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

SOME CLARIFICATION SO THAT OUR CHRISTMAS IS LESS POOR AND LESS IDEOLOGICAL: IN TRUTH, BETHLEHEM WAS ALL JUST OUT, JESUS ​​CHRIST IS BORN OF TWO IMMIGRANTS …

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Between 25 and the 26 December we will have to put up with the news reports trickling political correctness that c'informeranno how many glorious cathedrals and basilicas, during Holy Mass on Christmas Night, reference was made to Jesus, poor and refugee. And as the cathedral or the basilica will be prestigious, as the homilist will have raised the bar …

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Author
Ariel S. Levi di Gualdo

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The boy is born, alleluia !

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there was a place, a Bethlehem …

We will devote the homily on the Gospel of this Holy Night the link between the Incarnation of the Word of God made man in the mystery of the Holy Eucharist [see text of the Liturgy of the Word, LC 2, 1-14, WHO].

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In the days before this Holy Christmas, and in those that follow, the divine mystery of this birth has been defined in many ways by the world increasingly worldly and secular, just some examples: Christmas referred to as "party of peace", "Feast of solidarity", "Feast of love between the peoples of diversity and acceptance", of course "feast of the poor" and "party of immigrants'. Let me be clear: I'm not troubled either by the poor or by immigrants, but I believe both our human and Christian duty to help the poor out of their poverty, and the real refugees fleeing from wars and famine to a homeland: "I was a stranger and you welcomed me" [cf. Mt 25, 31-46].

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A disturb, it is therefore not the tragedy of poverty, nor the problem of immigration; for five years now to disturb me is another, and especially when on the occasion of Christmas and Easter, now these two ideological categories - poor and real or would-be migrants -, take the place of the Word of God incarnate and the Risen Christ.

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Between 25 and the 26 December so we will have to put up with The newspaper reports that political correctness dripping c'informeranno how many glorious cathedrals and basilicas, during Holy Mass on Christmas Night, reference was made to Jesus, poor and refugee. And as the cathedral or the basilica will be prestigious, as the homilist will have raised the bar. And so, as every January 1, we will have the traditional account given by newspapers and television news on New Year's incidents in Naples, the same will happen in our church ever crashed worldliness, and the 26 December we celebrate the memory of St. Stephen the Martyr with the most detailed reports on lunches that were held in our churches on Christmas Eve and the homilies based on the poor and refugees in the same took place between the night of 24 and the day 25 December, between cribs which have become a monotonous and conformist riot of barges and rescue donuts used to Arrange above the Bambinello Divine just landed on the island of Lampedusa.

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In this Holy Night I would like to recall that at Christmas, the Orbe catholica, celebrates the mystery of the Word of God made man [cf. GV 1, 1-18], not celebrate an unspecified "feast of" solidarity emptied of the divine mystery and filled with worldly secularism. And words are important, because the more diabolical way to destroy the faith, It is emptying the mysteries of the faith of their true meaning and then fill them with another. This means no more memory of the great mystery of the Incarnation of the Word of God who became man by assuming our human nature as illustrated by the Blessed Apostle Paul in his famous Christological hymn [cf. In II 2, 6-11 text WHO], but "party of peace", "Feast of solidarity", "Feast of love between people and acceptance of diversity" ... all with improbable and untruthful references to Jesus, poor and refugee.

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Let us see what to narrate the historical chronicles of the Holy Gospels: the Blessed Virgin Mary, after answering freely with their own "fiat"The messenger of the Lord [cf. LC 1, 26-38], It gives birth months later the only Son of God, It wraps Him in swaddling clothes and lays him in a manger. This birth and this deposition in a manger did not happen narrated in ways that Joseph was poor and refugee, but because the two, It tells us how the Holy Gospel we have just proclaimed [LC 2, 1-14], They were traveling from Nazareth to Bethlehem to fulfill the obligation of the census ordered by Caesar Augustus [cf. LC 2, 1-14]. Joseph was a craftsman who played the noble and profitable trade of cabinetmaker, while Mary came from a family perhaps even more wealthy than that of Joseph, just think that the husband of her cousin Elizabeth was a priest of the ancient caste of Abijah [cf. LC 1, 57-80]. Therefore, if Jesus was born in a makeshift place is because, as narrated in the Gospels Saints, there was not an empty seat in any hotel [cf. LC 2, 1-6]; not because Joseph had nothing to pay for the accommodation when the Blessed Virgin was seized by labor pains on that trip, undertaken not by voluntary choice, but for a legal duty imposed obligation to be enrolled [cf. LC 2,1].

