Holiness, and from 2011 what a testimony and lament that «a universal cloudburst has broken out in the Church». If today you have decided to use my styles and phrasebooks, at least pay me the royalties
/in Actuality/by father arielHOLINESS, AND FROM 2011 WHAT A TESTIMONY AND COMPLAINT THAT «A UNIVERSAL NUBIFROOM HAS Erupted IN THE CHURCH». IF TODAY YOU HAVE DECIDED TO USE MY STYLES AND PHRASE BOOKS, AT LEAST PAY ME THE COPYRIGHTS
To all the bishops that yesterday, not being able to deny the obvious problem I raised about poisoning lobby gay inside the church, they clung to the form to the point of calling me blasphemous, Today I have a very serious question to ask, this: the Roman Pontiff who speaks of "faggotness" is blasphemous or else, much more simply, it was finally discovered after a decade that his ghost-writer it's me?

Author
Ariel S. Levi di Gualdo
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In my book of 2011, titled And Satan became triune, still distributed today by our Edizioni L'Isola di Patmos, in paragraph V of Chapter Two I deal with this delicate topic:
«Gay priests and careerists punished and expelled? nope: they lobby and are warmed like snakes in the bosom giving life to pornocracy clerical».

In the narrative of this chapter I made use of an expression about which some bishops with particularly sensitive uteruses - and therefore easy to be attacked by itching - complained to my then Bishop, the late Luigi Negri of blessed memory, that I needed to be corrected and rebuked for having resorted to blasphemy. In fact, it happened that this good Prelate of mine at the time, just arrived at the plenary of the Italian Episcopal Conference of 2012, during the first available break he was assailed by the jeremiads of several of his brother Bishops, those who incidentally, much to be understood, of the "nubifrossing» were directly responsible, as well as guilty before God and before men. The sentence judged blasphemous was the following:
«In this new, highly de-virilized ecclesial dimension, it seems that something has really broken out in the Church nubifrossing universal"
Thirteen years later the Supreme Pontiff Francis, during the plenary assembly of the Italian Episcopal Conference this May 2024, speaking behind closed doors with the Bishops, perfectly aware that the matter would be reported to journalists within a few hours - certainly by some prelate who had felt stung to the core - he complained that "There is too much fagotism in the seminaries". Inviting the Bishops not to admit into our disastrous seminaries - which for years and years I have complained are real branches of the Gay village - people with homosexual tendencies. Pointing out and clarifying in another closed-door speech made to the same Bishops in May of 2018:
«If there is a doubt about homosexuality, it is better not to let anyone enter the seminary» (cf.. WHO).
To all the bishops that yesterday, not being able to deny the obvious problem I raised about poisoning lobby gay inside the church, they clung to the form to the point of calling me blasphemous, Today I have a very serious question to ask, this: the Roman Pontiff who speaks of "faggotness", is he blasphemous or, much more simply, it was finally discovered after a decade that his ghost-writer it's me?
Below is the excerpt of that fifth paragraph taken from Chapter Two of my work And Satan became triune, a book written between 2008 and the 2010, published at the suggestion of my then Bishop only at the end of 2011.
From the island of Patmos 29 May 2024
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GAY PRIESTS AND CAREER PEOPLE PUNISHED AND EXPOSED? NOTHING: THEY LOBBY AND ARE HEATED LIKE SNAKES IN THEIR BOMBS, GIVING LIFE TO CLERICAL PORNOCRACY
(And Satan became triune, Ariel S. Levi di Gualdo, Rome, 2011, Cap. II by. V)

A dirty body that gives off a strong odor of sweat should be stripped and washed thoroughly with soap and water, at the end of the wash it can be sprinkled with perfume; but if perfume is sprinkled on a dirty body that gives off a strong odor of sweat, the effect will be that the perfume mixed with sweat will end up making it stink more.
Involved in topics related to painful facts that afflict and humiliate the Church, at the end the prelate admonished me:
«The problem is not telling the truth but how it is said».
I replied:
«Jesus Christ did not die for the truths that the political and religious authorities wanted to hear, but for those truths that they were not willing to tolerate being merely sighed".
When the substance cannot be demolished, a last desperate defense is attempted by quibbling over the futile form, to best defend the right to spiritual blindness. When in fact it was not possible to rebuke Jesus for having healed a blind man by restoring his sight, he reproached himself with harsh criticism for having performed a miracle on the Sabbath, on a day when work is not permitted (cf.. GV 5, 2-16).
Or maybe we are, we modern Christians, so different from the Pharisees of ancient Judea? When we talk about Pharisees we tend to do so in the past tense, as if they were only one of the many Jewish sects present in Judea at the time; while the Pharisee is a being without time and religious connotation, it is a lifestyle that can take root anywhere, in every time and religious culture.
The desire for career, far from being a modern quirk, according to the words of Saint Paul it also existed in the apostolic era; even then there were those who aspired to the episcopate, so much so that the Apostle exhorts:
«What I tell you is worthy of belief: if one aspires episcopate, wants an excellent task, but the bishop must be irreproachable, husband of one wife, sober, prudent, decent, hospitable and capable of teaching, not addicted to wine, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not attached to money" (The Tm 3, 1-3).
Today the difference lies in the erotic-psychological approach. The careerists of the past were manfully driven by motivations that in the councils of the first centuries generated heated doctrinal battles, in subsequent political and religious struggles; social animals who believed in something beyond themselves and their lust for career.
For men of the past, making a career in the ecclesiastical world was a means of winning a battle, to impose their doctrine, their social or economic policy.
Today's is a careerism that comes to the surface in a world of little men e somewhere retreat into the hedonism of a social psychology that has reached the peak of collective narcissism. To the virility of the males who yesterday fought for the investitures and who were willing to risk their lives and the health of their souls to be able to impose what they believed in, the androgynous softness has been replaced by an aesthetic vision of social being and appearance, even through a privileged place like the Church, a set of international coverage which can bring bishops and priests into the limelight of the mass media, or in close contact with the world of politics, of culture and the public and private economy.
In this new highly devirilized ecclesial dimension, it seems that something has really broken out in the Church nubifrossing universal, led by a fierce army of monsignorini in career, friends of friends of friends... who have not yet been kicked out of the Roman Curia and who proliferate within it through the good offices of friends of friends of friends, often removing or keeping away everything pure that could enter it. But having to please and please to achieve the goal of pleasing and pleasing oneself, by intrinsic nature aesthetic careerists are not inclined to make decisions, this would imply the psycho-physical possession and use of those masculine attributes necessary to take on responsibilities, which in every society entail the high risk of pleasing two men and remaining unwelcome to two thousand, from time to time to be celebrated twenty years after their departure as far-sighted spirits by twenty million men against the negative opinion of only two obstinate fools.
The media ended up distorting the episcopal figure and in the collective imagination the bishop was transformed into a sort of Queen Elizabeth, representative icon for stamps, punts and Buckingham Palace parades. They speak of the bishop as a religious subject responsible for "representing his Church", starting from the first of the bishops, the Supreme Pontiff, which “represents the Catholic Church”. Which is true but also ambiguous, if the hand is pressed on those concepts of "representation" which have erased from the collective memory that the fact that the bishop is called to govern his Church, before being its religious "representative" and merely managing director, or worse, bankruptcy trustee [1].
Today the pastoral and spiritual figure of the apostolic father who governs the family has been lost, guaranteeing the protection and education of children and also making the bite of authority and discipline felt when necessary.
Bishops govern the particular Churches entrusted to them as vicars and legates of Christ, with advice, persuasion, the example, but also with authority and sacred power, which, however, they do not use except to edify their flock in truth and holiness, remembering that whoever is bigger must do like the smaller one, and who is the boss, come chi serve (cf.. LC 22, 26-27).
This power, which they personally exercise in the name of Christ, it is its own, ordinary and immediate, although its exercise is ultimately subject to the supreme authority of the Church and, within certain limits, with a view to the usefulness of the Church or the faithful, can be restricted.
«By virtue of this power bishops have the sacred right and before God the duty to give laws to their subjects, to judge and regulate everything that pertains to worship and the apostolate […][2] Under this, the Bishops govern the particular Churches entrusted to them, as vicars and delegates of Christ, with advice, persuasion, the example, but also with authority and sacred power, which, however, they do not use except to edify their flock in truth and holiness" […][3].
Lose all this, it means losing the spiritual and pastoral sense of the episcopate in the Church.
In his most important liturgical actions the bishop is called to proceed with the rod, the pastoral staff, which is a sign of his spiritual government and his Christian and psychological virility.
Even more so today it makes you blush with embarrassment, when certain aesthetic masters of ceremonies cover the poor bishops with cascades of lace and lace, which are more reminiscent of the bewitching female underwear rather than the vestments of the male Fathers of the Church.
Modern aesthetic and media careerism is based on a singular element: he is not virile but ephebic, feminine; asexual at best, at worst it leads to real sexual disorder due to obvious consequences of character.
In the unbalanced relationship with the ecclesiastical career, There are tremendously high numbers of individuals influenced by the typical instinct of the homosexual narcissist. And for the Church machine there is no worse engulfment than the devious personalities of repressed gays, ended up in considerable numbers like foxes in the henhouse in delicate roles where they end up "not to serve but to serve themselves"[4], not to please God, but to please others and please oneself, instead of exercising the power to decide according to charity and justice what that episcopal chair or that office of curia requires for the good of the Church and its faithful.
Hiding the truth does no one any good, especially to those who have to announce it to the world.
If we really want to seriously address this very dramatic problem, we must start from a sad fact of life: today, within the secular and religious clergy men, the number of homosexuals is alarmingly high, and is divided between gay gay practitioners and repressed; the most active seconds of the first exercise of their exhausting psychological homosexuality. Homosexuals for repressed psychic character in the body, They are far worse than those who practice homosexuality physical, causing always within the Church of sometimes enormous damage sometimes irreparable, always aiming to place itself in the highest positions and key government roles, the better to strengthen a powerful and united lobby inside, straight on pornocratici criteria.
what the pornocrazi to[5] is a drama that wounds the Church striking with deadly sinking. recent term of French origin, pornocrazi to It indicates a form of government characterized by the pernicious influence of fops and prostitutes on the men in charge of the exercise of power. Literally meaning "of prostitutes government", or government based in large part on the typical mechanisms of prostitution.
The hallmark of the pornocrazi to, It is not so much bartering for sexual favors with privileged positions, as in the usual relations between powerful and prostitute, because these power relations have not always been sexual connotations, species within certain pockets decaying, that they have formed in the past and present horrible ballast for the Church, where often the mechanism, far from being the completely natural one of heterosexual sexuality, It is based on asexuality, or of pure homosexuals mechanisms, often more psychological than physical.
In pornocrazi to clerical, homosexuality practiced at the physical level is just the tip of mental homosexuality radicalized and went often to power.
With the exercise of its influence on man power prostitute, or gay-prostitute, not so much they can indirectly exercise their personal power, because similar role mechanisms have been repeatedly applied in a quasi-institutional of the legitimate spouses of kings, or their various buddies-gay.
What is particularly stressful in the Church, more than in the secular civil power, is the prostitute ability to create their own personal power at times almost absolute, which often replaces the authority of the powerful, which often survives the same powerful.
Consider for example the young and adolescent secretary from whose lips hung the powerful, and that after an impact on the exercise of the power of the prelate - who was appointed to serve, not to drive by hitting it with the arrows of Cupid -, when he is about to retire from office for new arrivals age limit, he is promoted bishop, taking the place - in rank and sacramental dignity - of his platonically in love master[6].
The use of the term prostitute rather than prostitute, in a male society like the ecclesiastical one it is not accidental, whereas in the Church the pornocrazi to it tends to have eminently male subjects as driving characters.
The latter is the dramatic case of the powerful gay lobby, which within the Church has been able to impact and influence the driving force of the whole for some decades Orb Cattolica: the promotion of priests to the episcopate.
Predating by many centuries the classification of men placed by Leonardo Sciascia on the lips of the character of his novel, St. Bernard of Clairvaux[7] who is not a fictional character but an extraordinary saint and doctor of the Church, In the 1145 he wrote to his disciple Bernardo dei Paganelli, became Supreme Pontiff with the name of Eugene III, greeting his election to the See of Peter with a Treaty good for every Pope, carefully tailored for him. In this writing Bernardo does not fail to point out that certain mellifluous pages and young men with hair following bishops and cardinals are not happy at all around the Holy Father..
Wise exhortation addressed to a newly elected Pontiff nine centuries ago by a future saint and doctor of the Church.
Today some can say that we were not warned well in advance, regarding the damage that can be caused by certain smooth pages and young haired men to whom Saint Bernard of Clairvaux refers?[8] O, if to the medieval language of this Doctor of the Church, we prefer Sciascia's literary one from the 20th century: «take me e somewhere»?[9]
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NOTE
[1] On the governing power of the bishop and his ministry: Christ the Lord, n. 8 e n. 11, Apostolic Exhortation Herdsmen, n. 42, n. 54, n. 55 and the following.
[2] Dogmatic Constitution on the Church The light, n. 27.
[3] Apostolic Exhortation Shepherds of the flocks, n. 43.
[4] Meditation of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger at the IX Station ofthe Way of the cross, Colosseum in Rome, 25 March 2005. Benedict XVI: Way of the cross 2005, Libreria Editrice Vaticana Publishing House.
[5] Italian term coined on the film by Catherine Breillat whose original title is Anatomy of Hell. Prod. France, 2004.
[6] N.d.A. edition of 2019 - Made of record as reported by the press: «In the summer of 2017 the Vatican Gendarmerie arrests Mons. Louis Capozzi, of fifty years, Secretary of Cardinal Francesco Coccopalmerio and officer second class at the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts, chaired by the cardinal. The fact: in his apartment located in the Vatican in the Holy Office building, Monsignor organized revels gay-based drugs, so much so that he was admitted to the Roman Pio XI clinic for detoxification therapies", cf.. Franca Giansoldati, The messenger, 29 June 2017; Francesco Antonio Grana, The Daily, 5 July 2017; Editorial, Free, 7 July 2017; Dominic Gramazio, The City of SalernO, 2 July 2017; Emanuele Barbieri, Correspondence Romana, 22 November 2017; Richard Cascioli, The New Compass Daily, 4 December 2017, etc..]. Referring to news they received from the inside of the Holy See, newspapers state that Monsignor "had already been proposed by the Cardinal to be raised to the episcopal dignity ', Francesco Antonio Grana, Daily fact, 28 June 2017. More than a year after the fact, journalists Maike Hickson and John Henry Westen LifeSiteNews they launch a piece of news later reported by the Vatican expert Marco Tosatti, pencil Court 11 October 2018 and Giuseppe Aloisi, The Journale, 11 October 2018 and various organs of Print: «Cardinal Francesco Coccopalmerio […] was present at party homosexual drug-based affair which the Vatican police raided in the summer of 2017 and he was arrested his secretary, Mons. Luigi Capozzi». At this news the same evening responds with a Tweet Cardinal Angelo Becciu, Prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, at the time of the incident Substitute of the Secretariat of State: «The news is baseless. I was the one to inform arrest of the priest Cardinal. Coccopalmerio end of the day, I did not find, for a mistake, the morning. The priest was not arrested during a phantom party, but in the courtyard of the house". Let's clarify everything: for over a year Cardinal Angelo Becciu allowed the newspapers to smear a priest by writing without ever being contradicted that «the arrest took place inside the apartment during a party gay a base drug», then, spent sixteen months - when at stake was pulled a cardinal - the former deputy to the Secretary of State, with timing diligent and sudden love for the truth, reports a Tweet that the arrest did not take place «during a phantom party» but «in the backyard» (!?) … «Il 29 August 2018 the roof of the Roman church of San Giuseppe ai Falegnami collapses", The Republic, 30 August 2018, whose title is held by Cardinal Francesco Coccopalmerio. After having shown this faithful history not subject to denial, perhaps it would be good to keep close tabs, in order to avoid further sharp drops, the Etruscan necropolis of Roselle Maremma, of which Cardinal Angelo Becciu is titular Archbishop, so the roof of the Roman church of San Lino, of which he holds the title of Cardinals.
[7] Monk and then Abbot of the Cistercian Order (Fontaine les Dijon 1090 – City under Ferté 1153). He founded Clairvaux Abbey and other monasteries, including Chiaravalle Abbey in Italy. Canonized in 1174, he was declared Doctor of the Church in 1830. In 1953 the Supreme Pontiff Pius XII wanted to dedicate the Encyclical to him: Doctor Mellifluus.
[8] N.d.A. edition of 2019 – When in 2009 As I was writing these lines, the following reflection escaped me: perhaps, St. Bernard of Clairvaux, indicating «mellifluous pages and young men with hair», that is to say the gays present in certain ecclesiastical courts of the time, it could have been based on the Free Gomorrhianus written a few decades earlier by San Pier Damiani (Ravenna 1007 – Faenza 1072), work in which he begs the Roman Pontiff to dismiss those guilty of the foul sins of homosexuality from the priestly and episcopal ministry, ephebophilia and pedophilia. However, a powerful force already existed at the time lobby gay, and the Supreme Pontiff replied that these desired severe measures would be taken only in the event of a repeat offense.
[9] Leonardo Sciascia: The Day of the Owl. Torino, 1960, Einaudi publishing house.
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The Pentecost of the "called alongside" as defender, rescuer and comforter
/in Homiletics/by Hermit Monk
Homiletics of the Fathers of The Island of Patmos
THE PENTECOST OF THE «CALLED ALONGSIDE» AS THE DEFENDER, RESCUER, COMFORTER
The Synoptic Gospels say that Jesus spoke of the Holy Spirit, descended upon him in baptism, he then promised it as a gift to the disciples, in particular for the hour of persecution, when the Spirit will be their true defense: speaking into them and teaching them what needs to be said.

