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THE HEAD AND FEET OF CHRIST: SAN CROMAZIO OF AQUILEIA AGAINST CONTEMPORARY POLARIZATIONS

Today the Church seems split between two paroxysmal factions, incapable of communicating except by mutual anathema: the priests of pure worldly praxis on the one hand and the Gnostics of sacral abstraction on the other.

— Theologica —

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

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Polarizations have animated the geopolitical clash of the last century. Capitalism on the one hand, socialism on the other.

Portrait of the bishop in the Throne Room in the Patriarchal Palace of Udine

The Berlin Wall fell, we thought everything was solved. But no. In each of us there is a form of dualistic catharism that pushes us to feel like the good and pure and to turn ourselves against another, which would be evil and demonic. Not even social networks help with this. To try to delve deeper into this reflection, we draw on the sources of an ancient father of the Church: Saint Chromatius.

I. Aquileia at the end of the Empire: the profile of an integral shepherd

Ad Aquileia, hinge between East and West in late ancient Roman times, the mild but granitic figure of Saint Chromatius shone between the 4th and 5th centuries. Born around 335-340, grew up in the womb of that ascetic and clerical community that Girolamo praised as a "choir of the blessed", he was consecrated bishop by Saint Ambrose in 388 and led his Church until his death, In the 407 or in the first months of 408. Friend of Rufinus of Aquileia and of Girolamo himself, when the Origenist controversy divided them it was he who tried to mend their rift: a man capable of safeguarding communion without ever trading dogmatic truth. The manuscript rediscoveries of the twentieth century have given us his liturgical sermons, full of clear biblical exegesis, where mysticism merges with the most rigorous dogmatics.

(II). The scent of Bethany and the unity of the Christian mystery

Among the most wonderful pages of Chromatian homiletics, the exegetical investigation dedicated to the episode of the anointing of Bethany stands out, narrated in the chapter 12 the Gospel according to John (cf.. GV 12,1-8), in profound connection with what happens in the previous chapter (cf.. GV 11,33-35). It's the scene where Maria, sister of the resurrected Lazarus, takes a pound of genuine spikenard, very precious, he sprinkles Jesus' feet with it and dries them with his own hair, while the entire house is saturated with the aroma of that balm. Chromazio reads this gesture neither with sentimentality nor with the utilitarian calculation of Judas, that he wanted to sell that perfume for three hundred denarii (cf.. GV 12,4-6), but according to the allegorical and typological method dear to the patristic tradition, capturing a very dense synthesis of Christian dogma. He recalls first of all how it was Mary herself who mourned the death of her brother before Jesus, causing the Redeemer to cry. From this detail comes a dazzling Christological intuition:

«In the tears of the Lord the mystery of the Incarnation is shown; in the resurrection of Lazarus the power of his Divinity is proclaimed".

Mary tears tears from Christ of authentic human emotion and, next, offers the most sublime testimony of faith by prostrating himself at his feet to anoint them. For Cromazio, Mary is a transparent figure of the Church (figure of the Church): she prefigures the immaculate Bride who gives the Word the fullness of devotion and adoration. The exegesis here is done with millimetric precision. Recalling a symbolism also loved by Saint Jerome, Cromazio observes that the pound Romana is made up of exactly twelve ounces. The church, so, brings to Christ the full weight of the precious ointment because it has received the right doctrine from twelve Apostles. There is no perfume pleasing to God that does not come from the apostolic deposit. Moreover, that ointment is made up of the harmonious composition of multiple chosen aromas: so is the apostolic doctrine, which, despite being one and indivisible in the substance of faith, shines in the variety of spiritual graces, of the charisms and virtues that make the sweetness of Christ perceivable in the world.

The Redeemer, remembers the bishop of Aquileia, when he deigned to annihilate himself by descending from the bosom of the Father to assume a mortal body, went almost unnoticed in the eyes of the world; but yet, precisely in that kenosis, the scent of his Name - the Christ, that is, the "Anointed One" par excellence - filled the earthly orb. And the Church could never have known or reached the Redeemer except through the objective medium of this apostolic doctrine.

III. The head and the feet: the double saving confession

The theological fulcrum of the Chromatian homily lies in the spiritual anatomy of the body of the Lord: because the woman anoints the feet of Jesus and not the chief, as Matthew and Mark report (cf.. Mt 26,7; MC 14,3)? For Cromazio, the act contains a fundamental pedagogical and salvific order. The feet signify the abasement of the Incarnation: the eternal Word that touches the earth, who walks in our dust, who "in recent times deigned to be born of a Virgin". The head indicates the everlasting glory of his divinity: the eternal generation from the Father before all ages, light from light, True God from true God.

The church, explains Cromazio, it necessarily begins with anointing the feet. If man does not recognize and adore the humanity of the Savior - the assumed flesh, the wounds, the painful way, the historical concreteness of the Redemption - will never be able to rise to the contemplation of the divinity that resides in the head:

«We cannot save ourselves if we do not hold together these two truths about the dual nature of Christ, which are signified by the head and the feet. We have feet because we believe in the Incarnation of the Virgin; we have the head because we confess his Divinity which proceeds from the Father".

Salvation is not an abstract concept nor a social philanthropy: it is not given without the integral profession of the hypostatic union. To omit the feet is to fall into a disembodied spiritualism; to omit the head is to degrade the Lord to a mere teacher of human morality.

Cromazio finally focuses on the hair with which the woman cleanses the feet of the Lord. Taking up the Song of Songs (cf.. Ct 4,1), the holy bishop sees there the holy people of the Church and its virtues: pure prayer and the ardor of charity. The ointment of apostolic doctrine, poured at the feet of the Lord, it is thus translated into concrete works of piety and corporal and spiritual mercy. When the Christian helps the poor, cure the sufferer, defends the oppressed and spends himself for his brothers, he is pouring nard on the wounded feet of Christ and wiping them with his own life.

IV. The lesson of Chromatius in today's Babel: the antidote to extreme polarizations

If the pages of Saint Chromatius resonate today with a disarming freshness, it is because they strike at the heart of the ecclesiological and doctrinal tragedy of our time. On the columns of The Island of Patmos we have repeatedly denounced how the drama of the contemporary Church lies in the loss of Catholic harmony (the and-and) in favor of a partisan dialectic, ideological and destructive (l'aut-aut).

Observing the fragmentation ecclesial today, it emerges with clear evidence that we are witnessing the exhumation, and conscience of modernity, of ancient Christological heresies: the Arianism that Chromatius fought in his time and the Monophysitism that exploded a few decades after his death. Today the Church seems split between two paroxysmal factions, incapable of communicating except by mutual anathema: the priests of pure worldly praxis on the one hand and the Gnostics of sacral abstraction on the other.

V. The «horizontalist» and neo-Pelagian drift: the idolatry of feet without heads

On the one hand we encounter secularized progressivism, which transforms the Church into a gigantic non-governmental organization dedicated to sociological commentary or bureaucratic welfarism, deluding themselves into building the Kingdom with human strength alone: a returning Pelagianism. This current, imbued with modernism and sociologism, deals almost obsessively with the "feet", understood, however, not as the Incarnation of the Word that redeems the flesh from sin, but as a pure worldly immanence.

Christ is reduced to a noble social agitator, to a prophet of universal inclusion, to a Palestinian Socrates whose resurrection becomes a symbolic myth and whose divinity almost constitutes an obstacle to dialogue with the world. From this perspective, the ointment of apostolic doctrine is undersold or considered a divisive frill: only immediate action counts, the agreement with him Zeitgeist, adaptation to secular parameters. But if we forget the head - that is, the consubstantial divinity of Christ, of its absolute primacy, of uncreated grace and the eschatological purpose of man - the works of mercy lose their divine fragrance and decay into a sterile secularist philanthropy. Without the head generated by the Father, the feet do not walk towards eternal Life: they are groping in the mud of relativism.

WE. The «hyper-traditionalist» and gnostic drift: the fetishism of the head without the feet

At the other extreme, an equally poisonous temptation proliferates, though often cloaked in uncorrupted devotion: intellectualistic or formalist hyper-traditionalism. It is the faction of those who, like the ancient Gnostics, they claim to anoint exclusively the "boss", longing for a disembodied Church, squeeze, reduced to a museum of mummified dogmatic formulas, detached from any lively concern for the suffering members of Christ.

In among them the apostolic doctrine is no longer the aromatic ointment that heals the wounds of the soul and pushes towards mission, but rather a polemical weapon to measure the unworthiness of others from a pedestal of pharisaic untouchability. They fall into a practical monophysitism: Christ is so and exclusively "divine", distant and hieratic, that his Incarnation struggles to get his hands dirty with the misery of human history. Forgetting the "feet", they forget pastoral care, pedagogical patience, closeness to sinners, the tears shared with those who suffer mourning and the precariousness of existence. They overlook the fact that the truth, if it does not translate into the work of mercy and living charity, it is not Catholic orthodoxy, but Luciferian pride.

Conclusion: return to the scent of apostolic doctrine

Saint Chromatius warns us from the depths of the centuries: there is no redemption without full confession, simultaneous and indivisible nature of the two natures in the one Person of the incarnate Word. We cannot amputate Christ to satisfy the ideological fashions of the moment. This is the only cure for that dualistic catharism that lurks in each of us: it cannot be won by choosing one half of Christ against the other, but returning to confess it whole.

The authentic Church he does not choose between the mystical and the pastoral, between dogma and charity, between the teacher's desk and the hospital ward. Mary of Bethany performs the perfect act because she begins where the Church must begin: young in feet of the Savior with the ointment of apostolic faith and dries them with living virtue of their hair, opening the way up to the cape. Charity draws its lifeblood and its orientation from correct doctrine; the doctrine finds its fruitfulness and its glorification in the lived mystery of charity towards the members of Christ.

Against the delusions of progressivism which degrade Christianity to political moralism and against the shallows of exasperated traditionalisms which freeze faith in a gnosis devoid of the bowels of mercy, the voice of the bishop of Aquileia rises like a beacon of supernatural balance. It is time for the Church to regain awareness of its own spousal identity: to cling to the wounded feet of the Lord's humanity with the piety of works, without ever taking our adoring gaze away from the glorious Head who reigns in the heavens, from which all grace descends and towards which the entire history of salvation converges.

Convent of Santa Maria Novella in Florence, 19 October 2026

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THE HEAD AND THE FEET OF CHRIST: SAINT CHROMATIUS OF AQUILEIA AGAINST THE POLARIZATIONS OF OUR TIME

Today the Church seems split between two paroxysmal factions, unable to communicate except through mutual anathemas: the priests of pure worldly praxis on one side and the gnostics of sacral abstraction on the other.

— Theologica —

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

.

Polarizations drove the geopolitical clash of the last century. Capitalism on one side, socialism on the other. When the Berlin Wall fell, we thought everything had been settled. Not so. In each of us there is a form of dualistic Catharism that drives us to feel we are the good and the pure and to set ourselves against someone else, whom we cast as the wicked and the demonic one. Nor do social networks help in this. To enter more deeply into this reflection, let us draw on the sources of an ancient Father of the Church: Saint Chromatius.

I. Aquileia at the Twilight of the Empire: The Profile of an Upright Shepherd

In Aquileia, the hinge between East and West in late-antique Roman civilization, there shone forth between the fourth and fifth centuries the gentle yet granitic figure of Saint Chromatius. Born around 335-340, raised in the bosom of that ascetic and clerical community which Jerome praised as a «choir of the blessed», he was consecrated bishop by Saint Ambrose in 388 and led his Church until his death, in 407 or the first months of 408. A friend of Rufinus of Aquileia and of Jerome himself, when the Origenist controversy divided them it was he who sought to mend their rupture: a man capable of safeguarding communion without ever bartering away dogmatic truth. The manuscript rediscoveries of the twentieth century have restored to us his liturgical sermons, rich in a lucid biblical exegesis, in which mysticism merges with the most rigorous dogmatics.

(II). The Fragrance of Bethany and the Unity of the Christian Mystery

Among the most admirable pages of Chromatius’s homiletics stands the exegetical inquiry devoted to the episode of the anointing at Bethany, narrated in chapter 12 of the Gospel according to John (cf. Jn 12:1-8), in profound connection with what takes place in the preceding chapter (cf. Jn 11:33-35). It is the scene in which Mary, sister of the risen Lazarus, takes a pound of genuine nard, very costly, pours it over the feet of Jesus and dries them with her hair, while the whole house is filled with the fragrance of that balm. Chromatius reads this gesture neither with sentimentality nor with the utilitarian calculation of Judas, who wanted that perfume sold for three hundred denarii (cf. Jn 12:4-6), but according to the allegorical and typological method dear to the patristic tradition, discerning in it an extraordinarily dense synthesis of Christian dogma. He recalls first of all that it was this same Mary who brought before Jesus her grief over her brother’s death, moving the Redeemer to tears. From this detail springs a dazzling Christological insight:

«In the tears of the Lord the mystery of the Incarnation is shown; in the raising of Lazarus the power of his Divinity is proclaimed».

