CARDINAL CARLO CAFFARRA THE FEAST OF SAINT AUGUSTIN: "THE DAY YOU DO NOT endure sound Doctrine, TO TAKE YOUR TO FABLES …»

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The true Church and the Church - let's call it - of the newspaper is the same reality; is the same Church that, like Jacob, It rests firmly on one foot and the other lame. A great English writer said: "To the great saints and great sinners there is the Catholic Church; for people honest just the Anglican Church " [Oscar Wilde]

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The Patmos Island Fathers propose to the readers this homily delivered in Pavia on 28 agosto to S. E. Cardinal Carlo Caffarra, Archbishop Emeritus of Bologna, on the feast of St. Augustine, Bishop and Doctor of the Church. In this sermon we discovered product includes all the doctrinal and theological reasons with which recently, I and the Father Ariel S. Levi Gualdo we returned to enter without any false mercy, the deeds of certain "bad teachers" [cf. WHO, WHO] and words of certain dangerous "false prophets" [cf. WHO, WHO]. The words of Cardinal Carlo Caffara we have very heartened and made to feel less alone in advancing the gospel principle: « Let what you say be Yes, Yes ; no, no ; the more you from evil» [cf. Mt 5, 21-37].

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[…] Dear brothers and sisters,

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the three readings just proclaimed, together they have presented the reality of the Church in its historical condition. The church, as we are told in the first reading, is human unity rebuilt from obedience to the teaching of the Apostles and the "breaking of bread", that is, by the Eucharistic celebration. The unequivocal expression unit rebuilt by faith and the Sacrament, is the disappearance of the categories "My-Your": "They had all things in common".

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If the first reading we move to the Gospel, the presentation of the Church becomes dramatic. Beside the amiable and attractive figure of the Good Shepherd, They move ravening wolves. They are introduced into the flock of the Lord "to kidnap and disperse"; and in front of the wolves are shepherds-mercenaries who flee, afraid of the danger. But the second reading is even more dramatic. It promises to be for the Church "a day that will not endure sound doctrine […] refusing to listen to the truth to turn to fairy tales ". Dear friends, the contrast could not be more violent: a church built on listening to the Apostles' teaching, a Church traveled by "itching ears" different, by listening to storyteller, "According to their own desires".

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At this point we must not make the mistake to understand the Word of God in chronological order, as if each of the three readings declare it to different historical periods of the Church: to a holy and immaculate Church of the beginning happens long time a corrupt church and worldly. No, this is not what the Word of God is telling us. What then? And then we begin to go to the school of your Holy Patron, who, in a beautiful text, He answers our question.

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Augustine says the biblical text which tells the mysterious struggle between Jacob and the Angel. From it comes the father of the Jewish people blessed by God, but crippled for life. So writes Augustine: "The injured party of Jacob is bad Christians, because there is the same Jacob and blessing and limp ... Now the Church limps. Based firmly on one foot, the other is invalid ' [Speech 5,8; NBA XXIX, pp.94-95]. The Church which speaks the first reading is the same Church which Paul speaks in the second reading. The true Church and the Church - let's call it - of the newspaper is the same reality; is the same Church that, like Jacob, It rests firmly on one foot and the other lame. A great English writer said: "To the great saints and great sinners there is the Catholic Church; for people honest just the Anglican Church " [O. Wilde].

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"That's why" - writes Augustine - "The Church of Christ believers firm in the faith, but he also wavering faithful, and it can not be stable without the ones in faith, nor without those unstable ' [Speech 76, 3.4; NBA XXX/1, pag.519].

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How are we to live in our house which is the Church, in which, as she has just told us Augustine, There are strong Christians in faith and weak Christians? The Word of God heard answers that question, turning distinctly to us pastors and faithful to you. A we pastors : "Dearest ... proclaim the Word, be urgent in season and inappropriate occasion, do warn, reproaches, encourage through all patience and teaching ... do the work of the Gospel preacher ". What awful words are addressed to us Pastors! "You," Augustine says, addressed to you faithful "listen (the) carefully, we (the) We listen with trembling ... As for you listen as sheep of God and see how God has kept him safe. Whatever the behavior of those who are there at the head, that is to say of us, you are always safe for the security you donated the Shepherd of Israel. God does not abandon his sheep " [Speech 46.1 ... 2; NBA XXIX, pag.796.797].