Author
Hermit Monk
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The lectionary of the Italian Church presents per this Pentecost Sunday two passages taken from the Fourth Gospel which in truth are somewhat artificial constructions, as they are made up of verses belonging to different contexts. In this year B the text is composed of two verses where Jesus promises the disciples the Holy Spirit (GV 15,26-27) and by four others in which he specifies the action of the same Spirit in the days of the Church (GV 16,12-15). Jesus pronounces these words while he is still at the table with his disciples after the washing of their feet (cf.. GV 13,1-20) and communicates words of farewell, because "the hour has come to pass from this world to the Father" (GV 13,1). Here is the evangelical passage of the Solemnity:

Pentecost, fresco by Quirino De Ieso (1999)
"During that time, Jesus told his disciples: «When the Paraclete comes, which I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness about me; and you too bear witness, because you have been with me from the beginning. I have much more to say to you, but by the time you are not able to bear them. When he comes, the Spirit of truth, he will guide you to all the truth, because he will not speak for himself, but he will speak everything he hears, and he will tell you things to come. He will glorify me, because he will take from what is mine and declare it to you. Everything the Father has is mine; this is why I said that he will take from what is mine and announce it to you" (GV 15,26-27; 16,12-15).
The Synoptic Gospels they say that Jesus spoke about the Holy Spirit, descended upon him in baptism (cf.. MC 1,10), he then promised it as a gift to the disciples, in particular for the hour of persecution (cf.. MC 13,11 e par.), when the Spirit will be their true defense: speaking into them and teaching them what needs to be said. We find the same promise in the Gospel according to John (cf.. GV 14,26-27). It will come Parakletos (supplicant) a term that is not immediately understandable, the meaning of which is: «the one called next» as defender, rescuer and comforter. The sanctifying Spirit that Jesus, ascended to the Father, will send. Then the Spirit will bear witness to Jesus, just as the disciples themselves will do, who have been with him since the beginning of his mission. This is the decisive function of the Holy Spirit who, how he was "Jesus' inseparable companion" (Basil of Caesarea), after Jesus sent him from his glory to the Father, becomes the inseparable companion of every Christian.
He is that breath of God that Jesus breathes on the disciples after the resurrection and the very life of God which is also of Jesus becomes life in the disciples and enables them to be his witnesses. A synergy will be produced between the testimony of the Spirit and that of the disciples. And this regarding Christ. Even when men feel that Christians are strangers, in the persecutions or hostilities suffered by the world, in the power of the Spirit Christians will continue to bear witness to Jesus.
Pentecost then is the fullness of Easter. With it the Church celebrates the gift of the Spirit, on the one hand it recalls what God has already done in Jesus of Nazareth and on the other it invokes what is not yet, that is, the universal and cosmic extension of the energies of life and salvation deployed by God himself in the resurrection of Jesus. Pentecost is simultaneously celebration and invocation. The first reading of today's Solemnity (At 2,1-11) it shows the Spirit in his aspect of gift from above which makes the disciples capable of communicating the great actions of God in the languages of men. It is an openness to the languages and communication skills of others. The Spirit is thus at the origin of a mission that is at the same time one of inculturation, to reach the other where he is; and corresponding deculturation, so as not to announce as Gospel what is simply culture. Just as the Scripture says:
«The spirit of the Lord fills the universe and, embracing everything, knows every voice" (cf.. Sap, 1,7).
The second reading presents the fruits of the Spirit. He who is invisible makes himself recognizable by the fruits he produces in man if he welcomes his presence. The Spirit with his "indwelling" makes man go from being a closed and self-referential individuality, Paul alludes to this when he speaks of "satisfying the desires of the flesh" (Gal 5, 16-21); to be open to relationships with others and with God. Paul states: «The fruit of the Spirit, however, is love, gioia, pace, magnanimity, benevolence, goodness, fidelity, mildness, self-control… Therefore if we live by the Spirit, let us also walk according to the Spirit" (Gal 5, 22.25). Thus the Spirit shapes the face of the believer in the image of the face of Christ, guiding him on the path to holiness: fruit of the Spirit is the holy man.
In the second part of today's evangelical passage Jesus says a few more words about this divine breath which is the Spirit. He is aware of being the revealer of the Father as stated in the Johannine prologue: "It gave, no one has seen him: the only Son, who is God and is at the Father, it is he who has made him known " (cf.. exegetical Of GV 1,18, the greek explainer). He did it with events and words and above all by loving his people until the end (cf.. GV 13,1), but he also knows that he could have said many more things. Jesus warns us that there is a progressive initiation into the knowledge of God, a growth in this same knowledge, which cannot be given once and for all. In this way the disciple learns to know the Lord every day of his life, «from beginning to beginning, for beginnings that never end" (cf.. Gregory of Nyssa). The life of the disciple opens up to ever greater understanding and everything that a person experiences, thanks to the action of the Holy Spirit, acquires a new meaning in God. Each of us experiences it; the more we progress in personal life and in responding to the Lord's call in history, the more we know him: «In the illumination of the Spirit, we will see the true light that illuminates every man who comes into the world" (cf.. San Basilio).
“Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever” (EB 13,8), does not change, but the Spirit will guide us to the whole truth. These, sent to the disciples, remind them of his words (cf.. GV 14,26), it deepens them and new events and realities are illuminated and understood precisely thanks to the presence of the Holy Spirit. Christ is not succeeded by the Holy Spirit, the age of the Son is not followed by that of the Spirit, because the Spirit who proceeds from the Father is also the Spirit of the Son: “All that the Father has is mine”. Where there is Christ there is the Spirit and where there is the Spirit there is Christ. He is the perennial source of the Spirit who never runs out and always renews the Church, as John himself reminds us: «On the last day, the big day of the party, Jesus, pillow block feet, he shouted: «If anyone is thirsty, come to me, and let him who believes in me drink. As Scripture says: From her womb rivers of living water will flow. This he said of the Spirit that those who believe in him would receive: in fact there was not yet the Spirit, because Jesus had not yet been glorified" (GV 7, 37-39).
For this reason the Church continually invokes this water, the Spirit of the Father and of the Son, which is also the ever-creating breath of life, according to the words of the Psalm: «Send your Spirit, everything will be created and you will renew the face of the earth" (Shall 104, 30).
From the Hermitage, 19 May 2024
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Sant'Angelo Cave in Ripe (Civitella del Tronto)
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The disastrous episcopal appointments of a Church that despises and destroys talent to make ideology prevail
/in Actuality/by father arielTHE DISASTROUS EPISCOPAL APPOINTMENTS OF A CHURCH THAT DESPISES AND DESTROYS TALENT TO MAKE IDEOLOGY PREVAIL
Nhe 1960, while in the United States there was racial segregation between blacks and whites, abolished only 4 years later from Civil Rights Act, in Rome, the Tanzanian Laurean Rugambwa, newly elected cardinal, dressed in purple with ermine and cappa magna, he received a kiss on the knee from members of the most ancient pontifical nobility. Does the Holy Father Francis know these edifying pearls of history linked to a Roman curia kissing the hand of a black cardinal while in the United States blacks were not even allowed to ride public transport?