Mary draws from Christ tears of genuine human emotion and, immediately afterwards, offers the most sublime testimony of faith by prostrating herself at his feet to anoint them. For Chromatius, Mary is a transparent figure of the Church (figure of the Church): she prefigures the immaculate Bride who renders to the Word the fullness of devotion and adoration.

Here the exegesis attains pinpoint precision. Recalling a symbolism also dear to Saint Jerome, Chromatius observes that the Roman pound is made up of exactly twelve ounces. The Church, therefore, brings to Christ the whole weight of the precious ointment because she has received right doctrine from the twelve Apostles. There is no fragrance pleasing to God that does not come from the apostolic deposit. Moreover, that ointment is composed of a harmonious blend of many choice spices: so it is with apostolic doctrine, which, while being one and indivisible in the substance of the faith, shines forth in the variety of spiritual graces, charisms and virtues that make the sweetness of Christ perceptible in the world.

The Redeemer, the bishop of Aquileia reminds us, when he deigned to empty himself by descending from the bosom of the Father to take on a mortal body, passed almost unnoticed in the eyes of the world; and yet, precisely in that kenosis, the fragrance of his Name — the Christ, that is, the «Anointed One» par excellence — filled the whole earth. And the Church could never have known or reached the Redeemer except through the objective channel of this apostolic doctrine.

III. The Head and the Feet: The Twofold Saving Confession

The theological core of Chromatius’s homily lies in the spiritual anatomy of the Lord’s body: why does the woman anoint the feet of Jesus and not his head, as Matthew and Mark relate instead (cf. Mt 26:7; Mk 14:3)? For Chromatius, the act contains a fundamental pedagogical and salvific order. The feet signify the abasement of the Incarnation: the eternal Word who touches the earth, who walks in our dust, who «in the last times deigned to be born of a Virgin». The head indicates the imperishable glory of his divinity: the eternal generation from the Father before all ages, Light from Light, true God from true God.

The Church, Chromatius explains, necessarily begins by anointing the feet. If man does not recognize and adore the humanity of the Savior — the flesh assumed, the wounds, the sorrowful way, the historical concreteness of the Redemption — he will never be able to rise to the contemplation of the divinity that dwells in the head:

«We cannot be saved unless we hold together these two truths about the twofold nature of Christ, which are signified by the head and the feet. We have the feet because we believe that he was incarnate of the Virgin; we have the head because we confess his Divinity which proceeds from the Father».

Salvation is neither an abstract concept nor a social philanthropy: it is not attained without the integral profession of the hypostatic union. To omit the feet means plunging into a disembodied spiritualism; to omit the head means degrading the Lord to a mere teacher of human morality.

Finally, Chromatius dwells on the hair with which the woman wipes the Lord’s feet. Taking up the Song of Songs (cf. Sg 4:1), the holy bishop sees in that hair the holy people of the Church and its virtues: pure prayer and the ardor of charity. The ointment of apostolic doctrine, poured out upon the Lord’s feet, is thus translated into concrete works of piety and of corporal and spiritual mercy. When the Christian helps the poor, tends the suffering, defends the oppressed and spends himself for his brethren, he is pouring nard upon the wounded feet of Christ and drying them with his own life.

IV. Chromatius’s Lesson for Today’s Babel: The Antidote to Extreme Polarizations

If the pages of Saint Chromatius resound today with disarming freshness, it is because they strike at the heart of the ecclesiological and doctrinal tragedy of our time. In the columns of The Island of Patmos we have repeatedly denounced how the drama of the contemporary Church lies in the loss of Catholic harmony (the and-and) in favor of a factional, ideological and destructive dialectic (the aut-aut).

Looking at today’s ecclesial fragmentation, one sees with crystal clarity that we are witnessing the exhumation, in modern garb, of the ancient Christological heresies: the Arianism that Chromatius fought in his own time and the Monophysitism that erupted a few decades after his death. Today the Church seems split between two paroxysmal factions, unable to communicate except through mutual anathemas: the priests of pure worldly praxis on one side and the gnostics of sacral abstraction on the other.

V. The «Horizontalist» and Neo-Pelagian Drift: The Idolatry of the Feet without the Head

On one side we find secularized progressivism, which turns the Church into a gigantic non-governmental organization devoted to sociological commentary or bureaucratic welfarism, deluding itself that it can build the Kingdom by human strength alone: a resurgent Pelagianism. This current, steeped in modernism and sociologism, concerns itself almost obsessively with the «feet», understood, however, not as the Incarnation of the Word who redeems the flesh from sin, but as a pure worldly immanence.

Christ is reduced to a noble social agitator, a prophet of universal inclusion, a Palestinian Socrates whose resurrection becomes a symbolic myth and whose divinity is almost an obstacle to dialogue with the world. In this perspective the ointment of apostolic doctrine is sold off or regarded as a divisive frill: all that counts is immediate action, agreement with the Zeitgeist, conformity to secular standards. But if we forget the head — that is, the consubstantial divinity of Christ, his absolute primacy, uncreated grace and the eschatological end of man — the works of mercy lose their divine fragrance and decay into a sterile secularist philanthropy. Without the head begotten of the Father, the feet do not walk toward eternal Life: they grope in the mud of relativism.

WE. The «Hyper-Traditionalist» and Gnostic Drift: The Fetishism of the Head without the Feet

At the opposite extreme there proliferates a temptation no less poisonous, though often cloaked in incorruptible devotion: intellectualist or formalist hyper-traditionalism. It is the faction of those who, like the ancient gnostics, presume to anoint only the «head», dreaming of a disembodied, purist Church, reduced to a museum of mummified dogmatic formulas, cut off from any living solicitude for the suffering members of Christ.

In them apostolic doctrine is no longer the aromatic ointment that heals the wounds of the soul and impels toward mission, but a polemical weapon for measuring the unworthiness of others from a pedestal of Pharisaic untouchability. They fall into a practical Monophysitism: Christ is so utterly and exclusively «divine», distant and hieratic, that his Incarnation struggles to get its hands dirty with the misery of human history. Forgetting the «feet», they forget pastoral care, pedagogical patience, closeness to sinners, the tears shared with those who suffer grief and the precariousness of existence. They overlook the fact that truth, if it is not translated into the work of mercy and living charity, is not Catholic orthodoxy, but Luciferian pride.

Conclusion: Returning to the Fragrance of Apostolic Doctrine

Saint Chromatius admonishes us from the depths of the centuries: there is no redemption without the full, simultaneous and indivisible confession of the two natures in the one Person of the incarnate Word. We cannot amputate Christ to pander to the ideological fashions of the moment. This is the only cure for that dualistic Catharism that lurks in each of us: it is not overcome by choosing one half of Christ against the other, but by returning to confess him whole.

The authentic Church does not choose between mysticism and pastoral care, between dogma and charity, between the professorial chair and the hospital ward. Mary of Bethany performs the perfect act because she begins where the Church must begin: she anoints the feet of the Savior with the ointment of apostolic faith and dries them with the living virtues of her hair, opening the way that rises up to the head. Charity draws its vital sap and its orientation from right doctrine; doctrine finds its fruitfulness and its glorification in the lived mystery of charity toward the members of Christ.

Against the ravings of progressivisms that degrade Christianity to political moralism and against the shoals of exasperated traditionalisms that freeze the faith into a gnosis devoid of any heart of mercy, the voice of the bishop of Aquileia rises like a beacon of supernatural balance. It is time for the Church to rediscover the awareness of her own spousal identity: to cling to the wounded feet of the Lord’s humanity with the piety of works, without ever turning her adoring gaze away from the glorious Head who reigns in heaven, from whom every grace descends and toward whom the whole history of salvation converges.

Santa Maria Novella, Florence, 19 October 2026

.

THE HEAD AND FEET OF CHRIST: SAINT CHROMATIUS OF AQUILEA AGAINST THE POLARIZATIONS OF OUR TIME

Today the Church seems divided between two paroxysmal factions, incapable of communicating except through reciprocal anathemas: the priests of pure worldly praxis on the one hand and the Gnostics of sacral abstraction on the other.

— Theologica —

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

.

Polarizations marked the geopolitical confrontation from the last century. Capitalism on the one hand, socialism on the other. Berlin Wall fallen, we thought everything was resolved. And yet, no. In each of us there is a form of dualistic Catharism that pushes us to feel good and pure and to put ourselves against another., who would be the evil and the demonic. Social media doesn't help with this either.. To try to delve deeper into this reflection, let us turn to the sources of an ancient Father of the Church: in Chromacio.

I. Aquilea at the twilight of the Empire: the profile of an upright pastor

In Aquileia, hinge between East and West in late ancient Roman times, between the 4th and 5th centuries the peaceful but granite figure of Saint Chromatius shone. Born towards 335-340, raised within that ascetic and clerical community that Jerome praised as a "choir of the blessed.", He was consecrated bishop by Saint Ambrose in the 388 and guided his Church until his death, in it 407 or in the first months of 408. Friend of Rufinus of Aquilea and Jerome himself, When the origin controversy divided them, it was he who tried to mend their rupture.: a man capable of guarding communion without ever undermining dogmatic truth. The rediscovery of 20th century manuscripts has given us back his liturgical sermons., rich in clear biblical exegesis, where mysticism merges with the most rigorous dogmatics.

(II). The perfume of Bethany and the unity of the Christian mystery

Among the most admirable pages of Chromatic homiletics, the exegetical investigation dedicated to the episode of the anointing of Bethany stands out., narrated in the chapter 12 from the Gospel according to Saint John (cf. Jn 12,1-8), in deep connection with what happens in the previous chapter (cf. Jn 11,33-35). It is the scene in which María, sister of resurrected Lazarus, take a pound of real tuberose, very expensive, She anoints Jesus' feet with it and wipes them with her hair., while the whole house is filled with the aroma of that balm. Chromatius reads this gesture neither with sentimentalism nor with the utilitarian calculation of Judas., who would have wanted to sell that perfume for three hundred denarii (cf. Jn 12,4-6), but according to the allegorical and typological method typical of the patristic tradition, discovering in it a very dense synthesis of Christian dogma. Remember above all that it was Mary herself who mourned the death of her brother before Jesus., provoking the cry of the Redeemer. From this detail springs a brilliant Christological intuition.:

«In the tears of the Lord the mystery of the Incarnation is shown; “In the resurrection of Lazarus the power of his Divinity is proclaimed.”.

Mary brings Christ to tears of genuine shock human and, immediately after, offers the most sublime testimony of faith by prostrating himself at his feet to anoint them. Para Cromacio, Mary is a transparent figure of the Church (figure of the Church): prefigures the immaculate Bride who pays to the Word the fullness of devotion and adoration.

The exegesis here reaches a millimetric precision. Evoking a symbolism also appreciated by Saint Jerome, Chromatius observes that the libra Romana is made up of exactly twelve ounces. The Church, therefore, offers to Christ the entire weight of the precious ointment because he has received the right doctrine of the twelve Apostles. There is no perfume pleasing to God that does not come from the apostolic deposit. Besides, That ointment is composed of the harmonious combination of multiple chosen aromas: this is the apostolic doctrine, which, even though it is one and indivisible in the substance of faith, shines in the variety of spiritual graces, of the charismas and virtues that make the gentleness of Christ perceptible in the world.

The Redeemer, remembers the bishop of Aquileia, when he deigned to annihilate himself by descending from the bosom of the Father to assume a mortal body, went almost unnoticed in the eyes of the world; and yet, precisely in that kenosis, the perfume of his Name—the Christ, that is to say, the “Anointed One” par excellence—filled the entire world. And the Church would never have been able to know or reach the Redeemer if not through the objective channel of this apostolic doctrine..

III. head and feet: the saving double confession

The theological core of the Chromatic homily lies in the spiritual anatomy of the body of the Lord: why does the woman anoint the pies of Jesus and not head, as Matthew and Mark refer instead (cf. Mt 26,7; MC 14,3)? Para Cromacio, The gesture contains a fundamental pedagogical and salvific order. The feet signify the abasement of the Incarnation: the eternal Word that touches the earth, that walks in our dust, that "in recent times he deigned to be born of a Virgin". The head indicates the imperishable glory of his divinity: the eternal generation of the Father before all ages, Light of Light, true god of true god.

The Church, explains Cromacio, necessarily begins by anointing the feet. If man does not recognize and worship the humanity of the Savior—the assumed flesh, the sores, the painful way, the historical concretion of the Redemption—can never rise to the contemplation of the divinity that resides in the head:

«We cannot be saved if we do not hold together these two truths about the double nature of Christ, which are signified by the head and the feet. We have feet because we believe that they were incarnated from the Virgin; "We have the head because we confess his Divinity that comes from the Father.".

