Luke is also the only one to preserve and offer to readers the extraordinary words of Jesus on forgiveness:
“Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing” (Page 23:34).
These words are absent from certain prestigious manuscript witnesses, such as Codex Vaticanus (“B”), perhaps removed by scribes either out of anti-Jewish polemic or in order to underscore that the subsequent fall of Jerusalem would be an act of divine punishment, according to the Lord’s own words:
“Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me; weep rather for yourselves and for your children… For if this is what is done to the green wood, what will happen to the dry?” (Page 23:28).
For those unfamiliar with the matter, it often happens in the Bible that the most beautiful expressions are precisely those that pose the greatest problems from the point of view of the textual witnesses that transmit them — to the point of becoming a cross for textual critics, that is, for those scholars who devote their time and expertise to offering us the text closest to the original, upon which the critical editions used for modern translations of Holy Scripture are based. Returning to the dialogue between Jesus and the criminal, it was noted that this episode is absent both from the oldest Gospel text — that of Mark — and from the other two traditions, those of Matthew and John. Indeed, Mark states explicitly that both of the men crucified with Jesus reviled him:
“And those who were crucified with him also reviled him” (Mk 15:32).
This historical problem intrigued the Fathers of the Church — among them Origen, Saint John Chrysostom, and Saint Jerome. They proposed a simplified solution: that at the beginning both criminals attacked Jesus, as Mark reports; but that one of the two, at a certain point, understood, and then changed his attitude, while the other continued to insult Him. The other solution, perhaps more plausible, is that Luke drew this account from a different source, and therefore deliberately diverges from Mark, being aware of the change in the disposition of one of the criminals.
But who, then, are the “thieves” of Luke? This evangelist does not employ, as the other Gospels do, the term thief, but rather malefactor — literally, “one who has caused harm through fraud or deceit.” In Mark and Matthew, instead, we find two bandits — freight in Greek — a term also used to indicate insurgents, as in the case of Barabbas in the Gospel of John. But, as one commentator notes, “On every page of his narrative, Luke avoids any possible confusion between the Christian movement and the rebels who rose up against Rome” (François Bovon).
A Latin manuscript of the eighth century even supplies us with the names of the two malefactors: Joathas and Maggatras; while in the apocryphal Acts of Pilate we encounter the names Desmas and Gestas. In the end, however, wha t matters is that Jesus finds Himself between two malefactors; indeed, in verse 32 Luke writes that “two others also, who were criminals, were led away to be put to death with him,” thus making it clear that Jesus was classified among offenders.
The dialogue — beautiful and deeply moving in itself — begins with the malefactor who turns toward the other crucified man, reproaching him and acknowledging his own sin. He makes a true act of repentance and shows his conversion precisely by admitting his wrongdoing. Then he turns repeatedly to the Lord. The Italian Bible renders it “and he said,” but in the Greek text the verb is in the imperfect: “he was saying,” suggesting a repeated or continuous action in the past — perhaps he said it several times. Addressing the Lord by His proper name, “Jesus,” the crucified malefactor proves to be the only one in all the Gospels who speaks to Him in so direct a manner. It is a sign of familiarity — perhaps because, upon the cross, at the threshold of death, all formalities fall away. The malefactor continues: “Remember me,” echoing what the supplicant so often asks of God in the Psalms; and we may also recall Samson, dying in the Book of Judges:
“Then Samson called to the Lord and said, ‘Lord God, remember me! Strengthen me once more, just this once, O God'” (Jgs 16:28).
Finally comes the reference to the Kingdom: the malefactor says, “when you come into your kingdom,” showing that he understands what Kingdom this is — the Kingdom of Jesus, not one of the kingdoms of this world.
The response of Jesus bears the distinctive mark of Luke, especially through the adverb “today,” which recurs so frequently in the third Gospel. He declares that salvation is from now, from this very moment, and not merely something that awaits beyond death. Jesus then expresses a relationship of extraordinary intimacy — all the more astonishing when we consider who His interlocutor is — by using the expression “with me”; and He concludes by speaking of “paradise,” a word of Persian origin meaning “garden,” recalling the Book of Genesis. Indeed, in an ancient Syriac translation we read that Jesus promises the malefactor that he will be with Him “in the garden of Eden.”
We have already touched upon the importance of the theme of the kingship of Jesus in the fourth Gospel, that of Saint John. But what, then, is Luke telling us on this matter? It must be borne in mind that, although narrating an event, the evangelist Luke does not offer us a chronicle of what happened: he “does not describe the procedure by which the condemned man was fixed to the cross; rather, he illustrates the theological and soteriological significance of what took place” — that which pertains to God and to salvation. Indeed, it is at the very moment of extremest weakness that the nature of the kingdom and kingship chosen by Jesus is displayed most clearly. God accomplishes His will precisely at the moment of the greatest weakness of His Son. It is through His death that the true liberation takes place — the liberation of which Jesus had spoken and for which He had come, as Luke states in the Blessed:
“to give his people knowledge of salvation through the forgiveness of their sins” (Page 1:77).
Upon the cross, moreover, the prophecy concerning the life of Jesus — inscribed within His very name — is fulfilled. Jesus means “God saves,” as the angel explains to Joseph in Mt 1:21: “She (the Virgin) will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” This word is fulfilled above all upon the cross, where the same name appears, accompanied by His royal title. Even there — even from the cross of the Son — God is able to save. Indeed, it is Jesus Himself who, with the little breath remaining to Him in that circumstance, announces salvation to one of the many sinners He encountered during His earthly ministry:
“Today you will be with me in paradise” (Page 23:43).
Of what salvation is Jesus capable? A salvation that is truly complete — one that embraces the whole life of the malefactor crucified beside Him: the forgiveness of his sins, yet also the promise that he will enter His kingdom. To effect this, Jesus too exercises a power, though not as the rulers of this world exercise power. His is a power entirely free of self-interest, as only grace can be — grace that saves the human person in his entirety, for its horizon is the ultimate good.
The feast we celebrate today helps us to set things once more in their proper order and to recover a vision of life and of history that is distinctively Christian. Even if all around us is in turmoil — governments change, powers rise and fall, and events at times frighten us — Christians know that it is, mysteriously, the Providence of God that holds the reins of history. Indeed, precisely in those moments when reality seems to deny the presence of God — as Pius XI emphasised in the encyclical mentioned above — Christians have a model that reveals how things truly work: the kingship exercised by Jesus Christ in the hidden folds of history.
From the Hermitage, 22 November 2025
.
______________________________
OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST, KING OF THE UNIVERSE
The title of king applied to Christ appears with force and frequency precisely in the gospels of the Passion. It will be the Gospel of Saint John that will make this theological topic one of the decisive points to understand in depth the meaning of the saving death of Jesus on the cross and its universal value..
Author
Hermit Monk
.
Pope Pius XI, he 11 December 1925, with the encyclical What a first, instituted the feast of Christ the King. One of the intended purposes when establishing this solemnity was to counteract secularism., defined by that pontiff as "the plague of our time". He saw the exclusion of God from society as the main cause of the evils that afflicted the world at that time.:
«And so that the fruits may be more abundant and remain more firmly in human society, It is necessary that knowledge of the royal dignity of our Lord be disseminated as much as possible.. To this end, it seems to us that nothing else can be of greater benefit than the institution of a particular and proper festival of Christ the King..
However, as almost always happens in the Church, This pronouncement of the pontifical magisterium—due to the topics it addresses—has favored both the exegetical development of Sacred Scripture on such issues and the subsequent theological reflection.. Thus new horizons have been opened, and useful and profound reflections for Christian witness and spiritual life have been offered to the faithful.. And here is the evangelical passage of the Solemnity:
From the holy Gospel according to Saint Luke — «At that time, [after they had crucified Jesus,] the people stood there watching; the bosses, for his part, They mocked Jesus saying: “He has saved others; let him save himself, if he is the Messiah of God, the Chosen One”. The soldiers also made fun of him, They came up to offer him vinegar and said: “If you are the king of the Jews, save yourself!”. Above it was an inscription: “This is the king of the Jews”. One of the crucified criminals insulted him: “Aren't you the Messiah? Save yourself and us!”. But the other rebuked him saying: “Do you not fear God?”, you who are under the same sentence? Us, justly, because we received what our actions deserved; he, instead, "He hasn't done anything wrong.". And he added: "Jesus, “Remember me when you come to your Kingdom.”. Jesus replied: “Truly I tell you: Today you will be with me in paradise." (LC 23,35-43).
For this year's Solemnity a passage taken from the Passion of the Lord according to Saint Luke is proposed in the liturgical proclamation, which we had already found previously during Holy Week. Indeed, The editors of the Lectionary could also have turned to other texts to highlight the idea of the kingship of Christ. For example, the story of Jesus' entry into Jerusalem, where, according to Luke, is proclaimed king:
«Blessed is he who comes, the king, in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven and glory in the highest heaven." (LC 19,38).
But it is equally true that the title of king applied to Christ appears with force and frequency precisely in the Gospels of the Passion. It will be the Gospel of Saint John that will make this theological topic one of the decisive points to understand in depth the meaning of the saving death of Jesus on the cross and its universal value..
Here, in the Lucan story of the Passion, we find ourselves within the section that describes the culminating phase of Jesus' execution, that is to say, his crucifixion, that includes the verses 32-49, a passage, therefore, broader than that proposed by the Liturgy of the Word. The Lectionary focuses on two tables: a) The mockery of religious leaders and soldiers; b) The dialogue of the two evildoers, where a mockery appears again and Jesus' response to one of them, that only Luke collects among the evangelists.
In addition, san Lucas is the only one that records and offers readers Jesus' extraordinary words about forgiveness:
"Dad, forgive them, because they don't know what they're doing." (LC 23,34).
These words are absent in some prestigious manuscript codices, like “B”, he The Vatican, perhaps suppressed by copyists because of the anti-Jewish controversy, or to emphasize that the subsequent fall of Jerusalem would be the work of divine punishment, according to the words of the Lord:
«Daughters of Jerusalem, don't cry for me; cry rather for yourselves and for your children […] Because if that's how they treat the green log, what will happen to the dry?» (LC 23,28).
For those who don't know, In the Bible it sometimes happens that the most beautiful expressions are also those that present the greatest problems from the point of view of the witnesses of the text who transmit them., until it became a “cross” for textual critics, that is to say, the scholars who dedicate their time and knowledge to offering us the text closest to the original, which is then reproduced in the critical editions that serve as the basis for translations of the Holy Scripture into modern languages.
Returning to the dialogue between Jesus and the evildoer, We said that it is not found even in the oldest text of the gospels, Mark's, nor in the other two stories, those of Matthew and Saint John. It's more, In Mark it is clearly stated that the two who had been crucified with Jesus insulted him:
"Those who had been crucified with him also insulted him" (MC 15,32).
The historical question also intrigued the Fathers of the Church, among them Origins, Saint John Chrysostom and Saint Jerome. They offered a simplified solution by imagining that at the beginning both criminals attacked Jesus, as Marcos actually refers; but then one of the two understood and then changed his mind, while the other continued insulting him.
The other solution, maybe more logical, consists of assuming that Luke obtained this information from a different source and that therefore he consciously distances himself from Mark, knowing of the change of attitude of one of the two criminals.
But who are Lucas' “thieves”?? This evangelist does not use, like the other gospels, the term “thief”, but rather that of malefactor, literally “one who has caused harm through fraud or deception”. In Mark and Matthew, however, there are two bandits (weighted in Greek), term that was also used to designate rebels, as is the case of Barabbas in the gospel of John. But, as one commentator writes:
«On each page of his story, Luke avoids any possible confusion between the Christian movement and the rebels against Rome. (François Bovon).
A Latin manuscript from the 8th century He even provides us with the names of the two criminals.: Joathas and Draw back, while in the apocrypha Acts of Pilate we find other names: Desmas and A gesture.
Ultimately, We see that Jesus is between two evildoers; it's more, in the v. 32, Luke writes that “two other evildoers were also led to the torture.”, clearly implying that Jesus was assimilated to criminals.
The dialogue, in itself beautiful and moving, begins with the evildoer who addresses the other crucified, rebuking him and admitting his own sin. Perform a true act of repentance and, by stating that he has done wrong, expresses his conversion.
Then he turns to the Lord, repeatedly. The EEC edition translates "and said", while in the Greek text an imperfect appears, as indicating a repeated action in the past: "And he said", maybe several times.
By calling the Lord by his proper name, "Jesus", This crucified evildoer turns out to be the only one in the gospels who addresses Him so directly. It is a sign of trust, maybe because on the cross, when you die, there is no longer any room for formalities.
The evildoer continues: "Remember me", asking what the prayer asks of God in the Psalms; but we can also remember Samson dying in the book of Judges:
"Then Samson called upon the Lord, saying: “Lord God, remember me! Grant me strength just this once, oh God” (Joe 16,28).
Finally comes the reference to the Kingdom: the evildoer says "in your Kingdom", demonstrating an understanding of what Kingdom it is – that of Jesus – and not just any one of this world.
Jesus' response shows the typical Lucan trait thanks to the adverb "today", that appears so many times in the third gospel. He affirms that salvation is from now on, from this very moment, and not only after.
Jesus also expresses an extraordinary relationship if we think who his interlocutor was, using the company plugin: "with me"; and finally he speaks of a "paradise", term of Persian origin that means garden and that evokes the book of Genesis.
In fact, In an ancient Syriac translation we read that Jesus promised the evildoer that he would be with Him "in the Garden of Eden.".
We had mentioned the importance of the topic of the kingship of Jesus in the fourth Gospel, that of Saint John. But what does Luke tell us about it?? It is necessary to consider that, still telling a story, the evangelist Luke does not offer us a chronicle of what happened: "does not describe the procedure of fixing the condemned on the cross, but rather it illustrates the theological and soteriological scope of what happened.", that is to say, that which has to do with God and salvation.
Indeed, It is in the extreme moment of weakness where it is best manifested what Kingdom and what royalty Jesus has chosen. God fulfills his will precisely at the moment of his Son's greatest weakness.. It is with his death that the true liberation of which Jesus has spoken and for which he has come is realized., As Luke says in Blessed:
"To give to his people the knowledge of salvation through the remission of their sins" (LC 1,77).