Author
Ariel S. Levi di Gualdo
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Take parish priests with consolidated experience and promoting them to the episcopate would not in itself be wrong, because what they vitally need the many small, but also in medium-sized Italian dioceses there is the figure of a bishop with pastoral experience, who knows how to deal with his priests and welcome and guide the portion of the flock of the People of God entrusted to him. But being a parish priest, or have been, It's not a guarantee at all, because the bishop is required to have a particular thoroughness that few parish priests have, especially those who, in order to reach the episcopate, managed to sew on themselves the “fortunato” curriculum of "frontier priest" or "periphery", essential and decisive under this pontificate. The Bishop must first of all know how to govern his priests with authority and authority, confirming them day after day in faith (cf.. LC 22, 31-34) then drive in a decisive and credible God's People.

Cardinal Laurean Rugambwa, archive photo, Vatican CITY,1960
Bishops must avoid the attitudes of the spineless who, in order to please everyone and not displease anyone, create situations of self-destructive paralysis, because in fact they do not govern their particular Church and let arrogance govern it, quarrels and priests arbitrarities divided among themselves, where light is only the arrogance of the strongest in the time that you are placed in the right places after collecting the worst weapons of blackmail. Priests in some dioceses, although representing a small number of three or four elements, they put three or four bishops in check and silenced one after the other, after making them understand that they had in hand instruments of blackmail both on the moral side both on the economic side to blow up an entire diocese, with all the implications of a criminal nature in the event that certain information reached the competent civil and criminal judicial authorities. And not a few Italian bishops, in such situations, They remained with their beautiful pastoral in his hand used solely as Liturgical trinket to do done anything, or rather yes, to only be extras on the theater scene.
The bishop must be a master of doctrine. And here note that I did not say an excellent theologian, but a master of doctrine, able to teach and if necessary enforce compliance with the Magisterium of the Church which the supreme guardian in his particular Church deposit of credit. However, considering the recorded homilies that were pronounced both for their installation in the chair and during the first acts of episcopal ministry by several of these bishops coming from parishes-existential-devices, the doctrine of several of them is not all that exciting; and when you don't know well and thoroughly the deposit of credit, safeguard it is not easy, although of course no limits to the grace of the Holy Spirit, which however is best not to challenge to the levels of certain unfortunate appointments.
The bishop must also be a connoisseur of law and have a strong natural sense of justice. And here you notice: I did not say that it should be a supremely doctor in canon law, but a person with the sense of entitlement, because if it is not, easily slip in free agency, factory all the worst injustices. Even in this case, many of the new recruits, They also leave a lot to be desired in this sense, despite having been parish priests Peripheral-existential for many years and presented themselves as champions of the poor Church for the poor which looks out for refugees and Roma.
The bishop is the supreme liturgist and celebrating the Eucharist depends on the validity of all the Masses celebrated in his own particular Church. And even in this case it is good to gloss over the sloppy manner and approximate with which certain bishops from parishes-existential-devices, true or presumed, They have been taken for years and years by many cameramen while celebrating liturgies that you may want to draw a veil.
Run the mode, both conformism, lead by different routes but both parallel to the same disaster. Indeed, before the conformist fashion of peripheral-existential bishops-parish priests, we experienced both the fashion of curial bishops with John Paul II and the fashion of professor bishops with Benedict XVI. these seconds, mostly linked to the last part of the pontificate of John Paul II and the subsequent pontificate of Benedict XVI, that realizing how inside the Church of the ferment of heresy or doctrinal errors had pushed up huge panettone, to remedy, instead of closing the factories of panettone, instead of stripping certain pontifical universities and pontifical universities of the title "pontifical", we begin to have more or less illustrious professors of theology appointed as bishops, often coming from these same factories of heresy, inside which were themselves the first and most pernicious speakers. Unfortunately these professors, some of them true theologians, others pure puffballs, over time they have sown so much damage around the dioceses that in many cases it will take decades before it can be remedied, especially when such serious damage are related to the priestly ordinations of many wrong subjects as such should never have become priests.
Problems are not solved by moving from one fashion to another, He has already done politics. Or perhaps the Church wants to repeat the mistakes of politicians? Does anyone remember the times when before the political fall to historic lows of credibility, Italian political parties attempted to entice voters by nominating actors, singers and players on the electoral roll? To tell the truth, a famous person was also nominated and elected pornstars. We want to repeat these same mistakes in the Church, pornstars included?
The problem is only to become bishops it is necessary to have been a parish priest, or professors of theology, or who work in the Curia duties. It is not in fact the role that makes holy man, but the man who sanctifies the role that has been appointed to. A good bishop can emerge from a suburban parish priest as from a luminary of theology, by an employee of the diplomatic service or by a priest who has served the Church in a hospital specialized in the care of terminally ill patients, from a missionary who spent many years of his life in the poorest villages of the Congo as well as from a researcher who spent much of his life inside historical archives and libraries, because it is the man who makes the good bishop, not the specific position he held. Otherwise we risk reasoning and assigning episcopates on the basis of ideological stereotypes, with the bleak results that end up shining in the sunlight today.
Talking about the drama of the self-candidates and the clerical mafia that promotes them, in a book of mine published at the beginning of 2011[1], speaking of the episcopate and of our natural vocation to holiness, written in the water of our baptism, It said that it is up to the Church to establish how consecrated in the sacrament of Holy Order should play and pay their grateful and valuable services; the assumption that what is at the basis of the nature of the sacrament of Holy Orders. It is unacceptable that the priests are proposed as candidates for the episcopate, or bishops propose to major metropolitan locations, office of the Roman Curia or the honorary title of Cardinals. Anyone, in direct or indirect way it did, the penalty should be excluded from any possibility of promotion. No one is in fact promoted and consecrated bishop for his personal prestige but to be a faithful servant and devoted to the particular Church entrusted to him, always bearing in mind that God became incarnate in Jesus not to be served but to serve (cf.. Mt 20,28). Therefore we should work towards a day to an important result: a Catholic clergy formed by secular and religious priests are well aware that being bishop of a large and important diocese or be pastor of a small country parish is equally dignified and important for the Church, within which the Bishop of the largest diocese and the parish priest of the small country church offer both an essential service, united by their very nature of servants.
In the Church there is precious inspiring figure and the high example of the Holy Bishop Carlo Borromeo, but there is just as valuable inspirational figure of no less high and example: John Mary Vianney, elected patron saint of priests not by chance. No wise mind would have ever sent Carlo Borromeo as parish priest to Ars e John Mary Vianney as bishop in Milan; but it is precisely the Church that is the only one, the only one to establish who should become bishop of Milan and who should become curate of Ars, to better develop its natural vocation to holiness and to preserve and save the faith of the People of God.
However, when common sense takes over from fashions or market strategies played on real advertising slogans, the risk we run is to put Giovanni Maria Vianney as the Bishop of Milan and Carlo Borromeo as the curate of Ars, with a sad consequent results: neither will become saints. The first, will not become holy because be an inappropriate subject as not up to the Bishop of Milan; The second one, will not become holy because it is an inappropriate subject as not up to the priest at Ars, and both sow damage to no end.
In the state in which we find ourselves, it is useless to look small, futile and clerical strategies, today targeted the baked professors and curial, tomorrow in the parish priests who have taken upon themselves in some way - or really clever joke - the smell of the poor and of those existential suburbs that seem to go out of fashion today. Each of these choices are only palliatives that lead to total failure. What in fact does not seem to enter into the ever smaller heads of certain ecclesiastical, is that to arrive at being truly perfect in unity (cf.. GV 17, 23) We must proceed if necessary with dramatic divisions, mindful that Christ the Lord also came to bring a sword and war, not just peace understood in the manner of dreamlike ideological pacifists (cf.. Mt 10,34), Mindful that sooner or later, at the right moment, wheat will be separated from the chaff, when it is certain that not even an ear of wheat will be sacrificed to tear out the weeds. That doesn't mean that: ups weeds that choke the good grain permanently, as we are doing these days (cf.. Mt 13, 24-30).
Today's fashions prevent golden eagles to access ecclesiastical offices where they could render excellent services to the Church. Because trends are always harmful, of whatever kind they are, including the current research of parish priests with past real or imagined between Caritas, the slums and Roma camps, because that means that in the present, a man of God of extraordinary human completeness, morale, theological, juridical and pastoral as Rafael Merry del Val, not only it would never became cardinal, but not even bishop and perhaps not even priest, because just the sound of his surname would turn up many noses who pretend to only want to smell the smell of sheep to take on themselves, without having at all understood what the Holy Father Francis wanted to say and convey to shepherds caring for souls by claiming to be shepherds with the smell of sheep on them (cf.. WHO). Nor ever he would have done any road a man like Giovanni Battista Montini, guilty of coming from a family of the old and rich Lombard bourgeoisie[2]. Let us not dwell on the unfortunate fates of the Church trendy today they would have fallen to someone like Eugenio Pacelli, which is better to ignore and move directly to Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli, but to the real, not to Santino from popular iconography. Today as today, the future St John XXIII, at the peak of the diplomatic career as apostolic nuncio in Paris, It would never become Patriarch of Venice - most ultra seventy -, after spending his entire life in the diplomatic service of the Holy See? Of course not, because if the logic had been applied fashionistas Today would have been tried definitely a pastor of some Veneto province that between 1945 and the 1950 he had enriched his CV after having dedicated himself to refugees and war orphans or for having served meals to the homeless left homeless after the Allied bombings of Italy.
