Homiletics of the Fathers of The Island of Patmos

THE GOOD SHEPHERD IS THE ONE WHO LEADS WITH SERENITY BY GIVING HERSELF WITH CHARITY IN THE LIQUID WORLD

Jesus describes the figure of the mercenary as opposed to his own. The mercenary expresses the mentality of the liquid world. In fact it does not give life, flees from the dangers of those entrusted to him. The mercenary uses the sheep as objects, as long as it suits them and for personal gain. He does not know how to guard, but it only uses a domain perspective

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Author:
Gabriele Giordano M. Scardocci, o.p.

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Roman aqueduct on the Appia Antica

Dear Readers L'Isola di Patmos,

when I was a high school student I used to go for a run in the park near my house every now and then, a huge countryside inside the Appia Antica Park. One day I remember that a large flock of sheep appeared in this large green area. Behind a young shepherd who directed them by whistling in their direction. And the silent sheep, also accompanied by the shepherd dog, they obeyed.

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This tale of the Gospel of Saint John offered by the liturgy of this fourth Sunday of Easter [cf.. 10, 11-18], providentially reminds us that in these times of great uncertainty, today the Lord comes to meet us and reminds us that He is the Good Shepherd of our life. It is precisely in this great mystery that today's readings introduce us. Especially in the Gospel of John, Jesus presents himself as such by affirming:

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"I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The mercenary […] sees the wolf coming, abandon the sheep and flee, and the wolf kidnaps and scatters them; because he is a mercenary and does not care about the sheep ".

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We immediately notice that Jesus describes the figure of the mercenary as opposed to his own. The mercenary clearly expresses the mentality of the liquid world. In fact it does not give life, flees from the dangers of those entrusted to him. The mercenary uses the sheep as objects, as long as it suits them and for personal gain. He does not know how to guard, but it only uses a domain perspective. It therefore has a merely utilitarian mentality.

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On the contrary, the good Shepherd is quite the opposite. He knows and loves his sheep. Interesting how there is this link between knowing and loving, which finds its foundation in the relationship of knowledge and love that exists between the Eternal Father and Christ Logos. Indeed, in the Hebrew and Aramaic languages ​​spoken by Jesus, the word to know is said with the word yadah indicating it is an intellectual knowledge, is at the same time an emotional intimacy. When Jesus says know then he wants to indicate that there is a truthful and very intimate relationship between him and us, his sheep. Precisely because he loves us, he offers his life and remains, giving himself to the end, in Gethsemane. He offers all of himself to free us from the slavery of sin.

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In offering life there is the deepest reason for all the Trinitarian movement. The Lord explains it to us in clear words, continuing in this way:

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«For this the Father loves me: because I give my life, and then pick it up again. Nobody takes it from me: I give it myself. I have the power to give it and the power to take it back again. This is the command I received from my Father ".

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The Eternal Father in fact he entrusted the visible mission to Jesus of incarnating himself, become a man like us, live the days of passion and death and then rise again. Here then is that the Incarnation and Easter have the element of love in common: all of us in the risen Jesus obtain the grace to love and know God. The Trinitarian mentality of offering and self-love overcomes the utilitarian mentality. Because it renews man entirely in God: anima, body and spirit. This deeply questions our lives of faith.

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We want to be mercenaries or shepherds? We want to enter into the perspective of domination or self-offering? If we really choose to strive to be consistent with our vocation, we too enter into the perspective of the Eternal Father who sends Jesus: then we respond to His command, which, however, is not a dictatorial imposition. It is adhering to a project of personal community love which is the expression of a greater freedom. Enter the perspective of the Trinity, it means welcoming our mission which will offer priceless joy and satisfaction.

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We ask the Lord to enter more and more into his perspective of offering and oblation of ourselves, to involve the whole world in the horizon of theological charity and generate the true civilization of love, united in the love of the one Shepherd.