The prophecy about the life of Jesus is also fulfilled on the cross, registered in the same name that bears; Jesus means "God saves", as the angel clearly explains to Joseph on Mt 1,21:
«Ella (the Virgin) she will give birth to a son and you will name him Jesus, because He will save his people from their sins".
this word It is done above all from the cross, where the same name is inscribed, accompanied by his royal title. Even from there, from the cross of the Son, God is able to save. Even more: It is Jesus himself who, with the little breath that he has left in such circumstances, announces salvation to one of the many sinners he has encountered throughout his ministry:
«Today you will be with me in paradise» (LC 23,43).
What salvation is Jesus capable of?? Of course a global salvation, that encompasses the entire life of the evildoer crucified with Him: the deliverance from his sins and also the promise of making him enter his Kingdom. To do this, Jesus manifests a power, but not as the powerful of this world exercise it, because it is selfless as only the grace that saves the human being in its entirety can be., since its horizon is the ultimate good.
Today's party It thus helps us to put things in their right order and to have a truly Christian vision of life and history.. Although everything around us shakes, change governments and the powerful, and what happens sometimes scares us, Christians know that whoever holds the reins of history is, mysteriously, the Providence of God.
It's more: precisely in moments when reality seems to deny the presence of God - as Pius XI emphasized in the aforementioned encyclical -, Christians have a model that explains how things work: through the kingship exercised by Jesus Christ in the folds of history.
From the Hermitage, 22 November 2025
.
.
Sant'Angelo Cave in Ripe (Civitella del Tronto)
.
Visit the pages of our book shop WHO and support our editions by purchasing and distributing our books.
.
______________________
Dear Readers,
this magazine requires management costs that we have always faced only with your free offers. Those who wish to support our apostolic work can send us their contribution through the convenient and safe way PayPal by clicking below:
Or if you prefer you can use our
Bank account in the name of:
Editions The island of Patmos
n Agency. 59 From Rome – Vatican
Iban code:
IT74R0503403259000000301118
For international bank transfers:
Codice SWIFT:
BAPPIT21D21
If you make a bank transfer, send an email to the editorial staff, the bank does not provide your email and we will not be able to send you a thank you message:
isoladipatmos@gmail.com
We thank you for the support you wish to offer to our apostolic service.
The Fathers of the Island of Patmos
.
.
.
.
.
«I believe to understand». A journey into the Profession of Faith that restores the Creed to its original power
«I BELIEVE TO UNDERSTAND». A JOURNEY INSIDE THE PROFESSION OF FAITH THAT GIVES BACK TO CREDO ITS ORIGINAL POWER
The author, Ariel S. Levi di Gualdo, in this book of his published on the occasion of 1700 years of the Council celebrated in Nicaea in 325, returns to Symbol of Faith its primordial strength as a word to live. The I believe it ceases to be the "summary" of faith and becomes what it has always been in tradition: the spiritual grammar of Christian existence, the code that introduces the mystery and that allows man to rediscover himself in the face of the incarnate God.
— Books and reviews —
Author:
Jorge Facio Lynx
President of Editions The island of Patmos
.
In the time when faith dissolves into emotional feelings and truth in consensus, I think to understand presents itself as a necessary and courageous work: a return to the rock from which the Church is recognized.
The author, Ariel S. Levi di Gualdo, in this book of his published on the occasion of 1700 years of the Council celebrated in Nicaea in 325, returns to Symbol of Faith its primordial strength as a word to live. The I believe it ceases to be the "summary" of faith and becomes what it has always been in tradition: the spiritual grammar of Christian existence, the code that introduces the mystery and that allows man to rediscover himself in the face of the incarnate God.
In an era of fragmented languages and liquid identities, the text reaffirms - with rigor and patristic breadth - that Christian truth is not a vague feeling nor a personal impression, but an act of freedom born from the encounter with Christ. The word "I believe" thus regains its highest meaning: not the opinion of the believer, but man's communion with the truth that saves.
The Author proposes a theological and spiritual journey to the roots of faith within the revelation that God makes of himself; within the history of the dogma that preserves the truth; within the drama of the Ecumenical Councils, who defended the Christian identity from the danger of being reduced to philosophy; within the life of the believer, who finds the unity of his own person in the act of faith.
The Reader immediately feels the great breath of the Fathers of the Church, the echo of the martyrs who professed the I believe before offering himself up for sacrifice, the luminous force of Tradition that, far from suffocating, free.
The text is crossed by a red thread: only the truth sets you free and only a conscious faith allows you to understand what you profess, what is experienced and what is announced.
The Author shows at the same time how the loss of a rigorous theological language has led to the loss of the very sense of mystery and how many contemporary crises arise from the removal of what the Church has always proclaimed: that truth does not arise from man, but it comes to him as a gift. In this sense, I think to understand it also appears as a pastoral book, because it gives back to the Christian people the possibility of understand to believe e believe to understand, according to the great teaching of Saint Augustine and Saint Anselm of Aosta.
The volume thus fits into the path already started by the Author with other theological-doctrinal works that unite the dimensions of truth and that of freedom with the root of faith.
It is a book that presents continuity with the entire editorial process of the magazine The Island of Patmos: founded in 2014 and from which they were born in 2018 the editions of the same name to render a service to the Church, an act of doctrinal clarification e, at the same time, a call to personal responsibility of the believer.
In a publishing landscape often dominated by generic spiritual texts, This volume gives the reader back the taste of theological authenticity and the joy of the intelligence of faith. It is an invitation to rediscover the I believe as a gesture, as an act, as a voice that crosses the centuries and continues to say - today as yesterday - who God is and who man is in the light of his face.
A book destined to stay, to meditate slowly and for a long time, because it leads not only to the understanding of Symbol, but at the very heart of Christian life. A book that also constitutes an act of gratitude on the part of the Author who wanted to dedicate it to the memory of Jesuit theologian Peter Gumpel (Hannover 1923 – Roma †2022), "to whom I owe", he writes in the dedication: «my training in dogmatic theology and in the history of dogma».
the Island of Patmos, 21 November 2025
.
.
______________________
Dear Readers,
this magazine requires management costs that we have always faced only with your free offers. Those who wish to support our apostolic work can send us their contribution through the convenient and safe way PayPal by clicking below:
Or if you prefer you can use our
Bank account in the name of:
Editions The island of Patmos
n Agency. 59 From Rome – Vatican
Iban code:
IT74R0503403259000000301118
For international bank transfers:
Codice SWIFT:
BAPPIT21D21
If you make a bank transfer, send an email to the editorial staff, the bank does not provide your email and we will not be able to send you a thank you message:
isoladipatmos@gmail.com
We thank you for the support you wish to offer to our apostolic service.
The Fathers of the Island of Patmos
.
.
.
The replacement of sin with the crime of opinion in contemporary society – The replacement of sin with the crime of opinion in contemporary society – The replacement of sin by the crime of opinion in contemporary society
Italian, english, español
THE REPLACEMENT OF SIN WITH THE CRIME OF OPINION IN CONTEMPORARY SOCIETY
Public morality, free from sin but obsessed with guilt, ends up producing a new form of Puritanism, crueler than what she thought she had overcome. Because modern Puritanism no longer arises from an excess of religion, but from a lack of faith; it does not aim at holiness, but to compliance. And in this new civil orthodoxy, the sinner can no longer convert: he can only remain silent.
— Theologica —
.
Author
Ariel S. Levi di Gualdo
.
PDF print format article – PDF article print format – PDF article in printed format
.
At the moment the concept of sin it is expelled from language and collective thought, society - deprived of its theological dimension - nevertheless does not stop judging. On the contrary, paradoxically he judges more than before.
God's judgment rejected, man places himself as the absolute measure of good and evil. And so, in the name of freedom, new moral tribunals are erected that do not allow appeal. Today it is enough to state that abortion is not a "great social achievement" but a vile massacre of the innocent, to be accused of hatred; it is enough to question homosexualist culture to be declared enemies of freedom and progress, or branded as obscurantists for daring to defend the institution of the natural family, or simply express the truth that human life is a gift from God to be suspected of religious fanaticism.
In this way, to the theology of sin understood as an act of the will that separates man from God and from which the voluntary and free deprivation of grace derives, society replaces the sociology of guilt. It is no longer sin that offends God, but the "heretical" opinion offends collective sensitivity. This creates a system of symbolic sanctions that, despite not having the form of law, acts with the same coercive force: marginalization, censorship, the loss of speech. A teacher who dares to critically discuss the "dogmas" of single thought is suspended or isolated; an artist who represents the Christian faith outside the canons of secularist aesthetics is accused of provocation; a priest who reminds us of the need for moral judgment is accused of fomenting hatred. Even a simple evangelical quote — like «I am the way, the truth and the life " (GV 14,6) — can be read as an act of presumption or offense. Trials no longer take place in courts, but in television studios and social network, where guilt is measured in seconds and condemnation is pronounced en masse.
I talk show television programs are now a real plague: there is no debate in them, not even through comparisons, even wanting to be polemical, but structured on questions and answers. Far from it: issues are raised - often very delicate and complex - to spark fights at the end of which no conclusion is reached. All this is studied and desired. Experts and scholars in various fields of knowledge are invited, to which the hosts ask, without pain of human ridicule, to answer in half a minute to controversial questions that science and philosophy have been debating for centuries. If the scholar dares to exceed thirty or forty seconds, the mandatory advertising break arrives; after which a new program block begins and the invited scholar has meanwhile disappeared from parterre television. In return, But, at the beginning of the evening, the now calm presenter - in an attitude of almost kneeling deference - lets the politician in office who is particularly appreciated by that company speak without any cross-examination, who is granted a monologue lasting forty uninterrupted minutes, with five or six questions asked in an amiable and subdued manner, clearly agreed in advance to avoid unpleasant questions. In these circumstances there are no advertising needs of any kind, the same ones justified until recently with the need to support the television company which lives on advertising revenues. Everything is postponed to subsequent blocks, where particularly aggressive journalists are broadcast who chase peripheral private or public administrators with microphones and cameras, issuing orders in a severe peremptory tone: «You have to answer… you have to answer!». Ignoring that the right not to respond - and not to a journalist, but to an investigating magistrate -, it is one of the fundamental constitutional rights recognized to the suspect and the accused. Then follows the next block in which one does not hesitate to ask a philosopher to explain in four words - for a maximum of thirty seconds - the principles of metaphysics "in a way that is understandable to everyone", or an astrophysicist to clarify the dynamics of the expansion of the universe in a few moments.
In such a context, the television screen becomes the new moral chair of the world: acquittals and convictions are pronounced from it, it is decided who is worthy of speaking and who must be silenced. In modernity we no longer seek forgiveness, but the public exposure of the guilty party. Penance is no longer the fruit of conversion, but social erasure. Apparently it seems like a form of justice, but in reality it is just a new sacrificial ritual without redemption. It is the upside-down confessional of modernity, where forgiveness is not sought but the public exposure of the guilty party. And penance is no longer conversion, but the cancellation. Apparently, it seems like an achievement of freedom: sin eliminated, man believes himself to be free from any moral judgement. But actually, precisely by denying sin, he has canceled the very possibility of forgiveness. Indeed, if there no longer exists a God who judges and redeems, there is no longer even an act of mercy that can forgive and erase sin. Only the sense of guilt remains as a permanent condition, a social brand that cannot be erased, because no one anymore has the authority nor the will to forgive.
Unfortunately, in recent years, even within the Church we have sometimes succumbed to the same worldly logic, taking on expressions and criteria typical of the squares driven by gallows emotion. After the serious scandals that have involved and often overwhelmed various members of our clergy - scandals that canon law properly defines sERIOUS oFFENSES — has begun to be used, even at the highest levels, a formula that sounds like an insult to the Christian faith: «zero tolerance». Such a language, borrowed from political and media lexicon, it reveals a mentality foreign to the Gospel and the penitential tradition of the Church. It is obvious that when faced with certain crimes - such as sexual abuse of minors - the perpetrator must be immediately neutralized and placed in a position to no longer harm, therefore subjected to a just punishment, proportionate and, according to canonical doctrine, MEDICAL, that is, oriented towards its recovery and conversion. This is why the expression "zero tolerance" is aberrant on a doctrinal and pastoral level, because it does not belong to the language of the Church, but to that of populist campaigns that focus and play on the belly moods of the masses.
Declaring that you need a doctor they are the sick and not the healthy (cf.. Mt 9, 12), Jesus indicates and entrusts us with a specific mission, does not invite us to "zero tolerance".
Faced with these new trends a paradoxical moral short circuit emerges: the same consciences that for years have hidden the dirt under the carpets with rare and silenced clerical malice, today they are zealous in publicly proclaiming their severity, almost as if to purify themselves before the world. Sometimes innocent people or simply suspects are hit to demonstrate rigor, while the real culprits - in other times protected - often go unpunished and, sometimes, promoted to the highest ecclesial and ecclesiastical leaders, because it is precisely there that we find them all "to judge the living and the dead", almost as if their reign - that of falsehood and hypocrisy - "will never end", in a kind of I believe on the contrary. All this is presented as evidence of a "new Church" that would finally embrace the politics of firmness. And the much vaunted mercy, where have you been? If we go and see we will discover that in order to benefit from mercy it seems it is necessary to be black who commits violence in the most central areas of cities, including attacks on the police themselves, despite being promptly justified, they do not commit crimes because they are violent and inclined to crime, but due to society being strictly guilty of not having adequately welcomed and integrated them. Let's ask ourselves: what credibility can an evangelical announcement have that preaches mercy only for certain "protected categories" and at the same time adopts the logic of the so-called "zero tolerance" for those, within itself, he was seriously wrong? It is here that the most dramatic outcome of internal secularization manifests itself: the Church that to please the world renounces the language of redemption to take on that of gallows revenge, showing mercy only with what corresponds to the social tendencies of political correctness.
In Christianity, sin was a wound that she could be healed; in secularized anthropology, guilt is an indelible stain. The sinner could be converted and reborn, the contemporary culprit can only be punished or re-educated. The mercy, deprived of its theological foundation, it becomes an administrative gesture, a paternalist concession, an act of public clemency that does not regenerate but humiliates. Because true mercy does not arise from a change of heart or from an act of indulgence, but by the redemptive justice of God, which manifests itself in the sacrifice of the Son and finds fulfillment in the Cross, where justice and mercy embrace each other. It is not the opposite of justice, but its fullness, as the Psalm states: «Love and truth will meet, justice and peace will kiss each other" (Shall 85,11).
When this foundation is lost, mercy is reduced to tolerance, justice with vengeance, forgiveness loses its saving power and justice becomes ruthless because it is devoid of grace and man, who believed he was free from sin, he discovers that he is a prisoner of guilt.
