There are many houses and fathers: the prodigal son returns home to the one of the only true Father who is the source of grace and the center of the mystery of salvation

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L'Angolo di Girolamo Savonarola: Catholic homiletics in lean times

THERE ARE MANY HOMES AND FATHERS: THE PRODIGAL SON RETURNS TO THE ONLY HOME OF THE ONLY AND TRUE FATHER WHO IS THE SOURCE OF GRACE AND THE CENTER OF THE MYSTERY OF SALVATION

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The prodigal son returns to his father's house where waiting for him there is no sociological fashion, above all, no political correctness. Because God is always beyond any fashion, but above all human political correctness, because God is all without beginning and without end, why not end it is his love, for this eternal is his mercy, for this one is his home, not many; and the only home of the one Father remains in the base centuries, source of grace and the center of the mystery of salvation, culmination and perfect center of unity.

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Author
Ariel S. Levi di Gualdo.

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Jesus Christ be praised !

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The Prodigal Son, work of the sculptor Arturo Martini, 1927 [Rest Home Jona Ottolenghi, Acqui Terme]

In this Sunday glad the fourth week of Lent, the liturgy gives us one of the pages of the Holy Gospels of the best known: the Parable of the Prodigal Son [see text of the liturgy, WHO]. To claim to have legitimate paternal inheritance while the father was still alive was a terrible outrage in the Jewish world, but not only in it. It would be like saying: "I have no time to wait for you to pull the bucket, what to give me right away what belongs to me ". Here then it is that the father gives an initial and a final response: Start the answer is the action that fulfills the son's request, confirming him master of his freedom and owner of the goods which he claimed; the final answer is an act of pure love, which in itself contains a lesson based on the maturity and true mercy; the mercy that comes from God, who has no fear to welcome sinners and eating with them, with all due respect to the scribes and Pharisees of yesterday and today.

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The prodigal son of a far country and he squanders all loose living, until it starts to feel the pinch. "He would gladly have fed on the pods that were fed the pigs, "But no one gave him anything". Honestly it is hard to think that the boy did not have a chance to take for themselves the husks; and this should call our attention to the phrase: "No one gave him anything", referring to this young man who had lost everything. That is to say that no one fed him with love. He devoured his substance with many prostitutes, but he had not been devoured by love sincere and passionate about a single woman. So it is the lack of love generates in him a strong crisis, because most of the physical needs he suffers for human needs. The love which until earlier had received, It generates in him a feeling of fear, resulting in tender nostalgia.

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We do not know if the young man begins to understand that you have lived a life devoid of love, or to understand that out of love had lost their freedom to enter into the spiral of fear, hidden anguish and guilt. The man, which itself remains a mystery, He can not live without love; his life is senseless, if he meets the love from which it can come true freedom: "In love there is no fear, but perfect love casts out fear " [GV 4, 18-19].

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At that point the young man begins to question: "How many hired servants of my father's have bread enough and I perish with hunger! I will wake up, I go to my father ... ". In these words prevails not have a sense of pain for the father abandoned, or for its inability to give and receive love; It seems to prevail rather the situation of hardship and extreme need that push him to go home, Perhaps even more folded on itself. For a selfish need is for a party and selfish need decides to return. All this marks his first start and, albeit moved by discomfort and need, and he moves back to his father. "While still far away his father saw him, he took pity on him, He ran to meet, and he fell on his neck and kissed him ". These five words we open their doors on the essence of true love. Seeing someone still far means that in our hearts we were waiting for him. Try compassion means that you do not think more to injury received, on the contrary it is willing to open their hearts and to think of the suffering, no matter what happened. Christian The eternal challenge is in fact to humanely accommodate those who have hurt us, raising the evil from the ground when it falls, instead of raging at him with that spirit of revenge that has nothing to do with justice, even with the right and sometimes necessary punishment to compete for the best good of the person, but above all for its recovery.

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running meeting to the other equivalent to removing it from any uncomfortable taking the first step that breaks the deadlock, This prerogative typical of the great, certainly not of little men who live by grudges, spite and revenge. Throw to a person's neck, in the Jewish culture of the time was not a gesture of circumstance but of deep warm love and extreme confidence.

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Here is the big brother who "became angry and refused to go», beginning to list their merits and demerits of the brother to his father, complaining they have not received anything from his father. "Son, all that is mine is yours ", He reassures the father for his due. In this way the parable stresses that reasoning so also the elder son, in a different but similar moves away to his left and out of the house as the youngest brother, showing a clear rejection of the action of grace. Therefore the Father, that "emotional" meeting was going on at the prodigal son, Now comes a new meeting to the eldest son, explaining both his love for children is free. No One, it has the right to be loved; from any page of the Gospel you get this kind of law, if anything, it yields a duty: to love. From the various steps and articulate the Gospel we can also derive how often love is tragically one-sided, He donated one side with divine power, not accepted and welcomed other human aridity. God loves us not because we deserve it, but because he is the source of love. God can not help but to love, It is not capable; we are, able to help but be loved.