Salvation is not an abstract concept nor a social philanthropy: does not occur without the complete profession of the hypostatic union. Omitting the feet means rushing into disembodied spiritualism.; omitting the head means degrading the Lord to a mere teacher of human morality.

Chromatius stops last in the hair with which the woman wipes the feet of the Lord. Returning to the Song of songs (cf. Cant 4,1), the holy bishop sees in them the holy people of the Church and its virtues: pure prayer and the ardor of charity. The ointment of apostolic doctrine, poured out on the feet of the Lord, It is thus translated into concrete works of piety and corporal and spiritual mercy.. When the Christian helps the poor, care for those who suffer, He defends the oppressed and gives himself up for his brothers, He is pouring nard on the sore feet of Christ and wiping them with his own life..

IV. Chromatius's lesson for today's Babel: the antidote to extreme polarizations

If the pages of Saint Chromatius resonate today with a disarming freshness, It is because they strike at the heart of the ecclesiological and doctrinal tragedy of our time. In the columns of The Island of Patmos We have repeatedly denounced that the drama of the contemporary Church lies in the loss of Catholic harmony (he and-and) in favor of a factious dialectic, ideological and destructive (he aut-aut).

Observing the current ecclesial fragmentation, It is crystal clear that we are witnessing the exhumation, with modern clothes, of the ancient Christological heresies: the Arianism that Chromatius fought in his time and the Monophysitism that broke out a few decades after his death. Today the Church seems divided between two paroxysmal factions, incapable of communicating except through reciprocal anathemas: the priests of pure worldly praxis on the one hand and the Gnostics of sacral abstraction on the other.

V. The "horizontalist" and neo-Pelagian drift: the idolatry of the feet without the head

On the one hand we find secularized progressivism, that transforms the Church into a gigantic non-governmental organization dedicated to sociological commentary or bureaucratic welfare, with the illusion of building the Kingdom with human forces alone: a revived Pelagianism. This current, steeped in modernism and sociologism, takes almost obsessive care of the "feet", understood, however, not like the Incarnation of the Word that redeems the flesh from sin, but as a pure worldly immanence.

Christ is reduced to a noble social agitator, to a prophet of universal inclusion, to a Palestinian Socrates whose resurrection becomes a symbolic myth and whose divinity constitutes almost a hindrance to dialogue with the world. In this perspective, the ointment of apostolic doctrine is undersold or considered a divisive adornment: only immediate action counts, harmony with Zeitgeist, adaptation to secular parameters. But if we forget about the head—i.e., of the consubstantial divinity of Christ, of its absolute primacy, of uncreated grace and the eschatological end of man—, works of mercy lose their divine fragrance and degenerate into sterile secular philanthropy. Without the head begotten by the Father, the feet do not walk towards eternal Life: they grope in the mud of relativism.

WE. The "hypertraditionalist" and Gnostic drift: fetishism of the head without feet

At the opposite extreme, an equally poisonous temptation proliferates., although often clothed in uncorrupted devotion: intellectualist or formalist hypertraditionalism. It is the faction of those who, like the ancient gnostics, They intend to anoint exclusively the "head", dreaming of a disembodied Church, squeeze, reduced to a museum of mummified dogmatic formulas, detached from all lively concern for the suffering members of Christ.

In them the apostolic doctrine It is no longer the aromatic ointment that heals the wounds of the soul and drives the mission, but a polemical weapon to measure the indignity of others from a pedestal of self-righteous untouchability. They fall into a practical monophysitism: Christ is so totally and exclusively "divine", distant and hieratic, that his Incarnation refuses to stain his hands with the misery of human history. Forgetting the "feet", they forget the pastoral, pedagogical patience, closeness to sinners, the tears shared with those who suffer grief and the precariousness of existence. They ignore the truth, if it does not translate into the work of mercy and living charity, It is not Catholic orthodoxy, but luciferian pride.

Conclusion: return to the perfume of apostolic doctrine

Saint Chromatius admonishes us from the depths of the centuries: there is no redemption without full confession, simultaneous and indivisible of the two natures in the one Person of the incarnate Word. We cannot amputate Christ to support the ideological fashions of the moment. This is the only cure for that dualistic catharism that resides in each of us.: You don't win by choosing one half of Christ against the other., but confessing it in its entirety.

The authentic Church does not choose between mysticism and pastoral, between dogma and charity, between the chair and the hospital room. Mary of Bethany performs the perfect act because she begins where the Church should begin.: unheard of pies of the Savior with the ointment of apostolic faith and wipes them with living virtues of their hair, opening the path that goes up to the head. Charity draws its vital sap and its orientation from right doctrine; The doctrine finds its fruitfulness and its glorification in the lived mystery of charity towards the members of Christ..

Against the delusions of progressivism that degrade Christianity to political moralism and against the shoals of exasperated traditionalisms that freeze faith in a gnosis lacking the bowels of mercy, The voice of the Bishop of Aquileia rises like a beacon of supernatural balance. It is time for the Church to regain awareness of its own spousal identity: embrace the wounded feet of the Lord's humanity with the piety of works, without ever taking away the adoring gaze of the glorious Head who reigns in the heavens, from which all grace descends and towards which all salvation history converges.

Santa Maria Novella, Florence, 19 October 2026

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MAXIMUS THE CONFESSOR: UNITED WITH THE FATHER'S WILL DESPITE THE ALMOST “STATE OF EMERGENCY” ECCLESIAL

In this summer time we can dedicate a few more moments to reflection and prayer, without sending God on holiday too, the Mass and the Church - perhaps in front of a sea or mountain panorama, contemplating the beauty of the truth of Jesus in creation.

— Theologica —

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

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PDF print format article – article print format – article in printed format

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Who today strives to authentically live the Catholic faith risks being ridiculed, sometimes isolated - often due to choices of ecclesiastical institutions and men of the Church, in good or bad faith. We must fear it? I do not believe: it might make us angry, give us frustration, but it is precisely here that the experience of San Massimo can help us.

In an almost “state of emergency” which never authorizes, minimizes or glorifies the birth of schisms or divisions, this holy monk teaches us extraordinary things about Jesus, with theology and with life. St. Maximus the Confessor (580–662 d.C.) it stands at the height of Eastern patristic speculation, an essential point of reference for Christology and Christian spiritual life. Nato, according to the historiographical tradition, in Constantinople — or in Palestine, according to an alternative Syriac biography —, he received an excellent humanistic and philosophical education, which led him to hold the office of first secretary of the emperor Heraclius. Then driven by the desire for a contemplative life, he abandoned palace honors to retire to the monastery of Chrysopolis, becoming its abbot.

The existence of Massimo was marked by the great political upheavals of the 7th century and, above all, from heated Christological controversies. To escape the invasions that threatened the Empire, he first took refuge in Crete, then in Byzantine Africa. In this context, monoenergism and monothelitism were born, promoted by the patriarch Sergius of Constantinople and supported by the Byzantine emperors to mend the rift with the Monophysites, according to which in Christ there would be a single energy and a single will. To understand what's at stake: monophysitism (the greek “one nature”) it is the doctrine, condemned at the Council of Chalcedon in 451, according to which in Christ, after the Incarnation, only one nature would exist - the divine one, that would have absorbed the human one -, against the Chalcedonian belief in two natures, divine and human, united without confusion in a single person. Il monoenergismo, promoted in the 7th century precisely to bring the Monophysites closer to the imperial Church, he was looking for a compromise: two natures yes, but a single energy, a single operating principle, in Christ. Monothelitism was its coherent development: if there is only one energy, it was stated, the will must also be, because will and action are closely linked.

Massimo understood that denying the human will of Christ meant dissolving his real and autonomous humanity. Referring to the principle of Gregory Nazianzen - "what is not assumed is not cared for" - he defended the integrity of the human nature assumed by the Word. In 645 he disputed in Carthage with the deposed patriarch Pyrrhus, masterfully refuting the Monothelite theses; he then went to Rome, where he was the inspirer and reference theologian of the Lateran Council of 649, wanted by Pope Martin I, who condemned Monothelitism.

The imperial reaction was ruthless: In the 653 Pope Martin I and Maximus were arrested and taken to Constantinople. Despite years of imprisonment, interrogations and political pressure, the monk remained unwavering in his defense of Chalcedonian orthodoxy. In 662, at the end of the last process, to prevent him from continuing to preach or write, the Monothelites inflicted the mutilation of his tongue and right hand; exhausted by torture, he was deported to the fortress of Schemaria in Lazica, on the Black Sea, where he died 13 August of the same year, historically deserving the title of “Confessor”¹.

The commentary on the Gethsemane episode

The focal point of the Christological reflection of Saint Maximus is concentrated in the exegesis of the dramatic prayer of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane: «Dad, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; but not what I want, but what you want» (Mt 26,39; LC 22,42). For monothelites, the request to remove the cup indicated a single divine will moved with a view to the economy, or it would have introduced an unacceptable conflict between the will of the Son and that of the Father.

In the booklets dedicated to the agony of Jesus (especially him Brochures 6, 7, 15, 16 e 24), Maximus demonstrates that the request to be freed from death comes from the natural will of the flesh assumed by Christ: temerla, feel anguish, shunning it are dimensions of human nature, which cannot help but retreat from physical dissolution. Taking on real flesh, rational and intelligent, the Word appropriated all the natural properties of humanity, including pain and fear, without this introducing any opposition between human will and divine will. The mistake of Massimo's opponents was to confuse the natural distinction with themoral opposition: rebellion does not come from nature, but from sin, which alters the way he acts - τρόπος (in the tropics) — nothing that is natural can be in conflict with the Creator².

Like this, in Gethsemane, the human will of Christ first expresses the natural weakness of the flesh in the face of death, but immediately afterwards he submits and adapts perfectly to his own divine will and that of the Father: «Not mine, but your will be done». There is no opposition, but "supreme consensus" and "perfect union": the human will of Jesus, free and immune from sin, it totally is “deified” from the hypostatic union with the Word. Thus Christ's obedience in Gethsemane redeems Adam's disobedience, taking care of the human will and bringing it back to full communion with God³.

The anthropology of San Massimo: Nature, Person and Freedom

The anthropology of San Massimo presents man as a cosmic synthesis and a “mediator” called to recapitulate within himself and unite the entire creation with God. According to Bernardo De Angelis, Maximian anthropological speculation rests on the fundamental methodological distinction between nature or substance — οὐσία (ousia) — e persona o ipostasi — presence (Hypostasis)⁴.

While the nature expresses what is common and universal to a species (the “what is it”), l’hypostasi O persona indicates the concrete existent, singular and unrepeatable (the “who is it”). Alla natura appartiene il principio essentia — reason of nature (logos physeos) — which includes all the powers and faculties constitutive of the human being, including reason, intelligence e volontà naturale — natural will (thelema physikon): an innate power, the faculty of desiring what is in conformity with rational nature and of tending towards the good.

Unlike the natural will, freedom of choice or gnomic will — γνώμη (gnome), will of opinion (thelema gnomicon) — is specific to the person and the hypostasis. The gnome expressi il modo — way of being (tropos hyparxeos) — in which the individual person exercises his or her natural faculty of will. In fallen man, gnomic will is a hesitant and uncertain process, marked by deliberation in the face of opposing alternatives, from doubt, from ignorance and the tragic possibility of choosing evil, deviating to selfishness — φιλαυτία (philautia).

Maximian anthropology culminates in the doctrine of deification — θέωσις (theosis). Man was created to become “God by grace”, participating in divine life. This process does not cancel human nature, but leads it to its perfect fulfillment⁵. In deification, the oscillations of the gnomic will are overcome: the deified person, mossa dall'amore — love (agape) — adheres stably and freely to the Supreme Good, without any more hesitations or internal divisions.

In this picture we understand the excellence of the humanity of Jesus Christ: in Him there is a real and complete natural human will, but there is no hesitant or imperfect gnomic will. The hypostasis of Christ being the same as that of the divine Word, his human will, moved and guided by divinity in a perfect and sinless way, represents the model and the first fruits of true freedom and the deification of all humanity.