It is the reversed logic of the Gospel: where Christ said «Go and from now on sin no more» (GV 8,11), the secularized world says «You have sinned, so you don't deserve to talk anymore". Where the Church announced the possibility of redemption, the new civil morality proclaims the irredeemability of the guilty. This is the true drama of modernity: not having replaced God with man, but having replaced mercy with vengeance. And divine mercy is not weakness but the most sublime form of justice[1]. Without mercy, justice degenerates into punishment and the truth turns into an instrument of condemnation. Saint Thomas Aquinas had grasped this essential truth: mercy of truth — the mercy of truth — is the only one that saves, because it does not suppress justice, but he does it in charity. When truth is separated from mercy, only the cruelty of human judgment remains.
Saint Augustine warned that by eliminating God, sin remains, but without forgiveness"[2]. When you remove this truth, all that remains is the power of some to declare a crime what was once called a sin. It is the ultimate outcome of that "freedom without truth" which constitutes the most dangerous of modern illusions[3].
It is not about, so, of overcoming moral judgment, but of its extreme secularization. Modern man has not stopped distinguishing between what he considers right and what he considers unfair; it only changed the foundation and sanction of this distinction. Where once sin was confessed and redeemed, today the error of thought must be denounced and punished. Christological redemption is replaced by social re-education. And this transition was gradual, but inexorable. The culture of guilt without God has generated a closed moral system, which works with the same inquisitorial logic as ancient heresies, but with reversed signs. The tribunal is no longer that of the Church which aimed to include the wanderer in the path of salvation, but that of the media that condemn to exclusion without appeal; penance is no longer the conversion of the heart, but the public recants its ideas; forgiveness is no longer grace, but conditional reintegration into the ideologically correct community. In tal modo, post-Christian society has created a new civil theology, made up of inviolable dogmas and collective liturgies. Anyone who contests them becomes an apostate from the new secular religion, a deviant to be expelled. It is here that the concept of freedom undergoes its reversal: what was once freedom of conscience now becomes supervised freedom of opinion. Everything can be said, as long as it is said in the authorized language.
Public morality, free from sin but obsessed with guilt, ends up producing a new form of Puritanism, crueler than what she thought she had overcome. Because modern Puritanism no longer arises from an excess of religion, but from a lack of faith; it does not aim at holiness, but to compliance. And in this new civil orthodoxy, the sinner can no longer convert: he can only remain silent.
the Island of Patmos, 16 November 2025
___________________________
Notes
[1] See. Saint John Paul II, Dives Misericordia, n. 14.
[2] See. St. Augustine, Confessiones, (II), 4,9
[3] See. Saint John Paul II, The Splendor of Truth, 84.
_____________________________
.
THE REPLACEMENT OF SIN WITH THE CRIME OF OPINION IN CONTEMPORARY SOCIETY
Public morality, detached from sin yet obsessed with guilt, ends by producing a new form of puritanism, more cruel than the one it believed it had overcome. For modern puritanism no longer arises from an excess of religion, but from a defect of faith; it no longer aims at holiness, but at conformity. And in this new civil orthodoxy, the sinner can no longer convert; he can only remain silent.
-Theological-
.
Author
Ariel S. Levi di Gualdo
.
At the very moment when the concept of sin is expelled from language and from collective thought, society — stripped of its theological dimension — does not cease to judge. On the contrary, paradoxically, it judges more than before. Having rejected God’s judgement, man places himself as the absolute measure of good and evil. Thus, in the name of freedom, new moral tribunals are erected—tribunals that admit of no appeal. Today it is enough to affirm that abortion is not a “great social achievement” but a vile massacre of the innocent, to be accused of hatred; it is enough to question the homosexualist culture to be declared an enemy of freedom and progress; or to be branded as obscurantist for having dared to defend the institution of the natural family; or simply to express the truth that human life is a gift of God, to be suspected of religious fanaticism.
In this way, to the theology of sin understood as an act of the will that separates man from God and from which there follows the voluntary and freely chosen deprivation of grace, society substitutes a sociology of guilt. It is no longer sin that offends God, but the “heretical” opinion that offends collective sensitivity. Thus a system of symbolic sanctions is created which, although it does not have the form of law, acts with the same coercive force: marginalisation, censorship, and the loss of the right to speak. A lecturer who dares to discuss critically the “dogmas” of single thought is suspended or isolated; an artist who represents the Christian faith outside the canons of secularist aesthetics is accused of provocation; a priest who recalls the necessity of moral judgement is charged with fomenting hatred. Even a simple Gospel quotation — such as “I am the way, the truth, and the life” (Jn 14:6) — can be read as an act of presumption or of offence. Trials are no longer held in courts of law, but in television studios and on social networks, where guilt is measured in seconds and condemnation is pronounced by the crowd.
Television talk shows have by now become a veritable plague: in them there is no real debate, not even through exchanges that, even if polemical, are articulated in questions and answers. Quite the contrary: topics are raised — often very delicate and complex ones — in order to trigger brawls at the end of which no conclusion is ever reached. All this is studied and intended. Experts and scholars from various fields of knowledge are invited, and the presenters ask them, without the slightest sense of human absurdity, to respond in half a minute to controversial questions that the sciences and philosophy have been debating for centuries. If the scholar dares to exceed thirty or forty seconds, the unavoidable commercial break arrives; once it is over, a new segment of the programme begins and the invited scholar has in the meantime disappeared from the television panel.
By contrast, at the beginning of the evening, the now calm presenter — in an attitude of almost genuflecting deference — allows the politician in office particularly favoured by that network to speak without any contradiction, granting him a forty-minute uninterrupted monologue, with five or six questions posed in a pleasant and subdued manner, clearly agreed in advance so as to avoid unwelcome questions. In such circumstances there are no advertising emergencies of any sort, the very same that only a short while before were justified by the alleged necessity of supporting the television company that lives on advertising revenue. Everything is postponed to the subsequent segments, where particularly aggressive journalists are put on air, chasing private citizens or local public administrators with microphones and cameras, commanding them in a stern and peremptory tone: “You must answer… you must answer!” They ignore the fact that the faculty of not answering — and not to a journalist, but to an investigating magistrate — is one of the fundamental constitutional rights recognised to the person under investigation and to the defendant. Then there follows yet another segment in which one does not hesitate to ask a philosopher to explain in four words — for a maximum of thirty seconds — the principles of metaphysics “in a way that everyone can understand,” or to ask an astrophysicist to clarify, in a few moments, the dynamics of the expansion of the universe.
In such a context, the television screen becomes partly the chair of modern non-knowledge and partly the new moral chair of the world: from it are pronounced absolutions and condemnations, and it is decided who is worthy of speech and who must be reduced to silence. In modernity one no longer seeks forgiveness, but the public exposure of the guilty. Penance is no longer the fruit of conversion, but social erasure. In appearance, it seems a form of justice, but in reality it is only a new sacrificial ritual without redemption. It is the inverted confessional of modernity, where one does not seek forgiveness but the public exposure of the guilty. And penance is no longer conversion, but erasure. In appearance, it seems a victory for freedom: with sin eliminated, man believes himself freed from all moral judgement. Yet in reality, precisely by denying sin, he has erased the very possibility of forgiveness. For if there is no longer a God who judges and redeems, there is no longer any act of mercy that can forgive and wipe away sin. What remains is only guilt as a permanent condition, a social brand that cannot be erased, because no one any longer possesses either the authority or the will to forgive.
Unfortunately, in recent years, even within the Church there has at times been a yielding to this same worldly logic, adopting expressions and criteria proper to squares moved by a lynch-mob emotionality. After the grave scandals that have involved — and often overwhelmed various members of our clergy — scandals that canon law properly defines as serious offenses, a formula has begun to be used, even at the highest levels, which sounds like an insult to the Christian faith: “zero tolerance.” Such language, borrowed from the political and media lexicon, reveals a mentality foreign to the Gospel and to the Church’s penitential tradition. It is obvious that in the face of certain crimes — such as sexual abuse of minors — the perpetrator must be immediately neutralised and placed in the condition of no longer being able to cause harm, and therefore subjected to a punishment that is just, proportionate and, according to canonical doctrine, medicinal, that is, directed to his recovery and conversion. For this reason, the expression “zero tolerance” is aberrant on the doctrinal and pastoral plane, because it does not belong to the language of the Church, but to that of populist campaigns that aim at and play upon the gut instincts of the masses.
By declaring that it is the sick and not the healthy who are in need of a physician (cf. Mt 9:12), Jesus indicates and entrusts to us a precise mission; He does not invite us to “zero tolerance.”
Before these new tendencies, a paradoxical moral short circuit emerges: the very same consciences that for years have hidden the filth under the carpets with rare and conspiratorial clerical malice now show themselves zealous in publicly proclaiming their severity, as though purifying themselves before the world. At times the innocent, or the merely suspected, are struck down in order to demonstrate rigour, while the true guilty — once protected — often remain unpunished and, at times, are promoted to the highest ecclesial and ecclesiastical positions, for it is precisely there that we find them all, “to judge the living and the dead,” almost as though their kingdom — the kingdom of falsehood and hypocrisy — “will have no end,” in a kind of inverted Creed. All this is presented as proof of a “new Church” that would at last have embraced the politics of firmness.
And what of the much-vaunted mercy, what has become of it? If we look closely, we shall discover that, in order to be able to benefit from mercy, it seems necessary to be black people who commit acts of violence in the most central areas of the cities, including assaults against the very Forces of Order, yet who are promptly justified, not because they do not commit crimes, but because, being violent and inclined to delinquency, it is said that they act on account of a society strictly guilty of not having adequately welcomed and integrated them.
Let us ask ourselves: what credibility can a Gospel proclamation have that preaches mercy only for certain “protected categories” and at the same time adopts the logic of so-called “zero tolerance” towards those who, within its own ranks, have gravely erred? It is here that the most dramatic outcome of internal secularisation is manifested: the Church which, in order to please the world, renounces the language of redemption to assume that of lynch-mob vengeance, showing herself merciful only with that which corresponds to the social tendencies of political correctness.
In Christianity, sin was a wound that could be healed; in secularised anthropology, guilt is an indelible stain. The sinner could convert and be reborn; the contemporary culprit can only be punished or re-educated. Mercy, deprived of its theological foundation, becomes an administrative gesture, a paternalistic concession, a public act of clemency that does not regenerate but humiliates. For true mercy is not born from an emotion or from an act of indulgence, but from the redemptive justice of God, which is manifested in the sacrifice of the Son and finds its fulfilment in the Cross, where justice and mercy embrace. It is not the opposite of justice, but its fullness, as the Psalm affirms: “Love and truth will meet, justice and peace will kiss” (Ps 85:11).
When this foundation is lost, mercy is reduced to tolerance, justice to vengeance; forgiveness loses its saving power and justice becomes pitiless because it is deprived of grace, and man, who believed he was freeing himself from sin, discovers that he is a prisoner of guilt.
It is the inverted logic of the Gospel: where Christ said, “Go, and from now on do not sin any more” (Jn 8:11), the secularised world says, “You have sinned, and therefore you no longer deserve to speak”. Where the Church once proclaimed the possibility of redemption, the new civil morality proclaims the irredeemability of the guilty. This is the true drama of modernity: not having replaced God with man, but having replaced mercy with vengeance. And divine mercy is not weakness, but the most sublime form of justice¹. Without mercy, justice degenerates into punishment and truth becomes an instrument of condemnation. Saint Thomas Aquinas had grasped this essential truth: mercy of truth — the mercy of truth — is the only mercy that saves, because it does not suppress justice but fulfils it in charity. When truth is separated from mercy, there remains only the cruelty of human judgement. Saint Augustine warned that, by eliminating God, sin remains — but without forgiveness². When this truth is removed, what remains is only the power of some to declare as a crime what was once called sin. This is the ultimate outcome of that “freedom without truth” which constitutes the most dangerous of modern illusions³.
It is not, therefore, a surpassing of moral judgement, but its extreme secularisation. Modern man has not ceased to distinguish between what he considers just and what he deems unjust; he has only changed the foundation and the sanction of that distinction. Where once sin was confessed and redeemed, today error of thought must be denounced and punished. Christological redemption is replaced by social re-education. And this passage has been gradual, but inexorable. The culture of guilt without God has generated a closed moral system, which functions with the same inquisitorial logic as the ancient heresies, but with reversed signs. The tribunal is no longer that of the Church, which aimed to include the erring within the path of salvation, but that of the media, which condemn to exclusion without appeal; penance is no longer the conversion of the heart, but the public recantation of one’s own ideas; forgiveness is no longer grace, but conditional reintegration into the ideologically correct community. In this way, post-Christian society has created a new civil theology, made up of inviolable dogmas and collective liturgies. Whoever contests them becomes an apostate of the new secular religion, a deviant to be expelled. It is here that the very concept of freedom is overturned: what was once freedom of conscience becomes today supervised freedom of opinion. One may say everything, provided it is said in the authorised language.
Public morality, detached from sin yet obsessed with guilt, ends by producing a new form of puritanism, more cruel than the one it believed it had overcome. For modern puritanism no longer arises from an excess of religion, but from a defect of faith; it no longer aims at holiness, but at conformity. And in this new civil orthodoxy, the sinner can no longer convert; he can only remain silent.
From the Island of Patmos, 13 November 2025
___________________________
Notes
¹ St John Paul II, Dives in Misericordia, n. 14.
² St Augustine, Confessiones, (II), 4, 9.
³ St John Paul II, The Splendor of Truth, 84.
______________________________
.
THE SUBSTITUTION OF SIN FOR THE CRIME OF OPINION IN CONTEMPORARY SOCIETY
public morality, detached from sin but obsessed with guilt, ends up producing a new form of puritanism, crueler than the one I thought I had overcome. Because modern puritanism is no longer born from an excess of religion, but from a defect of faith; does not aim at holiness, but to conformity. And in this new civil orthodoxy, the sinner can no longer convert: can only be silent
- Theological -
.
Author
Ariel S. Levi di Gualdo
.
At the time when the concept of sin expelled from language and collective thought, society — deprived of its theological dimension — does not allow, however, to judge. It's more, paradoxically, judge more than before. God's judgment rejected, Man puts himself as the absolute measure of good and evil. And so, in the name of freedom, New moral courts are erected that do not allow appeal. Today it is enough to affirm that abortion is not a "great social achievement" but a vile slaughter of innocents to be accused of hatred; It is enough to question homosexual culture to be declared an enemy of freedom and progress, being branded a scurantista for having dared to defend the institution of the natural family, or simply express the truth that human life is a gift from God to be suspected of religious fanaticism.