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Like the prodigal son has lost the love of the Father away from him, the eldest son does not have the Father's right to love because it has not strayed. In this same mistake we fall we children of the Church, we priests first, that much of the People that God has entrusted to us to serve, We acquired no right to salvation, only a duty to respond much more and much better than others for what Christ has given us, through the mystery of his participation in the ministerial priesthood.

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How many times do we suffer the Father who can not help but love, feeling like the eldest son of an injustice parable his love and mercy toward his brother offender? How much it is, especially in these times of serious crisis through the Church, We run integral with heat to embrace all that is not Catholic, But at the same time showing little love, sometimes even open rebellion against our Church, turning his back to the brothers and sons of the living members of Christ, which it is the Church, his mystical body? And on this earth, the Christ, He has established only one Church, worth remembering from time to time, considering that soon we will proclaim in the profession of faith, the unity of the Church, not the multiplicity of churches [the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed]; reminds without the possibility of erroneous theological interpretations one of the main documents of Vatican Council II, the The light.

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This is also a way to meditate on the parable of the prodigal son who returns to the house of his father, where waiting for him there is no sociological fashion, above all, no political correctness. Because God is always beyond any fashion, but above all human political correctness, because God is all without beginning and without end, why not end it is his love, for this eternal is his mercy, for this one is his home, not many; and the only home of the one Father remains in the base centuries, source of grace and the center of the mystery of salvation, culmination and perfect center of unity.

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In the unity the Father created us, and awaits you with open arms, the perfect unity of his body which is the Church, the beloved prodigal son hidden inside each of us, so that his children can be "completely one that the world may know that you sent me and have loved them even as you loved me" [GV 17, 23].

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From the island of Patmos, 30 March 2019

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And available Book of Masses for the dead of The Island of Patmos [see WHO]

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7 replies
  1. orenzo
    orenzo says:

    But do not forget that the Justice of the Father, although it seems to have favored the younger son, It not economically puts them on the same plane: should never be forgotten that, in the end, Father remembers the eldest son, remained with him, that “… all that is mine is yours ..”, or that all of the assets is his and not his younger brother.

  2. Elena
    Elena says:

    Caro Father, I explained how we interpret the statements of the Pope about the fact that the conversion of non-Christians and non’ our mission?
    https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-pope-morocco/conversion-is-not-your-mission-pope-tells-catholics-in-morocco-idUKKCN1RC0FJ
    Since recently re-converted (from about 3 years I came home, as she says, the only real home), I do not hide my confusion and even sincere sorrow in seeing so many contradictions in the Church. E’ Clearly none of us go around mo’ a Jehovah's Witness, but’ unless we witness our faith, what are we doing? I apologize if sometimes I will ask the’ clarifications and advice in matters of faith and doctrine, but I prefer to be well catechized that waffling. How well you see, now every lay person feels entitled to preach, prophesy and comment the Gospel. I already have’ wrong for a long time and I regret to see attitudes and even false doctrines that was in false religions / syncretism / esotericism that once followed. If I wanted to make less effort, I would be where I was before, doing yoga and meditation! I know this discomfort and’ common to many…

    • father ariel
      Ariel S. Levi di Gualdo says:

      Elena face,

      I could not hear and read any speech, nor have I been able to see television services or other, because these days have been very busy to administer confessions to several priests and Catholic faithful who wanted to receive this precious Sacramento before Easter.

      Look, mia way, the thing is very simple, because what they do has told God in Christ all the power of the risen:

      « “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned. And these signs will accompany those who believe: in my name they will cast out demons, speak with new tongues, they will take snakes in hand and, if they drink any deadly, it shall not hurt them harm, lay hands on the sick and they shall recover”. The Lord Jesus, after talking with them, He was taken up into heaven and sat down at the right hand of God.
      And they went forth and preached everywhere, while the Lord worked with them and confirmed the word with the prodigies that accompanied it " [MC 16, 9-20].

      "The eleven disciples, in the meantime, They went to Galilee, the mountain where Jesus had appointed them. When they saw, they worshiped him; but some doubted. And Jesus, approaching, he told them: “I have been given all authority in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. there, I am with you always;, until the end of the world”» [MC 28, 16-20].