Let's listen directly to San Massimo, writing to the hegumen prior of the Monastery of San Giorgio di Cizio:

To the holy Egumeno priest Giorio […] full of pity, I propose an answer according to my strength, saying that humanity in the Savior by nature is not something different from ours; but it is the same and entirely similar in essence, for He has taken from us in an unspeakable way the virginal and uncontaminated blood of the all-pure Mother of God, to whom, like a seed, the Logos united and became flesh without ceasing to be God according to essence. And he became a perfect man like us, except sin, which often makes us rebel and oppose God, in the will, as it makes us swing from two sides. But He by nature is free from all sin, as he is not simply a man, but God made man, and has nothing against it, but it preserves our nature properly and in all things pure and immaculate, as it says: «now comes the prince of this world, and he has no power over me" […] Voluntarily without falsifying our essence in anything or anything that is irreproachable and natural in it, and he deified it with all its properties like a red-hot iron, making it entirely theurgic as he has impregnated it supremely for union and in everything has become one with her without confusion in a single hypostasis. Thus in Him the human differs from ours not by the logos of nature, but for the new way of conception; equal in essence and different in absence of seed […] His will was just as natural as ours, but divinely informed and superior to us. Because it is evident that being generated with or without seed does not make nature different, but what concerns nature, as being unbegotten or generated. the great Gregory the Theologian there appears no demonstration that the Savior's humanity is one thing and our humanity another, as some believe because He says: «we can say that these words are spoken as if by a man, not by him who is considered the Savior (because the will of This has nothing that opposes God, being totally deified), but from him who is like us. Because human will does not always follow that of God, but he often resists and opposes it". He had the Logos himself as his seed, adding the innovation of his mode of birth, obtaining in participation, at the same time as natural being, being divinely founded in Him, so that He would affirm what was ours and be believed superior to us. Because it's necessary in everything, one part, preserve the nature assumed by Him, the Logos of God incarnate and made perfectly man for us, with everything that is natural to it and without which there is no nature but only a vain simulacrum; other parte, their union. The one preserved in its natural otherness, the other, on the contrary, recognized in the hypostatic identity; thus making it appear without confusion and without division, with wisdom and piety, the whole logos of the economy.⁶

San Massimo and us

The reflections and life of Saint Maximus help us closely in this effort to be authentically Catholic. Adhering to the faith of Christ implies welcoming, like Jesus, the will of the Father — with all fears, difficulties, the penalties and suffering that this entails. I think of Saint Maximus in his smelly and terrible imprisonment: without ever hesitating, he never abandoned the Truth of Christ, nor obedience to Pietro. Nello “state of emergency” he was really there, objectively, and he had every reason to fear — for the coherence and purity of the faith, and for your life. But he never thought, not even for an instant, that the true will of the Eternal Father was to create a parallel church, Made of “true Catholics in their own way” versus “fake Catholics” of the Roman Church.

Saint Maximus lived on his own skin what it meant to take on the cup of agony in Gethsemane, to be with Christ the bearer of a greater love that holds together truth and obedience. Let's think about it: if we were like him, we would have escaped from that prison to escape, I do not know, in the Swiss cantons? Or we would have remained to offer our lives in union with God's will?

Let's think about it, this summer, to all those who continue to remain in the unity of the Church despite uncertain times, difficulties, the appearance of victory of the devil. They are not fools or fools, conservatives who damage the Church for not criticizing the Pope's every sneeze as a schismatic or heretical act. Expenses, like Saint Maximus, remains in unity and truth, he forcefully expresses that yes that unites him to the charity of Christ - that charity that loves without hesitation, that overcomes every fear, every fear, any state of emergency, whether subjective or objective. In the strong will of Jesus we always find unity with the Spirit and with the Father. And unity with Mary, the Mother who gave us the Head for the Body. And unity with the Church, Mother who gives us the Body for the Head.

Let's keep thinking about it, this summer.

Convent of Santa Maria Novella in Florence, 18 August 2026

NOTE

¹ Maximus the Confessor, Meditations on the agony of Jesus, New City, Introduction by Aldo Ceresa-Gastaldo, Rome 1985, 5-12; B. Of the Angels, Nature, persona, freedom. The anthropology of Maximus the Confessor, Armando Editore, Rome 2002, 11-14.

² Maximus the Confessor, Meditations on the agony of Jesus, cit. [Ceresa-Gastaldo, p. 27; Of the Angels, p. 85, 94].

³ Maximus the Confessor, Meditations on the agony of Jesus, cit., 25, 64.

⁴ B. Of the Angels, Nature, persona, freedom, cit., 56 e 180-181.

⁵ B. Of the Angels, Nature, persona, freedom, cit., 160.

⁶ Maximus the Confessor, Brochure 4, PG 91, 56 (D) – 61 (D), in S. Maximus the Confessor, Theological and polemical pamphlets, the cure of Bernardo De Angelis, Dehonian, Bologna, 2007.

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MAXIMUS THE CONFESSOR: UNITED TO THE FATHER’S WILL AMID AN ECCLESIAL QUASI “STATE OF EMERGENCY”

In this summer season we can devote a little more time to reflection and prayer, without sending God, Mass, and the Church on holiday too — perhaps before a seascape or a mountain view, contemplating the beauty of the truth of Jesus in creation.

— Theologica —

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

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In almost “state of emergency” that neither authorizes nor minimizes nor ever exalts the rise of schisms or divisions, this holy monk teaches us extraordinary things about Jesus, through theology and through his life. Saint Maximus the Confessor (580–662 AD) stands at the summit of Eastern patristic speculation, an indispensable point of reference for Christology and for Christian spiritual life. Born, according to the historiographical tradition, in Constantinople — or in Palestine, according to an alternative Syriac biography — he received an excellent humanistic and philosophical formation, which led him to hold the office of first secretary to the Emperor Heraclius. Driven then by a desire for the contemplative life, he abandoned the honors of the palace to withdraw to the monastery of Chrysopolis, of which he became abbot.

Maximus’s life was marked by the great political upheavals of the seventh century and, above all, by the fierce Christological controversies. Fleeing the invasions that threatened the Empire, he took refuge first in Crete, then in Byzantine Africa. It was in this context that Monoenergism and Monothelitism arose, promoted by Patriarch Sergius of Constantinople and supported by the Byzantine emperors in an effort to heal the breach with the Monophysites, according to whom there would be in Christ a single energy and a single will. To understand what was at stake: Monophysitism (from the Greek “one nature alone”) is the doctrine, condemned at the Council of Chalcedon in 451, according to which in Christ, after the Incarnation, there would subsist a single nature — the divine one, which would have absorbed the human — as against the Chalcedonian faith in two natures, divine and human, united without confusion in a single person. Monoenergism, promoted in the seventh century precisely to bring the Monophysites back closer to the imperial Church, sought a compromise: two natures, yes, but a single energy, a single operative principle, in Christ. Monothelitism was its coherent development: if the energy is one alone, it was argued, so too must the will be, because will and action are closely bound together.

Maximus understood that to deny Christ’s human will meant dissolving his real and autonomous humanity. Appealing to the principle of Gregory Nazianzen — “what has not been assumed has not been healed” — he defended the integrity of the human nature assumed by the Word. In 645 he disputed at Carthage with the deposed Patriarch Pyrrhus, masterfully refuting his Monothelite theses; he then went to Rome, where he was the inspiration and the theological point of reference for the Lateran Council of 649, convened by Pope Martin I, which solemnly condemned Monothelitism.

The imperial reaction was merciless: in 653 Pope Martin I and Maximus were arrested and taken to Constantinople. Despite years of imprisonment, interrogation, and political pressure, the monk remained unshakeable in his defense of Chalcedonian orthodoxy. In 662, at the end of the final trial, in order to prevent him from continuing to preach or write, the Monothelites had his tongue and right hand mutilated; worn out by torture, he was deported to the fortress of Schemaris in Lazica, on the Black Sea, where he died on 13 August of that same year, thereby historically earning the title of “Confessor.”¹

The commentary on the Gethsemane episode

The focal point of Saint Maximus’s Christological reflection is concentrated in his exegesis of the dramatic prayer of Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane: “Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless not what I will, but what you will” (Mt 26:39; Page 22:42). For the Monothelites, the request to have the cup pass away either indicated a single divine will moved with a view to the economy of salvation, or else it would have introduced an unacceptable dissension between the will of the Son and that of the Father.

In the treatises devoted to the agony of Jesus (in particular pamphlets 6, 7, 15, 16, and 24), Maximus demonstrates that the request to be freed from death proceeds from the natural will of the flesh assumed by Christ: to fear death, to feel anguish before it, to shrink from it are dimensions proper to human nature, which cannot but recoil from physical dissolution. By assuming a real, rational, and intelligent flesh, the Word made his own all the natural properties of humanity, including pain and fear, without this introducing any opposition between the human will and the divine will. The error of Maximus’s adversaries was to confuse natural distinction with moral opposition: rebellion does not derive from nature, but from sin, which alters its mode of acting (in the tropics) — for nothing that is natural can ever be in contrast with the Creator.²

Thus, in Gethsemane, the human will of Christ first expresses the natural weakness of the flesh before death, but immediately afterward submits and conforms perfectly to the divine will proper to himself and to the Father: “Not my will, but yours be done.” There is no contrariety here, but rather “supreme consent” and “perfect union”: the human will of Jesus, free and immune from sin, is entirely “divinized” through the hypostatic union with the Word. Thus Christ’s obedience in Gethsemane redeems the disobedience of Adam, healing the human will and leading it back to full communion with God.³

Saint Maximus’s Anthropology: Nature, Person, and Freedom

Saint Maximus’s anthropology presents man as a cosmic synthesis and a “mediator” called to recapitulate and unite the whole of creation in himself and to God. According to Bernardo De Angelis, Maximian anthropological speculation rests on the fundamental methodological distinction between nature or substance — οὐσία (ousia) — and person or hypostasis — HYPOSTASIS (Hypostasis).⁴

While nature expresses what is common and universal to a species (the “what it is”), the hypostasis or person indicates the concrete, singular, and unrepeatable existent (the “who it is”). To nature belongs the essential principle — reason of nature (logos physeos) — which comprises all the powers and faculties constitutive of the human being, among them reason, intellect, and the natural will (thelema physikon): an innate power, the faculty of desiring what is in conformity with rational nature and of tending toward the good.

Unlike the natural will, freedom of choice or the gnomic will — γνώμη (gnome), will of opinion (thelema gnomicon) — belongs properly to the person and the hypostasis. The gnome expresses the mode — mode of existence (tropos hyparxeos) — in which the individual person exercises his natural faculty of willing. In fallen man, the gnomic will is a hesitant and uncertain process, marked by deliberation in the face of opposing alternatives, by doubt, by ignorance, and by the tragic possibility of choosing evil, deviating toward self-love (philautia).

Maximian anthropology culminates in the doctrine of deification — θέωσις (theosis). Man was created to become “God by grace,” participating in the divine life. This process does not annul human nature but leads it to its perfect fulfillment.⁵ In deification, the oscillations of the gnomic will are overcome: the deified person, moved by love (agape) — adheres stably and freely to the supreme Good, without further hesitation or inner division.

Within this framework one can understand the excellence of the humanity of Jesus Christ: in him there is a real and complete human natural will, but there is no hesitant or imperfect gnomic will. Since Christ’s hypostasis is that very hypostasis of the divine Word, his human will, moved and guided by the divinity perfectly and without sin, represents the model and the first fruits of true freedom and of the deification of the whole of humanity.

Let us listen directly to Saint Maximus, writing to the priest-abbot of the Monastery of Saint George of Cyzicus:

To the holy priest and abbot Georgius […] full of devotion, I offer a reply according to my powers, saying that the humanity in the Savior is by nature not a thing different from ours; but it is the same and in every way like ours in essence, because he took it from us, assuming it ineffably from the virginal and undefiled blood of the all-pure Mother of God, to whom, as to a seed, the Logos united himself and became flesh without ceasing to be God according to his essence. And he became perfect man as we are, save for sin, which so often makes us rebel and set ourselves against God, in the will, insofar as it makes us waver from two sides. But he by nature is free from every sin, inasmuch as he is not a mere man, but God made man, and has nothing that opposes him, but preserves our nature properly and wholly pure and immaculate, as he says: “now comes the prince of this world, and he has no power over me” […] Willingly, without falsifying in anything our essence nor anything within it that is blameless and natural, he has divinized it with all its properties like red-hot iron, rendering it wholly theurgic inasmuch as he has supremely permeated it through the union, and in every way has become one with it without confusion in a single hypostasis. Thus in him the human differs from ours not in the logos of nature, but in the new mode of conception; equal in essence, and different for lack of seed […] His will was properly natural as ours is, but informed divinely and above us. For it is evident that being begotten with or without seed does not make the nature different, but concerns what belongs to nature, such as being unbegotten or begotten. Nowhere in the great Gregory the Theologian does there appear any demonstration that the humanity of the Savior is one thing and our humanity another, as some believe on account of his saying: “we may say that these words are spoken as by a man, not by him who is regarded as the Savior (for the will of this one has nothing that opposes God, being wholly deified), but by him who is as we are. For the human will does not always follow that of God, but often resists him and opposes him.” He had the Logos himself as his own seed, adding the innovation of his mode of birth, obtaining in participation, at the same time as natural being, the being divinely founded in him, so that he might affirm what was ours and be believed superior to us. For it is necessary in every respect, on the one hand, to preserve the nature assumed by him, the Logos of God incarnate and made perfect man for us, with everything that is natural to him and without which there is no nature but only an empty simulacrum; and on the other hand, their union. The one preserved in its natural otherness, the other, on the contrary, recognized in hypostatic identity; so as to display, without confusion and without division, with wisdom and piety, the whole logos of the economy.⁶

Saint Maximus and Us

The reflections and the life of Saint Maximus help us closely in this effort to be authentically Catholic. To adhere to the faith of Christ means accepting, as Jesus did, the will of the Father — with all the fears, difficulties, hardships, and sufferings that this entails. I think of Saint Maximus in his foul and terrible imprisonment: without ever wavering, he never abandoned the Truth of Christ, nor obedience to Peter. In the “state of emergency” he truly was there, objectively, and he had every reason to fear — for the coherence and purity of the faith, and for his own life. But he never thought, not even for an instant, that the true will of the Eternal Father was to create a parallel church, made up of “true Catholics in their own fashion” against the “false Catholics” of the Roman Church.