If at certain bishoprics Bishops who have already gained pastoral experience in other dioceses where they have given good evidence of governance are usually sent., there is a reason, or not? If some Italian archbishop's offices have for centuries also cardinals locations, it is because there are ancient traditions linked to history and the past kingdoms and principalities of the Italian peninsula; this has established a tradition that is said to be maintained. Rules and habits can be changed and in fact, to do it, Peter does not have to ask anyone's permission. Limit it, if he wants, or if it has the necessary humility to do it, can ask people who are certain historical and ecclesial mechanisms may know them even better than him; but he alone, remains equipped with a full tank power to act as considers most appropriate. So that the current Patriarch of Venice was not created cardinal, perhaps to the person concerned does not affect anything, but the Venetians who have been accustomed to having a patriarch also awarded the honorary title of cardinal for centuries are very interested, so much so that they experienced this lack of a red hat as a humiliation, some even as a personal affront.
I understand that the Holy Father declared himself to be from "the other side of the world", However, this does not mean attempting other-worldly extravagances, because it is common ground that the Italian Church, its bishops and clergy, soprattutto alla sua storia bimillenaria, at least the same respect is due that the Holy Father shows he has for real or presumed refugees who disembark for an average of sometimes 700/800 per day in a country - ours - unable to contain and assist such a flood of people, because we are talking about 400.000/ 500.000 people per year who arrive in a territory - the Italian one - which is certainly not as large as Argentina.
To the Italian Church and its history at least the same respect that the Holy Father has for the inhabitants of the Roma camps is due, whose workers in the begging industry blaspheme Christ and all the saints along Via della Conciliazione, in front of the Papal Archbasilica of St. Peter, behind those who dare not give him money. It is not beautiful nor good, even for a Roman Pontiff, albeit surrounded by a "liberal" aura that only those who don't enter churches even for Christmas and Easter believe in, let it be understood: "I am and I do what I want". For us there is no doubt that you are Pietro, for your Lutheran or Pentecostal friends I don't know, but for us yes, you are Peter. Therefore, first establish precise rules, you have full authority to do so. Before Abolish customs and practices, then you should appoint a cardinal who you want and when you want, preventing a slice of your faithful, who for centuries they have been at the head of their diocese a bishop always created cardinal practices, they must ask themselves what they have done wrong to the Church and to the Holy Father to receive such a slap from him.
The Church needs its own strength and its own stability, which they contribute to some extent the traditions and customs of all accidental and quotas as such are changing and may be abolished at any time by the Supreme Shepherd. But I think that the least likely candidate to make the dangerous game to destabilization without first having established rules, is the Successor of the Prince of the Apostles, also because sooner or later, the People of God, that has never been a fool in the whole course of the history of salvation, You might begin to wonder: in which pro 'all this, but especially, at what price must we pay for the eccentric deeds of this subject who seems to be suffering from a great thirst for originality? And at least according to our increasingly empty churches, more than in front of faithful who ask themselves certain questions, we are faced with an increasingly numerous army of faithful who are so disaffected that they do not consider it useful to even ask questions, they prefer to desert or abandon the churches directly.
The Church cannot give up being mother and teacher beyond the time, of fashions and ideologies, because the greatness of the Church has always been that of being a mother and teacher. And a good teacher, which it is also mother, primarily educates. This is the reason why this extraordinary mother who is a body whose head is Christ (cf.. With the 1, 18) He never made the class distinction, race and nation. We know all the flaws of our Church, holy and sinful according to the old definition ambrosiana. Historical defects that the undersigned know enough to have stigmatized several times in compliance with the wise warning of the Supreme Pontiff Leo XIII who stated:
"The Church historian will more strongly emphasize its divine origin as has been loyal in no way conceal the evidence that the sins of her children and sometimes of his own ministers did suffer this bride of Christ" (Speech to the academics of France, 8 September 1899).
This mother and teacher, at the same time saint and sinner, even in its most controversial eras and you contrasted saw up to their so-called leaders many men from very simple and modest families. Even in his most controversial and conflicted eras he managed to spot talent, rather: I was looking right. Who today says, with a spirit that is both Romanophobic and anti-historical, which until not so long ago, to become bishops and cardinals had to be called Borghese, Orsini, Column, Odescalchi, Chigi, Doctors, Sforza ... wrong and mind, or rather he doesn't know the history of the Church at all. The chronologies of the bishops who have succeeded one another in our numerous Italian dioceses, They include many names of men from poor families, they entered the seminaries with the outfits given to them by a poor country parish priest who had collected donations from equally poor faithful.
Do not forget that to succeed Cardinal Rafael Merry del Val, who had a blood concentration of the oldest noble families of Europe, it was the Cardinal Peter Gasparri, who was secretary of state under Pope Benedict XV and Pius XI, as well as a signatory of the Lateran Pacts which put an end to the long Roman Question that began with the capture of Rome 20 September 1870 lasted 59 long years until 1929. Peter Gasparri, born in the Marche in a village of the province, He came from a family of farmers pastoralists. In the Roman curia, where not even the Supreme Pontiffs have ever been exempt from the attribution of a nickname, he was nicknamed, not by chance, he shepherd. Pietro Gasparri was a canonist of rare refinement and his contribution to the drafting of the Code of Canon Law of 1917. From modest family came the Holy Pontiff Pius X, who also he wanted beside him in the role of Secretary of State, Cardinal Merry del Val. The Cardinal was born into a poor family Alfredo Ottaviani, in the Trastevere, where his father worked as a laborer at a baker. The Cardinal Giuseppe Siri he was the son of a janitor and a concierge. We stop at these few examples because the list of men whose names are today included in the history of the Church would be long, not at all marked by the surnames of the most powerful European princely families.
What can we say then that nohe 1960, while in the United States of America there was racial segregation between whites and blacks, abolished only 4 years later from Civil Rights Act, in Rome, the Tanzanian Laurean Rugambwa, newly elected cardinal, dressed in purple with ermine and cappa magna, he received a kiss on the knee from members of the most ancient pontifical nobility. Does the Holy Father Francis know these edifying pearls of history linked to a Roman curia kissing the hand of a black cardinal while in the United States blacks were not even allowed to ride public transport? He is informed, the Holy Father Francis, that his Supreme Predecessor Benedict XIV, nee Prospero Lambertini, In the 1741 he did not hesitate to challenge - despite all the risks involved - the major European powers, condemning without appeal slavery and declaring illegal, under penalty of immediate excommunication, the sale and the reduction of the Indians to slavery? Condemns, however, already delivered earlier by his predecessors Supreme Eugene IV (1435), Paul III (1537), urban VIII (1639), none of whom came from the "existential periphery" nor had they ever carried out any apostolate in the villas miseries.
I fear that for some decades delicate and ancient balances have been shattered and that today we have reached the apotheosis. man ever, in the past, a Rafael Merry del Val prevented a priest of recognized talent with him to sit in the pews of the College of Cardinals, as guilty of coming from humble beginnings. However, what should be feared today is that numerous Pietro Gasparri and Alfredo Ottaviani are totally devoid of the great talent and great piety that characterized these men of God, but filled with ambitions in return for which they never could aspire in the civilized world, can prevent a Merry del Val to become bishop and cardinal, because it "does not correspond to what are the criteria and pastoral styles today" - from villas miseries - "The Holy Father Francesco", with all the immense damage that would result and that has already occurred to the Church which has been deprived of this faith for years now, talent and rare intelligence.
Today the Church is no longer capable of educating and valorizing precious talents given by God to certain of his children. I don't know if anyone will reflect on all this, in a Church no longer capable of grasping talent, to educate and as a logical consequence to grasp the talent and transform the Gasparri and Ottaviani into authentic principles, making them the principles for nothing less principles of a prince of birth as Merry del Val. I fear that in these sad times, where many men of the Church seem addicted to the immediate and to living day after day without thinking about the future and building for the future, few will make similar reflections. When in fact the one hand they make a coup and the other one gives in to fashions, first of all, the freedom of the children of God is lost and we try with the worst coercions and the worst arbitrariness to force others to also lose this precious gift of grace. A church that no longer free teetering between bankruptcy and fashions equally unsuccessful experiments is bound to collapse, from his heart: the College of the Apostles, in which to recruit a mediocre after another into effect the coup of mediocrity in power. Never as today is in fact echoed the false and misleading warning which Judas:
«[…] then Mary, took a pound of ointment of true nard, very precious, He anointed the feet of Jesus and dried them with her hair, and the whole house was filled with the fragrance of the ointment. Then Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples, who would betray, he said: “Because this perfumed oil was not sold for three hundred denarii and then given to the poor?”. He said this not because he cared for the poor, but because he was a thief and, He had the bag, to take what was put therein. Then Jesus said: “Let her do it, let her keep it for the day of my burial. For the poor you have always with you, but you don't always have me"" (GV 12, 3-8).
Together with the excuse of the poor we risk also having an army of Judah, thieves and traitors, as well as pimps, ready to use the poor as false and measure as a new pretext for their personal gain, always moved by those irrepressible ambitions originating from the queen mother of all deadly sins: the Superbia, which always blinds, preventing to correctly perceive the present and the future to build a holy manner to the praise and glory of God.
the Island of Patmos, 5 May 2024
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NOTE
[1] See. Ariel S. Levi di Gualdo, And Satan became triune, Iª ed. Rome 2011, reprint, Rome 2019, Editions The island of Patmos.
[2] See. Ariel S. Levi di Gualdo, Digressions of a liberal priest, about the true curriculum of Giovanni Battista Montini, pag 61 e ss.. Rome 2023, Editions The island of Patmos.
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Bible, homosexuals and theology. The substantial difference between those who speculate and discuss and those who want to introduce a dangerous Trojan horse into the Church
/in Theologica/by Hermit MonkBIBLE, HOMOSEXUALS AND THEOLOGY. THE SUBSTANTIAL DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THOSE WHO SPECULATE AND DISCUSS AND THOSE WHO WANT TO INTRODUCE A DANGEROUS TROJAN HORSE INSIDE THE CHURCH
«Today an increasingly large number of people, even within the Church, they exert very strong pressure to bring her to accept the homosexual condition, like it wasn't messy, and to legitimize homosexual acts" (Joseph Ratzinger, 1986)
— Theologica pages —

