The quill of Charlemagne

BACK ON THE ISLAND OF PATMOS CHARLEMAGNE WITH A QUESTION OF CHRIST THE LORD: «SAY ABOUT MEN, CROWDS THAT I AM? AND YOU, WHO DO YOU SAY I AM?»

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The Christian hope is not an imaginative and mind-numbing "Sol of 'Avvenire' nor the 'glorious future' preached by all the dictators of all time. Nor is it a new world forged by the culture of dialogue between fake and hucksters. Nor it is, at last, misericordiante the kingdom prophets of falsehood call, at will and more often inappropriately, the terrible tragedies of history and immutable filth of the world. The Christian Hope instead - as taught by St. Augustine of Hippo - still has only one name and one certainly be announced: Christ!

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Charlemagne

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the Charlemagne, known as Charles the Great, universally known as Charlemagne, baptized in faith in Christ Jesus in the Holy Mother Catholic Church in the City of Aachen, in a day of many years ago, running at the time the Year of the Lord 742; I, therefore, with a good and legitimate title, write as part of that Mystical and Historical Body which alone belongs to Christ, and of which I consider myself with conviction "of the less honorable members of it" but that for this very humbly believe that, as the Apostle writes, "God has so composed the body, giving the greater honor to that which lacked, so that there was no disunity in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another " [The Corinthians 12, 24-25].

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Who do men say, the crowds that I am? And you, who do you say that I am?

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The Gospels do not tell us the results of a Gallup poll or an extemporaneous focus group of Jesus of Nazareth and his disciples, first, and the Apostles, then.

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Jesus, on the contrary, challenges men [people, Marco 8, 27 e Matteo 16, 13] and the crowds [the mobs, Luca 9, 18] with the message itself, essential, radical and, not at least, disturbing and dramatic of Logos cristiano.

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He wrote Romano Guardini:

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"Christianity is in fact not a theory of Truth, or interpretation of life. It is also this, but it not in this consists its essential nucleus. This consists of Jesus of Nazareth, from his concrete existence, from his work, by fate, that is, from a historical personality. […] Non l’humanityat O l’Human thus become important case, ma this person. It determines everything else, and the more deeply and universally the more intense the relationship ' [The essence of Christianity, 1984, p. 23].

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The essence of the Christian faith lies, in truth, in response that man both individually and collectively, provides this essential question with which Jesus of Nazareth challenge here, today and always [cf.. Letter to the Hebrews 13, 8] the individual and society.

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Who do men say, the crowds that I am? And you, who do you say that I am?

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Faith, Hope and Christian Charity have neither their foundation or their first and last name to neutral values ​​of tolerance, cohabitation, solidarity, acceptance and universal harmony of men and peoples.

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The Christian faith is not a changing content, according to fashion and the needs of the time, but one, unchangeable, vital and saving encounter.

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"You have gone, you washed, you come to the altar, you began to see what previously were not able to see. That is, via the source of the Lord and the announcement of his passion, Your eyes are open at that time. You, that before you seemed blinded in the heart, you began to see the light of the sacraments " [Sant'Ambrogio, the Sacraments I, 3,15].

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The Christian Hope, then, is an imaginative and mind-numbing "Sol of 'Avvenire' nor the 'glorious future' preached by all the dictators of all time. Nor is it a new world forged by the culture of dialogue between fake and hucksters. Nor it is, at last, misericordiante the kingdom prophets of falsehood call, at will and more often inappropriately, the terrible tragedies of history and immutable filth of the world. The Christian Hope instead - as taught by St. Augustine of Hippo - still has only one name and one certainly be announced: Christ!

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"And as it has become our hope? Why he was tempted, He suffered and rose again. So it became our hope. In it you can see your toil and your reward: your labor in the passion, your reward in the resurrection. That's how it became our hope. Because we have two lives: one is that we, the other is that we hope. The one where we are known, one in which we hope is unknown […]. With his labors, temptations, and patents, the death, Christ has made you see your life in which you are; with the resurrection did you see life in which you will be. We knew only that the man is born and dies, but we did not know who rises and lives forever. This is why Christ has become our hope in afflictions and temptations, and now we are heading towards hope ' [Enarrationes in Psalmos, 60, IV].