Saint Maximus experienced on his own flesh what it meant to take up the cup of the agony of Gethsemane, to be with Christ a bearer of a greater love that holds together truth and obedience. Let us think about it: had we been like him, would we have fled that prison to escape to, say, the Swiss cantons? Or would we have remained to offer our lives in union with the will of God?

Let us think, this summer, of all those who continue to remain within the unity of the Church despite uncertain times, difficulties, and the appearance of the devil’s victory. They are neither fools nor simpletons — conservatives who harm the Church by not setting out to denounce the Pope’s every sneeze as a schismatic or heretical act. Whoever, like Saint Maximus, remains within unity and truth, powerfully expresses that “yes” which unites him to the charity of Christ — that charity which loves without hesitation, which overcomes every fear, every dread, every state of emergency, whether subjective or objective. In the strong will of Jesus we always find unity with the Spirit and with the Father. And unity with Mary, the Mother who gave us the Head for the Body. And unity with the Church, the Mother who gives us the Body for the Head.

Let us go on thinking about it, this summer.

Santa Maria Novella in Florence, 18 August 2026

NOTES

¹ MAXIMUS THE CONFESSOR, Meditations on the Agony of Jesus, New City, Introduction by Aldo Ceresa-Gastaldo, Rome 1985, 5–12; B. OF THE ANGELS, Nature, Person, Freedom: The Anthropology of Maximus the Confessor, Armando Editore, Rome 2002, 11–14.

² MAXIMUS THE CONFESSOR, Meditations on the Agony of Jesus, cit. [Ceresa-Gastaldo, p. 27; Of the Angels, p. 85, 94].

³ MAXIMUS THE CONFESSOR, Meditations on the Agony of Jesus, cit., 25, 64.

⁴ B. OF THE ANGELS, Nature, Person, Freedom, cit., 56 and 180–181.

⁵ B. OF THE ANGELS, Nature, Person, Freedom, cit., 160.

⁶ MAXIMUS THE CONFESSOR, An essay 4, PG 91, 56D–61D, in S. MAXIMUS THE CONFESSOR, Theological and Polemical Opuscula, edited by Bernardo De Angelis, Dehonian, Bologna, 2007.

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MAXIMO THE CONFESSOR: UNITED TO THE WILL OF THE FATHER DESPITE THE ALMOST “STATE OF EMERGENCY” ECCLESIAL

In this summer time we can dedicate a little more time to reflection and prayer, without also sending God on vacation, to the Mass and the Church — perhaps before a marine or mountainous panorama, contemplating the beauty of the truth of Jesus in creation.

— Theologica —

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

.

In an almost “state of emergency” that never authorizes, minimizes or exalts the birth of schisms or divisions, This holy monk teaches us extraordinary things about Jesus, with theology and with life. Saint Maximus the Confessor (580–662 d.C.) stands at the summit of eastern patristic speculation, essential reference point for Christology and Christian spiritual life. Born, according to historiographical tradition, in Constantinople — or in Palestine, according to an alternative Syriac biography—, He received an excellent humanistic and philosophical training, which led him to occupy the position of first secretary of the emperor Heraclius. Later moved by the desire for a contemplative life, He abandoned the honors of the palace to retire to the monastery of Chrysópolis, of whom he became abbot.

The existence of Máximo was marked by the great political upheavals of the 7th century and, above all, by the heated Christological controversies. To flee from the invasions that threatened the Empire, He first took refuge in Crete, then in Byzantine Africa. In this context, monoenergism and monotelism were born., promoted by Patriarch Sergius of Constantinople and supported by the Byzantine emperors to mend the fracture with the Monophysites, according to which in Christ there would be a single energy and a single will. To understand what was at stake: monophysitism (from Greek “one nature”) is the doctrine, condemned at the Council of Chalcedon in 451, according to which in Christ, after incarnation, only one nature would remain - the divine, that would have absorbed the human, against the Chalcedonian faith in two natures, divine and human, united without confusion in a single person. monoenergism, promoted in the 7th century precisely to bring the Monophysites closer to the imperial Church again, I was looking for a compromise: two natures yes, but only one energy, a single operating principle, in Christ. Monothelism was its coherent development: If the energy is only one, it was stated, the will must also be, because will and action are closely linked.

Maximus understood that denying the human will of Christ meant dissolving his real and autonomous humanity. Referring to the principle of Gregory of Nazianzus — “what has not been assumed has not been healed” —, defended the integrity of human nature assumed by the Word. On 645 He disputed in Carthage with the deposed patriarch Pyrrhus, masterfully refuting his monothelite thesis; He then went to Rome, where he was the inspiration and the leading theologian of the Lateran Council of 649, summoned by Pope Martin I, who solemnly condemned monothelism.

The imperial reaction was ruthless: in 653 Pope Martin I and Maximus were arrested and taken to Constantinople. Despite years in prison, interrogations and political pressure, the monk remained unwavering in the defense of Chalcedonian orthodoxy. On 662, at the end of the last process, to prevent him from continuing to preach or write, The Monothelites mutilated his tongue and right hand.; exhausted by torture, He was deported to the fortress of Schemaris, in Lazica, next to the Black Sea, where he died 13 August of that same year, historically deserving the title of “Confessor”.¹

Commentary on the Gethsemane episode

The focal point of Saint Maximus's Christological reflection is concentrated on the exegesis of Jesus' dramatic prayer in the garden of Gethsemane.: "Dad, if possible, take this chalice away from me; but don't do what I want, but what you want” (Mt 26,39; LC 22,42). For the monothelites, the request that the cup be set aside either indicated a single divine will moved in view of the economy of salvation, or it would have introduced an unacceptable dissension between the will of the Son and that of the Father.

In the tracts dedicated to the agony of Jesus (in particular the Opuscles 6, 7, 15, 16 and 24), Maximus demonstrates that the request to be freed from death comes from the natural will of the flesh assumed by Christ: temerla, feel anguish before her, avoiding it are dimensions of human nature, that cannot but withdraw in the face of physical dissolution. By assuming real flesh, rational and intelligent, the Word made all the natural properties of humanity his own, including pain and fear, without this introducing any opposition between human will and divine will. The mistake of Maximus's adversaries was to confuse the natural distinction with the moral opposition: rebellion does not derive from nature, but of sin, that alters their way of acting — τρόπος (in the tropics) —; nothing that is natural can be in contrast to the Creator.²

So, in Gethsemane, The human will of Christ first expresses the natural weakness of the flesh in the face of death, but immediately afterwards he submits and adapts perfectly to his own divine will and that of the Father.: “My will not be done, but yours". There is no contradiction, but “supreme consent” and “perfect union”: the human will of Jesus, free and immune from sin, is totally “divinized” by the hypostatic union with the Word. So, Christ's obedience in Gethsemane rescues Adam's disobedience, healing the human will and bringing it back to full communion with God.³

The anthropology of Saint Maximus: Nature, Person and Freedom

The anthropology of Saint Maximus presents man as a cosmic synthesis and a “mediator” called to recapitulate within himself and unite all creation with God.. According to Bernardo De Angelis, Maximian anthropological speculation rests on the fundamental methodological distinction between nature or substance — οὐσία (messenger) — y persona o hipóstasis — hypostasis (hypóstasis).⁴

While nature expresses what is common and universal to a species (the “what is”), the hypostasis or person indicates the concrete existent, singular and unrepeatable (the “who is”). A la naturaleza pertenece el principio essencial — reason of nature (logos physeos) —, which includes all the constituent powers and faculties of the human being, among them the reason, la inteligencia y la voluntad natural — natural will (thelema physikon): an innate power, the faculty of desiring what is in accordance with rational nature and of tending toward good.

Unlike the natural will, freedom of choice or gnomic will — γνώμη (gnome), will of opinion (thelema gnomikón) —is characteristic of the person and the hypostasis. The gnome expresa el modo — way of being (tropos hyparxeos) — in which the singular person exercises his natural faculty of willing. In the fallen man, the gnomic will is a vacillating and uncertain process, marked by deliberation in the face of opposing alternatives, for the doubt, by ignorance and by the tragic possibility of choosing evil, diverting towards self-love — φιλαυτία (philautía).

Maximian anthropology culminates in the doctrine of deification — θέωσις (theosis). Man was created to become “God by grace.”, participating in divine life. This process does not cancel human nature, but leads it to its perfect fulfillment.⁵ In the deification, the oscillations of the gnomic will are overcome: the deified person, moved by love — ἀγάπη (agape) —, adheres stably and freely to the supreme Good, without more hesitation or internal splits.

In this framework the excellence of the humanity of Jesus Christ is understood: in Him there is a real and complete natural human will, but there is no wavering or imperfect gnomic will. The hypostasis of Christ being the same as that of the divine Word, his human will, moved and guided by divinity in a perfect and sinless way, represents the model and the first fruits of true freedom and the deification of all humanity.

Let's listen directly to Saint Maximus, writing to the egumenous priest of the Monastery of San Jorge de Cícico:

To the holy Egumenan priest George […] full of pity, I propose an answer according to my strength, saying that humanity in the Savior by nature is nothing different from ours; but it is the same and in all things similar in terms of essence, because He took it from us, assuming it in an inexpressible way from the virginal and uncontaminated blood of the all pure Mother of God, to which, like a seed, the Logos united and became flesh without ceasing to be God according to the essence. And he became a perfect man like us, save sin, which often causes us to rebel and oppose God, in the will, as it makes us oscillate from two sides. But He by nature is free from all sin, as he is not a simple man, but God made man, and there is nothing that opposes it, but preserves our nature properly and in everything pure and immaculate, as he says: "Now comes the prince of this world, and has no power over me." […] Voluntarily, without falsifying our essence or anything that is irreproachable and natural in it., He has deified it with all its properties like a red-hot iron, making it entirely theurgic in that it has been supremely impregnated by the union, and in everything he has become one with her without confusion in a single hypostasis. So, In Him what is human differs from what is ours not because of the logos of nature, but for the new way of conception; the same in essence and different in the absence of seed […] His love was as natural as ours., but divinely informed and above us. Because it is evident that being generated with or without seed does not make nature different., but what concerns nature, as being unborn or generated. In the great Gregory the Theologian there is no demonstration that the humanity of the Savior is one thing and our humanity another., as some believe because He says: "We can say that these words are uttered as if by a man, not by Him who is considered the Savior (because His will has nothing that opposes God, being totally deified), but for him who is like us. Because human will does not always follow God's will, but it is often resisted and opposed.”. He had the Logos himself as his own seed, adding the innovation of its birth mode, obtaining in participation, at the same time as the natural being, being divinely founded in Him, so that he would affirm what was ours and be believed superior to us. Because it is necessary, throughout, on the one hand, preserve the nature assumed by Him, the Logos of God incarnated and made perfectly man for us, with everything that is natural to it and without which there is no nature but only a vain simulacrum; besides, their union. The one preserved in its natural otherness, the other, instead, recognized in the hypostatic identity; so that it is manifested without confusion and without division, with wisdom and mercy, all the logos of the economy.⁶

Saint Maximus and us

The reflections and life of Saint Maximus help us closely in this effort to be authentically Catholic.. Adhering to the faith of Christ means welcoming, like Jesus, the Father's will — with all fears, difficulties, hardships and suffering that this entails. I think of Saint Maximus in his pestilent and terrible prison: without ever hesitation, He never abandoned the Truth of Christ, nor obedience to Peter. In the “state of emergency” he was truly present, objectively, and had every reason to fear—for the coherence and purity of the faith, and for his own life. but never thought, not even for a moment, that the true will of the Eternal Father was to create a parallel church, formed by “true Catholics in their own way” against the “false Catholics” of the Roman Church.

