Homiletics of the Fathers of The Island of Patmos

- homiletics -

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

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

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Author
Ariel S. Levi di Gualdo

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jesus Christ be praised!

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Zoverallo di Verbania, 28 June 2020

House of the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians

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