Author
Hermit Monk
.HTTPS://youtu.be/4fP7neCJapw.
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Homosexuality has always been a thorny topic, generates destined discussions and polarizations, like the famous parallel lines, to never meet. To give an example, I could cite the fuss raised last year by the publication of a book written by a General of the Italian Army containing decidedly clear positions on this aspect.. Of course homosexuality, During the years, it was also a debated chapter in the Catholic Church, more and more; escaped from fleeting mention in old manuals of moral theology and has become the subject of magisterial pronouncements, with specific dedicated documents, which denote how much the topic is felt in society and in the Christian communities that question themselves on this. Various meanings are found in the same documents, decisive or timid openings and closures which can also be ascribed to the sensitivity or position of that ecclesiastical representative or pontiff in office in a particular historical moment.

The Second Vatican Council he also asked that Sacred Scripture be given back the veneration it deserves as the source of divine Revelation and to it and to Sacred Tradition he dedicated one of the four dogmatic constitutions issued from that meeting, with the name of God's word. Since then every magisterial pronouncement, but one could say any theological or pastoral reflection, every single act of the Church cannot ignore the reference to the Bible. Even a topic that would seem delicate like that of homosexuality. Now, what sometimes emerges in many who want to refer to the Bible when speaking or writing about this topic, it's that they can hardly put aside the desire to polarize or necessarily emerge victorious from controversies, as we already noted at the beginning of this speech. Like this, the Holy Scripture, in debates or writings, it ceases to be that source that nourishes to become a weapon brandished by those who condemn short homosexuality, and by those who would instead like the Church to apologize to homosexuals for its closures and for the suffering it has caused them. How can you get out of this impasse? I think, first of all, recognizing the right value of the Holy Scripture which is evidently not a weapon to be used at will or a handbook and leaflet to be opened to comfort one's ideas and positions in the world. I read some passages of the voluminous commentary published last year under the name of Bibbia queer for the types of the Dehonian editions (WHO), where among other things, in the Gospels there is fear of a homosexual relationship between the Roman centurion and his sick servant for whom the former asks Jesus for healing, only because the Evangelist Luke says that "he was very dear to him" (LC 7, 1-10). The same interpretation was recently relaunched by a blog that is usually very polemical towards the current Pontiff and the leaders of the Church, but decidedly lenient on the subject of homosexuality, so much so as to state in an article dedicated to the relationship between this topic and Sacred Scripture that:
«Reading these texts carefully, so, there is nothing against homosexuality".
For real? Why leafing through the documents of the ecclesiastical Magisterium, the Catechism of the Catholic Church to cite an example, and of course those sites or blogs with a more conservative orientation, so to speak, it seems instead that for these the Bible is decidedly positioned on an attitude against homosexuality.
What I want to remember here it is how the Council wanted the Bible to be interpreted and it talks about this in nr. 12 of the Dogmatic Constitution God's word:
«For God in the Holy Scripture spoke through men in the human manner, the interpreter of the Holy Scripture, to better understand what he wanted to communicate to us, he must carefully research what the hagiographers really wanted to say and what God was pleased to demonstrate with their words. To obtain the intention of the hagiographers, among other things, literary genres must also be taken into account. In fact, the truth is proposed and expressed differently in historical texts in various ways, or prophetic, or poetic, or even in other genres of expression. It is therefore necessary for the interpreter to seek the meaning that the hagiographs in certain circumstances, according to the conditions of his time and his culture, through the literary genres in use at the time, he intended to express and has in fact expressed. In fact, to understand exactly what the sacred author wanted to assert in writing, due attention must be paid to both habitual and original ways of feeling, to express oneself and tell stories in force in the time of the hagiographer, both to those and in the various places they were then in use in human relationships. Sacred Scripture must be read and interpreted in the light of the same Spirit by which it was written, to derive the exact meaning of the sacred texts, care must be taken with no less diligence the content and unity of the whole Scripture, taking due account of the living tradition of the whole Church and the analogy of faith. It is the task of the exegetes to contribute, following these rules, to the deepest intelligence and exposition of the meaning of Sacred Scripture, so that through their studies, somewhat preparatory, let the judgment of the Church mature".
This is important and in some ways the passage of the passage is still not fully understood God's word reminds us, in its first part, the sacramental quality, as it were, of the Holy Scripture. Since the Word of God is presented in the form of human writing that is subject to the conditions of time and culture of the writers and to the original way of organizing that literary genius that every biblical author possesses. Just as it underlies their "ways of feeling, to express oneself and tell stories... which were in use in human relationships". In the second part, instead, there is an invitation to further excavation that goes in the direction of searching for the deeper meaning or meaning of the same Scripture. A spiritual sense, it is no coincidence that the Spirit is mentioned with a capital letter, and theological, in accordance with the entire deposit of faith, for an ever fuller understanding of the text and because the Church, in particular that part of it predisposed to driving, can express a judgment on the things that concern the Christian experience in accordance with the Word of God and its tradition. In light of this, we understand that we are facing a long and patient job, quite another thing than unsheathing the sword of the Bible and brandishing it to assert, or worse to impose their ideas.
Returning to our topic, it is clear that the Church's judgment on homosexuality has undergone progress, as well as maintaining some considerations. This can be seen in the documents, it gives Human person the 1975 to the recent Begging for Confidence the 2023, passing by Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the pastoral care of homosexual people the 1986, issued by the Congregation, now Dicastery, for the Doctrine of the Faith. This last document is the one that more than the others makes explicit reference to the biblical passages that condemn homosexuality, he lists them all and on this basis and on that of Tradition and the Magisterium, that document states that the Church:
«He maintains his clear position on this matter, which cannot be modified under the pressure of civil legislation or the fashion of the moment" (no. 9).
Shortly before the same text mentioned that:
«Today an increasingly large number of people, even within the Church, they exert very strong pressure to bring her to accept the homosexual condition, like it wasn't messy, and to legitimize homosexual acts" (no. 8).
Even the most recent document Begging for confidence it relies on Scripture, tradition and the Magisterium, in particular of the last Pontiff. This grants the possibility of giving the blessing under certain conditions to irregular couples and to those of the same sex because in this way:
«The Church is thus the sacrament of God's infinite love. Therefore, even when the relationship with God is clouded by sin, you can always ask for a blessing, holding out your hand to him, as Peter did in the storm when he cried out to Jesus: "Man, save me!” (Mt 14, 30). Wishing for and receiving a blessing can be the best thing possible in some situations." (no. 43).
Without forgetting the Catechism of the Catholic Church, published in 1992, what he says about homosexual people:
«Homosexuality refers to relationships between men or women who experience sexual attraction, exclusive or predominant, towards people of the same sex. It manifests itself in very varied forms over the centuries and in different cultures. Its psychic genesis remains largely unexplained. Relying on the Holy Scripture, which presents homosexual relationships as serious depravities, Tradition has always declared that "acts of homosexuality are intrinsically disordered". They are against natural law. They preclude the gift of life from the sexual act. They are not the fruit of true emotional and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved." (cf.. 2357). «A non-negligible number of men and women have deeply rooted homosexual tendencies. This inclination, objectively disordered, constitutes a test for most of them. Therefore they must be welcomed with respect, compassion, delicacy. In their regard, any sign of unfair discrimination will be avoided. Such people are called to carry out God's will in their life, e, if they are Christian, to unite the difficulties they may encounter as a result of their condition to the sacrifice of the Lord's cross " (cf.. 2358). «Homosexual people are called to chastity. Through the virtues of self-mastery, educators of inner freedom, through support, sometimes, of a disinterested friendship, with prayer and sacramental grace, they can and must, gradually and resolutely, getting closer to Christian perfection" (cfr.2359).
What about all this? Evidently these are not schizophrenic visions of the same reality. Rather, in the aforementioned documents there is a desire to maintain anchoring in the Word of God, seen precisely as a source. It is clear that the different writers wanted to press a certain type of register instead of another. Thus the most recent document relied on the teaching of mercy, so dear to Pope Francis and prefer biblical passages that underline God's welcome rather than condemnation. It is probable that the texts most decisive in condemning homosexuality have been interpreted in light of that "sense that the hagiographer in certain circumstances, according to the conditions of his time and his culture, through the literary genres in use at the time, intended to express and has in fact expressed", of which the Council spoke. Thus some expressions of Saint Paul and already of the Book of Leviticus which condemn homosexual relations for some exegetes are such because "the notion of homosexuality did not exist, that is, the normal attraction that a person can have towards another of the same sex, Paul saw this behavior as a deviation, based on what he believed was the "natural relationship". His opinions on the matter have the same value as when he states that it is "nature itself that teaches us that it is unseemly for a man to let his hair grow" (1 Color 11,14) (WHO). Likewise the Old Testament prescriptions of Leviticus, they are not related to sexuality, but rather to procreation, as it contravened the divine commandment "Be fruitful and multiply" (Gen 1,28) (WHO). The biblical text par excellence, then, on which every openness towards the homosexual condition is based and, lately, it is also used for the request for female ordination and is the Pauline passage from the Letter to the Galatians:
«There is neither Jew nor Greek; there is no slave nor free; there is no male and female, because you are all one in Christ Jesus" (Gal 3,28).
Text variously interpreted and sometimes forced to say what he really doesn't want to say. Yet all the documents, and the more closed ones, is the last one that presents some openings regarding the blessing of homosexual couples, you have to say it and accept it, they do not declare themselves openly Gay-friendly, as they say today; quite the opposite. Also Begging for confidence, which speaks of mercy, he does not withdraw from traditional doctrine nor does he wish to create confusion between the marital union and other types of union:
«This belief is founded on the perennial Catholic doctrine of marriage. Only in this context do sexual relations find their natural meaning, adequate and fully human. The doctrine of the Church on this point remains firm." (no. 4).
There is yet another aspect that needs to be mentioned. Joseph Ratzinger who drafted the aforementioned Letter the 1986 he spoke of very strong pressures, even manipulation, to ensure that the Church accepted the homosexual condition. The document clarified the Church's position on this matter. Yet it must be admitted that in that document and in the others the Church's attitude towards homosexuals had already changed a lot and this, it cannot be denied, because the sensitivity and opinion of contemporaries in this regard has profoundly changed, at all levels. Thus the Church today also deplores the oppression of homosexual people, as expressed by the Catechism of the Catholic Church cited above, therefore the use of violent language and actions. We appeal to the "proper dignity of every person". The term sodomy has disappeared and instead of "against nature" we are instead talking about a tendency, even if the "orientation" used by the World Health Organization is not adopted. Homosexual people are Christians like everyone else and invited to live chastity. there, Homosexual acts are not accepted, but that document, in the final part, it is all a promotion of the welcome and pastoral care of homosexuals who are not denied the Sacraments, under the appropriate conditions.
But as always happens with the topics that interest us In the Christian life, discussions are never closed, the reflection continues. The same Letter by Joseph Ratzinger invites bishops to solicit "the collaboration of all Catholic theologians" (no. 17). This aspect is probably the most difficult, the most tiring, what we miss most and also the most delicate as I will mention shortly with an example. But also what we need most, precisely because the Bible, to return to the heart of our discussion, is not used as a handbook. There is a further and decisive step. So that people, immersed in contemporary culture, can appreciate the intelligence of faith, we need the continuous effort to hermeneutically re-understand the data of faith and translate it into coherent organizations of thought. The Bible must retain its character as a source, but we need theological reflection for which the Holy Scripture, according to a beautiful expression of God's word, it is like the soul that keeps it always young:
«Sacred theology rests as if on an everlasting foundation on the written Word of God, inseparable from sacred Tradition; in it it is vigorously consolidated and always rejuvenated, scrutinizing in the light of faith every truth contained in the mystery of Christ. The Holy Scriptures contain the Word of God and, because you are inspired, they are truly the Word of God, let the study of the sacred pages be the soul of sacred theology" (no. 24).
I come to the example I wanted to refer to: the known theologians who have reflected on the topic of homosexuality almost all belong to the Anglo-Saxon area, often with decidedly open-minded positions in this area. Yet in Italy we had a theologian, a priest, who has thought a lot about this topic, but few know it. I am referring to the presbyter Gianni Baget Bozzo who many know for his orbiting vocation, that is, capable of making choices and expressing opinions first in one direction and then in the opposite direction. Embodying a controversial character alive he is now almost forgotten, Unfortunately. But according to him "in God the opposites are not contradictory" and "there is nothing more fascinating for the human imagination than seeing the two sides of a contradiction at the same time"[1]. He had Giuseppe Siri as a professor of religion in Genoa, future archbishop and cardinal of the same city who ordained him as a priest, he will want him to be a professor of theology in the seminary, he will entrust the magazine to him Renewal, he will take away these two tasks and suspend him peep. He changed his mind about everything, but on a subject he never changed his opinion: about homosexuals. His comments on the matter, which date from 1976 until the 2008, so that they do not fall into oblivion, they were collected by the Vatican expert Luigi Accattoli in a book entitled: For a theology of homosexuality [2].
These are texts that appeared in newspapers, magazines or speeches at conferences in which he tenaciously made his claims, for over thirty years, the rights of those who live in the homosexual condition. And as a theologian he encouraged Christians to rethink the theology of sexuality and to develop within it the unprecedented chapter of homosexuality. With his extraordinary aptitude for speaking about God in the language of his time, he wondered and asked what the divine intention is regarding the existence of homosexuals. He did so with sharp arguments and learned quotations, to the point that in the end he even had to repeat in more than one interview that he was not homosexual. Defended homosexuals, but also virginity and celibacy and did not spare criticism of the movement gay, to the organization of Pride, in particular that of the Holy Year of 2000, jubilee year, which caused such a sensation in the city of Rome. He advised homosexuals to have stable partners, instead of variables and also accused the European Union of using i gay as a weapon against the Catholic Church. He considered chaste homoeroticism not incompatible with sanctity and wrote things like this:
«Homosexuality, anyhow, it can never be considered by society as a model. It cannot be so first and foremost for biological reasons. A society that is biologically aseptic is incompatible with the teachings of Christ. This should not be forgotten. The Church cannot accept the equalization between the heterosexual and homosexual conditions. This is valid on the level of social morality. To be clear, on the political level. But on the level of individual morality, the discussion is still open and will need to be addressed" (The Gazette, June 2020).
What I want to underline here it is not so much defending Baget Bozzo's opinions, although it is nice that they are not forgotten and that there was an Italian intellectual who was not afraid to expose himself in this debate, but that we need such a cultural and theological effort, of sharp minds that help us think about difficult issues and therefore deal with those who don't think like us, but with the same diligence. Let's leave the shortcuts of those who take the Bible and read it like a medical handbook to the dear fundamentalists from overseas or to some blog of little fortune. The Catholic tradition that has never made use of shortcuts, much less the intellectuals, has always invited us to think, after meditating on Holy page, to quote Thomas Aquinas, what it was magister.
From the Hermitage, 3 May 2024

Gianni Baget Bozzo, Genoese presbyter (1925 – †2009)
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NOTE
[1] Baget Bozzo G., Vocation, Rizzoli, 1982, pg 68 e 142).
[2] Baget Bozzo G., For a theology of homosexualityat, edited by Luigi Accattoli, Ed. Months, 2020.
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"Something is changed". From Jack Nicholson to Cardinal Matteo Maria Zuppi honorary degree from the University of Catania
/in Actuality/by father ariel"SOMETHING IS CHANGED". FROM JACK NICHOLSON TO CARDINAL MATTEO MARIA ZUPPI GRADUATION HONORARY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CATANIA
«[…] If different opinions are not also welcomed, and maybe even words of dissent, there will be no real change. Today the CEI assembly is a moratorium because there are no longer any significant figures; you could share the positions of Siri or Martini or not, but their interventions were important points of reference. Today only pimps speak, those who want to be seen […]» (from an interview with the Archbishop emeritus of Pisa Alessandro Plotti, former vice president of the CEI)

Author
Ariel S. Levi di Gualdo
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Inside the Church today it can happen to feel a bit like on set cinematic of the film, Something is changed, main protagonist Jack Nicholson together with a lovable little dog. For those who haven't seen it, let's summarize briefly: Melvin Udall, played by Jack Nicholson, is a famous writer of romance novels, misanthrope and suffering from obsessive-compulsive neurosis who, through a hilarious tangle of events in which he ends up involved together with the waitress of a restaurant, to a gay painter who is his neighbor and his little Brussels Griffon dog, comes to an unexpected and incredible transformation that leads him to become even a tender and lovable person.