Saint Maximus lived in his own flesh what it meant to assume the chalice of the agony of Gethsemane, to be with Christ the bearer of a greater love that keeps truth and obedience together. Pensémoslo: if we had been like him, Would we have fled from that prison to escape, I don't know, to the Swiss cantons? Or would we have remained to offer our lives in union with the will of God?

Let's think, this summer, in all those who continue to remain in the unity of the Church despite uncertain times, of the difficulties, of the devil's appearance of victory. They are not stupid or naive, conservatives who harm the Church for not having dedicated themselves to criticizing every sneeze of the Pope as a schismatic or heretical act. Who, like Saint Maximus, remain in unity and truth, expresses with force that yes that unites him to the charity of Christ — that charity that loves without hesitation, that overcomes all fear, all fear, all state of emergency, sea ​​subjective or objective. In the strong will of Jesus we always find unity with the Spirit and with the Father. And unity with Mary, the Mother who has given us the Head for the Body. And unity with the Church, Mother who gives us the Body for the Head.

Let's keep thinking about it, this summer.

Santa Maria Novella in Florence, 18 of August of 2026

NOTES

¹ MAXIMO THE CONFESSOR, Meditations on the agony of Jesus, New City, Introduction by Aldo Ceresa-Gastaldo, Rome 1985, 5-12; B. OF THE ANGELS, Nature, persona, freedom. The anthropology of Maximus the Confessor, Armando Editore, Rome 2002, 11-14.

² MAXIMO THE CONFESSOR, Meditations on the agony of Jesus, cit. [Ceresa-Gastaldo, p. 27; Of the Angels, p. 85, 94].

³ MAXIMO THE CONFESSOR, Meditations on the agony of Jesus, cit., 25, 64.

⁴ B. OF THE ANGELS, Nature, persona, freedom, cit., 56 and 180-181.

⁵ B. OF THE ANGELS, Nature, persona, freedom, cit., 160.

⁶ MAXIMO THE CONFESSOR, Booklet 4, PG 91, 56 (D) – 61 (D), and S. MAXIMO THE CONFESSOR, Theological and polemical tracts, by Bernardo De Angelis, Dehonian, Bologna, 2007.

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KARL RAHNER AND EASTER AS A TIME OF REDISCOVERY OF GLORY

«The beginning of the glory of all things is already underway, that we, apparently so lost and wandering, needy and distant, we are already enveloped in infinite bliss. Because the end has already begun. And that's the glory."

— Theologica —

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

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A famous proverb goes:: «Even a broken watch, twice a day, marks the exact time".

in theology Padre Karl Rahner S.J. (to the left), Father Joseph Ratzinger (downtown), Father Sergio Ubbiali (To the right)

It will seem strange to you, but for once I found myself in agreement with Karl Rahner, who dedicated some reflections to Easter. I read one of his texts because I wanted to take a while’ in discussion on what were also my Easter reflections, and I must say that the speech of this Jesuit theologian seems to me, as well as profoundly Catholic, also very consistent and profitable. In this article we will start from one of his considerations and then try to apply it to the Easter season.

Yup, because Easter time is coming a little’ left out, and this is the first reflection I want to leave you. It seems to run away quickly until summer, almost as if it were exclusively a period in which we sit and rest: just remember that Jesus is risen and everything is resolved, and we put ourselves in a position of pure celebration. Unlike Lent, considered the strong spiritual and existential time par excellence, in which fasting is rightly practiced, ascetic choices are made and topics such as death are reflected upon par excellence, judgment and original sin, and that is what the Church asks of us at that moment.

You understand well, At that time, that it would be appropriate for us believers to also be a time of Easter to pay attention to certain issues that, otherwise, they tend to escape us a little. Of course, it is obvious that we need to diversify the Easter season from that of Lent; the liturgy up to Pentecost already distinguishes the colors, passing from Lenten purple to the white vestments of the holiday. It is based on some of Rahner's intuitions - although he does not share many others, but by grasping what is valid - that a profound detail emerges about the meaning of Easter. He states:

«I believe that the beginning of the glory of all things is already underway, that we, apparently so lost and wandering, needy and distant, we are already enveloped in infinite bliss. Because the end has already begun. And that's the glory." (cf.. What Easter means, Queriniana, Brescia, 2021, 37).

Rahner says this starting from the idea that the resurrection is not a past event, closed in time, nor is it an event that will occur exclusively at the end of time: it is a present, a resurrection that begins now, a glory we experience now. On this point I could quote Rahner's antagonist par excellence, also trained in the Society of Jesus, Hans Urs von Balthasar, but it would take us down paths that are too far away. Glory is presence, the might and strength of God in our today.

And then we can make this reflection, dear friends of the Island of Patmos: truly the Easter season is a time of glory for us? We have truly understood that with the resurrection of Christ the era of the new man began for us, of man living in God? Indeed, entering the glory of God happens, in the first place, in the sacraments. It is the moment in which sacramental grace - in particular the Eucharistic one, but united with all the other sacraments - already now introduces us into the very life of God. And so experiencing the sacraments during Easter time is the right time to enter into the glory of the Risen One, to understand that the life we ​​are living has a different meaning, a sense of eternity. And this shouldn't make us fear the rules - “don't do this, otherwise one day eternal life could be hell” —, limiting itself to a cold normative sense. This promise of eternal life, which starts now, it is also the joy and hope of building, as of now, real paths to eternity.

And here we come to the third point: what does it mean, in practice: live as a resurrected person? It means learning that behind every suffering, behind every pain, behind every mourning and behind every trial, Christ already promises us glory from now on; he promises us that He is with us and asks us to face difficulties in a Christian way and then rise again with Him.

I still have vivid memories of my years of study for Bachelor of Theology: during an in-depth study on the theology of marriage, our teacher, suor Alexandra Diriart, he reminded us that every wedding goes through its own Easter. Pass through the nights of passion, of pain and lack of understanding, to arrive at Easter and rise again every time. This dynamic doesn't just apply to marriage: it is our whole life that is resurrected, and rises again now. To live as resurrected people we must have the courage of love, of charity, and the courage to discover the truths of the Catholic faith. We don't all have to be theologians, but we must all learn to believe intelligently. Here is a spiritual journey that we can rediscover at Easter. The liturgical elements of this time – the Ascension, Pentecost and so on - must help us to enter into the perspective of glory to start thinking from “glorified”, looking, as Saint Paul exhorts us, the things from above.

Santa Maria Novella, in Florence, 27 April 2026

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KARL RAHNER AND EASTER AS A TIME OF REDISCOVERING GLORY

“I believe that the beginning of the glory of all things is already underway, that we, apparently so lost and wandering, needy and distant, are already enveloped in infinite beatitude. For the end has already begun. And it is glory”.

— Theologica —

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

.

A well-known proverb says: «Even a stopped clock is right twice a day». It may seem strange to you, but for once I found myself in agreement with Karl Rahner, who devoted some reflections to Easter. I read one of his texts because I wanted to question my own Easter reflections, and I must say that the thought of this Jesuit theologian appears to me not only profoundly Catholic, but also remarkably coherent and fruitful. In this article, we will begin from one of his insights and then attempt to apply it to our present Easter season.

Yes, because the Easter season is somewhat neglected, and this is the first reflection I would like to offer you. It seems to pass quickly until summer, almost as if it were merely a time to sit back and rest: it is enough to recall that Jesus has risen and everything is resolved, and one settles into a purely festive attitude. In contrast to Lent, considered the strong spiritual and existential time par excellence, in which one rightly practices fasting, undertakes ascetical choices, and reflects above all on themes such as death, judgment, and original sin — as the Church asks of us in that time.

You can understand, then, that it would be fitting for the Easter season also to become for us believers a time of attention to certain themes which otherwise tend to slip away from us. Of course, it is clear that Easter must be distinguished from Lent; the liturgy itself, up to Pentecost, distinguishes the colors, moving from the Lenten violet to the white vestments of the feast. It is from some insights of Rahner — while not sharing many of his other positions, but taking what is valid — that a profound detail about the meaning of Easter emerges. He states:

“I believe that the beginning of the glory of all things is already underway, that we, apparently so lost and wandering, needy and distant, are already enveloped in infinite beatitude. For the end has already begun. And it is glory” (cf. What Does Easter Mean?, Queriniana, Brescia, 2021, 37).

Rahner says this starting from the idea that the Resurrection is not a past event, closed in time, nor is it an event that will occur only at the end of time: it is a present reality, a Resurrection that already begins now, a glory that we live even now. On this point I could mention Rahner’s great counterpart, also formed in the Society of Jesus, Hans Urs von Balthasar, but that would lead us too far afield. Glory is the presence, the power, and the strength of God in our today.

And so we may ask ourselves, dear friends of the Island of Patmos: is the Easter season truly a time of glory for us? Have we really understood that with the Resurrection of Christ there has begun for us the era of the new man, the man alive in God? Indeed, entering into the glory of God takes place, first of all, in the sacraments. It is the moment in which sacramental grace — especially Eucharistic grace, but united with all the other sacraments — already introduces us into the very life of God. Thus, living the sacraments during the Easter season is the favorable time to enter into the glory of the Risen One, to understand that the life we are living has a different meaning, a meaning of eternity. And this should not instill in us fear of rules — “do not do this, otherwise eternal life may become hell” — reducing everything to a cold normative sense. This promise of eternal life, which begins already now, is also joy and hope, allowing us to build, even now, true paths of eternity.

And here we come to the third point: what does it mean, in practice, to live as risen? It means learning that behind every suffering, behind every pain, behind every loss and every trial, Christ already now promises us glory; He promises that He is with us and asks us to face difficulties in a Christian way in order to rise again with Him.

I still vividly remember my years of study for the licentiate in theology: during a lecture on the theology of marriage, our professor, Sister Alexandra Diriart, reminded us that every marriage goes through its own Easter. It passes through the nights of passion, suffering, and misunderstanding, in order to arrive at Easter and rise again each time. This dynamic does not apply only to marriage: it is our whole life that rises again, and rises now. To live as risen, we must have the courage of love, of charity, and the courage to discover the truths of the Catholic faith. We do not all have to be theologians, but we must all learn to believe with intelligence. This is a spiritual path that we can rediscover at Easter. The liturgical elements of this time — the Ascension, Pentecost, and so on — must help us to enter into the perspective of glory and begin to think as “those already glorified,” seeking, as Saint Paul exhorts us, the things that are above.

Santa Maria Novella, Florence, April 27, 2026

.

KARL RAHNER AND EASTER AS A TIME OF REDISCOVERY OF GLORY

«The beginning of the glory of all things is already underway, that we, seemingly so lost and wandering, needy and distant, we are already enveloped in infinite bliss. Because the end has already begun. And it is the glory

— Theologica —

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

.

A well-known proverb says: "Even a broken watch, twice a day, mark the exact time. It may seem strange, but for once I found myself agreeing with Karl Rahner, who has dedicated some reflections to Easter. I have read one of your texts because I wanted to question my own Easter reflections, and I must say that the thought of this Jesuit theologian seems to me, in addition to being deeply Catholic, also remarkably coherent and fruitful. In this article we will start from one of his intuitions to try to apply it to our Easter time..

Yeah, because Easter time is usually a bit sloppy, and this is the first reflection that I want to leave you. It seems to go by quickly until summer, almost as if it were just a time to sit and rest: It is enough to remember that Jesus has risen and everything is resolved, thus adopting a purely festive attitude. Unlike Lent, considered the strong spiritual and existential time par excellence, in which fasting is precisely practiced, ascetic choices are made and reflection is made on topics such as death, judgment and original sin — just as the Church asks us at that time.

Understand well, so, that it would be appropriate for Easter time to also be for us, believers, a time of attention to certain themes that, otherwise, they tend to escape. It is evident that the time of Easter must be distinguished from that of Lent.; of the liturgy, until Pentecost, differentiate the colors, going from Lenten purple to the white ornaments of the holiday. Based on some of Rahner's intuitions — although not sharing many of his other positions, but embracing what is valid — a profound aspect emerges about the meaning of Easter. He claims:

«I believe that the beginning of the glory of all things is already underway, that we, seemingly so lost and wandering, needy and distant, we are already enveloped in infinite bliss. Because the end has already begun. And it is the glory (cf. What does Easter mean?, Queriniana, Brescia, 2021, 37).

Rahner affirms this based on the idea that the Resurrection It is not a past event., closed in time, nor is it an event that will happen only at the end of time: it is a present, a Resurrection that begins now, a glory that we already live today. At this point I could quote Rahner's great counterpoint, also trained in the Society of Jesus, Hans Urs von Balthasar, but it would take us too far. Glory is the presence, the power and strength of God in our today.