To the theology of sin understood as an act of the will that separates man from God and from which the voluntary and free deprivation of grace derives, society replaces the sociology of guilt. It is no longer sin that offends God, but the “heretical” opinion that offends collective sensitivity. This creates a system of symbolic sanctions that, even without having legal form, they act with the same coercive force: marginalization, censorship, the loss of the word. A teacher who dares to critically discuss the “dogmas” of single thinking is suspended or isolated; an artist who represents the Christian faith outside the canons of secular aesthetics is accused of provocation; a priest who reminds us of the need for moral judgment is accused of promoting hatred. Even a simple gospel quote — like "I am the way", "truth and life" (Jn 14,6) — can be read as an act of presumption or offense. Trials are no longer held in court., but in television studios and on social networks, where guilt is measured in seconds and condemnation is pronounced en masse.
Los talk show television They have become a real plague: there is no debate in them, not even through confrontations that, even though they are controversial, are articulated in questions and answers. Quite the opposite: Issues are raised – often very delicate and complex – to trigger arguments at the end of which no conclusion is reached.. All this is studied. Experts and scholars from various fields of knowledge are invited, to whom the presenters ask, without the slightest qualms of human ridiculousness, that respond in half a minute to controversial questions that science and philosophy have debated for centuries. If the scholar dares to exceed thirty or forty seconds, the inevitable commercial break arrives; finished this, A new block of the program begins and the guest scholar has meanwhile disappeared from the television studio.
In compensation, however, at the beginning of the evening, the presenter, Now calm — in an attitude of almost genuflexed deference — he lets the politician in office who is particularly fond of that network speak without any type of contradiction., to which he is granted a monologue of forty minutes uninterrupted, with five or six questions asked in a friendly and submissive manner, obviously agreed in advance to avoid awkward issues. In these circumstances there are no advertising emergencies of any kind., the same ones that shortly before were justified by the need to support the television company that lives off advertising revenues.. Everything refers to the successive blocks, where particularly aggressive journalists are broadcast who persecute private individuals or peripheral public administrators with microphones and cameras, Intimidating them in a severe and peremptory tone: «You must answer... you must answer!!». Ignoring that the power not to respond — and not to a journalist, but to an investigating magistrate - it is one of the fundamental constitutional rights recognized to the investigated and the accused. Then follows the next block in which there is no hesitation in asking a philosopher to explain in four words - for a maximum of thirty seconds - the principles of metaphysics "in a way that is understandable to everyone.", or an astrophysicist who will clarify in a few moments the dynamics of the expansion of the universe.
In a similar context, the television screen becomes partly the chair of modern non-knowledge and partly the new moral chair of the world: from it acquittals and convictions are pronounced, and it is decided who is worthy of speech and who should be reduced to silence. In modernity forgiveness is no longer sought, but the public exposure of the guilty. Penance is no longer the fruit of conversion, but social cancellation. On the surface it seems like a form of justice, but in reality it is nothing more than a new sacrificial ritual without redemption. It is the inverted confessional of modernity, where forgiveness is not sought, but the public exposure of the guilty. And penance is no longer conversion, but the cancellation. In appearance, It seems like a conquest of freedom.: eliminated sin, man believes himself freed from all moral judgment. But actually, precisely by denying sin, has erased the very possibility of forgiveness. Indeed, If there is no longer a God who judges and redeems, There is no longer an act of mercy that can forgive and erase sin.. Only the feeling of guilt remains as a permanent condition, a social brand that does not erase, because no one anymore has the authority or the will to forgive.
Unfortunately, in recent years, even within the Church we have sometimes given in to the same worldly logic, adopting expressions and criteria typical of the squares moved by the emotionality of lynching. Following the serious scandals that have implicated and often devastated several members of our clergy—scandals that canon law properly defines as sERIOUS oFFENSES —, has started to be used, even at the highest levels, a formula that sounds like an insult to the Christian faith: "zero tolerance". A similar language, taken from the political and media lexicon, reveals a mentality alien to the Gospel and the penitential tradition of the Church. It is obvious that in the case of certain crimes - such as sexual abuse of minors - the perpetrator must be immediately neutralized and placed in the condition of not being able to do more harm., and therefore subjected to a just penalty, provided and, according to canonical doctrine, medicinal, that is to say, aimed at recovery and conversion. For this reason, The expression “zero tolerance” is aberrant on a doctrinal and pastoral level., because it does not belong to the language of the Church, but that of populist campaigns that target and play with the viscera of the masses.
By declaring that those who need a doctor They are the sick and not the healthy (cf. Mt 9,12), Jesus tells us and entrusts us with a precise mission, does not invite us to "zero tolerance".
Given these new trends a paradoxical moral short circuit arises: the same consciences that for years have hidden dirt under the rugs with rare and omertous clerical malice today are jealous by publicly proclaiming its severity, almost as if to purify oneself before the world. Sometimes the innocent or the simply suspicious are beaten to demonstrate rigor., while the real culprits - once protected - usually go unpunished and, sometimes, are promoted to the highest ecclesiastical and ecclesiastical positions, because that is precisely where we find them all, "to judge the living and the dead", almost as if his kingdom — that of falsehood and hypocrisy — “had no end”, in a sort of backwards Creed. All this is presented as proof of a "new Church" that would have finally embraced the policy of firmness.
And the mercy so decanted, what has become of her? If we are going to see, We will discover that in order to benefit from mercy it seems necessary to be black people who commit violence in the most central areas of cities., including attacks on the Law Enforcement Forces themselves, and yet readily justified, not because they don't commit crimes, but because, being violent and prone to crime, It is stated that the blame falls on a society rigorously guilty of not having welcomed and integrated them properly.. let's ask ourselves: What credibility can an evangelical advertisement have that preaches mercy only for certain “protected categories” and at the same time adopts the logic of so-called “zero tolerance” for those who, in your own bosom, han seriously wrong? Here the most dramatic result of internal secularization is manifested: the Church that, to please the world, renounces the language of redemption to assume that of revenge for lynchings, showing mercy only with that which corresponds to the social tendencies of political correctness.
In Christianity, sin was a wound that could be healed; in secularized anthropology, guilt is an indelible stain. The sinner could be converted and reborn; the contemporary guilty can only be punished or reeducated. The mercy, deprived of its theological foundation, becomes an administrative gesture, a paternalistic concession, an act of public clemency that does not regenerate, but humiliates. Because true mercy is not born from a movement of the spirit or from an act of indulgence., but of the redeeming justice of God, which is manifested in the sacrifice of the Son and finds fulfillment in the Cross, where justice and mercy embrace. It is not the opposite of justice, but its fullness, as the psalm states: «Love and truth will meet, "justice and peace will kiss" (Shall 85,11).
When this foundation is lost, mercy is reduced to tolerance, justice to revenge; Forgiveness loses its saving power and justice becomes ruthless because it lacks grace., and the man, who believed he had freed himself from sin, discovers that he is a prisoner of guilt.
It is the inverted logic of the Gospel: where Christ said "Go, and from now on sin no more" (Jn 8,11), the secularized world says: "You have sinned, and therefore you no longer deserve to speak". Where the Church announced the possibility of redemption, the new civil morality proclaims the irredeemability of the guilty. This is the true drama of modernity: not having replaced God with man, but having replaced mercy with vengeance. And divine mercy is not weakness, but the most sublime form of justice. No mercy, justice degenerates into punishment and the truth becomes an instrument of condemnation. Saint Thomas Aquinas had grasped this essential truth: mercy of truth — the mercy of truth — is the only one that saves, because it does not suppress justice, but he fulfills it in charity. When truth separates from mercy, only the cruelty of human judgment remains¹.
Saint Augustine warned that, eliminating God, sin remains, but without forgiveness. When this truth is removed, All that remains is the power of some to declare as a crime what was once called sin.². It is the ultimate result of this “freedom without truth” that constitutes the most dangerous of modern illusions.³.
It is not about, well, of an overcoming of moral judgment, but of its extreme secularization. Modern man has not stopped distinguishing between what he considers fair and what he considers unjust.; only the basis and sanction of such distinction has changed. Where once sin was confessed and redeemed, Today the error of thinking must be denounced and punished. Christological redemption is replaced by social reeducation. And this step has been gradual, but inexorable. The culture of guilt without God has generated a closed moral system, that works with the same inquisitorial logic of ancient heresies, although with inverted signs. The court is no longer that of the Church, that sought to include the wanderer on the path of salvation, but that of the media, that condemn to exclusion without appeal; penance is no longer the conversion of the heart, but the public abjuration of one's own ideas; forgiveness is no longer grace, but conditional readmission into the ideologically correct community. Thus, post-Christian society has created a new civil theology, made of inviolable dogmas and collective liturgies. Whoever questions them becomes an apostate of the new secular religion, a deviant who must be expelled. This is where the concept of freedom suffers its inversion.: What was once freedom of conscience today becomes controlled freedom of opinion. You can say everything, as long as it is said in the authorized language.
public morality, detached from sin but obsessed with guilt, ends up producing a new form of puritanism, crueler than the one I thought I had overcome. Because modern puritanism is no longer born from an excess of religion, but from a defect of faith; does not aim at holiness, but to conformity. And in this new civil orthodoxy, the sinner can no longer convert: can only be silent.
From the Island of Patmos, 13 November 2025
.
___________________________
Notes
¹ Saint John Paul II, Dives in Misericordia, n. 14.
² Saint Augustine, Confessions, (II), 4, 9.
³ Saint John Paul II, The Splendor of Truth, 84.
.
.
______________________
Dear Readers, this magazine requires management costs that we have always faced only with your free offers. Those who wish to support our apostolic work can send us their contribution through the convenient and safe way PayPal by clicking below:
Or if you prefer you can use our Bank account in the name of:
Editions The island of Patmos
n Agency. 59 From Rome – Vatican
Iban code: IT74R0503403259000000301118
For international bank transfers:
Codice SWIFT: BAPPIT21D21
If you make a bank transfer, send an email to the editorial staff,
the bank does not provide your email and we will not be able to send you a thank you message: isoladipatmos@gmail.com
We thank you for the support you wish to offer to our apostolic service.
The Fathers of the Island of Patmos
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Andrea Cionci and the epilogue of the painful lie from which he no longer knows how to escape
ANDREA CIONCI AND THE EPILOGUE OF THE PAINFUL LIE FROM WHICH HE NO LONGER KNOWS HOW TO GET OUT OF
He has vilified the Supreme Pontiff Francis for years, calling him "invalidly elected", "antipope", «false pope», «usurper of the throne of Peter», "heretic", "Apostate", "evil Bergoglio" ... then continuing to argue that we don't know if the current reigning Pontiff is truly valid. Even though he feels legitimate - without human penalty of ridicule - to present even phantom complaints to the judicial offices of His Holiness.
– The briefs of the Fathers of the Isle of Patmos –
Author
Editors of The Island of Patmos
.
The Fathers of the Island of Patmos take note that following an article by our Hermit Monk (cf.. WHO), Mr. Andrea Cionci, opera singer, but today a great expert in canon law, in one of his videos from November 11th he accused the editor of this magazine of being a self-styled priest and self-styled theologian. To these insults, not exactly mild, he adds that he has filed a complaint against him at the office of the Promoter of Justice of the Vatican City State (cf.. WHO).
It is worth remembering that Mr. Cionci has vilified the Supreme Pontiff Francis for years, calling him "invalidly elected", "antipope", «false pope», «usurper of the throne of Peter», "heretic", "Apostate", "evil Bergoglio" ... then continuing to argue that we don't know if the current reigning Pontiff is truly valid. Even though he feels legitimate - without human penalty of ridicule - to present even phantom complaints to the judicial offices of His Holiness; offices responsible for issuing sentences of acquittal or condemnation in the name of the validly elected Roman Pontiff, as well as succeeded by an equally valid Predecessor.
The logical question is therefore rigor: is it not perhaps the judicial offices of the Roman Pontiff himself about which Mr. Cionci is saying around that we don't know if it is valid, given the disability of the Predecessor, publicly vilified by him as a "heretic" and "apostate"? Isn't it perhaps he himself who maintains in articles and conferences that if a pontiff is invalid they are invalid that fact e ipso jure all his acts?
Mr. Cionci has wrapped himself in a castle of lies and absurdity through its surreal pamphlet “Ratzinger Code”, from which today he no longer knows how to escape, unless they continue to expose themselves to public derision, as the facts prove without easy penalty of denial, including the pathetic threat of having turned to the justice of that institution that he has outraged for years by hitting and delegitimizing the papacy through public contempt of the figure of the Roman Pontiff, continuing undaunted, all ’ today, to bring outrage to the memory of the Holy Father Francis.
But he says he turned to Vatican justice against a self-styled priest and self-styled theologian. And with this everything is said about the logic and coherence of Mr. Cionci.
From the island of Patmos, 15 November 2025
.
______________________
Dear Readers,
this magazine requires management costs that we have always faced only with your free offers. Those who wish to support our apostolic work can send us their contribution through the convenient and safe way PayPal by clicking below:
Or if you prefer you can use our
Bank account in the name of:
Editions The island of Patmos
n Agency. 59 Rome – Vatican
Iban code:
IT74R0503403259000000301118
For international bank transfers:
Codice SWIFT:
BAPPIT21D21
If you make a bank transfer, send an email to the editorial staff, the bank does not provide your email and we will not be able to send you a thank you message:
isoladipatmos@gmail.com
We thank you for the support you wish to offer to our apostolic service.
The Fathers of the Island of Patmos
.
.
Lost time and the eternal present: Saint Augustine for the contemporary man hungry for time – The lost time and the eternal present: Saint Augustine for the contemporary man starved of time – Lost time and the eternal present: Saint Augustine for the time-hungry contemporary man
Italian, english, español
LOST TIME AND THE ETERNAL PRESENT: AGOSTINO FOR THE TIME-HUNGRY CONTEMPORARY MAN
The past is no more, the future is not yet. It would seem that only the present exists. But the present is also problematic. If it had a duration, it would be divisible into a before and an after, therefore i would no longer be present. The present, to be such, it must be an instant without extension, a vanishing point between what is no longer and what is not yet. But how can something that has no duration constitute the reality of time?
— Theologica —
Author:
Gabriele Giordano M. Scardocci, o.p.
.
PDF print format article – PDF article print format – PDF article in printed format
.