Faced with some facts, say that today Something is changed it's reductive, because we are faced with reversals so radical that they are difficult to interpret. Like when the 12 April the University of Catania awarded the master's degree Honorary in Global Politics and Euro-Mediterranean Relations to His Eminence Cardinal Matteo Maria Zuppi, Metropolitan Archbishop of Bologna and President of the Italian Episcopal Conference.
I think it's irrelevant focus on the relationships that have been going on since before 17 February 1861 - the date that marked the fall of the Bourbon Kingdom - link this university to the historic lodges of the city's Freemasonry, as a figure from the names of many illustrious academics who were members of Freemasonry over two centuries. Unless the numerous funeral posters with their name and the initials A:.G:.(D):.G:.A:.(D):.U:. (acronym indicating: To the Glory of the Great Architect of the Universe) hanging in the city of Etna over the last few decades, they weren't just pranks by the Catania printers or the editorial staff of Sicily it's from The Sicilian newspaper who wanted to play around on the page of their obituaries published for a fee to commemorate the deceased.
Being a Freemason is not unbecoming, nor even a crime, membership of a historical association is lawful and legitimate; unless it is a deviant Lodge like P2, which comes to life from Freemasonry but is not an expression of it at all, but only detour. That affiliation with the Lodges is incompatible with belonging to the Catholic Church, this is yet another matter, linked to that partly Gnostic and partly esoteric system which makes Freemasonry incompatible and irreconcilable with Catholicism.
Without even dwelling on anticlericalism which winds through historical tradition in the University of Catania, our interests being completely different, However, some clarifications are required. Let us therefore start from a truly striking example now fixed in historical chronicles: when in November of 2007 he was invited by the Rector Magnificus to inaugurate the academic year at La Sapienza University of Rome, the Supreme Pontiff Benedict XVI gave up holding one keynote inaugural following protests by groups of students and teachers who rose up shouting «the university is secular!», while those of many Italian universities supported and supported the protest, including the Catania one.
Before it started today's youth season the bishop of Pecorecci - quite a few of whom would have failed an exam in fundamental theology until a few decades ago -, in Italy we had several bishops who were great scholars and men of profound culture, distributed in all those different areas than in improper journalistic language, because it is foreign in itself to the very structure of the Church, they are referred to as traditionalists, Conservatives, Progressives. Or to put it in the words of the Archbishop of Pisa Alessandro Plotti, who was vice-president of the Italian Episcopal Conference:
«If different opinions are not also welcomed, and maybe even words of dissent, there will be no real change. Today the CEI assembly is a moratorium because there are no longer any significant figures; you could share the positions of Siri or Martini or not, but their interventions were important points of reference. Today only pimps speak, those who want to be seen; the pastoral theme is thrown away with the study groups, which actually last half an hour, and then we only talk about Otto per Mille and money, which could very well be done by correspondence. And to say that, eg, regarding the family there are really big problems to face and everyone is trying to understand what direction the Church will take" (cf.. interview published in Jesus the 10 February 2014, text WHO).
Several of these bishops several times, over the past 30 year old, including Alessandro Plotti himself who belonged to the so-called progressive area, they had to give up invitations to academic structures and universities because the inevitable student agitators, instigated behind the scenes by former 1968 professors, they raised hell (cf.. WHO). The then President of the Italian Episcopal Conference, Cardinal Camillo Ruini, was challenged and booed in Siena on 24 September 2005 (cf.. WHO) because «it is the symbol of conservatism, of the attack on the secularity of the State and the denial of homosexual rights", as the representative of the Young Communist League of Siena reported in the press conference (cf.. WHO).
Yet we are not faced with different people, because those who yesterday barred the doors to the successor of those Roman Pontiffs who founded La Sapienza University, making it a universal center of culture, science and research over the centuries, they are the same ones who award degrees today Honorary to the president of the Italian Episcopal Conference, no longer booed and criticized like his predecessor accused of being a violator of the secularity of the State, but welcomed with pats on the back and called in a friendly way "Don Matteo".
More than wondering Something is changed, we should ask ourselves: who was exploited and why? And it would certainly also be necessary to ask ourselves: who is such a "pimp" - to quote Alessandro Plotti - that he doesn't even understand, due to its own inevitable and invincible limitation, of being exploited?
Let's try to go behind the scenes of the little theater, because doing so isn't that difficult: the trial against the then Minister for Internal Affairs Matteo Salvini was opened in Catania, accused of having prevented at the end of July 2019 the landing of 116 illegal immigrants from the Gregoretti ship, stop in the port of the city of Augusta in the province of Syracuse (cf.. WHO). That under this pontificate, that of migrants, is an element that ranges between obsessive neurosis and ideology, it is a completely incontrovertible fact. As is the imprudent involvement - partly verified and partly yet to be verified - that some bishops had with a communist militant like Luca Casarini, which should be treated with extreme caution and above all with the utmost prudence, certainly not invited to the Synod of Bishops.
Translating from English to Italian graduation Honorary conferred is in Global politics e Euro-Mediterranean relations. Incredible! The doors of the universities were barred to the Pontiffs and Bishops of yesterday, or they shouted at each other when they approached state institutions or foundations, because regardless of their tendencies, whether conservative or progressive, they still said what the world didn't want to hear, by the Metropolitan Archbishop of Genoa Cardinal Giuseppe Siri to the Metropolitan Archbishop of Milan Carlo Maria Martini, otherwise, but both worried about the secularist drift that European society was taking, especially in his at times even hateful and violent rejection of Christianity. Today, who instead decided to whore with the world, through many new bishops who were variously "ruffian" and sheepish, here the Presidents of the Italian Episcopal Conferences are clapping their hands on the shoulders, they are called "Don Matteo" and they are awarded degrees Honorary precisely on political and Euro-Mediterranean issues regarding which the award winners themselves claimed the head of a Minister of the Italian Republic with a more bloodthirsty manner than that of Robespierre.
Even if in fact nothing has changed, in any case we are not idiots nor do we intend to be treated as such by a world that shows it loves us to the extent that we are willing to be ashamed of Christ, you forget that it is written:
"For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him, when he cometh in the glory of his Father with the holy angels " (MC 8,38).
Embarrassing and dangerous as few as the Blessed Apostle Paul will be today more than ever:
"Indeed, It is perhaps the favor of men that I intend to earn, or rather that of God? Or am I trying to please men? If I were still pleasing men, do not be a servant of Christ! I therefore declare to you, siblings, that the Gospel announced by me is not modeled on man; for I neither received it nor learned it from men, but by revelation of Jesus Christ" (Gal 1,10 e ss.).
From this company which, following the model and example of France, wants to establish the "great universal right to abortion" in the Charter of Europe, We Catholics should not expect applause or honors. If they applaud us or reward us, it is because we are the first to reassure the children of the Prince of this World that ultimately "the Gospel is not a distillation of truth", as the President of the Italian Episcopal Conference recently stated while responding to an interviewer from The Corriere della Sera (cf.. WHO, WHO). If I wanted, I could suggest to His Most Reverend Eminence, for friends Don Matteo, also another effective expression, by pronouncing which he would soon end up being the second Italian appointed academician of France after Maurizio Serra, but I prefer to remain silent and avoid making suggestions.
the Island of Patmos, 14 April 2024
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The Church is the daughter of the first hesitant disciples
/in Homiletics/by Hermit Monk
Homiletics of the Fathers of The Island of Patmos
THE CHURCH IS THE DAUGHTER OF THE FIRST HESITANT DISCIPLES
People can appreciate religion very much, but then they rarely come to faith. On the occasion of Easter we saw, multiply come on social, religious manifestations of the popular tradition that we call “sacred” and which play a lot on the edge of emotion and feeling, but then they really arrive at Jesus Christ and his Word?

Author
Hermit Monk
.HTTPS://youtu.be/4fP7neCJapw.
The Gospel of this Third Sunday of Easter tells the last appearance of the Risen Jesus, according to the narrative plan of the Gospel of Luke. We are between the scene of Emmaus and that of the ascension and Jesus shows himself to the disciples who have just listened to what two travelers told them. Here's the song:

Resurrection, work of Quirino De Ieso, 1996
"During that time, [the two disciples who had returned from Emmaus] narravano [to the Eleven and to those who were with them] what had happened along the way and how they recognized [Jesus] in breaking bread. While they were talking about these things, Jesus himself stood among them and said: "Peace be with you!”. Shocked and full of fear, they thought they were seeing a ghost. But he told them: “Because you are upset, and why doubts arise in your heart? Look at my hands and my feet: It's really me! Touch me and see; a ghost has no flesh and bones, as you can see that I have". By saying this, he showed them his hands and feet. But because of joy they still did not believe and were filled with amazement, he said: “You have here something to eat?”. They offered him a portion of roasted fish; he took it and ate it in front of them. Then he said: “These are the words that I spoke to you when I was still with you: all things written about me in the law of Moses must be fulfilled, in the Prophets and Psalms". Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures and said to them: “So it is written: Christ will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, and in his name conversion and forgiveness of sins will be preached to all peoples, starting from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of this "". (LC 24,35-48).
Always on the same day, "the first of the week" (LC 24,1), but this time in the evening, two disciples who have returned to Jerusalem are in the upper house (cf.. LC 22,12; MC 14,15), to tell the Eleven and the others "how they recognized Jesus in the breaking of the bread" (LC 24,35). And here it is, suddenly, they realize that Jesus is among them and makes his voice heard. He does not address them with words of reproach for how they behaved in the hours of his passion. The fact of mentioning that there are now eleven of them and no longer twelve, as when he had chosen them, It says a lot about their state of mind. Rather, he addresses them like this: «peace to you! (Peace be with you!)»; an apparently usual greeting among Jews, but that evening, aimed at disciples deeply shaken and troubled by the events of the passion and death of Jesus, means first and foremost: "Do not be afraid!».
Things seem to be back to normal, but that's really how it is? The resurrection radically transformed Jesus, he transfigured it, made "other" in appearance, because he has now "entered into his glory" (LC 24,26) and can only be recognized by disciples through an act of faith. This act of faith, however, is difficult, tiring: the Eleven struggle to live it and put it into practice. It is no coincidence that Luke notes that the disciples were «shocked and full of fear, they think they see a spirit" (spirit they consider), in the same way that the disciples of Emmaus thought they saw a pilgrim or Magdalene a gardener. In particular, Jesus' body changed, he has now risen, glorioso. We might ask ourselves, indeed, why with such a great event as a resurrection from the dead the body of the Lord did not emerge from the repaired tomb, but you retain the evident signs of passion. Jesus questions the disciples:
«Because you are upset, and why doubts arise in your heart? Look at my hands and my feet: It's really me! Touch me and see; a spirit has no flesh and bones, as you can see that I have".
In saying this, show them your hands and feet with the signs of crucifixion. The Risen One is none other than the one who was crucified. This display by Jesus of his hands and feet pierced by the crucifixion is a gesture that according to some means that it is now possible to encounter the Lord in the suffering, in the poor and despised who suffer injustices. This is true, but it is also first and foremost a question of faith that is based on evident signs that refer to everything that Jesus was and the meaning of what he underwent: the resurrection of Jesus is not a religious myth, it's a real fact, physical.
Because of this, paradoxically, we must be grateful for the reluctance of the disciples preserved in the Gospels. Despite Jesus' words and gesture, the disciples cannot believe, despite the joyful emotion they do not reach faith. Perhaps this is not the experience that is still perpetuated in our communities? People can appreciate religion very much, but then they rarely come to faith. On the occasion of Easter we saw, multiply come on social, religious manifestations of the popular tradition that we call "sacred" and which play a lot on the edge of emotion and feeling, but then they really arrive at Jesus Christ and his Word? In what happened to the Eleven we can read the story of our communities, in which faith is lived and confessed, but disbelief also manifests itself. Yet the Risen One has great patience, for this reason he offers his community a second word and a second gesture.
He does not answer doubts – «because doubts arise in your heart?», LC 24,38 – in the way we would expect, but it is rather placed on another level, that of the meeting, e, what is even more significant, in the form of conviviality. Jesus eats with his, as he had usually done in his earthly life. On the contrary, this time he says it himself: «You have something to eat?» (LC 24,41). Such a simple gesture surprises us, everyday and normal, which Jesus accomplished many times. On the contrary, it really seems like the gesture of a beggar who asks for food and humbly searches for it when entering the house, just as the others are already at the table. With the same discretion that we saw in the Emmaus episode. Jesus, it will be said in the book of Revelation, he is the one who stands at the door and knocks: «If someone hears my voice and opens the door for me, I will come, I sup with him and he with me " (AP 3,20).
But evidently there is more. Jesus eats in front of them not because there is a cause to continue and the meal becomes, like at funerals, a way to ease the pain of separation and strengthen the memory of those who are no longer here. Jesus offers signs and makes gestures so that people believe that he is truly Risen and that his crucified body is now a living body, "a spiritual body" (1Color 15,44), that is, living in the Spirit, the Apostle Paul will say. This is why even today the Church encounters the Risen One in the Sacraments and in particular in the Eucharistic celebration.
The disciples, narrates the Gospel, they remain silent, muti, overwhelmed by the emotions of joy and fear, who together are unable to turn on the light of Easter faith. Luca will write later, at the beginning of the Acts of the Apostles, that Jesus "presented himself alive to his disciples... with many proofs" (At 1,3). Then Jesus, to finally make them believers he asks them to remember the words spoken while he was with them and above all how everything that had been written about him had to find fulfillment, the Messiah, in the Law of Moses, in the Prophets and Psalms, that is, in the holy Scriptures of the Ancient Covenant. This hermeneutic action carried out by the Risen One that we relive every Sunday in the Eucharist is described by the words: «He opened their minds (dienoixen autôn ton noûn) to understand the Scriptures".
The verb used here (dianoígo) in the Gospels it has the meaning of "opening and communicating". Thus the ears of the deaf are opened, the mouth of the dumb (cf.. MC 7,34) and the blind eyes of the disciples of Emmaus (LC 24,31). In this circumstance he indicates the operation carried out by the Risen One who, like an exegete, helps the disciples to understand that the Scriptures spoke about him. Hadn't he perhaps conversed with Moses and Elijah about that Paschal Exodus which was to take place in Jerusalem? (LC 9,30-31)?
The Church is the daughter of those first hesitant disciples to whom Jesus immediately makes this promise: "And here, I send upon you the one whom my Father promised; but you stay in the city, until you are clothed with power from on high" (LC 24,49). Thanks to the gift and strength of the Spirit of the Risen One, the disciples still listen to the Scripture today, supremely in the Liturgy, which speaks of Him, they feed on Him in the Eucharist and He bears witness by inviting conversion and forgiveness which began in Jerusalem. Since that first day, Christians have not ceased to profess and then bear witness to their faith condensed in the Symbol: «He died and was buried. On the third day he was resurrected, according to the Scriptures (He rose again on the third day according to the Scriptures)» (cf.. 1Color 15,3-4).
Happy Sunday everyone!
From the Hermitage, 14 April 2024
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The Devil among crime news, itching and reality in the 2024
/in Actuality/by Father GabrieleTHE DEVIL AMONG CRIME, ITCH AND REALITY IN 2024
«Human beings are amphibians – half spirit, half animal […]. As spirits they belong to the world of eternity, but like animals they are inhabitants of time"

Author:
Gabriele Giordano M. Scardocci, o.p.
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In February this year the mass media announced the terrible news of a religiously motivated family homicide. It all wore out, with particular and brutal cruelty, in Altavilla Milicia, in the province of Palermo. With the now consolidated spirit of pure itching i talk show national-popular groups have been talking about it for a few weeks, by putting people completely devoid of basic knowledge on certain issues to discuss in television lounges.