And then we can ask ourselves this question, dear friends of the Island of Patmos: Is Easter time really a time of glory for us?? Have we truly understood that with the Resurrection of Christ the era of the new man has begun for us?, of man alive in God? Indeed, entering the glory of God happens, first of all, in the sacraments. It is the moment when sacramental grace - especially Eucharistic grace, but united to all the other sacraments — it already introduces us into the very life of God. Living the sacraments at Easter time is, therefore, the opportune moment to enter into the glory of the Risen Lord, to understand that the life we ​​are living has a different meaning, a sense of eternity. And this should not make us afraid of the rules — "don't do this.", otherwise eternal life could be hell”—reducing itself to a cold normative sense. This promise of eternal life, that starts now, It is also joy and hope, allowing us to build from now on true paths of eternity.

And here we come to the third point: what does it mean, in practice, live like resurrected? It means learning that behind all suffering, behind all pain, behind every loss and every trial, Christ now promises us glory; He promises us that He is with us and asks us to face difficulties in a Christian way and then rise again with Him..

I still have very vivid memories of my years of study. for the degree in theology: during a class on the theology of marriage, our teacher, sor Alexandra Diriart, He reminded us that every marriage goes through its own Easter. Go through the nights of passion, of pain and misunderstanding, to reach Easter and resurrect each time. This dynamic doesn't just apply to marriage.: It is our whole life that is resurrected, and resurrect now. To live as resurrected we must have the courage of love, of charity, and the value of discovering the truths of the Catholic faith. Not all of us should be theologians, but we must all learn to believe intelligently. Here is a spiritual path that we can rediscover at Easter. The liturgical elements of this time — the Ascension, Pentecost and so on — should help us enter into the perspective of glory and begin to think as “glorified.”, searching, as Saint Paul exhorts us, the things above.

Santa Maria Novella, Florence, 21 April 2026

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.

______________________

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:
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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:
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Italian, English, Español

THE DESERT, THE EXODUS AND THE STAGE: YOUNG PEOPLE AND LENT WITH POPE LEO XIV

«How rare it is to find adults who mend their ways, people, companies and institutions that admit they were wrong! Today, from noi, it is precisely this possibility".

— Theologica —

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

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PDF article print format – Article print format – Article in printed format

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«I always imagine all these kids who play a game in that immense rye field etc. etc. Thousands of kids, and there is no one else around, no big ones, I am trying to say, just me. And I'm standing on the edge of a crazy cliff. And all I have to do is catch everyone who's about to fall off the cliff, I am trying to say, if they run without looking where they are going, I have to jump out from somewhere and catch them. I shouldn't have to do anything else all day.".

This famous and poignant confession of the protagonist of Young Holden di J.D. Salinger (1), resonates, decades later, with an impressive prophetic relevance. Holden Caulfield, in his restless and disenchanted wandering, he profoundly despises the falsity of the adult world, empty conformism, what today we could define as the hypertrophy of the ephemeral. He desperately seeks authenticity, a safe place where innocence is not corrupted. Those were other times now gone? We are sure? I do not believe. The youth of today, immersed in our complex and turbulent era change, they're right on that crazy cliff, one step away from the dizzying void of the loss of meaning.

Ours are unprecedented times. The post-pandemic era has left deep scars in the souls of the new generations, scars that add to the anxieties of a society in which artificial intelligence, predictive algorithms and the new logic of the global economy risk reducing the human person to a mere data point for consumption and processing. In this scenario, as trainers, theologians and pastors, we clash with two fundamental tensions that run through the hearts of young people. The first is the absence of future and planning: the new generations struggle to imagine their own tomorrow because they are not given the coordinates to trace it; their hopes, too often, they have not been integrated into a journey of faith capable of giving breathing space to existence.

The second tension, even more radical, it is precisely the search for a profound meaning that goes beyond the ephemeral, the urgent need for something, or rather than Someone, that does not fade with changing fashions, of Amazon advertisements and various digital stores. However, at least at our personal level of pastoral and human experience, we can say with certainty that under the ashes of this crisis there is a living fire. The extraordinary experience of the Youth Jubilee of the summer 2025 it wasn't a flash in the pan, an isolated event consumed in the enthusiasm of a few days. Was, on the contrary, an authentic beginning. Many have started walking along that road. We certainly cannot guarantee for all the two million young people present, but the excitement is undeniable. Young people feel increasingly attracted to the sacred. Paradoxically, Precisely the aggressiveness of a secularization that has flattened itself on commercialization and on the hypertrophy of the ego is pushing the new generations to look elsewhere, to escape from a materialism that does not nourish the spirit. They seek the God of Jesus Christ, a God who knows how to value them, that shows them their strengths but also helps them deal with necessary self-denials.

The beginning of this Lent of 2026 it was marked by a beautiful and programmatic homily by the Holy Father Leo XIV, who made his debut as Pontiff for the first time on the penitential path. The Pope grasped this dynamic of youthful research with extraordinary clarity, offering a theological and pastoral reading that shakes us from our laziness. In his message for the Ash Mass, Pope Leo XIV states: opposing idolatry to the living God - Scripture teaches us - means daring freedom and finding it again through an exodus, a path. No longer paralyzed, rigid, secure in their positions, but gathered to move and change. How rare it is to find adults who repent, people, companies and institutions that admit they were wrong!

"Today, from noi, it is precisely this possibility. And it is no coincidence that numerous young people, even in secularized contexts, feel the call of this day more than in the past, on Ash Wednesday. Are they, indeed, young people, to clearly understand that a more just way of living is possible and that there are responsibilities for what is wrong in the Church and in the world. It should be, so, start where you can and with whoever is there. «Now is the favorable moment, here is now the day of salvation!» (2Color 6,2). We feel, so, the missionary significance of Lent, certainly not to distract us from working on ourselves, as to open it to many restless people of good will, who seek ways to authentic renewal of life, on the horizon of the Kingdom of God and his justice" (Homily in the Holy Mass for the blessing of the ashes, 18 February 2026, text who).

Here is the key: Lent is not an intimate retreat, but an exodus. And who, more than young people, it is structurally ready to hit the road? The Pope acutely observes a dynamic that shames us adults:

«How rare it is to find adults who mend their ways, people, companies and institutions that admit they were wrong! Today, from noi, it is precisely this possibility".

The Church today finds itself in an ambivalent phase: is experiencing an undeniable decadence of its oldest institutional forms, but at the same time experiences a silent and powerful spiritual growth, a return to the essential. In this disorientation, in which as an ecclesial community we are not always able to provide the right answers, young people desperately ask for new ones “fixed points”. Fixed points necessary to decipher reality, so as not to be dragged away by the ideologies of the moment and to resist the spiritual desert.

Pope Leo XIV underlines precisely this aspect: young people. Young people are not looking for a perfect Church, but a credible Church, capable of admitting one's limits and getting back on the path. From here arises the urgency of a new mission, as recalled by the Apostle Paul cited by the Pontiff: «Now is the favorable moment, here is now the day of salvation!» (2Color 6,2). The Pope sends us as missionaries among young people, inviting us to get down from our chairs and seek new pastoral and theological ways to make people understand the beauty of being Christians. It is an invitation to make the desert flourish, offering solid proposals that overcome intimacy and embrace the drama of history.

Let's try to come up with some ways for this research by young people, with young people you become an effective pastoral action and theologically founded in the Theodrama of Christ which generates saving action and Hope. There is a precious interpretation that emerges every year, at the beginning of the penitential time, in conversations with a dear friend, who always reminds me how Lent is her favorite liturgical period. The motivation, translated into theological language, it is enlightening: Lent is the journey into which we are called to enter physically and spiritually drama of Christ, to immerse yourself in His deepest action, taller and more beautiful.

All other liturgical mysteries — Christmas, Ordinary Time, the Marian solemnities - find their center of gravity and their perfect connection only here, in the dramatic and saving action of Jesus. It is here that the thought inevitably refers us to the brilliant intuition of Hans Urs von Balthasar. In its monumental Theodramatic, the great Swiss theologian reminds us that Revelation is not a static picture to witness, but a drama in which God enters personally, compromising with history. He writes:

"It gave […] he is like a poet. From here it is also explained that he finds himself in evil and in all filth… He himself is all over the place, observe, goes on composing, in a certain sense in poetically impersonal ways, pay attention, so to speak, to everything" (2).

Man is then torn from his condition of simple spectator and is drawn to play his part in Christ, so long as:

«This entire existence can be understood – in its relation to the cross and of the cross – as a drama» (3).

This is the heart of the proposal to offer our young people. We must bring them back to live the drama of Christ, to understand that Christianity is the boldest adventure in which the infinite intertwines with the finite. We need to help them insert their action, their failures, their frustrated hopes and their disorientation in the victorious action of Jesus. When a young person understands that his pain and his aspirations have been taken on by the Son of God on the "stage" of the Cross, secularization suddenly loses its deceptive charm.

Let us then look at this Lent, led by the magisterium of Leo XIV, with unshakable optimism and profound hope. Despite the shadows of our era, the Holy Spirit continues to arouse in the hearts of the new generations a hunger and thirst for the Absolute that no human logic will ever be able to satisfy. Accompany young people in this exodus towards freedom, become their traveling companions to help them rediscover the dazzling beauty of faith in Christ, it is the most exciting challenge that the Church today is called to face. And the victory, in the drama of redemption, it has already been assured to us.

Santa Maria Novella, in Florence, 8 March 2026

.

NOTE

(1) (D). SALINGER Young Holden, Torino, Einaudi, 1961, cap. 22.

(2) U. FROM BALTHASAR, TheoDrammatica, Vol. I: Introduction to the drama, Jaca Book, Milan, 1980, 30.

(3) U. FROM BALTHASAR, TheoDrammatica, Vol. IV: The Action, JACA BOOK, MILANO, 1986, 368).

.

.

THE DESERT, THE EXODUS AND THE STAGE: YOUNG PEOPLE AND LENT WITH POPE LEO XIV

«How rare it is to find adults who repent, people, companies and institutions who admit that they have been wrong! Today, among us, this is precisely the possibility».

— Theologica —

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

.

«I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody’s around – nobody big, I mean – except me. And I’m standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do is catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff – I mean if they’re running and they don’t look where they’re going, I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That’s all I’d do all day».

This famous and moving confession of the protagonist of The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger (1) resonates, decades later, with astonishing prophetic relevance. Holden Caulfield, in his restless and disenchanted wandering, profoundly despises the falseness of the adult world, its empty conformism – what today we might define as the hypertrophy of the ephemeral. He desperately seeks authenticity, a safe place where innocence is not corrupted. Were those times long gone? Are we sure? I do not think so. Today’s young people, immersed in our complex and turbulent change of epoch, stand precisely on that crazy cliff, one step away from the vertiginous void of the loss of meaning.

Ours are unprecedented times. The post-pandemic era has left deep scars on the souls of the younger generations, scars that add to the anxieties of a society in which artificial intelligence, predictive algorithms and the new logics of the global economy risk reducing the human person to mere data for consumption and processing. In this scenario, as educators, theologians and pastors, we encounter two fundamental tensions that cross the hearts of the young. The first is the absence of a future and of life projects: new generations struggle to imagine their tomorrow because they are not given the coordinates to chart it; their hopes, too often, have not been integrated into a journey of faith capable of giving breath to existence.

The second tension, even more radical, is the search for a profound meaning that surpasses the ephemeral, the pressing need for something — or rather Someone — who does not vanish with changing fashions, Amazon advertisements and the countless digital stores. Yet, at least according to our own pastoral and human experience, we can affirm with certainty that beneath the ashes of this crisis there burns a living fire. The extraordinary experience of the Youth Jubilee in the summer of 2025 was not a flash in the pan, an isolated event consumed in the enthusiasm of a few days. On the contrary, it was an authentic beginning. Many have begun to walk along that road. We cannot guarantee for all the two million young people who were present, but the ferment is undeniable. Young people are increasingly attracted to the sacred. Paradoxically, precisely the aggressiveness of a secularization flattened into commercialization and the hypertrophy of the ego is pushing the new generations to look elsewhere, to flee from a materialism that does not nourish the spirit. They seek the God of Jesus Christ, a God who knows how to value them, who shows them their strengths but also helps them to face the necessary renunciations of self.

The beginning of this Lent of 2026 was marked by a beautiful and programmatic homily by the Holy Father Leo XIV, who for the first time opened the penitential journey as Pontiff. The Pope grasped with extraordinary clarity this dynamic of youthful search, offering a theological and pastoral interpretation that shakes us from our laziness. In his message for the Mass of Ash Wednesday, Pope Leo XIV states: opposing the living God to idolatry – Scripture teaches us – means daring freedom and rediscovering it through an exodus, a journey. No longer paralyzed, rigid, secure in one’s positions, but gathered in order to move and change. How rare it is to find adults who repent, people, companies and institutions who admit that they have been wrong!