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Rome, 25 April 2021

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Homiletics of the Fathers of The Island of Patmos

- homiletics -

WHY JESUS ​​ONCE DEAD DESCENDED TO HELL BEFORE RISING FROM THE DEAD ON THE THIRD DAY?

Before the resurrection something happens that many fail to understand and that others, Unfortunately, they just don't know: Christ, once dead, descends into the underworld. St. Paul the Apostle writes: “He had descended into the lower regions of the earth. He who descended is the same who also ascended "

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Author:
Gabriele Giordano M. Scardocci, o.p.

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Dear brothers and sisters,

Fra Angelico, Christ enters the underworld by breaking down the door and crushing a demon under it

happy Easter! After the Lenten journey, the Lord allows us to reach the awaited goal of his resurrection, on which our faith is founded and is based [See. The Cor 15, 14]. Truly today we all gather in Jesus and in him we are all united and joyful. Easter is truly the transition from the slavery of sin, of darkness, therefore of sadness and uncertainty to the liberation of joy, of the happiness of the certainty of the resurrection.

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Before the resurrection something happens that many cannot understand, others unfortunately do not know at all: Christ, once dead, descends into the underworld. St. Paul the Apostle writes: “He had descended into the lower regions of the earth. He who descended is the same who also ascended " [Ef 4,10]. In this regard, he teaches the Catechism of the Catholic Church to numbers 632-637:

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«The Scripture calls hell [cf.. the 2,10; At 2,24; AP 1,18; Ef 4,9] the place of the dead where the dead Christ descended, because those who are there are deprived of the vision of God [cf.. Shall 6,6; 88,11-13]. Such indeed is, waiting for the Redeemer, the fate of all the dead, bad or righteous [cf.. Shall 6,6; 88,11-13]; which does not mean that their fate is identical, as Jesus demonstrates in the parable of poor Lazarus welcomed into "Abraham's womb" [See. LC 16,22-26]. "It was precisely the souls of these righteous awaiting Christ who were freed by Jesus who descended into hell" [Roman Catechism, 1, 6, 3: ed. P. Rodriguez (Vatican City-Pamplona 1989) p. 71]”. Jesus did not descend into hell to free the damned [cf.. Council of Rome (year 745), Christ's descent into hell: DS 587] nor to destroy the hell of damnation [cf.. Benedict XII, Little Book since a long time (1341), 18: DS 1011; Clement VI, Letter on some (year 1351), (c). 15, 13: DS 1077] but to free the righteous who had preceded him [See. Council of Toledo IV (year 633), Chapter, 1: DS 485; Mt 27,52-53].

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Now let's see the readings of this Liturgy of the Word [cf.. WHO]. On Easter morning the witnesses of the Passion, with his heart still overwhelmed by the dramatic events, make a surprising discovery. Mary of Magdala first goes to the tomb. Imagine the scene of that walk: the affectionate friend of Jesus is with a dismayed heart swollen with sadness for what had happened just two days earlier. Just arrived at the door of the sepulcher, one realizes that the body of Jesus has disappeared.

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"They have taken the Lord out of the tomb and we know not where they have laid!» [GV, 20,2].

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Peter and John are also warned. Ma, says the gospel, they had not yet understood that Jesus had to rise from the dead; although Giovanni, who enters the tomb after Peter, he saw and believed. The faith of the two apostles in this prodigious event remains: despite not understanding everything immediately. Jesus had repeated it to him several times, that he would be crucified and then resurrected. And yet they themselves struggle to believe and understand.

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It is also a little bit’ the situation of all of us today. We believe in the mystery of the resurrection, but we struggle to get into it. Perhaps because we have not met Jesus risen, but his Resurrection has been holyly handed down to us. Or perhaps because there is a simpler reason. Because we have lost the training to pray, contemplate and meditate on these divine mysteries. Overwhelmed by the speed of life today, from messages social, from the pressing work, from the book releases we have a little’ put the important things in the attic. We too imitate the unbridled rush of Peter and John. But unlike the apostles we do not run to the risen Jesus, but towards a thousand distractions. Beyond what they already are.