According to journalistic sources a man would kill his family, with the exception of his seventeen-year-old daughter. He later called the police to turn himself in. The motive for the murder, always according to the sources, it would be the demonic presence in the house.
Faced with such a tragedy, which initially shocked me a lot, I thought it was a better choice to remain silent and pray. If in the face of this gruesome episode we strongly condemn this murder and the calling into question of the Devil by exalted people, at the same time it makes no sense to judge them for their religious status and their faith, that only God knows. As a priest, Dominican friar and theologian, however, I think it is necessary to clarify what the true nature of the Devil is, and distinguish between the responsibility of the fallen Angel and that of man.
Although a text about the devil always attracts, It is important for me to write it to also awaken conscience and personal responsibility in the exercise of virtue. How many battles there have been in the history of Italy? Think of the Punic Wars and Scipio, without which we would not have had Roman civilization but the Carthaginian one. Think about World War II, when the Allies arrived to liberate our nation from the Nazis. But this battle involves us as children of God: we are all responsible for ourselves, as people, both of our Common Good and that of others. One of the examples of application of the Common Good was when during the Lockdown we promised to stay at home, allowing the practice of that Common Good which according to the teaching of the Church is «the set of those conditions of social life that allow both communities and individual members, to reach one's perfection more fully and more quickly » (Social Doctrine of the Church, 346). Now, one of the conditions that we all achieved with our virtuous effort at that moment was to end the pandemic phase as soon as possible so that all Italians can perfect themselves. But we who are called to the life of faith, we too face a special battle. St. Paul tells us about this:
«Our battle, indeed, it is not against creatures made of blood and flesh, but against the Principalities and Powers, against the rulers of this world of darkness, against the evil spirits that dwell in the celestial regions" (Ef 6, 12).
This battle against these spiritual realities, demons calling them by their name, it's not a sword-fighting battle, magic wand or witchcraft. It's an internal battle, spiritual indeed, in which the devil tries to divert us from the path described by God for us. Let's try to make a small description of the devil, which we first see acting against Adam and Eve, first in Genesis 3.
«The serpent was the most cunning of all the wild beasts made by the Lord God. He said to the woman: “It is true that God said: You must not eat from any tree in the garden?”. The woman answered the serpent: “We may eat of the fruits of the trees of the garden, but God spoke of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden: You must not eat it and you must not touch it, otherwise you will die". But the serpent said to the woman: “You will not die at all! On the contrary, God knows when you ate it, your eyes would be opened and you would become like God, knowing good and evil". Then the woman saw that the tree was good to eat, pleasing to the eyes and desirable for gaining wisdom; he took of its fruit and ate, then she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he also ate it.".
The biblical text tells us something very important. What we know by tying it together with the New Testament - and what Catholic Doctrine has assumed - is that Satan and the rebel angels disobeyed God. St. Peter explains it to us:
«In fact, God did not spare the angels who had sinned, but he plunged them into dark abysses, holding them captive for judgment" (2PT 2,4).
Angelic and demonic theology offers an in-depth study of the biblical text. The devil is first and foremost an angel, an angel who disobeyed God and fell. So, He has the same natural characteristics as angels, but with some differences that we will see now. First of all, the devil, spiritual being without body, like all creatures he was created by God. In technical jargon it is said that it is pure substantial form without matter.
How then to explain apparitions of angels and demons? A question that is normal to ask, Theologians asked themselves the question and then offered various answers. According to Saint Thomas Aquinas the Devil, when it appears a certain way, It is because it combines the natural and material elements: so we will say for example that it creates plays of light, terrible voices and disturbing images (QUESTION, I, q. 41, a2, ad3). Not because he has them in his nature, but because it is able to interact with the outside world and with humans.
According to Father Serge Thomas Bonino the Devil is guilty of the sin of pride: indeed, being a spiritual entity he wanted a spiritual good. The greatest spiritual good is obviously to be like God. But the Devil did not want to be like God for a gift of grace, explains Saint Thomas: he really wanted to become God. In short, before God he claimed the right to be called to divine participation (S. Bonino, Angels and demons, Word and Silence, 2007, 246 – 264). This is never a right, It is a gift of grace, which is offered by the Lord to those who entrust themselves to Him. The devil, according to St. Thomas he was proud and did not want to entrust himself to God, and he then claimed to make himself God. For these reasons he was hurled into Gehenna, and from there he tries to pull himself further and further into it and into Hell. The Devil acts on men precisely to pull them all away from God and lead them towards hell, dimension and “place” that are anything but metaphorical, but real and above all eternal.
Despite being champions of pride and selfishness, all the demons have coalesced, in a pact of subjection to Satan, leader of demons, with the aim of taking away believers from God. United, in their being proud, they know they are strong. But we are not alone. God is with us and we just need to know how they act: temptation. The ordinary action with which the Devil hinders and fights us is traditionally called temptation. However, this does not imply that the Devil carries out actions for us or forces us to carry them out.
The temptation it is the dimension of solicitation and incitement to sin, even more terrible. All we have to do is fight and resist this invitation to evil by making use of our freedom and our free will, through which one can both fall into diabolical temptations and resist and reject them. It's an unequal battle but we are not alone. The grace of the Lord helps us. The devil knows this well and for this reason he tries to distance us from him.
Clive Staples Lewis he was able to give voice to this certainty of the Devil in an excellent way, when in his splendid work Screwtape Letters makes the devil say Screwtape:
«Human beings are amphibians – half spirit, half animal […]. As spirits they belong to the world of eternity, but like animals they are inhabitants of time" (Screwtape's letters, chapter 8).
Let us always remain strong in his grace, which we draw upon especially in the sacraments and in the intimacy of prayer. With these tools we need not fear anything and become increasingly men and women of virtue.
We conclude with the appearance: Demon and itch. Our editors Ariel Levi di Gualdo and Ivano Liguori, who at the time trained for exorcists, they always repeated: «Of the Devil, in television contexts and in the press, the less we talk about it, better '. Let's clarify what they mean: when they hear the delicate aspects of demonology being addressed in an itchy way talk show televisions, where, if anything, some imprudent priest or religious person agrees to speak in a parterre populated with soubrette elderly people put in the role of unlikely commentators and more or less aggressive and mocking secularists, both end up being attacked by hives, and it's completely understandable. None of us should lend ourselves to fomenting, even and only involuntarily, certain itching games. Except to be silenced, if not attacked after less than half a minute trying in vain to explain what is of no interest in those television contexts, because the one and only thing you are aiming for is itching, the show, not infrequently the trash. For this reason, certain priests should avoid accepting invitations to those television salons where explaining certain delicate topics and offering clarifications on them is really prevented.. It is in this sense that our two brothers affirm: «Of the Devil, the less we talk about it, better '. Which is to say,: avoid, certain priests, to lend themselves to making the Devil laugh while some of his faithful acolytes never miss an opportunity to put the priest or the exorcist in difficulty and then expose him to ridicule. For which reason this, the Italian Association of Exorcists, he has repeatedly urged priests and exorcists not to accept invitations to television programs and to avoid speaking on certain topics where it is impossible to discuss them. But not everyone listens, as Al Pacino says at the end of the splendid film The Devil's advocate: «Vanity... of all the sins is always my favorite».
Florence, 10 April 2024
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“Blessed are we” that despite not having seen we believed in Christ, true God and true man
/in Homiletics/by Hermit Monk
Homiletics of the Fathers of The Island of Patmos
“BLESSED ARE WE” WHO HAVE NOT SEEN WE HAVE BELIEVED IN CHRIST, TRUE GOD AND TRUE MAN
What Thomas is reproached for is not having seen Jesus. The reproach falls rather on the fact that at the beginning Thomas closed himself off and did not give credence to the testimony of those who told him they had seen the Lord alive. It would have been better for him to give some initial credit to his friends, waiting to redo in person the experience they had already had. Instead, Thomas almost claimed to dictate the conditions of faith.
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Author
Hermit Monk
The song for this Second Sunday of Easter, or also called Divine Mercy, it is the last of the narrative compositions that end with the final "first" of the Gospel of John (vv. 30-31) and are divisible into four small squares: Mary Magdalene going to the tomb; after which it is Peter and the other disciple who go to the tomb; then Mary Magdalene meets the Lord and believes he is the gardener; at last, the last painting, sees the disciples and Thomas as protagonists.