«Today, among us, this very possibility is at stake. And it is no coincidence that many young people, even in secularized contexts, feel more than in the past the appeal of this day, Ash Wednesday. Indeed, it is the young who clearly perceive that a more just way of living is possible and that there are responsibilities for what does not work in the Church and in the world. Therefore we must begin where we can and with those who are willing. “Behold, now is the acceptable time; behold, now is the day of salvation!” (2 Color 6:2). Let us therefore feel the missionary scope of Lent, not in order to distract ourselves from the work on ourselves, but to open it to the many restless people of good will who are seeking paths for an authentic renewal of life, in the horizon of the Kingdom of God and of His justice» (Homily for the blessing of ashes, 18 February 2026).

Here lies the turning point: Lent is not an inward-looking retreat, but an exodus. And who, more than the young, is structurally ready to set out on a journey? The Pope astutely observes a dynamic that exposes us adults:

«How rare it is to find adults who repent, people, companies and institutions who admit that they have been wrong! Today, among us, this is precisely the possibility».

Today the Church finds herself in an ambivalent phase: she experiences an undeniable decline of her most ancient institutional forms, yet at the same time she witnesses a silent and powerful spiritual growth, a return to the essential. In this disorientation, in which we as an ecclesial community are not always able to provide the right answers, young people desperately ask for new “points of reference”. Firm points necessary to decipher reality, to avoid being swept away by the ideologies of the moment and to resist the spiritual desert.

Pope Leo XIV highlights precisely this aspect: young people. Young people do not seek a perfect Church, but a credible Church, capable of admitting its limits and setting out again on the journey. From here springs the urgency of a new mission, as the Apostle Paul – quoted by the Pontiff – reminds us: «Behold, now is the acceptable time; behold, now is the day of salvation!» (2 Color 6:2). The Pope sends us as missionaries among the young, inviting us to descend from our chairs and to seek new pastoral and theological paths to make people understand the beauty of being Christians. It is an invitation to make the desert blossom, offering solid proposals that go beyond intimacy and embrace the drama of history.

Let us try to devise some paths so that this search of the young, with the young, may become an effective pastoral action and theologically grounded in the Theo-drama of Christ that generates salvific action and Hope. A precious interpretative key emerges every year, at the beginning of the penitential season, in conversations with a dear friend who always reminds me that Lent is her favourite liturgical season. The reason, translated into theological language, is illuminating: Lent is the journey in which one is called to enter physically and spiritually into the drama of Christ, to immerse oneself in His deepest, highest and most beautiful action.

All the other liturgical mysteries – Christmas, Ordinary Time, the Marian solemnities – find their centre of gravity and their perfect convergence precisely here, in the dramatic and salvific action of Jesus. Here our thought inevitably turns to the brilliant intuition of Hans Urs von Balthasar. In his monumental Theo-Drama, the great Swiss theologian reminds us that Revelation is not a static picture to be observed, but a drama in which God enters personally, committing Himself to history. He writes:

«God […] is like a poet. Hence it is understandable that He finds Himself in evil and in all the filth… He Himself is everywhere on the scene, observing, continuing to compose, in a certain sense with poetically impersonal ways, attentive, so to speak, to everything» (2).

Man is thus torn from the condition of a mere spectator and drawn to play his part in Christ, since:

«This whole existence can be understood – in its relation to the Cross and from the Cross – as a drama» (3).

Here lies the heart of the proposal to offer to our young people. We must bring them back to live the drama of Christ, to understand that Christianity is the boldest adventure in which the infinite intertwines with the finite. We must help them insert their action, their failures, their frustrated hopes and their disorientation into the victorious action of Jesus. When a young person understands that his suffering and aspirations have been taken up by the Son of God on the “stage” of the Cross, secularization suddenly loses its deceptive charm.

Let us therefore look to this Lent, guided by the magisterium of Leo XIV, with unshakeable optimism and deep hope. Despite the shadows of our age, the Holy Spirit continues to awaken in the hearts of the new generations a hunger and thirst for the Absolute that no human logic will ever be able to satisfy. Accompanying young people in this exodus toward freedom, becoming their companions on the journey so that they may rediscover the dazzling beauty of faith in Christ, is the most exciting challenge that the Church of today is called to face. And the victory, in the drama of redemption, has already been assured to us.

Santa Maria Novella, Florence, 8 March 2026

.

NOTES

(1) J.D.. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Boston–Toronto, Little, Brown and Company, 1951, ch. 22.

(2) Hans Urs von Balthasar, Theo-Drama: Theological Dramatic Theory, Vol. I: Prolegomena, San Francisco, Ignatius Press, 1988, p. 30.

(3) Hans Urs von Balthasar, Theo-Drama: Theological Dramatic Theory, Vol. IV: The Action, San Francisco, Ignatius Press, 1994, p. 368.

.

.

THE DESERT, THE EXODUS AND THE SCENARIO: YOUNG PEOPLE AND LENT WITH POPE LEO XIV

"How rare it is to find adults who become, personas, companies and institutions that admit to having been wrong! Hoy, among us, It is precisely this possibility.".

— Theologica —

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

.

«I always imagine all those children playing in that huge rye field… Thousands of children and no one around, no adult, I mean, only me. And I'm standing on the edge of a terrible precipice. And all I have to do is catch everyone who's about to fall off the cliff.; if they run without looking where they are going, I have to come out from somewhere and grab them. "That's the only thing I would have to do all day.".

This famous and moving confession of the protagonist The catcher in the rye by J.D.. Salinger (1) resonates, decades later, with impressive prophetic relevance. Holden Caulfield, in his restless and disenchanted wandering, deeply despises the falsehood of the adult world, empty conformity, what today we could define as the hypertrophy of the ephemeral. Desperately seeking authenticity, a safe place where innocence is not corrupted. Were those times long gone?? Are we sure? I don't believe it. The youth of today, immersed in our complex and turbulent change of era, They find themselves precisely on that terrible precipice, one step away from the dizzying emptiness of the loss of meaning.

We live in unprecedented times. The post-pandemic era has left deep scars in the souls of the new generations, scars that add to the anxieties of a society in which artificial intelligence, predictive algorithms and the new logic of the global economy run the risk of reducing the human person to a mere piece of data for consumption and processing.. In this scenario, as trainers, theologians and pastors, we find two fundamental tensions that cross the hearts of young people. The first is the absence of future and projects: The new generations have difficulty imagining their tomorrow because they are not provided with the coordinates to plot it; your hopes, too often, have not been integrated into a path of faith capable of giving breath to existence.

The second tension, even more radical, It is the search for a deep meaning that surpasses the ephemeral, the urgent need for something – or rather Someone – that does not disappear with the change of fashions, of Amazon advertising and the various digital platforms. However, at least according to our pastoral and human experience, We can affirm with certainty that under the ashes of this crisis a live fire burns. The extraordinary experience of the Summer Youth Jubilee 2025 It was not a straw fire, an isolated event consumed in the enthusiasm of a few days. Was, on the contrary, a real beginning. Many have begun to walk down that path. We cannot guarantee it for the two million young people present, but the ferment is undeniable. Young people are increasingly attracted to the sacred. Paradoxically, precisely the aggressiveness of a secularization reduced to commercialization and hypertrophy of the ego is pushing new generations to look elsewhere, to flee from a materialism that does not feed the spirit. They seek the God of Jesus Christ, a God who knows how to value them, that shows them their strengths but also helps them face the necessary renunciations of themselves.

The beginning of this Lent 2026 was marked by a beautiful and programmatic homily by the Holy Father Leo XIV, who for the first time heads as Pontiff on the penitential path. The Pope captured with extraordinary lucidity this dynamic of youthful search, offering a theological and pastoral reading that shakes us from our laziness. In his message for Ash Wednesday Mass, Pope Leo XIV affirms: Opposing the living God against idolatry — Scripture teaches us — means daring freedom and rediscovering it through an exodus, of a path. No longer paralyzed, rigid and secure in our positions, but gathered together to move and change. How rare it is to find adults who become, personas, companies and institutions that admit to having been wrong!

«Hoy, among us, It is precisely this possibility. And it is no coincidence that many young people, even in secularized contexts, perceive the call of this day more than before, Ash Wednesday. are they, the young, who clearly understand that a more just way of living is possible and that there are responsibilities for what does not work in the Church and in the world. It is necessary, therefore, start from where you can and with those who are willing. “Now is the favorable time, “Now is the day of salvation.” (2Color 6,2). Let's feel, therefore, the missionary reach of Lent, not to distract us from working on ourselves, but to open it to so many restless and good-willed people who seek paths for an authentic renewal of life., on the horizon of the Kingdom of God and his justice" (Homily at the Holy Mass for the blessing of the ashes, 18 February 2026).

here is the key: Lent is not an intimate withdrawal, but an exodus. and who, more than the young, is structurally ready to get going? The Pope keenly observes a dynamic that reveals to us adults:

"How rare it is to find adults who become, personas, companies and institutions that admit to having been wrong! Hoy, among us, It is precisely this possibility.".

Today the Church is experiencing an ambivalent phase: experiences an undeniable decline of its oldest institutional forms, but at the same time witness a silent and powerful spiritual growth, a return to essentials. In this confusion, in which we are not always able as an ecclesial community to offer adequate responses, young people desperately ask for new “reference points”. Firm points necessary to decipher reality, to not be carried away by the ideologies of the moment and to resist the spiritual desert.

Pope Leo XIV emphasizes precisely this aspect: the young. Young people are not looking for a perfect Church, but a credible Church, able to admit its limits and get back on track. From here arises the urgency of a new mission, as the Apostle Paul recalls quoted by the Pontiff: «Now is the favorable time, "Now is the day of salvation." (2Color 6,2). The Pope sends us as missionaries among young people, inviting us to come down from our chairs and look for new pastoral and theological paths to make us understand the beauty of being Christians.. It is an invitation to make the desert bloom, offering solid proposals that overcome intimacy and embrace the drama of history.

Let's try to imagine some paths so that this search of the young, together with the young, becomes an effective pastoral action and theologically founded on the Theodrama of Christ that generates saving action and Hope. There is a precious reading key that emerges every year, at the beginning of penitential time, in conversations with a dear friend who always reminds me how Lent is her favorite liturgical season. The motivation, translated into theological language, It is illuminating: Lent is the path in which we are called to enter physically and spiritually into the drama of Christ, to immerse ourselves in its deepest action, taller and more beautiful.

All other liturgical mysteries —Christmas, Ordinary Time, the Marian solemnities — find their center of gravity and their perfect convergence precisely here, in the dramatic and saving action of Jesus. It is here that thought inevitably refers us to the brilliant intuition of Hans Urs von Balthasar. In its monumental Theodramatic, The great Swiss theologian reminds us that Revelation is not a static picture to attend, but a drama in which God personally enters, engaging with history. He writes:

"God […] is like a poet. From there it is also explained that he is found in evil and in all the filth... He himself is everywhere on the scene, observa, continue composing, in a way with poetically impersonal ways, attentive, so to speak, to everything" (2).

The man is then torn from his condition as a mere spectator and is drawn to play his own part in Christ, since:

«This entire existence can be understood – in its relationship with the cross and from the cross – as a drama» (3).

Here is the heart of the proposal that we must offer to our young people. We must bring them back to live the drama of Christ, to understand that Christianity is the most daring adventure in which the infinite is intertwined with the finite. It is necessary to help them insert their action, your failures, their frustrated hopes and their bewilderment in the victorious action of Jesus. When a young person understands that his pain and aspirations have been assumed by the Son of God on the “stage” of the Cross, secularization suddenly loses its deceptive charm.

Let's look at this Lent then, guided by the teachings of Leo XIV, with unwavering optimism and deep hope. Despite the shadows of our time, The Holy Spirit continues to stir up in the hearts of new generations a hunger and thirst for the Absolute that no human logic can ever satisfy.. Accompany young people in this exodus towards freedom, become companions on the journey to rediscover the dazzling beauty of faith in Christ, It is the most exciting challenge that the Church today is called to face. and the victory, in the drama of redemption, it has already been assured to us.

Santa Maria Novella, Florence, a 8 March 2026

.

NOTES

(1) J.D.. SALINGER, The catcher in the rye, Torino, Einaudi, 1961, cap. 22.

(2) H.U. FROM BALTHASAR, Theodramatic, Vol. I: Introduction to drama, Jaca Book, Milan, 1980, 30.

(3) H.U. FROM BALTHASAR, Theodramatic, Vol. IV: The action, Jaca Book, Milan, 1986, 368.

.

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