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The biggest event in history, the incarnation of God's Word, It is described through the sequence of some basic keywords: give birth, wrap in swaddling, put in a manger. With these plain words it tells of the birth of the Only Begotten Son of God the Father, Jesus, the Light of the World. Because "Christ, while it is of divine nature, He did not consider it robbery to be equal with God; but he emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in human likeness. He appeared in human form, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death on a cross " [Fil 2, 6-11]. His, who is God from God, Light from Light, True God from true God, begotten not made of the same substance as the Father [Nicea-Constantinople Symbol], He sees the light through the eyes of a real man born from the womb of a woman, the Blessed Virgin Mary.

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The only begotten Son of God laid in the manger, It constitutes for us a great value mystagogical. In the manger it is in fact lays the food for animals: hay and straw, keeping them high off the ground so you do not dirty. Jesus, placing itself in the manger, He reveals to the world since the birth of what is its true essence: the Word of God made man is to be real nourishment of men.

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Even today Christ is laid in the manger altar or the tabernacle so that everyone can come to Him to worship him as shepherds worshiped the revelers flocked [cf. LC 2, 15-20] and Wizards astronomers said Magi [cf. Mt 2, 1-12], so that everyone can feed on Him in the Holy Eucharist, which it is the mystery of his body and his blood shed. And in the Eucharist Christ is present not symbolically or metaphorically, but really; He is living and real in body soul and divinity.

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Christ redeems and saves mankind through the sacrifice of the cross, immolating himself as the Lamb of God who washes the sin of the world [cf. GV 1, 29-34], making real food, man's true nourishment. The Holy Eucharist is the mystery of mutual transformation: God became man like us, so that we, washed from sin by the blood, through Christ, the bread of life we ​​can transform ourselves into Him, with Him and for Him. Remember what the celebrant recites what makes memory of the dead in the Holy Mass of suffrage? We priests, acting at that moment in persona Christi - certainly not as mere "presidents-playful joyful assembly" -, We recite this beautiful prayer: "He will transform our mortal body in the image of his glorious body" [cf. Roman Missal, Eucharistic Prayer III]. This, It meant by the mystery of mutual transformation.

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But what is the real Christ the Lord great joy and eternal humanity deposed in swaddling clothes in the manger? The joy of man is Christ received and heard that becomes our food of eternal life: "I am the living bread, down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world " [cf. GV 6, 51]. If Christ does not become our food and live our real lives, man can never know the truth that will set us free [cf. GV 8, 32]. They will never be the words for their own sake to give the man the joy that pervades the Gospel of Blessed John the Evangelist; They never will be unless those empty words instead lead to the mysteries of faith and salvation, empty these mysteries and fill them with another, often mundane and modern paganism.

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As long as man does not eat in a spirit of faith and truth Christ in his flesh sacrificed for our salvation, No real joy will come for him. And the flesh and throbbing of Christ God, yes it takes life in a tender manger, but then she ends up sacrificed on the cross for our redemption. In the end, the glorious body of Christ, He rises from the dead. Because the final epilogue of the Nativity is the resurrection. He tells us the Blessed Apostle Paul: "If Christ had not risen indeed, in vain would our faith, empty is our hope " [cf. The Cor 15,14].

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Our faith is born with the Incarnation of the Word of God deposited in a manger, but it is sealed from the overturned stone of an empty tomb, before which the angel said to the women: "Do not look among the dead for one who lives" [cf. LC 24,5]. The tender manger is just the beginning of the big announcement Christological, while the risen Christ is the eternal, one who affiancandoci in the journey along the Way to Emmaus [cf. LC 24, 13-53], will guide us through the centuries to his kingdom will have no end, towards the eternal.

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From the island of Patmos, 24 December 2018

Christmas night – Nativity of the Lord

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