Disbelief of St. Thomas, work by Michelangelo Merisi known as Caravaggio, Picture gallery
The evangelical text is as follows:
«The evening of that day, the first of the week, while the doors of the place where the disciples were were closed for fear of the Jews, Jesus came, stood in the middle and told them: "Peace be with you!”. Said this, he showed them his hands and his side. And the disciples rejoiced at seeing the Lord. Jesus said to them again: "Peace be with you! As the Father sent me, I send you too ". Said this, he blew and said to them: “Receive the Holy Spirit. To those to whom you will forgive sins, will be forgiven; to those you won't forgive, they will not be forgiven". Tommaso, one of the Twelve, called Didymus, he was not with them when Jesus came. The other disciples told him: “We have seen the Lord!”. But he told them: “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger into the mark of the nails, and put my hand into his side, I don't believe". Eight days later the disciples were back in the house and Thomas was also with them. Jesus came, behind closed doors, he stood in the middle and said: "Peace be with you!”. Then he said to Thomas: “Put your finger here and look at my hands; reach out your hand and place it in my side; and do not be incredulous, but a believer!”. Tommaso answered him: “My Lord and my God!”. Jesus told him: “Because you saw me, you believed; Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed!”. Jesus, in the presence of his disciples, he did many other signs which have not been written in this book. But these were written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and why, believing, have life in his name" (GV 20,19-31).
Even an inattentive reader realizes that so many themes are brought together in this text that it would be truly pretentious to collect them in a single short comment. Think about the time indication, that first day of the week which will forever mark the liturgical memory of the Resurrection of Jesus for Christians. Then there are the three gifts of peace, of the mission and forgiveness that flow from the Risen One who is "among" the disciples and who feel joy in it. Think of the theme of "seeing" which becomes synonymous with believing, in the sequence featuring Tommaso as protagonist.
There is also the gift of the Spirit from Jesus. The way the Fourth Gospel speaks of this is unique in the entire New Testament. Only Giovanni, indeed, and only here in the verse 22, it says that Jesus "breathed" on the disciples. A verb is used, emphysao, «inflate, alliteration», first used in the book of Genesis, during the story of the creation of man. All created reality, it is told there, it comes from the word of God, but to make a man this is not enough: God must breathe inside his nostrils. Looking carefully, But, Jesus' action is not just that of "blowing on", but it also indicates the "breathing" of Jesus: because He is alive again! It is proof that he is not a ghost and in fact it is not enough for him to show his hands and side: Jesus breathes. This verb emphysao it is found still other times in the Bible, for example in 1Re 17,21 and in This 37,9. In the text of Ezekiel the people can only be resurrected if the Spirit from the four winds comes to "breath" life into the dead.
It emerges from Old Testament usage of our verb a constant that can be linked to John's story. These «symbolically proclaim that, just as in the first creation God breathed a spirit of life into man, so now, at the moment of the new creation, Jesus breathes his own Holy Spirit into the disciples, giving them eternal life. In the baptismal symbolism of Giovanni 3,5, Gospel readers are told that from water and the Spirit they are born as children of God; the present scene serves as a baptism for Jesus' immediate disciples and as a pledge of divine birth for all believers of the future, represented by the disciples. It is little wonder that the custom of breathing on people to be baptized has entered the rite of baptism.. Now they are truly brothers of Jesus and can call his Father their Father (20,17). The gift of the Spirit is the final culmination of the personal relationships between Jesus and his disciples." (R. Brown).
Then there is the episode of Thomas which is very important and it is no coincidence that it marked not only a way of translating the Gospel, but above all the way of understanding Jesus' words to Thomas, in particular in the comparison between Catholics and Reformed people. We immediately notice that in the original Greek the verb is in the aorist (believers) and even in the Latin version it was put in the past tense (they believed): «You believed because you saw» – Jesus says to Thomas – «blessed are those who without having seen [that is, without having seen me, directly] they believed". And the allusion is not to the faithful who come later, that they should "believe without seeing", but to the apostles and disciples who first recognized that Jesus had risen, despite the paucity of visible signs that testified to it. In particular the reference is to John, the other disciple who with Peter had run to the tomb first (Gospel of Easter Day). Giovanni, entered after Peter, he had seen clues, the empty tomb and the bandages that remained empty of Jesus' body without being untied and, despite the paucity of such evidence, he had begun to believe. Jesus' phrase «blessed are those who have not seen [me] they believed" refers precisely to "he saw and believed» referring to John at the moment of his entry into the empty tomb. Proposing the example of John to Thomas again, Jesus means that it is reasonable to believe the testimony of those who saw signs, signs of his living presence. It is therefore not a request for blind faith, but the blessedness promised to those who humbly recognize his presence starting from even small signs and give credit to the word of credible witnesses. What Thomas is reproached for is not having seen Jesus. The reproach falls rather on the fact that at the beginning Thomas closed himself off and did not give credence to the testimony of those who told him they had seen the Lord alive. It would have been better for him to give some initial credit to his friends, waiting to redo in person the experience they had already had. Instead, Thomas almost claimed to dictate the conditions of faith. There is a translation error in the CEI version. When Jesus subjects his wounds to the empirical test requested by Thomas, accompanies this offer with an exhortation: «And don't become incredulous, but it becomes (become) believer". It means that Thomas is still neither one nor the other. He is not yet incredulous, but he's not even a believer yet. The CEI version, like many others, translates instead: «And don't be incredulous, but a believer". Now, in the original text, the verb "to become" suggests the idea of dynamism and a change brought about by the encounter with the living Lord. Without the encounter with a living reality one cannot begin to believe. Only after seeing Jesus alive can Thomas begin to become a "believer". Instead the incorrect version, which is the most popular, replacing the verb to be with the verb to become, it eliminates the perception of this movement and almost seems to imply that faith consists of a decision to be made a priori, an original movement of the human spirit. It's a total reversal. Thomas sees Jesus and on the basis of this experience is invited to break free and become a believer. If becoming is replaced by being, it almost seems as if preliminary faith is required of Thomas, which alone would allow him to "see" the Lord and approach his wounds. As idealism would have it, therefore it is faith that creates the reality to be believed, but this is in contradiction with everything the Scriptures and the Tradition of the Church teach. The apparitions to Mary Magdalene, to the disciples and to Thomas are the normative image of an experience that every believer is called to have in the Church; like the apostle John, for us too, "seeing" can be a gateway to "believing". Precisely for this reason we continue to read the Gospel stories; to redo the experience of those who have moved from "seeing" to "believing": think of the contemplation of the evangelical scenes and the application of the senses to them, according to a long spiritual tradition. The Gospel of Mark ends by testifying that the preaching of the apostles was not just a simple story, but it was accompanied by miracles, that they might confirm their words with these signs: «Then they left and announced the Gospel everywhere, while the Lord acted together with them and confirmed the word with the signs that accompanied it" (MC 16,20). Many Fathers of the Church, from the western Augustine to the eastern Athanasius, they insisted on this permanence of the external visible signs that accompany preaching, which are not a concession to human weakness, but they are connected with the very reality of the incarnation. If God became man, resurrected with his true body, he remains a man forever and continues to act. Now we do not see the glorious body of the Risen One, but we can see the works and signs he does. «Codes in our hands, done in the eyes», says Augustine: «in our hands the codes of the Gospels, the facts in our eyes" (WHO). As we read the Gospels, let's see the facts that happen again. And Athanasius writes in the Incarnation of the Word:
«Come, being invisible, it is known based on the works of creation, like this, once he became a man, even if it is not seen in the body, from the works it can be recognized that the one who carries out these works is not a man but the Word of God. If once dead you are no longer capable of doing anything but gratitude for the deceased reaches to the grave and then ceases - only the living, indeed, they act and operate towards other men - let whoever wants to see and judge by confessing the truth based on what is seen". All Tradition firmly preserves the fact that faith is not based only on listening, but also on the experience of external trials, as the Catechism of the Catholic Church recalls, citing the dogmatic definitions of the First Vatican Ecumenical Council: «Nevertheless, so that the observance of our faith was in conformity with reason, God wanted the internal help of the Holy Spirit to be accompanied by external evidence of his revelation." (CCC, no 156).
From the Hermitage, 07 March 2024
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The fear of women: “They took the Lord away from the tomb and we don't know where they put him”
/2 Comments/in Homiletics/by Hermit Monk
Homiletics of the Fathers of The Island of Patmos
THE SCARE OF WOMEN: «THEY TOOK THE LORD FROM THE TOMB AND WE DON'T KNOW WHERE THEY PLACED HIM»
Saint Augustine, with the acuity that distinguishes him, honestly reads what these words say: «He entered and didn't find it. He should have believed that he was resurrected, not that it had been stolen"
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Author
Hermit Monk
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.HTTPS://youtu.be/4fP7neCJapw.
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While on Easter night we have read the oldest gospel story about the resurrection of Jesus, Marco's, today the beginning of the twentieth chapter of John is proclaimed, probably the last text of the Gospels on the resurrection of Jesus to be written. We are, in this way, in front of a parable that starts from what is contained and taken up by Mark, that is, a "pre-Marc" account of the passion and resurrection of Jesus and reaches up to the last story, the Johannine one, dating back to the end of the first century. The Liturgy, in the space of a single night, from the Easter Vigil to the mass on Easter day, it collects sources and traditions that have settled over several decades and allows us to enjoy the different perspectives of the evangelists. This is the proclaimed text:

Salvador Dali, The dawn, 1948
«The first day of the week, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb in the morning, when it was still dark, and he saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb. He then ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, what Jesus loved, and told them: "They have taken the Lord out of the tomb and we know not where they have laid!». Peter then went out together with the other disciple and they went to the tomb. They both ran together, but the other disciple ran faster than Peter and reached the tomb first. He bent down, he saw the sheets laid there, but he did not enter. Meanwhile, Simon Pietro also arrived, who followed him, and he entered the tomb and observed the cloths laid there, and the shroud - which had been on his head - not placed there with the cloths, but wrapped in a place apart. Then the other disciple also entered, who had reached the tomb first, and he saw and believed. In fact they had not yet understood the Scripture, that is, he had to rise from the dead" (GV 20,1-9)
Reading this passage a profound emotion grips us, the same experienced by the first witnesses of the Resurrection, a woman and two disciples. This seems to be the evangelist's intention. We would expect, indeed, a mature and convinced confession about the event, however in our text we do not yet have the Easter announcement, rather, what Mary Magdalene runs to tell the two disciples is: “They took the Lord away from the tomb and we don't know where they put him”. Maria, prey to fear and discouragement, he takes it for granted that the body of Jesus has been stolen and his concern focuses on "where" the body can now be found. The Gospel story therefore shows the genesis of the Easter faith by presenting its inchoative moment, the release of the spark that will soon become a fire. The internal journey that will lead to the cry and announcement "He is risen" passes through the awareness of the evidence of death constituted by the bandages and shroud that wrapped the body and the tomb in which it had been placed.. The Holy Gospel makes these disciples feel very close to us, to our gradual journey towards a firm faith in the Resurrection of Jesus. Full faith will be that of Thomas who says: "My Lord and my God" (GV 20,28); but not without having also had to go through the temptation of not believing and distrust.
The absence of faith in the Resurrection is symbolically anticipated by the note that "it was still dark outside" (GV 20,1) when Mary Magdalene went to the tomb. And the "dark" in Johannine symbolism refers to that which is opposed to the light (GV 1,5; 3,19), designates the problematic situation of the disciples in the absence of Jesus (GV 6,17), it is the condition of uncertainty and confusion in which those who do not follow Jesus find themselves wandering (GV 8,12), who does not believe in him (GV 12,46). In short, we are on the "first day of the week" (GV 20,1), but dawn hasn't broken yet, we are still in the dark.
In this context the evangelist presents the reactions of three disciples faced with the empty tomb and in particular the inchoative faith of the beloved disciple who, having seen the bandages on the ground and entered the empty tomb, «believed» (GV 20,8), or better, "he began to believe" (cf.. the ingressive aorist: the epistemological – and he believed). Only in this way can we explain the note that the evangelist makes for immediate comment: “For they had not yet understood the Scripture that he must rise from the dead” (GV 20,9). Saint Augustine, with the acuity that distinguishes him, honestly reads what these words say: «He entered and didn't find it. He should have believed that he was resurrected, not that it had been stolen" (cf.. WHO). Easter faith is not born from the mere observation of an empty tomb: this can also lead to the hypothesis of the theft of the body. The facts must be compared to the words of Scripture and illuminated by it. Only then will they give life to the Easter faith. Faith that will find its fullness with the gift of the Spirit which illuminates minds, opening them to the understanding of the Scriptures, as it was for the disciples of Emmaus (cf.. LC 24,45), Why: «When he comes, the Spirit of truth, will guide you to all the truth” (GV 16, 13).
In fact, the resurrection is an unheard of event, unthinkable and disconcerting. Paul will know something about it when he tries to announce it to the Athenians (At 17, 32). It is God's absolute novelty and the disciples are totally unprepared for the event. Only the beloved disciple, precisely because of that intimate knowledge that binds him to Jesus, he begins to understand and make room in his soul for the newness accomplished by God.
However, it is there in these three disciples the emotional aspect that at the time had led them to leave everything to follow Jesus. In Magdalene who fears that she will no longer be able to see and touch her Lord and for this reason she runs. He runs towards Peter and the beloved disciple, the two points of reference of the group of disciples. And in turn they run too, this time on the contrary, back towards the tomb. The moment the emotional level is let loose, everyone expresses themselves without enforcing the rules of the group.. However, having reached the tomb, the beloved disciple waits for Peter and lets him enter first, respecting the primacy established by the Lord. Maria's emotional and affective level (running to the two disciples) and of the beloved disciple (who waits for Peter and lets him enter the tomb first) they remain ordered and submitted to community objectivity. But to guide emotion and affectivity to full faith, intelligence of Scripture and faith in it will be needed., which is the ineliminable and objectifying foundation of the Paschal faith and ecclesial life.
We today who hear these words once again of the Holy Gospel proclaimed we express gratitude towards these important disciples who wanted to maintain their hesitation in the face of such an unusual event. We feel them close, grateful for their testimony of faith that they handed down to us in the Scriptures. They taught us to look for the Risen One no longer in the tomb (mnemonic in Greek: became. "memorial"; GV 20 1.2.3.4.6) which is cemetery memory, dead. But now living in his glory and present when we love each other, when we witness it in the places of our existence, when we encounter suffering or when we bring hope. As we gather every Sunday, Easter of the week, without which we can no longer live. Because there we confess not only our sins, but we listen again to the Scripture that speaks to us about Him and we feed on Him, waiting for Him to come.
I end with these words of the Florentine poet Mario Luzi (1914 – 2005). Pope John Paul II asked him to comment on the stations of the Way of the cross at the Colosseum on Good Friday 1999. And that's how it ended:
«From the tomb life exploded. / Death has lost its harsh battle. / A new era begins: the man reconciled in the new alliance sanctioned by your blood / he has the path before him. / It's difficult to stay on that path. / The gate of your kingdom is narrow. / Now yes, or Redeemer, that we need your help, / now we ask for your help, / you, guidance and supervision, don't deny it to us. / The offense to the world was immense. / Your love was infinitely greater. / We ask you for love with love. / Amen». (Mario Luzi, Way of the cross at the Colosseum, 1999)
Surrexit Christus SPEs MEA ... Dominus vere, and he appeared to Simon, Alleluia!
Happy Easter everyone.
From the Hermitage, 31 March 2024
Holy Easter of Resurrection
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Sant'Angelo Cave in Ripe (Civitella del Tronto)
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