Contemporary society lives a schizophrenic relationship with time. On one side, it is the most precious asset, a perennially scarce resource.
Our life is marked by busy agendas, pressing deadlines and the overwhelming feeling of "never having time". Efficiency, the speed, the optimization of every moment have become the new categorical imperatives of a humanity that runs breathlessly, anxiously often without knowing the destination. Man today is hungry for time, a hunger that today seems to increasingly take up space in the soul and spirit. Indeed, often the hunger for time visibly affects the most fragile, with the many generalized anxiety syndromes, panic attacks and other mental pathologies. Paradoxically, on the other side, this longed-for and measured time escapes us, it dissolves into a series of commitments that leave a feeling of emptiness, of incompleteness. In the era of instant connection, we are increasingly disconnected from the present, projected towards a future that never arrives or anchored to a past that cannot be changed. We are rich in moments, but poor in time lived.
This experience of fragmentation and anguish was lucidly analyzed by the philosopher Martin Heidegger, almost a century ago. For the German philosopher, human existence (the To be there, l’being-there) it is intrinsically temporal. Man does not "have" time, but "it is" time. Our existence is a «be-for-death», a continuous projection towards the future, aware of being finite people, limited and not eternal. Authentic time, per Heidegger, it is not the homogeneous sequence of moments measured by the clock (called "vulgar" time), but the openness to the three dimensions of existence: the future (the project), the past (being-thrown) and the present (de-jection in the world). Anguish in the face of death and one's limitations, so, it's not a negative feeling to escape, but the condition that can reveal to us the possibility of an authentic life, in which man takes ownership of his own temporality and his own finite destiny[1].
Although profound, however, this analysis remains horizontal, confined in the immanence of an existence that ends with death. The horizon is nothingness. This is where the Christian reflection, e, in particular, the genius of Saint Augustine of Hippo, opens up a radically different perspective: vertical, transcendent[2]. Augustine does not limit himself to describing the experience of time, but he questions it until it becomes a way to question God. In this question, discovers that the solution to the riddle of time is not found in time itself, but outside of it, in the Eternity that founds and redeems him.
In Book XI of his confessions, Augustine addresses a seemingly naive question with disarming honesty, but theologically explosive: «What was God doing?, before he made heaven and earth?» (What did God do before he created the heavens and the earth?)[3]. The question presupposes a "before" creation, a time when God would exist in a kind of idleness, waiting for the right moment to act. Augustine's response is a conceptual revolution that dismantles this assumption at its root. He doesn't answer, evading the question with a joke («He prepared hell for those who investigated mysteries that were too lofty», as some suggested), but it demolishes it from the inside. There is no "before" creation, because time itself is a creature. God did not create the world In the time, ma with the weather: «You are the creator of all time», writes Doctor D'Ippona[4]. Before creation, simply, there was no time.
This intuition opens the way to understanding the nature of divine eternity. Eternity is not an infinitely extended time, an "always" that extends endlessly into the past and the future. This would still be a conception “temporal" of eternity. The eternity of God is the total absence of succession, the perfect and simultaneous fullness of an endless life. To use a classic image of theology, God is one Now standing, an "eternal present"[5]. In Him there is no past (memory) no future (wait), but only the pure and immutable act of His Being. «Your years are just one day», says Augustine, turning to God, «and your day is not every day, but today, because your today does not give way to tomorrow and it does not happen to yesterday. Your today is eternity"[6].
Catholic doctrine he formalized this concept by defining eternity as one of the divine attributes, one of the elements that makes up the "DNA" of God. God is immutable, absolutely perfect and simple. Temporal succession implies change, a passage from potency to act, which is inconceivable in Him who is "Pure Act", as taught by St. Thomas Aquinas[7]. Therefore, every attempt to apply our temporal categories to God, which are categories of us men who are in time, it is doomed to fail. He is the Lord of time precisely because he is not a prisoner of it.
«So what is time??». Once God's "extraterritoriality" with respect to time has been established, Agostino finds himself in front of the second, and perhaps more difficult, issue: define the nature of time itself. It is here that the famous paradox that has fascinated generations of thinkers emerges: «So what is the time?? If no one asks me, scio; I would like to explain to the inquirer, I don't know» (So what is time?? If no one asks me, I know; if I want to explain it to anyone who asks me, I do not know)[8] . This statement is not a statement of ignorance and agnosticism, but the starting point of a profound spiritual and phenomenological investigation. Augustine experiences the reality of time, lives it, the measurement, yet he is unable to enclose it in a concept. A process of dismantling the common beliefs of one's century then begins. Time is perhaps the movement of celestial bodies, of the sun, of the moon and stars? No, he replies, because even if the heavens stopped, a potter's vessel would continue to turn, and we would measure its movement over time. The weather, so, it is not the movement itself, but the measure of movement. But how can we measure something so elusive?
The past is no more, the future is not yet. It would seem that only the present exists. But the present is also problematic. If it had a duration, it would be divisible into a before and an after, therefore i would no longer be present. The present, to be such, it must be an instant without extension, a vanishing point between what is no longer and what is not yet. But how can something that has no duration constitute the reality of time?
The Augustinian solution is as ingenious as it is introspective. After looking for time in the outside world, in the skies and in objects, Agostino finds him inside, in the soul of man. Time has no ontological consistency outside of us; its reality is psychological. It's one distension of the mind, a "distension" or "dilation" of the soul. How it works? We see …
The human soul has three faculties which correspond to the three dimensions of time:
- memory (memory): Through it, the soul makes present what is past. The past no longer exists in re, but it exists in the soul as a current memory.
- The waiting (expectation): Through it, the soul anticipates and makes present what is not yet. The future doesn't exist yet, but it exists in the soul as a present expectation.
- Attention (attention O bruised): Through it, the soul focuses on the present moment, which is the point at which waiting turns into memory.
When we sing a song, Agostino explains with a beautiful example, our soul is "stretched out". The entire song is present in the wait before starting; as the words are spoken, they move from expectation to attention and finally are deposited in memory. The action takes place in the present, but it is made possible by this continuous «détente” of the soul between the future (which shortens) and the past (which lengthens)[9].The weather, so, it is the measure of this impression that things leave on the soul and that the soul itself produces.
Augustinian speculation, despite being of the highest philosophical and theological level, it is not a simple intellectual exercise. It offers all of us today a key to redeeming our experience of time and to living in a more authentic and spiritually fruitful way.. I therefore offer three reflections that arise from the Augustinian perspective.
Our daily life is dominated by Chronos, quantitative time, sequential, measured by the clock. It's the time for efficiency, of productivity, of anxiety, we said at the beginning. Augustine's reflection invites us to discover the Kairòs, qualitative time, the "favorable moment", the moment full of meaning in which eternity intersects our history. If God is an "eternal present", then every present of ours, every "now", it is the privileged place of meeting with Him. Augustinian teaching urges us to sanctify the present, to live it with attention, with full awareness. Instead of constantly escaping into the future of our projects or the past of our regrets, we are called to find God in the ordinariness of the present moment: in prayer, in work, in relationships, in the service. It is the invitation to experience the spirituality of the "present moment", dear to many masters of interior life.
There is a place and a time where the Kairos breaks into Chronos supremely: the Sacred Liturgy, and in particular the celebration of the Eucharist. During Mass, the time of the Church is connected to the eternal present of God. The sacrifice of Christ, happened once and for all in history (ephapax), it is not "repeated", but «re-presented», made sacramentally present on the altar[10] Past, present and future converge: let's remember the Passion, Death and Resurrection of Christ (past), we celebrate His real presence among us (here I'm) and we anticipate the glory of His return and the eternal banquet (future)[11]. The Liturgy is the great school that teaches us to live time in a new way, no longer as an inexorable escape towards death, but as a pilgrimage full of hope towards the fullness of life in the eternity of God.
In the end, the conception of time come distension of the mind offers us profound consolation. The "détente" of the soul between memory and waiting, which for the man without faith can be a source of anguish (the weight of the past, the uncertainty of the future), for the Christian it becomes the space of faith, of hope and charity. Memory is not just a reminder of our failures, but it is above all memory of salvation, memory of the wonders that God has worked in the history of salvation and in our personal lives. It is the foundation of our faith. Waiting is not anxiety about an unknown future, but the certain hope of the definitive encounter with Christ, the blessed vision promised to the pure in heart. And attention to the present becomes the space of charity, of concrete love for God and neighbor, the only act that "remains" for eternity (1 Color 13,13).
Our life moves, as in a spiritual breath, between the grateful memory of the grace received and the confident expectation of the promised glory. In this way, the Augustinian man is not crushed by time, but he lives in it like a temporary tent, with the heart already projected towards the celestial homeland, where God will be "all in all" and where time will dissolve into the unique, eternal and beatifying today of God.
Santa Maria Novella, in Florence, 12 November 2025
.
NOTE
[1] M. Heidegger, Being and Time,1927. In particular, the sections dedicated to the existential analysis of temporality: First section § 27; Second Section. §§ 46-53; Second Section §§ 54-60 e §§ 65-69.
[2] A theme so important and felt by contemporary culture that these days the actor Alessandro Preziosi is taking a show about Augustine and time around Italy (WHO).
[3]Augustine of Hippo, The Confessions, XI, 12, 14. «What did God do before he created the heavens and the earth?»
[4] Ibid., XI, 13, 15.
[5] The classical definition of eternity is found in Boethius, On the consolation of philosophy, V, 6: «Eternity is the endless and complete possession of life» («Eternity is entire possession, simultaneous and perfect of an interminable life"). This definition has been adopted by all scholastic theology.
[6]The Confessions, XI, 13, 16.
[7] S. Thomas Aquinas, QUESTION, Ia, q. 9 («The immutability of God») e q. 10 («The eternity of God»).
[8]The Confessions, XI, 14, 17.«So what is time?? If no one asks me, I know; if I want to explain it to anyone who asks me, I do not know"
[9] The Confessions, XI, 28, 38.
[10] Catechism of the Catholic Church, NN. 1085, 1362-1367.
[11] The term ephapax (one time) is a Greek word found in the New Testament, crucial to understanding the unique and definitive nature of Christ's sacrifice. The main source of this term is the Letter to the Hebrews. This New Testament writing builds a long and profound parallel between the Levitical priesthood of the Old Testament and the high priesthood of Christ. The most significant steps are the following:
- Jews 7, 27: Talking about Christ as high priest, the author says that He «does not need every day, like the other high priests, to offer sacrifices first for one's own sins and then for those of the people: in fact he did it once and for all (ephapax), offering himself". Here it is emphasized that, unlike the Jewish priests who had to continually repeat the sacrifices, Christ's sacrifice is unique and definitive.
- Jews 9, 12: «[Christ] entered once and for all (ephapax) in the sanctuary, not by the blood of goats and calves, but by virtue of his own blood, thus obtaining an eternal redemption ". The verse highlights that the effectiveness of Christ's sacrifice is not temporary, but eternal.
- Jews 10, 10: “By that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ, Once for all (ephapax)». Here our sanctification is directly connected to this unique and unrepeatable event.
The concept is also found in other passages of the New Testament, as in the Letter to the Romans (6, 10), where Sao Paulo, speaking of the death and resurrection of Christ, dice: «As for his death, he died to sin once and for all (ephapax)».
_________________________
.
THE LOST TIME AND THE ETERNAL PRESENT: AUGUSTINE FOR THE CONTEMPORARY MAN STARVED OF TIME
The past no longer exists; the future is not yet. It would seem, then, that only the present exists. But even the present is problematic. If it had duration, it would be divisible into a before and an after — and thus it would no longer be the present. The present, to be what it is, must be an instant without extension, a vanishing point between what is no more and what is not yet. But how can that which has no duration constitute the reality of time?
— Theologica —
Author:
Gabriele Giordano M. Scardocci, o.p.
.
Contemporary society lives in a schizophrenic relationship with time. On the one hand, time has become our most precious possession, an ever-scarce resource. Our lives are ruled by crowded schedules, relentless deadlines, and the oppressive sensation of “never having enough time.” Efficiency, speed, and the optimisation of every instant have become the new categorical imperatives of a humanity rushing breathlessly forward, often without even knowing its destination. Modern man is starved of time¹ — a hunger that increasingly devours the soul and the spirit. Indeed, this hunger for time visibly afflicts the most fragile among us, manifesting itself in the many forms of generalised anxiety, panic attacks, and other mental disorders.
Paradoxically, however, this time so longed for and so precisely measured constantly escapes us. It dissolves into a sequence of tasks and commitments that leave behind only a sense of emptiness and incompleteness. In the age of instant connection, we are increasingly disconnected from the present — projected towards a future that never seems to arrive, or chained to a past that cannot be changed. We are rich in moments, yet poor in lived time.
This experience of fragmentation and anguish was lucidly analysed almost a century ago by the philosopher Martin Heidegger². For the German thinker, human existence (To be there, the “being-there”) is intrinsically temporal. Man does not “possess” time — he is time. Our existence is a “being-toward-death,” a continual projection towards the future, fully aware of our finitude, limitation, and non-eternity.
Authentic time, for Heidegger, is not the homogeneous sequence of instants measured by the clock — what he calls vulgar time — but rather the openness to the three dimensions of existence: the future (as project), the past (as thrownness), and the present (as being-in-the-world). The anxiety that arises before death and our own limitations is therefore not a negative feeling to be avoided, but the very condition that can reveal to us the possibility of an authentic life, in which man takes possession of his own temporality and his finite destiny.
Profound as it is, this analysis nevertheless remains horizontal — confined within the immanence of an existence that ends with death. Its horizon is the nothingness. It is precisely here that Christian thought, and above all the genius of Saint Augustine of Hippo, opens a radically different perspective: a vertical and transcendent one. Augustine does not merely describe the experience of time; he interrogates it until it becomes a path by which he interrogates God Himself. And in this questioning he discovers that the solution to the enigma of time is not to be found within time itself, but beyond it — in the Eternity that grounds and redeems it.
In Book XI of his Confessions, Augustine confronts with disarming honesty a question that seems naïve yet is theologically explosive: «What was God doing?, before he made heaven and earth?» — “What was God doing before He created heaven and earth?”³. The question presupposes a before creation, a time in which God might have existed in a sort of divine idleness, waiting for the right moment to act. Augustine’s response is a conceptual revolution that dismantles this assumption at its very root. He does not evade the question with the witty remark attributed to some (“He was preparing hell for those who pry into mysteries too high for them”), but rather refutes it from within. There was no “before” creation, for time itself is a creature. God did not create the world in time but with time: “Thou art the maker of all times,” writes the Doctor of Hippo. Before creation, there simply was no time⁴.