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Our cities, our nation, our Europe They are facing a deadly crisis. The figure of their agony is the cold demographic winter we are experiencing. The word that God addresses to us pastors forces us to some questions: we are doing the work of proclaiming the Gospel and we are content to exhort people to good moral sentiments, such as for example tolerance, opening, hospitality? We must not be deaf to the real needs, the yearning need that dwells in the hearts of men and women living with anxiety the days dark and sad that we are going through. We do not have to, we pastors, It is deaf to the anguish that dwells in the heart of the fathers and mothers, who think with fear about the future of their children. It is necessary that the pastors of the Church testify, say that inside every moment, in every event live a Presence, a guest who guides everything that happens to the good of those who love God.

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Until about our spiritual ruin It will be celebrated the Eucharist, they will be resurrected. The pious moral exhortations let's leave them to others. When the 24 August 410 Alaric I, King of the Visigoths sacked Rome, in the general confusion - was from Brenno time since that has happened - Jerome wrote: "It's taken the city, that the whole world had occupied ' [Letter to Principia CXXVII, 12; RUSE, t. HVAC, pag.154, 16]. And he adds with an immense anguish: "The whole world perished in one city". Jerome could not see the future.

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Quite different was the reaction of Augustine. He does not suffer less for the news that come from Rome. "There have been transmitted horrible things: massacres, fires, robberies, killings, torture ... all we have moaned, often we cried, We just managed to console » [Discourse on the fall of Rome,6; PL 40, 715-724]. But he brought to completion The City of God, true cornerstone of our civilization. The holy bishop taught his faithful the right way of being in history; and inside the Empire ruins he sowed the seeds of a new civilization.

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What he wanted, what Augustine wanted, He was transmitting real hope, and just at a time when the whole empire, and in it his Africa were collapsing. On his death bed he knew that the Vandals had entered the city.

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Communicating the hope founded on faith which, giving up the project of a retired life of prayer and study, She made him able to really participate in the building of the Church and the city. The hope was that Augustine knew sends unshakable, because he was sure that God had come to live our troubled human story, and from within had saved. It is this God who gives us the right to hope, not just any God, but only the God who has a human face because it was made man.

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The Lord, therefore, face silenced on our lips of shepherds empty words, and put on our lips the words of truth. The Word of God is addressed also faithful to you. It tells you: "Do not be among those who no longer endure sound doctrine, but having itching to hear something new, not surround yourself with teachers who tell you what you have pleasure to hear you say, refusing to listen to the truth, content, look for fables ". But it is Jesus in the Holy Gospel tells you words of consolation. He tells you: "I am the gate for the sheep ... whoever enters through me, will be safe; come and out and find pasture ".

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Here's how he explains Agostino. "We can say that we enter when we gather in our inner selves to think, and we go out when we externalize through the action; and since, as the Apostle says, it is through faith that Christ dwells in our hearts, come to Christ means to think in the light of faith, while going out for Christ means to translate their faith into action before men " [Comm. the Gospel of John 45,15; NBA XXIV, pag.913]. there, dear faithful, What tells you the Good Shepherd: think in the light of faith; translate faith into acts.

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I conclude. In a paper against the Manichean, Augustine tells us the reasons why it remains in the Church. Here they are: "I stop keeps (in the Church) the consent of peoples and nations; I stop retains that authority initiated by the miracles, nourished by hope, increased by charity, confirmed the antiquity; I stop keeps the succession of Bishops on the same seat of Peter ... until the present Supreme Pontiff; Finally I stop it keeps the same name as the Catholic " [Against that of the Foundation Hands Letter 4.5; NBA XIII/2, pag.307].

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Dear faithful, listen to your Patron. In these times of great uncertainty still get active in the Church. We have real reasons to do so and beautiful. It is in it that we meet our Savior.

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© All rights of this text belongs to Cardinal Carlo Caffara. The text we have taken is a document published on the official website of the Cardinal [see WHO], from which the island of Patmos Writing has taken up and reported upon definition of all references.

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