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On this Easter 2021, then let's try to stop on these verses of the Gospel. We enter into the perspective of the Resurrection, which is the action of rising with Christ. The resurrection for us already begins today, if we orient ourselves to re-reading every event with the view of the resurrected. That is, with a view to no longer living as men destined to die, but as believers destined to die and then live eternally. So let us make St. Paul's invitation our own when he says:

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"Brothers, if you are resurrected with Christ, look for the things above, where is Christ, sitting at the right hand of God; turn your thoughts to the things above, not to those of the earth ". [With the 3,1]

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Think about the things up there obviously it does not imply living in a continuous state of metaphysical visionaries or lost in some sort of trance induced mysticism. Looking for the things above means trying to live our faith concretely and daily. Which is faith because it becomes a life of holiness. Pietro and Giovanni, as we will see in the coming Sundays, they will explain the empty tomb because they will see the risen Jesus. A quel point, they will be the first witnesses of the joyful event of Easter; the apostles, that without the fear that had made them flee before the Passion, they transmitted this extraordinary event to us. Peter offers us his testimony, when in the first reading of the acts he says:

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«[…] God consecrated Jesus of Nazareth in the Holy Spirit and power, […] They [the Jews] they killed him by hanging him on a cross, but God raised him up on the third day and wanted him to manifest, not to all the people, but to witnesses chosen by God, to us who ate and drank with him after his resurrection from the dead " [At 10, 38. 39 – 42]

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This call to eat and drink with him, in addition to the moments spent together with Jesus at the table, it is a call to the Eucharist. Here then is where to draw our spiritual food and drink to be able to walk the way of faith. The resurrection is lived especially at Easter, but every Sunday, in which Christ makes himself present in the body, blood, soul and divinity is always Easter and resurrection in Him, for him, with him.

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This feeling of closeness is described in a moving poem by Giuseppe Ungaretti:

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Christ, thoughtful heartbeat, / Star embodied in human darkness, / Brother who immolates you / Perpetually to rebuild / Humanly man, / Santo, Holy you suffer, /Teacher and brother and God you know us weak, / Santo, Holy you suffer / To free the dead from death /

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We thank the Lord, for the gift of the Resurrection, let us ask him for the grace to unite us little by little more and more to him in faith, in hope and theological charity, protected by the sweet Marian mantle.

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Rome, 4 April 2021

Easter of Resurrection

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Homiletics of the Fathers of The Island of Patmos

- homiletics -

CHRISTIANITY FROM A RESTAURANT MENU THAT ESCAPES THE CROSS AND TRANSFORMS CHRIST GOD INTO A DELICIOUS HIGHLY DIGESTIBLE PASTRY

Today more than ever it escapes, even to us consecrated, the sacrificial element of the true experience of faith. For some time now we have created what we could define as a restaurant menu Christianity you enter, you read the card and choose what you like. And so to dominate it is the worst of the emotionality animated by human selfishness.

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Author
Ariel S. Levi di Gualdo

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The three synoptic Gospels of the Beati Evangelisti Marco, Matteo and Luca, have different characteristics, just like the symbolism with which the Evangelists have been depicted since the early Middle Ages, which came to life at the end of the fifth century with the fall of the Roman Empire.

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Matthew the Evangelist it is depicted with the image of the winged man, because its editing begins with the genealogy of Christ the Lord and Messiah; the Blessed Evangelist Mark with the winged lion, because its editing begins with the narration of the preaching of the Precursor, Blessed John known as the Baptist, who preached in the desert, place inhabited by wild beasts; the Blessed Evangelist Luca with the ox, because its editing begins with the vision had by Zacharias in the Temple of Jerusalem, where animals were sacrificed, among which also oxen.