This intuition opens the way to the understanding of the divine eternity. Eternity is not an infinitely extended duration — a “forever” stretching endlessly backward and forward. Such would still be a temporal notion of eternity. God’s eternity is the total absence of succession, the perfect and simultaneous fullness of life without end. To use a classical image of theology, God is a Nunc stans — an “eternal now”⁵. In Him there is neither past (memory) nor future (expectation), but only the pure and immutable act of His Being. “Thy years are one day,” says Augustine to God, “and Thy day is not every day, but today; for Thy today yields not to tomorrow, nor does it follow yesterday. Thy today is eternity”⁶.
Catholic doctrine has formalised this insight by defining eternity as one of the divine attributes — one of the essential elements that compose the very ‘DNA’ of God. God is immutable, absolutely perfect, and simple. Temporal succession implies change, a passage from potentiality to act, which is inconceivable in Him who is Pure Act, as taught by Saint Thomas Aquinas⁷.
Therefore, every attempt to apply our human temporal categories to God — categories that belong to us precisely because we are within time — is bound to fail. He is the Lord of time precisely because He is not its prisoner.
“What, then, is time?” Once Augustine has established God’s extraterritoriality in regard to time, he faces a second and perhaps even more arduous question: to define the nature of time itself. Here emerges the celebrated paradox that has fascinated generations of thinkers: «So what is the time?? If no one asks me, scio; I would like to explain to the inquirer, I don't know». — “What, then, is time? If no one asks me, I know; if I wish to explain it to one who asks, I do not know”⁸. This statement is not a confession of ignorance or agnosticism, but the point of departure for a profound spiritual and phenomenological inquiry.
Augustine experiences the reality of time — he lives it, he measures it — and yet he cannot enclose it within a concept. Thus begins a process of dismantling the common assumptions of his age. Is time perhaps the movement of the heavenly bodies, of the sun, the moon, and the stars? No, he answers, for even if the heavens were to stand still, the potter’s wheel would continue to turn, and we would still measure its motion in time. Time, therefore, is not movement itself but the measure of movement. Yet how can we measure something so elusive?
The past no longer exists; the future is not yet. It would seem, then, that only the present exists. But even the present is problematic. If it had duration, it would be divisible into a before and an after — and thus it would no longer be the present. The present, to be what it is, must be an instant without extension, a vanishing point between what is no more and what is not yet. But how can that which has no duration constitute the reality of time?
Augustine’s solution is as ingenious as it is introspective. After seeking time in the external world — in the heavens and in material things — he finds it within, in the depths of the human soul. Time has no ontological substance outside ourselves; its reality is psychological. It is a distension of the mind, a “stretching” or “distension” of the soul. The human soul possesses three faculties corresponding to the three dimensions of time: memory (memory), by which the soul makes the past present; expectation (expectation), by which the soul anticipates and makes present what is not yet; and attention (attention or bruised), by which the soul focuses on the present instant, the point at which expectation is transformed into memory.
When we sing a hymn, Augustine explains in a beautiful example, our soul is “stretched.” The entire song is present in expectation before it begins; as the words are sung, they pass from expectation to attention, and finally they rest in memory. The action unfolds in the present, yet it is made possible by this continuous “stretching” of the soul between the future (which shortens) and the past (which lengthens). Time, therefore, is the measure of this impression that things leave upon the soul — and that the soul itself impresses upon them⁹.
Although Augustine’s speculation reaches the highest levels of philosophical and theological depth, it is far from being a mere intellectual exercise. It offers, rather, to each of us today a key by which to redeem our own experience of time and to live in a way that is more authentic and spiritually fruitful. Three reflections arise, therefore, from the Augustinian perspective.
Our daily life is dominated by Chronos — quantitative time, sequential, measured by the clock. It is the time of efficiency, productivity, and anxiety, as we noted at the beginning. Augustine’s reflection invites us to rediscover Kairos — qualitative time, the “favourable moment,” the instant filled with meaning in which eternity intersects our history. If God is an “eternal present,” then every present moment, every now, becomes the privileged place of encounter with Him. Augustine’s teaching urges us to sanctify the present, to live it with attentio, with full awareness. Instead of constantly fleeing into the future of our projects or the past of our regrets, we are called to find God in the ordinariness of the present moment: in prayer, in work, in relationships, in service. It is the invitation to live the spirituality of the “present moment,” so dear to many masters of the interior life.
There is a place and a time where Kairos breaks into Chronos in its most supreme form: the Sacred Liturgy, and in particular the celebration of the Eucharist. During the Holy Mass, the time of the Church is joined to the eternal present of God. The Sacrifice of Christ — accomplished once for all in history (ephapax)¹¹ — is not “repeated” but “re-presented,” made sacramentally present upon the altar. Past, present, and future converge: we recall the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of Christ (past); we celebrate His real presence in our midst (present); and we anticipate the glory of His return and the eternal banquet (future)¹⁰. The Liturgy is the great school that teaches us to live time in a new way — no longer as a relentless flight towards death, but as a hopeful pilgrimage towards the fullness of life in God’s eternity.
Finally, the conception of time as distentio animi offers profound consolation. The “stretching” of the soul between memory and expectation — which for the man without faith may be a source of anguish (the weight of the past, the uncertainty of the future) — becomes for the Christian the very space of faith, hope, and charity. Memory is not merely the recollection of our failures; it is above all memoria salutis — the remembrance of the wonders that God has wrought in the history of salvation and in our personal lives. It is the foundation of our faith. Expectation is not the anxiety of an unknown future, but the sure hope of the definitive encounter with Christ, the beatific vision promised to the pure of heart. And attention to the present becomes the space of charity — of concrete love of God and neighbour — the one act that “abides” for eternity (1 Color 13:13).
Our life thus moves, as in a spiritual breath, between the grateful remembrance of grace received and the confident expectation of the glory promised. In this way, the Augustinian man is not crushed by time but dwells within it as within a provisional tent, his heart already turned towards the heavenly homeland where God shall be “all in all” — and where time itself shall dissolve into the single, eternal, and beatifying today of God.
Santa Maria Novella, Florence, on the 12th of November, 2025
NOTES
- M. Heidegger, Being and time (Being and Time), 1927, especially the sections devoted to the existential analysis of temporality: First Division § 27; Second Division §§ 46-53; Second Division §§ 54-60 and §§ 65-69.
- This theme is so present in contemporary culture that it is even the subject of recent Italian stage performances on Augustine and time.
- Augustine of Hippo, Confessiones, XI, 12, 14: «What was God doing?, before he made heaven and earth?»
- Ibid., XI, 13, 15.
- Boethius, On the consolation of philosophy, V, 6: «Eternity is the endless and complete possession of life».
- Confessiones, XI, 13, 16.
- Thomas Aquinas, QUESTION, I, q. 9 (“On the Immutability of God”) and q. 10 (“On the Eternity of God”).
- Confessiones, XI, 14, 17.
- Confessiones, XI, 28, 38.
- Catechism of the Catholic Church, NN. 1085, 1362-1367.
- On the term ephapax (one time), see Hebrews 7:27; 9:12; 10:10; Romans 6:10 — indicating the definitive and unrepeatable character of Christ’s sacrifice, “once for all.”
_______________________
LOST TIME AND THE ETERNAL PRESENT: SAINT AUGUSTINE FOR THE CONTEMPORARY MAN HUNGRY FOR TIME
The past is no longer, the future is not yet. It would seem that only the present exists. But even the present is problematic. If it had duration, It would be divisible into a before and an after, and would cease to be present. The present, to be, It must be an instant without extension, a vanishing point between what is no longer and what is not yet. But how can something without duration constitute the reality of time??
— Theologica —
Author:
Gabriele Giordano M. Scardocci, o.p.
.
contemporary society lives a schizophrenic relationship with time. On the one hand, This has become the most precious asset, a perpetually scarce resource. Our lives are marked by saturated agendas, Pressing deadlines and the oppressive feeling of “never having time”. The efficiency, The speed and optimization of each moment have become the new categorical imperatives of a humanity that runs busily., many times without knowing your goal. Modern man is hungry for time², a hunger that increasingly devours the soul and spirit. In fact, This hunger for time visibly hits the most fragile, manifesting itself in multiple forms of generalized anxiety, panic attacks and other mental disorders.
Paradoxically, however, that time so longed for and so meticulously measured escapes us. It dissolves into a sequence of commitments that leave behind a feeling of emptiness and incompleteness.. In the age of instant connection, we are increasingly disconnected from the present: projected towards a future that never arrives or anchored in a past that cannot be changed. We are rich in moments, but poor in lived time.
This experience of fragmentation and anguish was lucidly analyzed almost a century ago by the philosopher Martin Heidegger¹. For the German thinker, human existence (To be there, the "being-there") It is inherently temporary.. Man does not "own" time: he is time. Our existence is a “being-for-death”, a continuous projection towards the future, fully aware of our finitude, limitation and not eternity.
authentic time, for Heidegger, It is not the homogeneous sequence of moments measured by the clock - what he calls "vulgar" time -, but the openness to the three dimensions of existence: the future (as project), the past (like being thrown) and the present (how to be-in-the-world). Anguish in the face of death and one's own limitations is not, therefore, a negative feeling to escape from, but the condition that can reveal to us the possibility of an authentic life, in which man appropriates his own temporality and his finite destiny.
No matter how deep, this reflection remains, however, in the horizontal plane, confined in the immanence of an existence that ends with death. Your horizon is nothing. It is precisely here where Christian thought, and especially the genius of Saint Augustine of Hippo, opens a radically different perspective: vertical and transcendent. Augustine does not limit himself to describing the experience of time, but interrogates it until it becomes a path to interrogate God himself. And in this search he discovers that the solution to the enigma of time is not found in time itself., but outside of it: in the Eternity that grounds it and redeems it.
In Book XI of his Confessions, Augustine addresses a question that seems naive with disarming sincerity., but it is theologically explosive: «What was God doing?, before he made heaven and earth?» — «What did God do before creating heaven and earth?»³. The question presupposes a “before” of creation, a time when God would have existed in a kind of divine leisure, waiting for the right moment to act. Augustine's response is a conceptual revolution that dismantles that assumption at its roots.. He does not evade the question with the ingenious response attributed to some ("He prepared hell for those who investigate mysteries that are too high"), but refutes it from within. There is no “before” of creation, because time itself is a creature. God did not create the world in the time, sino with the time: «You are the architect of all time», writes the Doctor of Hippo. Before creation, simply, there was no time⁴.
This intuition opens the way towards understanding divine eternity. Eternity is not an infinitely extended duration—an “ever” that stretches endlessly into the past and the future—. Such would still be a temporal conception of eternity.. God's eternity is the total absence of succession, the perfect and simultaneous plenitude of an endless life. To use a classic image of theology, God is a Now standing, an “eternal present”⁵. In Him there is no past (memory) no future (expectation), but only the pure and immutable act of his Being.
"Your years are a single day", Augustine says to God, «and your day is not every day, but today; because your today does not give way to tomorrow nor does it follow yesterday. Your today is eternity»⁶. Catholic doctrine has formalized this intuition by defining eternity as one of the divine attributes., one of the elements that make up the “DNA” of God. God is immutable, absolutely perfect and simple. Temporal succession implies change, a step from power to action, which is inconceivable in Him who is Pure Act, as Saint Thomas Aquinas teaches⁷.
So, every attempt to apply to God our temporal categories—categories proper to us, that we are in time — it is destined to fail. He is the Lord of time precisely because he is not its prisoner..
"What is, well, the time?» Once the extraterritoriality of God with respect to time is established, Agustín faces the second, and perhaps more arduous, issue: define the nature of time itself. Here arises the famous paradox that has fascinated generations of thinkers: «So what is the time?? If no one asks me, scio; I would like to explain to the inquirer, I don't know" - "What is, well, the time? If no one asks me, I know; If I want to explain it to the person who asks me, I don't know»⁸. This statement is not a confession of ignorance or agnosticism, but the starting point of a deep spiritual and phenomenological inquiry.
Augustine experiences the reality of time: lives it, measures it, and yet he fails to enclose it in a concept. Thus begins a process of dismantling the common convictions of his century. Is time perhaps the movement of celestial bodies, of the sun, the moon and the stars? No, respond, because even if the heavens stopped, the potter's wheel would keep turning, and we would measure its movement in time. time, therefore, it is not the movement itself, but the measure of movement. But how to measure something so elusive?
The past is no longer, the future is not yet. It would seem that only the present exists. But even the present is problematic. If it had duration, It would be divisible into a before and an after, and would cease to be present. The present, to be, It must be an instant without extension, a vanishing point between what is no longer and what is not yet. But how can something without duration constitute the reality of time??
The Augustinian solution It's as cool as it is introspective.. After searching for time in the outside world, in the skies and in the objects, Agustín finds it inside, in the soul of man. Time has no ontological consistency outside of us.; its reality is psychological. It is a distension of the mind, a "distension" or "dilation" of the soul. The human soul has three faculties that correspond to the three dimensions of time: memory (memory), through which the soul makes the past present; the expectation (expectation), by which the soul anticipates and makes present what is not yet; and attention (attention O bruised), by which the soul concentrates on the present moment, the point at which expectation transforms into memory.
When we sing a hymn, Agustín explains with a beautiful example, our soul is "extended". All the singing is present in the expectation before beginning; as the words are spoken, go from expectation to attention, and finally they are deposited in memory. The action takes place in the present, but it is possible thanks to this continuous "distension" of the soul between the future (that is shortened) and the past (that lengthens). time, therefore, It is the measure of this impression that things leave on the soul and that the soul itself produces⁹.
Although Augustinian speculation reaches the highest philosophical and theological level, It is far from being a mere intellectual exercise. Offers, rather, to each of us a key to redeem our own experience of time and live in a more authentic and spiritually fruitful way. From the Augustinian perspective arise, well, three reflections.
Our daily life is dominated by Chronos: quantitative time, sequential, measured by clock. It is the time of efficiency, productivity and anxiety, as we said at the beginning. Augustinian reflection invites us to discover the Cairo: qualitative time, the "opportune moment", the moment loaded with meaning in which eternity intersects with our history. If God is an "eternal present", then every present, every "now", becomes the privileged place of encounter with Him. Augustine's teaching exhorts us to sanctify the present, to live it with attention, with full awareness. Instead of constantly fleeing towards the future of our projects or towards the past of our regrets, We are called to find God in the everyday life of the present moment.: in prayer, at work, in relationships, in the service. It is the invitation to live the spirituality of the "present moment", so loved by many teachers of inner life.