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The Christian Charity, then, It is not a vacuous amalgam of good intentions or the content of an illusory undifferentiated cosmic fraternity and, not even, The fundamental precept of a mundane world order, amoreggiante pleasantly and happily soaked with alleged good works as.

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Yet, once, It is always and only the recognition of Person of Christ, which he founded and rooted in human affairs the only possible and essential Love: "If you do not believe, indeed, non friend. Like this, beginning from the end and going back to the principle, So said the apostle: Pace's Charityat, united to faith. Let us: Faith, charity and peace. Believe, but, rain. In fact, if you believe you do not love, you have not yet diversified your faith from the faith of those who trembled and said,: We know who you are, the Son of God. You, therefore, but; because charity joined to faith itself leads you to peace. What peace? True peace, full peace, real peace, secure peace; where there is no calamity, any enemy. This peace is the goal of every good desire. Caritat united to faith; and six you mean well, say well. Faith coupled with the charity " [St. Augustine, sermons 168, (II), 2, 9].

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Faith, Hope and Charity, so, sun and open only in Christ's humanity and history the only possible horizon of Salvation: "If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, and you will believe with your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved " [Romans 10, 9].

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Who do men say, the crowds that I am? And you, who do you say that I am?

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The question posed by Jesus of Nazareth is not only essential but also radical and, by its very nature, exceedingly divisive. It is neither an open question or a question at multiple choices. On the contrary, demands a 'radical option!

"Christianity says that for the incarnation of God's Son, for his death and his resurrection, for the mystery of faith and grace, in all creation you are asked to renounce his - apparent - autonomy and put themselves under the rule of a specific person, that is, Jesus Christ, and doing what their decisive rule ' [Romano Guardini, In the same place, p. 26].

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The only root and source of Christian proclamation does not lie in an ostentatious piety and in a grotesque and well-publicized jumble of good intentions for Humanity e the human.

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The Person of Christ - yes, let's face it once and for all and healthy intellectual rigor, even before Christian! - it is divisive in its radical truth about God and man!

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"Whoever acknowledges me before men, I will acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven; who will deny me before men, I will also deny before my Father who is in heaven. Do not think that I have come to bring peace on earth; have not come to bring peace, but a sword. I have come to set a man against his father, daughter against mother, in-law from mother-in-law: and a man's enemies will be those of his household " [Matteo 10, 32-36].

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The original root and the exclusive source of Logos Christian is, indeed, the Word made flesh, and did the same blood for eternal life and for the final resurrection.

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Who do men say, the crowds that I am? And you, who do you say that I am?

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In the Gospels of Mark and Matthew, the question followed by the story of the loaves, which is directly evoked listeners: "I do not remember? When I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, how many baskets full of fragments you brought forth?» [Marco 8, 19]; "I do not yet understand? Have you forgotten the five loaves that were enough for the five thousand men and baskets that you gathered?» [Matteo 16, 9].

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In Luke, the account of the same event immediately precedes the question of Jesus: "Then Jesus, I took the five loaves and the two fish and looking up to the sky, li blessed, He broke them and gave them to his disciples to distribute to the crowd. They all ate their fill and their advanced pieces took up twelve baskets " [Luca 9, 16-17].

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In John, at last, there is no explicit demand of Jesus, but the reaction of "many of the disciples" to the announcement that: "He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood, It has eternal life and I will raise him on the last day. My meat is real food and my blood is drink indeed " [Giovanni 6, 54-55]. «From that moment ', indeed, "Many of the disciples went back, and walked no more with him" [Giovanni 6, 66]. It becomes, pure, an open challenge to the remaining: "Will you well as you leave?» [Giovanni 6, 67].

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Who do men say, the crowds that I am? And you, who do you say that I am?

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The answer to this question solves the disturbing drama of every human time, troubled by the Absolute Evil and evil are.