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The authors of the three synoptic Gospels they follow a similar pattern and narrate the same events of the life of Christ God, despite their stylistic differences. Finally the so-called Fourth Gospel, that of Blessed Evangelist John, depicted with the image of an animal considered at the time the most noble of all the species on earth: the Eagle, she who alone could stare at the sunlight with open eyes.

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The Gospel of Blessed John the Evangelist, which opens with a hymn to the mystery of the incarnation of the Word of God - "And the Word became flesh" - is an admirable hymn in the light of Christ true God and true man, pictured below as a living sun descending from heaven. To Blessed Evangelista Giovanni, defined by the great Fathers and doctors of the Church as the theologian par excellence, the motto is accompanied «Higher than the rest of the revealed secret» [higher than the others - John - he revealed the arcane mysteries of God].

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A characteristic of the Gospel of Blessed Evangelista Matteo it is the narrative precision from which the figure of the historical Jesus takes shape, connected by him to numerous old-testamentary references. The whole, to testify that Christ had not come to earth to abolish the Law and the Prophets, but to fulfill [cf.. Mt 5, 17-20]. And the fulfillment was Him, the God made man, the light that shines in the darkness, as the Evangelist John defines it in his prologue, the "God from God light from Light", as the Church Fathers defined it by writing in the Councils of Nicea and Constantinople the I believe that we will soon recite. Or the Christ the whole, as Saint Augustine called it, that totality in which Christ God is the center, the beginning and the ultimate end of our entire humanism.

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So four personalities of different men, each illuminated by divine grace, who announce the mystery with fixed and timeless words, because as Christ God reveals through the story of the Blessed Evangelist Matthew: «The heavens and the earth will pass away, but my words will never go away " [Mt 24, 32-35], because they are fixed forever through the mystery of passion, the death and resurrection of Christ, God, in the glorious body of which the signs of passion are still impressed; eternal sign of his love consumed for the redemption of man until the torture of the cross, changing the Word that became flesh in the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

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And with this we have reached the heart of this Holy Gospel of the Blessed Evangelist Matthew in which Christ the Lord offers us something terrible: «Whoever does not take his cross and follow me, not worthy of me " [see Liturgy of the Word on this thirteenth Sunday of ordinary time, WHO].

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Today more than ever it escapes, even to us consecrated, the sacrificial element of the true experience of faith. For some time now we have created what we could define as a restaurant menu Christianity you enter, you read the card and choose what you like. And so to dominate it is the worst of the emotionality animated by human selfishness. It is the tragedy of faith watered down by little heart that beats, for example, in front of the tender, poignant popular images of the Child Jesus during Holy Christmas, unaware, however, that this is only the beginning of a path that then comes in the pain of the Garden of Olives, to continue with the immense torment of the painful way and the crucifixion.

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Faith is sacrifice, but many have turned it into a worldly right to what I like. Here then are the Catholics who on the one hand call themselves such, on the other, they declare themselves in favor of abortion, or who say "... it is right that two men live together if they love each other, because what matters is love, indeed it is right to give him even a child for adoption ». And here we should clarify what love is and what is not what some call love. As there are other Catholics who claim that it is right, indeed it is charitable to practice euthanasia for a terminally ill patient, why let him suffer? It is inhuman. And to these latter I answered: “Maybe you don't know what the torture of a crucifixion is, but if you talk to an anatomo-pathologist, he will explain to you the pain and also the humiliating reactions that such torture generated in the body of the condemned exposed naked to the sight of all. Well, it seems to you that the Blessed Virgin Mary pleaded to end the sufferings of her Divine Son?».

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Today we have created a monstrous society chasing a false happiness in which life is without disease and without physical decay; youth without old age and life without death. In this way, a society of the unreal has been created that rejects Christ, or a Catholic community that dilutes the message of Christ who invites us to assimilate to his pain. At that point the same Holy Mass is confused with a meeting between friends who get together to celebrate, to rejoice around the table. Yet it would be enough to listen to the words of the sacred liturgy to understand that through the mystery of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ the divine memorial of the passion is renewed., Death and Resurrection, because the Eucharist is the living and holy sacrifice ... and when I go to the altar, I'm not going to have a joyful party, but I go up to Mount Calvary, because on the altar the bloodless sacrifice of the passion of Christ God is renewed.