There is a place and a time in which the Cairo breaks into the Chronos supremely: the Sacred Liturgy, and in particular the celebration of the Eucharist. During the Holy Mass, the time of the Church is united to the eternal present of God. The Sacrifice of Christ, fulfilled once and for all in history (ephapax)¹¹, it is not "repeated", but it is "re-presented", becoming sacramentally present at the altar. Past, present and future converge: we remember the Passion, Death and Resurrection of Christ (past); we celebrate his real presence in our midst (here I'm); and we anticipate the glory of his return and the eternal banquet (future)¹⁰. The Liturgy is the great school that teaches us to live time in a new way: no longer as an inexorable flight towards death, but as a hopeful pilgrimage towards the fullness of life in the eternity of God.
Finally, the conception of time as distension of the mind offers deep consolation. The "distension" of the soul between memory and expectation - which for the man without faith can be a source of anguish (the weight of the past, the uncertainty of the future)— becomes for the Christian the very space of faith, hope and charity. Memory is not just the memory of our failures, but above all the memory of salvation: the memory of the wonders that God has worked in the history of salvation and in our personal lives. It is the foundation of our faith. Expectation is not anxiety about an uncertain future, but the sure hope of the definitive encounter with Christ, the beatific vision promised to the pure in heart. And attention to the present becomes the space of charity, of concrete love for God and neighbor, the only act that "remains" for eternity (1 Color 13,13).
Our life moves like this, like a spiritual breath, between the grateful memory of the grace received and the confident expectation of the promised glory. Thus, the Augustinian man is not crushed by time, but inhabits it like a temporary tent, with the heart already oriented towards the heavenly homeland, where God will be "all in all" and where time will dissolve into the one, eternal and beatifying today of God.
Santa Maria Novella, Florence, a 12 November 2025
Notes
- M. Heidegger, Being and time, 1927, especially the sections dedicated to the existential analysis of temporality: First section § 27; Second section §§ 46-53; Second section §§ 54-60 y §§ 65-69.
- A topic so present in contemporary culture that it has even been the subject of theatrical performances in Italy about Augustine and time..
- Saint Augustine of Hippo, Confessions, XI, 12, 14: "What was God doing?", before he made heaven and earth?»
- Ibid., XI, 13, 15.
- Boethius, On the consolation of philosophy, V, 6: "Eternity is the interminable possession of life all at once and perfect".
- Confessions, XI, 13, 16.
- Saint Thomas Aquinas, QUESTION, I, q. 9 («On the immutability of God») and what. 10 («On the eternity of God»).
- Confessions, XI, 14, 17.
- Confessions, XI, 28, 38.
- Catechism of the Catholic Church, NN. 1085, 1362-1367.
- About the term ephapax (one time), see Hebrews 7,27; 9,12; 10,10; Romans 6,10: indicates the unique and definitive character of Christ's sacrifice, "once for all".
.
Subscribe to our Channel Jordan the Theological club directed by Father Gabriele by clicking on the image
THE LATEST EPISODES ARE AVAILABLE IN THE ARCHIVE: WHO
.
Visit the pages of our book shop WHO and support our editions by purchasing and distributing our books.
.
.
.
______________________
Dear Readers,
this magazine requires management costs that we have always faced only with your free offers. Those who wish to support our apostolic work can send us their contribution through the convenient and safe way PayPal by clicking below:
Or if you prefer you can use our
Bank account in the name of:
Editions The island of Patmos
n Agency. 59 From Rome – Vatican
Iban code:
IT74R0503403259000000301118
For international bank transfers:
Codice SWIFT:
BAPPIT21D21
If you make a bank transfer, send an email to the editorial staff, the bank does not provide your email and we will not be able to send you a thank you message:
isoladipatmos@gmail.com
We thank you for the support you wish to offer to our apostolic service.
The Fathers of the Island of Patmos
.
.
.
The new Cionci's story: from the Roman Seraphicum to the British Nimby
THE NEW CIONCI'S STORY: FROM THE ROMAN SERAPHICUM TO THE BRITISH NIMBY
Dear Cavalier Cionci - because incidentally you are also a Knight of the Italian Republic - you are very free to think what you believe, to write it, naturally, to have a following. But don't take the Catholic Church or those who manage its structures for fools, with means of this kind.
Author
Hermit Monk
.
Many know the English expression «Not In My Back Yard» (not in my garden), often abbreviated with the acronym: «Nimby». A saying that serves to designate someone's opposition to hosting projects on their territory.
But there is also a proverb, this time Italian, that we all know and that begins like this: «Between the two litigants…»; which I would like to conclude by modifying the classic form a little with «... the third laughs».
The two litigants in question I'm Alessandro Minutella, priest from Palermo excommunicated e dismissed from the clerical state, and the journalist Andrea Cionci, author of the book «Ratzinger Code» in which he advocates the thesis that Pope Benedict XVI would never have renounced the papacy, by taking shelter in an imaginary prevented location, with the consequence that Pope Francis would have been an antipope. For the current Pontiff, judgment is suspended. Once upon a time the two got along very well, sharing ideas and proceeds. But as happens in couples, even the most close-knit ones, who first love each other and then hate each other, this is what happened between our two. Not a day goes by that they get caught on social media, Holding things against each other and no longer mentioning each other's names. Minutella indicates Cionci as «the Roman journalist», while for Cionci the Palermo native is addressed with: «the great prelate». In truth they both have a mad desire for fame, but above all to be taken seriously. And where if not in the Catholic Church and in one of its structures for example?
It so happens that Cionci is invited to speak at a meeting promoted by an association on apocalyptic themes, none other than in a room belonging to the Pontifical University of San Bonaventura, which is part of the complex Seraphicum in Rome. Naturally quietly: "I kept a low profile", Cionci will say. To then promulgate to the four winds, something that his commentators on social media understood very well, just read the comments, who had been able to talk about what he believes even in a Pontifical University. Open up heaven. Minutella immediately raises her tone: «Yes to him, not to me?». And for the duration of the usual morning appointment with his followers he returns to it, showing the poster of the event, circled well to highlight Cionci's name and the cost of participation.
It happens that the event is cancelled. The university thinks again and does not make its spaces available. Naturally, CIONCA, he is quick to report it in a video on YouTube blaming Minutella, accusing him of having caused harm that was not so much to him, but to that extraordinary possibility of being able to speak about his theses in a Pontifical University.
Caro Cionci, we know Minutella, but this time he's not to blame: it is innocent. I'm the culprit, I admit: became aware of the thing and foreseeing the use that would then be made of it, I took pen and paper, or rather the computer, because even in my remote hermitage we have connection, and I wrote an email to the general secretary of the San Bonaventure Theological Faculty, asking if they thought it appropriate to host an event in which such bizarre ideas would be presented that still offend the person of Pope Francis, of venerable memory, and that of Pope Benedict, made to appear as a sort of carbonaro who puts the entire Church in check. The response was not long in coming: «the rental of the room was immediately canceled and the event at our headquarters was cancelled».
Perhaps the second email also had an impact, this time sent with more refined and appropriate tones by our editorial team of The Island of Patmos to the Prefect of the Dicastery for Culture and Education, Cardinal José Tolentino de Mendonça? I do not know, but so.
Dear Cavalier Cionci - because incidentally he is also a Knight of the Italian Republic - you are very free to think what you believe, to write it, naturally, to have a following. But don't take the Catholic Church or those who manage its structures for fools, with means of this kind. You know what I recommend? Rent a plane, there, It seems like a good idea to me. He's already tried it? Or, like Minutella does, go to hotels. It will be expensive yes, but I don't think you will manage to buy a former gym with an asbestos roof in a hamlet in the province of Padua, like the double doctor of theology from Palermo. I don't see it.
To reassure her I conclude with Professor Keating's words to one of his students, alias Robin Williams, in the famous film Dead Poets Society: «Let's not laugh at her, let's laugh with her".
With estimates.
The Hermit Monk of The Isle of Patmos
.
.
.
Sant'Angelo Cave in Ripe (Civitella del Tronto)
.
Visit the pages of our book shop WHO and support our editions by purchasing and distributing our books.
.
______________________
Dear Readers,
this magazine requires management costs that we have always faced only with your free offers. Those who wish to support our apostolic work can send us their contribution through the convenient and safe way PayPal by clicking below:
Or if you prefer you can use our
Bank account in the name of:
Editions The island of Patmos
n Agency. 59 From Rome – Vatican
Iban code:
IT74R0503403259000000301118
For international bank transfers:
Codice SWIFT:
BAPPIT21D21
If you make a bank transfer, send an email to the editorial staff, the bank does not provide your email and we will not be able to send you a thank you message:
isoladipatmos@gmail.com
We thank you for the support you wish to offer to our apostolic service.
The Fathers of the Island of Patmos
.
.
.
.
.
The fans of Mary co-redemptrix, a gross contradiction in theological terms
THE FANS OF MARIA CO-REDEMPTOR, A GROSS CONTRADICTION IN THEOLOGICAL TERMS
Is anyone truly willing to believe that the Blessed Virgin, the one who defined herself as a "humble servant", the woman of gifted love, silence and confidentiality, the one who has the purpose of leading to Christ, can truly ask some visionaries or visionaries to be proclaimed co-redeemer and put almost on a par with the Divine Redeemer? One might reasonably ask: of when, the "humble servant" of Magnificat, she would become so pretentious and vain as to ask for and claim the title of co-redeemer?
— Theologica pages —
Author
Ariel S. Levi di Gualdo
.
.
Author
Editors of The Island of Patmos
.
On the occasion of the release of the doctrinal note Mother of the Faithful People, we propose the latest article on the topic written by Father Ariel S. Levi di Gualdo il 3 February 2024 his “Maria Corredentrice”, within which we refer to the following articles published previously:
«Article of 3 April 2020 — We defend the Holy Father Francesco from flamethrower of mariolatri thirsty for new Marian dogmas: “Mary is not co-redemptrix”»;
«Article of 14 August 2022 – Proclaiming new dogmas is more serious than deconstructing the dogmas of faith. Maria Corredentrice? A theological idiocy supported by those who ignore the bases of Christology»;
«Article of 11 May 2023 – Bergoglio, heretic and apostate, blaspheme the Madonna". Word of a solar heretic with the obsession of Mary co-redemptrix who would ask for the proclamation of the fifth Marian dogma»
_________________
.
Article dedicated to the memory of the Jesuit Peter Gumpel (Hannover 1923 – Rome 2023) who was my trainer and precious teacher in the history of dogma
.
By frequenting enough i social media, reading and listening to priests and lay people, on biblical and theological topics, sometimes one gets the impression that no progress has been made on certain issues. It so happens that many inaccuracies are put into circulation on questions concerning matters of faith, or we continue on old registers, devotional and emotional.
Salvador Dali, The Madonna of Port Lligat, 1949, Haggerty Museum of Art, Milwaukee, WI, USA. Detail.
The desire, perhaps a little utopian, it would be for the Readers to realize, with minimal effort, who could benefit from serious and precise insights. At least it is in my hope and that of our Fathers Patmos Island, be of help to those who manage to go beyond the four or five lines read on social media, where today unlikely theologians and Mariologists pontificate, with the consequences that we often know well: deviation from the true faith. And this is very sad, because i Social media they could be an extraordinary tool for us for the diffusion of sound and solid Catholic doctrine.
In the years following the Second Vatican Council Biblical science has made important strides, offering contributions that are now essential for theology in its various branches and for Christian life. This since when, since the time of the Venerable Pontiff Pius XII, in the Catholic Church the study of the Bible has been encouraged by giving the possibility of using all those methods that are normally applied to a written text. To cite just a few examples: rhetorical analysis, the structural one, literary and semantics have produced results that perhaps have sometimes appeared unsatisfactory, but they also allowed us to explore the text of the Holy Scripture in a new way and this led to a whole series of studies that made us know the Word of God better and more deeply. Or to reconsider ancient acquisitions, of tradition, of the Holy Fathers of the Church, which despite being true and profound, as well as works of high theology, however they did not have the support of a modern study of sacred texts, precisely because still, certain tools, at the time of their speculations they were missing.
Before continuing, an aside is necessary: i "teologi" da social media they need the fight, to unleash which it is necessary to choose and create an enemy. For certain groups the most popular enemy is Modernism, rightly defined by the Holy Pontiff Pius (cf.. Feeding of Dominic's Sheep). That doesn't mean that, But, than the actions of this Holy Pontiff, even before that of his Supreme Predecessor Leo XIII, has always produced beneficial effects in the decades to follow. Obviously, to make an objective critical analysis, it is imperative to contextualize the condemnation of Modernism and the severe canonical measures that followed in that precise historical moment, certainly not to express judgments using criteria linked to our present, because only misleading and distorting sentences would emerge. To briefly summarize this complex problem to which I intend to dedicate my next book, suffice it to say that the Church of those years, after the fall of the Papal State which occurred on 20 September 1870, it was subject to violent political and social attacks. The Roman Pontiff withdrew as a "voluntary prisoner" within the Vatican walls from which he emerged only six decades later. The anticlericalism of Masonic origin was raised to the maximum power and the Church had to seriously deal with its own survival and that of the institution of the papacy. It certainly could not afford the development of currents of thought that would have attacked and corroded it directly from within. It is in this delicate context that the fight of the Holy Pontiff Pius. With all the consequences, including negative ones, of the case: theological speculation was effectively frozen amidst a thousand fears and the training of priests was reduced to four formulas of decadent neo-scholasticism, which was not even a distant relative of the classical scholasticism of Saint Anselm of Aosta and Saint Thomas Aquinas. This produced such an unpreparedness and ignorance in the Catholic clergy that for clear proof it would be enough to read the Encyclical Back to the Catholic Priesthood written in 1935 of Pope Pius XI.
The consequences of the fight against Modernism they were in some ways disastrous, suffice it to say that when on the threshold of the 1940s, at the beginning of the pontificate of Pius XII, Catholic theologians and biblical scholars began to get their hands on certain materials and to carry out exegesis in the context of the Old and New Testaments, they were forced, discreetly and working prudently under the table, to refer to Protestant authors, who had been speculating and carrying out in-depth studies on certain topics for decades, especially in the field of biblical sciences. And so today, if we want to do a study and analysis of the text of the Letter to the Romans we must necessarily refer to the commentary of the Protestant theologian Carl Barth, which remains fundamental and above all unsurpassed. These too were the fruits of the struggle against Modernism, which the "theologians" certainly don't talk about social media that to exist they need an enemy to fight. But as already said, this theme will be the subject of my next book, but this aside was necessary to better introduce our theme.