      Etc …

      How do you see, how to live, what to do and how to do it, Christ taught us God. And we seguiteremo to follow scrupulously this teaching, because he told us "Heaven and earth will pass, but my words will not pass " [Mt 24, 35], whereas, other words, or even the same apostolic journeys, pass, rather: They come and go …

      So is very serene.

  3. Antony
    Antony says:

    ” To these faithful I have always responded: do one thing, go to the priest and ask the celebration of a Mass for the souls of your dead, and giving its free offer. After he celebrated the Holy Mass of suffrage - who will celebrate - at that point to ask screeners: but the requiem Masses, Can they not celebrate for the souls in Purgatory? ”

    Meanwhile, the player has paid off handsomely and maybe. It is best to first ask the priest if he believes the existence of purgatory? Then consider if you should seek another who believes in what he does?

  4. Elena
    Elena says:

    This is’ undoubtedly the most parable’ emblematic in our faith, perhaps the most’ also known among the nonbelievers. However, and’ It was constantly abused to reiterate a sterile and dangerous misericordismo. In his homily yesterday my pastor did not fail must emphasize (but then I hear a speech like that every Holy Sunday) that we must not doubt that God always forgives, indeed we have already’ forgiven, regardless. But the part where it says that he and his son’ repented, maybe even for convenience at the beginning, but then he and’ however converted, where is’ over? I am alas’ aware of my mistakes, indeed sins, and their dire consequences. I know that God is waiting for me with open arms but the pain and trials and through part of the healing path, To deny this truth’ to all sinners, in my opinion, It means removing the possibility’ of salvation, I mean that eternal. Heaven and’ constantly mentioned in Church, the possibility’ to finish all’ Hell or Purgatory’ totally canceled, why'?

    • father ariel
      Ariel S. Levi di Gualdo says:

      Elena face,

      I reply to her claim: "Paradise is constantly quoted in Church, the possibility of going to Hell or Purgatory is completely erased, why?»

      … simply because for half a century in this part we are seeing various return heresies. One of these is the ἀποκατάστασις [apokatástasis, the return to the state of origin]. In short: according to this doctrine, Hell exists, But, the end of time, It will be a re-generation that will bring everything to its original state and also the condemned souls will be saved, because it would not be acceptable that the mercy of God allows the damnation of souls forever; then hell exist, ma “in time”, not eternal.

      This doctrine was condemned in the fifth council of the Church celebrated in Constantinople in 553 which settled:

      "If anyone says or feels that the punishment of demons and impious men is temporary or that it will end after a certain time, ie there will be a re-establishment (apocatastasis) demons, or the wicked men, let him be anathema ".

      As I told you, many of the old heresies today are resurfaced, and in even more virulent way, with the difference that yesterday, They were condemned, today are made instead fall within the scope of the “free theological debate” or better than the “legitimate expression of different opinions”.

      When a heresy becomes a “simply different opinion”, happens that today we have before.

      In the early seventies, in the classrooms of the Pontifical Gregorian University he was taught quietly that Purgatory does not exist and that it was a pure literary invention of Dante Alighieri. This was also taught with great ignorance, because the doctrine of Purgatory in the Christian era dates back to the second century, but already in the Old Testament literature I was not raised to the purification of souls.

      While these teachings were disseminated, The Holy Pope Paul VI was moaning in pain, He suffered and moaned, Finally stating that, ohibò … "From some fissure the smoke of Satan has entered". So he continued to suffer and groan, while quietly they taught these and other similar doctrines …

      In many priests he has thus undermined the idea that Hell forever would be a real contradiction of divine mercy, so they do not have the ability to connect it to two elements that then constitute the very principle of non-contradiction of God, that are: freedom and the free will given to man made in his image and likeness.

      If the reward is eternal bliss, the other side of the coin, It can not be a “Hell in time”, but an eternal hell, the result of man's free choice and his
      stubborn closing the grace of God, because both the bliss is eternal damnation, They are placed both in a dimension of eternity in which it would be possible to apply the eternal bliss and temporality Hell, would be in contradiction to both the freedom and free will is the concept of the eternal God, living and true.

      I have often welcomed penitents who asked me if Purgatory really existed, because that, and the pastor, They were told in no uncertain terms that it does not exist. To these faithful I have always responded: do one thing, go to the priest and ask the celebration of a Mass for the souls of your dead, and giving its free offer. After he celebrated the Holy Mass of suffrage – who will celebrate – at that point to ask screeners: but the requiem Masses, Can they not celebrate for the souls in Purgatory? Indeed: the souls of Paradise does not have any need oerché is they who pray and intercede for us, least of all those in need of Hell. So, for who celebrates, she, Masses of suffrage?

      And then listen to what responds.

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