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The Holy Father Giovanni Paolo II wrote in 1984 a splendid apostolic letter on the occasion of the Jubilee of the Redemption entitled Saving pain, what does it mean: the salvific value of suffering. At the time,, the future Holy Pontiff had just 62 year old, he was a sporty man full of energy. Why that Letter dedicated to the salvific value of suffering written by a man who seemed the portrait of beauty and health? Well, we think of John Paul II not of 1984, but to that of 2000, when he persisted in kneeling before the Blessed Sacrament even though he was exhausted by the disease, trembling and without strength, with the papal master of ceremonies sweating around him when he wanted to genuflect in every way, obsequious to the end of the warning of the Blessed Apostle Paul "in the name of Jesus every knee should bend in the heavens, on earth and under the earth " [Fil 2, 10]. John Paul II understood immediately, in the splendor of his health, long before his illness, the saving element of pain that assimilates us to the cross of Christ ...

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… When I was consecrated a priest, kneeling before the bishop I received the sacred chalice and paten with these words: "Receive the oblation of the holy people for the Eucharistic sacrifice. Understand what you will do, imitate what you celebrate. Conform your life to the mystery of the cross of Christ the Lord ". I was not told ... now go to party with joyful friends around the canteen among guitarists, dances and tambourines. In essence I was told: now go up to Mount Calvary and through your sacrifice conform yourself to the sacrifice of Christ. This, it is the essence of our faith and, if we really want to follow it, we must be aware - as it is written in the Gospel of Blessed Evangelist Luke - there is no other path than the one indicated by Christ himself: "If anyone wants to come after me, you deny yourself, take up his cross every day and follow me " [LC 9, 22-25].

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... but how would it be to say pain ... cross ... Christianity is love, it is joy! Of course, it is the love of Christ who died on the cross for our salvation and is the joy of the resurrection of the Word of God made man and ascended into heaven who sits today at the right hand of the Father; Christianity is the joy of that resurrection to which we are assimilated, because as we recite in the III Eucharistic Prayer when we remember the dead: "He will transform our mortal body in the image of his glorious body". This, it is Christianity, all the rest, to paraphrase the Book of Qoelet which said "vanity of vanity", it is only emotionality of emotionality. E, between faith and emotionality, the difference is profoundly substantial, because in the middle there is that cross that the superficial emotional does not want and that runs away to live a false faith from a restaurant menu, while the man of true faith is called instead to conform his life to the cross of Christ: "He who does not take his cross and follow me, not worthy of me " [Mt 10, 38].

Jesus Christ be praised!

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Zoverallo di Verbania, 28 June 2020

House of the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians

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Homiletics of the Fathers of The Island of Patmos

- homiletics -

CRISTO PIO PELLICANO IS THE HEART OF THE SOLEMNITY OF THE BODY OF THE LORD

The anthem I love you devote expresses in his verses the tenderness of Jesus, because he describes the Lord as a pelican who tears his heart to feed his young.

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Author:
Gabriele Giordano M. Scardocci, o.p.

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Dear brothers and sisters,

Pie pellicáne, Jesus Lord, I clean with your blood, One drop of doing, All the world from all kinds of crimes (O pious pelican Lord Jesus, purify me, sinner, with your blood, that, with a single drop, it can save the whole world from all sin).

today we celebrate another wonderful feast of the Lord, Corpus Domini. Great mystery, given to us by the Lord at the Last Supper, last act of tenderness for man.