What is still missing today is that these results obtained through modern exegesis or the study of the Old and New Testament texts become the prerogative of the majority of believers. And here I return to reiterate the extraordinary importance that the social media, to disseminate and make certain materials accessible. Too often they remain confined to specialist texts and do not pass, if not sporadically, in preaching and catechesis, encouraging a new awareness of the terms at stake and therefore a more solid and motivated Christian faith, not based only on acquired data that is often fragile and confusing, on the devotional, on the sentimental, or worse: about revelations, on real or alleged apparitions, or on the itchy trembling “secrets” of talkativeness Madam di Medjugorje (cf.. my video conference, WHO)…and so on to follow.
If certain madonnolatrous fans they had humility, perhaps even the decency to read books and articles by authoritative scholars, perhaps they could understand that not only, they didn't understand, but that they have understood nothing at all about the Mary of the Holy Gospels. It would be enough to take - I mention just one among many - the article written by Father Ignace de la Potterie: «The Mother of Jesus and the mystery of Cana» (La Civiltà Cattolica, 1979, IV, pp. 425-440, full text WHO), to thus understand what abysmal difference there may be between Mariology and Mariolatry.
When even today we still talk about the Virgin Mary, Unfortunately, even among certain priests - and even more so among certain devout believers - we witness the trite repetition of the usual devotional and emotional discourses, until reaching, with the step of elephants inside a glassware shop, the very delicate and discussed theme of Mary co-redemptrix, that as is well known - and as the last Pontiffs have pointed out several times -, it is a term that in itself creates enormous theological problems with Christology and the mystery of redemption itself. In fact, affirm that Maria, perfect creature born without sin, but still a created creature, he cooperated in the redemption of humanity, it is not exactly the same as saying that he co-redeemed humanity. It was Christ who brought about the redemption, who was not a created creature but the Word of God made man, begotten not created of the same substance as God the Father, as we act in the Symbol of Faith, the I believe, where we profess «[…] and by the work of the Holy Spirit he became incarnate in the womb of the Virgin Mary". In Symbol of Faith, redemption is entirely centered on Christ. That's why we say that the Blessed Virgin “he cooperated” and say “ha co-redee” it has a substantially and radically different theological value. In fact, only one is the redeemer: Jesus Christ God made man "begotten not created of the same substance as the Father", who as such does not need any created creature to support or sustain him as co-redeemer or co-redeemer, including the Blessed Virgin Mary" (cf.. Ariel S. Levi di Gualdo, in The Island of Patmos, see WHO, WHO, WHO). Request: to the fans of the co-redeemer, how come it is not enough that Mary is the one who in fact cooperated more than any creature so that the mystery of redemption was realized? For what reason, but above all for what obstinacy, not happy with her role as a cooperator, at all costs they want her to be proclaimed co-redemptive with a solemn dogmatic definition?
From a theological point of view and dogmatic, the very concept of Mary co-redemptrix first of all creates big problems for Christology, with the risk of giving life to a sort of "quatrinity" and of raising the Madonna, that is perfect creature born without the stain of original sin, to the role of real gods. Christ redeemed us with his hypostatic precious human and divine blood, with his glorious resurrected body which still bears the signs of passion imprinted on it today. Mary instead, while covering an extraordinary role in the history of the economy of salvation, It cooperated in our redemption. To say co-redemptive is equivalent to saying that we have been redeemed by Christ and Mary. And here it is good to clarify: Christ saves, Mary intercedes for our salvation. It is not a small difference between “saving” and “interceding”, unless otherwise create a different religion from the one founded on the mystery of God's Word (cf.. My previous article WHO).
Mariology is not something in itself, almost as if he lived an autonomous life. Mariology is nothing more than an appendix of Christology and is inserted in a precise theological dimension of Christocentrism. If Mariology is somehow detached from this Christocentric centrality, one can run the serious risk of falling into the worst and most harmful Mariocentrism. Not to mention the obvious arrogance of the exponents of some young and problematic Congregation of Franciscan-Marian imprint, who did not limit themselves to making hypotheses or theological studies to support the peregrine idea of the so-called co-redemptive, but in fact they instituted its cult and veneration.
Who proclaims dogmas that do not exist commits a greater crime than those whose dogmas deny them, because it operates by placing itself above the authority of the same Holy Church Mater et Magistra, holder of an authority that derives from Christ himself. And the latter yes, which is a dogma of the Catholic Faith, which was not reached by logical deduction after centuries of studies and speculation - as in the case of the dogma of the immaculate conception and Mary's assumption into heaven -, but on the basis of clear and precise words pronounced by the Word of God made Man (cf.. Mt 13, 16-20). And when dogmas that don't exist are proclaimed, in that case pride enters the scene in its worst manifestation. I have written and explained it in several of my previous articles but it deserves to be repeated again: in the so-called scale of the deadly sins the Catechism of the Catholic Church indicates pride in the first place, with painful peace of those who persist in concentrating the entire mystery of evil in lust - which we remember does not figure in first place at all, but not even to the second, to the third and fourth [See. Catechism no. 1866] ―, regardless of the fact that the worst sins ranging everyone and rigor from his belt to rise, not instead of his belt to fall, as I wrote in an ironic but theologically very serious tone years ago in my book And Satan became triune, explaining in one of my books 2011 how the sixth commandment has often been exaggerated beyond measure, often forgetting all the worst and most serious sins against charity.
If then all this is filtered through fideistic emotions - as if such a delicate topic centered in the most complex spheres of dogmatics were a sort of opposing fan base made up of Lazio fans and Roma fans -, in that case one can fall into actual Marian idolatry or so-called Mariolatry, which is to say: pure paganism. At that point Mary could easily take the name of any goddess of the Greek Olympus or the Roman Pantheon.
The fans from social media of co-redemption of the Blessed Virgin affirm as a sort of incontrovertible proof that it was Mary herself who asked for the proclamation of this fifth Marian dogma (cf.. among many articles, WHO). Something they say there is no discussion about, the Blessed Virgin herself would have asked it when appearing in Amsterdam to Ida Peerdeman. Given that no Marian apparition, including those recognized as authentic by the Church, Fatima included, it can be the object and binding matter of faith; given also that the locutions of certain seers are even less so, we can only smile at certain pleasantries of amateur theologians which make certain subjects difficult to manage for us priests and above all for us theologians, precisely because their arrogance goes hand in hand with their ignorance which leads them to treat such a topic as if it really were a heated exchange between Lazio fans and Roma fans who shout at each other from the opposite corners of the stadium. Even in this case the answer is simple: is anyone truly willing to believe that the Blessed Virgin, the one who defined herself as a "humble servant", the woman of gifted love, silence and confidentiality, the one who has the purpose of leading to Christ, can truly ask some visionaries or visionaries to be proclaimed co-redeemer and put almost on a par with the Divine Redeemer? One might reasonably ask: of when, the "humble servant" of Magnificat, she would become so pretentious and vain as to ask for and claim the title of co-redeemer?
Finally, here it is “proof of proof”: «several Supreme Pontiffs have made use of the term co-redemptive», Having said this, the list of their various speeches follows, although everything demonstrates the exact opposite of what the co-redemption fans would like to experience. It is true that the Supreme Pontiff John Paul II, in a speech of his on 8 September 1982, stated:
«Maria, even conceived and born without stain of sin, he participated in a wonderful way in the sufferings of his divine Son, to be co-redemptor of humanity".
However, this expression demonstrates the exact opposite on the theological and Mariological level. Let's clarify why: from then on, following John Paul II - who was undoubtedly a Pontiff of profound Marian devotion -, he had others before him 23 years of pontificate. Come May, in this long period of time, as well as not proclaiming the fifth Marian dogma of Mary's co-redemption, he flatly rejected the request, when it was presented to him twice? He rejected her because between the 1962 and the 1965, the then young Bishop Karol Woytila was a participating and active figure in the Second Vatican Council who in one of its dogmatic constitutions clarified how Mary had «cooperated in a unique way in the work of the Savior» (The light, 61). Statement introduced by the previous article where it is specified that the only mediation of the Redeemer «does not exclude, but it arouses in creatures a varied cooperation participated by the single source" (The light 60; CCC 970). And the highest and most extraordinary cooperation was that of the Virgin Mary. This should be enough to understand that the Supreme Pontiffs, when they sometimes resorted to the term co-redemptive in their speeches, never in encyclicals or solemn acts of the supreme magisterium, they intended to express with it the concept of Mary's cooperation in the mystery of salvation and redemption.
The very term co-redemptive it is in and of itself a theological absurdity that creates enormous conflicts with Christology and the mystery of redemption brought about solely by God the Incarnate Word, which does not need co-redeemers and co-redeemers, he repeated it three times, In the 2019, 2020 e 2021 also the Supreme Pontiff Francis:
«[…] Faithful to his Master, who is his Son, the only Redeemer, he never wanted to take something of his Son for himself. She never presented herself as a co-redeemer. No, discepola. And there is a Holy Father who says around that discipleship is more worthy than motherhood. Questions of theologians, but a disciple. He never stole anything from his Son for himself, she served him because she is a mother, gives life in the fullness of time to this Son born of a woman (cf.. Homily of 12 December 2019, full text WHO) […] Our Lady did not want to take any title away from Jesus; she received the gift of being His Mother and the duty to accompany us as a Mother, to be our Mother. She did not ask for herself to be a quasi-redeemer or a co-redeemer: no. The Redeemer is only one and this title is not doubled. Only disciple and Mother (cf.. Homily of 3 April 2020, full text WHO) […] the Madonna who, as the Mother to whom Jesus has entrusted us, envelops us all; but as a mother, not as a goddess, not as a co-redemptrix: as Mother. It is true that Christian piety always gives it beautiful titles, like a son to his mother: how many beautiful things a son says to the mother he loves! But let's be careful: the beautiful things that the Church and the Saints say about Mary take nothing away from the redemptive uniqueness of Christ. He is the only Redeemer. They are expressions of love like a son to his mother, sometimes exaggerated. But love, we know, always makes us do exaggerated things, but with love" (cf.. Hearing of 24 March 2021, full text WHO).
The mystery of redemption it is one with the mystery of the cross, on which God made man died as a sacrificial lamb. On the cross the Blessed Virgin Mary was not nailed to death like a sacrificial lamb, that at the end of her life she fell asleep and was assumed into heaven, she did not die and rose again on the third day, defeating death. The Blessed Virgin, first creature of the whole creation above all the saints for its immaculate purity, he does not forgive our sins and does not redeem us, he intercedes for the remission of our sins and for our redemption. So if he doesn't redeem us, because we insist on dogmatizing a title aimed at solemnly defining which co-redeems us?
Many fans of co-redemption are likely have never paid attention to the invocations of the Loreto Litany, which were certainly not the work of some recent pontiff smacking of modernism, as some would say, they were added to the recitation of the Holy Rosary by the Holy Pontiff Pius V after the victory of the Holy League in Lepanto in 1571, although already in use for several decades in the Sanctuary of the House of Loreto, from which they take their name. Yet it would be enough to ask this question: How come, when at the beginning of these litanies God the Father is invoked, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit, let's say "Miserere nobis» (have mercy on us)? While just starting, with the invocation Holy Mary, to enunciate all the titles of the Blessed Virgin, from that moment on we say «Pray for us» (pray for us)? Simple: because God the Father who created us and who gave himself to humanity through the incarnation of the Word of God made man, Jesus Christ, who then brought the Holy Spirit who "proceeds from the Father and the Son", with compassionate mercy they give the grace of forgiveness from sins through a Trinitarian action of the triune God, the Virgin Mary does not, he does not forgive us our sins and does not forgive us, because in the economy of salvation his role is that of intercession. This is why, when we turn to her through prayer, both in the Ave Maria than in Hi Regina, of always, throughout the history and tradition of the Church we invoke her saying "pray for us sinners", we do not ask her to forgive our sins or to save us (cf.. My previous article, WHO). This alone should be sufficient and advance to understand that the term co-redemptive itself is a gross contradiction on a theological level, unfortunately enough to make those theologians who insist on calling for the proclamation of this fifth Marian dogma to be rude, charging and using as fans fringes of faithful, most of whom have deep and serious gaps in the foundations of the Catechism of the Catholic Church.
The person of the Virgin Mary, the Mother of Jesus, it is looked at and indicated with a theological depth that places it in close relationship with the mission of his Son and united with us disciples, because this is his role that the Gospels wanted to communicate and remind us of, all with all due respect to those who claim, sometimes even arrogantly, to relegate the Woman of Magnificat in a microcosm of emotional devotions that often even reveal the fumus of neo-paganism. The Supreme Pontiff Francis is therefore right, than with his very simple and direct style, at times even deliberately provocative and for some even irritating, but precisely for this reason capable of making himself understood by everyone, he specified that Maria «[…] he never wanted to take something of his Son for himself. She never presented herself as co-redeemer". And she did not present herself as such because Mary is the Woman of Magnificat: «He looked at the humility of his servant, from now on all generations will call me blessed"; blessed because I became a servant, certainly not why I asked, to some demented seer, to be proclaimed co-redemptrix.
the Island of Patmos, 3 February 2024
.
.
______________________
Dear Readers,
this magazine requires management costs that we have always faced only with your free offers. Those who wish to support our apostolic work can send us their contribution through the convenient and safe way PayPal by clicking below:
Or if you prefer you can use our
Bank account in the name of:
Editions The island of Patmos
n Agency. 59 From Rome
Iban code:
IT74R0503403259000000301118
For international bank transfers:
Codice SWIFT:
BAPPIT21D21
If you make a bank transfer, send an email to the editorial staff, the bank does not provide your email and we will not be able to send you a thank you message:
isoladipatmos@gmail.com
We thank you for the support you wish to offer to our apostolic service.
The Fathers of the Island of Patmos
.
.
.
The website of this magazine and the editions take name from the Aegean island in which the Blessed Apostle John wrote the Book of the Apocalypse, isola also known as «the place of the last revelation»
«God revealed the secrets of others ALTIUS»
(in higher than the others, John has left the Church, the arcane mysteries of God)
The bezel used as the cover of our home page is a 16th century fresco by Correggio. preserved in the Church of San Giovanni Evangelista in Parma
Creator and editor of this magazine website:
MANUELA LUZZARDI