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The beautiful text of Saint Thomas Aquinas I love you devote expresses in his verses the tenderness of Jesus, because he describes the Lord as a pelican:

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«Oh pious Pelican, Lord Jesus, / Purify me, unclean, with Your blood / Of which a single drop can save / The whole world from all sin ».

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Jesus is the pelican who gives his blood for us his little ones, to keep us alive. So that, land readings today [see Liturgy of the Word, WHO] they introduce us to this mystery of presence, communion and abode with Jesus. First of all, in Deuteronomy, we already find traces of the Lord's living and strong presence:

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«Do not forget the Lord, your god, that brought you out of the land of Egypt, that led you to this great and frightening desert, place of poisonous snakes and scorpions that in the desert fed you with manna unknown to your fathers ».

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Moses' invitation to the Jewish people is not to forget and, so, to remember that the Lord has nourished his people with manna, while he was in situations of great danger. He was always with them, while leading them out of Egyptian slavery. Manna is a prefiguration of Eucharistic food, with which the Lord is still close to us today and gives us nourishment in the difficulties of life. This invitation is then for us: let's not forget about the Eucharistic Jesus, when everything seems dark, when there seems to be no way out. The Lord himself helps, through the Eucharist, to recognize our moral and existential slavery and to get out of it. While St. Paul exposes this mystery of presence and communion in a strong and clear way:

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«There is only one bread, we are, although many, one body: in fact we all participate in the only bread ".

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This is a great teaching. Whenever we make communion, we enter into communion with Jesus; and this, it makes us communion among us. We become one, without losing our personal distinction. The great teaching of this feast is to try to live every mass, any participation in communion as a source of unity, ecclesial but also interpersonal: the Eucharist will help us to overcome the divisions and rifts that may arise. In fact, from this communion there is the experience of God who dwells in us. This is then the center of Jesus' teaching:

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«Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him».

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In the Greek original, that "remains" can also be translated by dwelling, taking just a shade of place. Now that we're going to take communion, God will take up residence in us. This dwelling has a very important meaning: in fact it is welcoming another point of view, that of God who enters the most intimate folds of the soul, of the heart and therefore of life. The remaining of Jesus in us then allows us to open ourselves to a contemplative vision, deep, with the gaze of God on all the people we meet, about all the events that happen to us.

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The poet William Blake wrote: "The ruins of time build dwellings in eternity".

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We ask the Lord to feel the beautiful touch of Jesus in our hearts through the Eucharistic species, so that beyond the time that passes between minutes and seconds and the history that unfolds between years and centuries, we can continue walking until reaching Eternal life and building the eternal home to enjoy the final banquet of Paradise.

Amen

Rome, 14 June 2020

Solemnity of Corpus Domini

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Staff Blog

Father Gabriele

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Visit the pages of our book shop WHO and support our editions by purchasing and distributing our books.

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News from the Dominican Province Roman: visit the official website of the Dominicans, WHO

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«You will know the truth and the truth will set you free» [GV 8,32],
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The angle dell'omiletica of the Fathers of The Island of Patmos

THAT SURFACE MEDIOCRITY AND INDOLENT SLOWNESS THAT PREVENTS US FROM GETTING TO THE WAY, TRUTH AND LIFE

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We need so much he sees men who stand in the breach as defenders of a people now unable to find God, lost as an orphaned child. The current health emergency has unearthed the most hidden human miseries, even those miseries of the Christian people and his ministers both forgetful of the only life-giving relationship with Christ in favor of virtual relationships and alternative solutions not without noble intentions.

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Author
Ivano Liguori, Ofm. Capp.

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The Gospel of St. John: 14, 6

Last Sunday Jesus presents himself to us as the door of the sheep and the good shepherd, as the one who is the sure guide to achieving true life [see previous homily, WHO]. In this Easter season, marked by the annoying Covid-19 pandemic, life can only yearn for truth, without capitulating to the lying fatalism of the world, so that it acquires more and more sensibility and value even in infirmity [Liturgy of the Word of this fifth Easter Sunday, WHO]. This high expectation of earthly existence can only come true in collaboration with grace, reaffirming the radical choice of the Risen Lord: in him the cornerstone every life grows in an orderly and well-organized and connected way to build itself as a holy place inhabited by the Spirit of God [cf. Ef 2,21; 4,16].

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And inside the Church, risen bride, the Holy Spirit never ceases to make that question of the Psalm sound firmly 34 which constitutes one of the cornerstones of every interior renewal and of every sure vocational action:

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"There is someone who wants life and longs for days to taste the good?» [cf. Shall 34, 13].

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Let's ask ourselves really, there is still someone who wants to live fully or you want to settle only on the superficial mediocrity and indolent lukewarmness? Our Christian communities are still able to respond to God's invitation to the prophet:

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«I sought among them a man who built a wall and stood on the breach in front of me, to defend the country so that I wouldn't devastate it, but I haven't found it» [cf. This 22,30].

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We need so much he sees men who stand in the breach as defenders of a people now unable to find God, lost as an orphaned child. The current health emergency has unearthed the most hidden human miseries, even those miseries of the Christian people and his ministers both forgetful of the only life-giving relationship with Christ in favor of virtual relationships and alternative solutions not without noble intentions.

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In our hypocrisy, which is sometimes colored with disbelief and sometimes with bigotry, we forgot that we were created exclusively to get to know, love and enjoy God. The life of man on earth, even the most sinful and distant one, it serves no other purpose than to express this awareness: God loves me and I love him. And the measure of this love is the glorious Cross of the Risen One that never shines like this in this time of tribulation to the world as often unique.

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God is looking for lovers, of men who want to live without discounts, without alibi, without compromises, without interference with the world. God makes himself - through the humanity of his Son - a beggar of love, so that man finds the richness of life in him. In this search for love and new life it is urgent to remove the personal self and graft the ego of Christ:

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«I am the way, the truth and the life. Nobody comes to the Father except through me " [cf. GV 14,6].

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The three predicates that we find in this Gospel verse are introduced by the solemn divine formula of theI am eimi, of the I Am, formula that leaves no possibility of appeal and misunderstanding but seals the essentiality of the disciples' vocational following. Christ is truly the face of the visible and knowable God who is the Way, Truth and Life. And whoever chooses Christ knows he has to go a different way, make an uncomfortable truth your own, take on a life that demands perfection beyond measure.

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The Way that guides existence it is the Word of Christ, it is the new Torah that has brought the ancient Mosaic Law to perfection and fullness [cf. Mt 5,17], his Gospel is now rule and orientation without gloss.

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The Truth that liberates it is no longer given by that subtle and malicious human wisdom, finally there is an embodied wisdom, pretty who reveals himself and communicates himself in the Word of God who became the son of Joseph and Mary, revealing the man to himself in his true face [cf. GV 19,5]. Life reminds us of the profound bond with God because he is the giver of all life through his Spirit, accepting life means unquestionably accepting God's signature on the created world. In the Gospel of John, Christ is the custodian of the Father's life, it is he who gives it to whoever he wants [cf. GV 5,21; 11,25-26].

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Faith in the Risen One Via, Truth and Life allows us to reach God, this is the goal of every profession of faith so much so that the evangelist John tends to underline it very well in the end of his Gospel:

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«Many other signs made Jesus in the presence of his disciples, but they were not written in this book. These were written, because you believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God and why, believing, have life in its name» [cf. GV 20,30-31].

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Faith in him leads us to the breach, has us atHere I am, it makes it possible for us to embrace the Father in a time when hugs are denied us. Let's not waste time, we want life, we always want it, let's wish it now!

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Laconi, 10 May 2020

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

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Visit the pages of our book shop WHO. Following the coronavirus emergency, the Amazon company that prints and distributes our books had to prioritize the distribution of basic necessities. Printing and distribution of books will then resume after 4 May.

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