The answer to this question solves the shocking tragedy that in every time and place gush and always will flow from the very limits of human nature, decayed and decaying, always exposed to the lure of intellectual and moral corruption, and perpetually at the mercy "of the murderer from the beginning", "The liar and the father of lies" [Giovanni 8, 44] and the "prince of this world" [Giovanni 14, 30].

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Jesus the Christ puts himself and actually donated in his Body and his Blood poured out - Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity - far beyond and above any physical law, the only real food subsistence for man and mankind and the only true drink of liberation and salvation.

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This true and only Nourishment, Jesus invites his disciples to call: "In our daily bread", the bread of us ultra-substantial, "Give us this day", you by us daily.

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'So all we have in Christ […]"- writes Sant’Ambrogio -" and Christ is everything for us. If you want to heal a wound, he is a doctor; if you burn with fever, he is the source; if you are oppressed by, he is justice; if you need help, he is the force; if you fear death, he is life; if you desire heaven, he is the way; if you flee the darkness, he is the light; if you seek food, he is the food " [Virginia, 99].

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Who do men say, the crowds that I am? And you, who do you say that I am?

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The question of Jesus is placed, then, in the most dramatic moment of Divine Revelation. AND the question of the true man and Only God that "while were fulfilled the days when it was lifted up, It makes hard his face walking towards Jerusalem " [Luca 9, 51].

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The answer to your question, indeed, become the talk of the high priest the same dramatic and terrible indictment leading to the death sentence and the ruthless execution on the gallows of the Cross: "Are you the Christ, the Son of God? Jesus answered: It's me! Then the high priest, rent his garments, he said: You have heard the blasphemy, what do you think? All they judged him guilty of death '[Marco 14, 61-64].

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In the Mystery of the Passion, Cross and Death of the Person of Christ, (c)he is annihilating "He was God» [Filip Breeding 2, 6] — although it was not but while it is God — indeed, "Body which is annihilated by taking the form of a servant is not already embodied the Christ, but the one who is above the world, found in the form of God " [Hans Urs From Bathasar, Theology the three days, 1969, p. 37].

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"Jesus the Christ", St. Athanasius explained, "has hired, being God, the form of a servant, under this assumption is not so raised, but he lowered. The man, on the contrary, He needed to be raised because of the lowness of the flesh and death. He suffered as a man in his flesh the death for us, to present themselves well to the Father in death on our behalf and lift us up with him at that competes eternity " [.Antioch I, 40-41].

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Who do men say, the crowds that I am? And you, who do you say that I am?

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this question with his answer is the heart of the Gospel, in its dramatic actuality: "The time is fulfilled, the kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the Gospel " [Marco 1,15]. AND this question with his answer and the only legitimate exegesis by reading a "mystery that was not made known to men in other generations as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit: that is, the Gentiles are called, in Christ Jesus, to participate in the same heritage, to form the same body, and to be partakers of the promise through the gospel " [Ephesians, 3, 5-6]. AND this question with his answer the founding act of the Christian Mystery and also its dramatic distinction: "He who is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me, scatters " [Matteo 12, 30]. AND this question with his reply the only way of salvation can: "If Christ has not been raised, your faith is vain and you are still in your sins. And even those who have died in Christ have perished. If our hope in Christ for this life only, we are to be pitied more than all men. Now, instead, Christ rose from the dead, firstfruits of those who have died. For as by a man came death, because a man has come also the resurrection of the dead; Just as all die in Adam, so all will receive life in Christ " [The Corinthians 15, 17-22].

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Who do men say, the crowds that I am? And you, who do you say that I am?

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The answer to this existential question leaves no way! Here, today and always. The Christian does not believe absurd neither Because it is absurd! The Christian believes responding, "You are the Christ, the Messiah " [Marco 8, 29] because Jesus Christ has met, known and therefore believed in Him and in Him alone can find the infinite and inexhaustible dignity of his to be in ed be-di Christ.

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"Know, the cristiano, your dignity, e, that they share in the divine nature, do not return to your former base condition by sinning. Remember who is your head and of whose body you are a member. Think back that, freed from the power of darkness, you have been brought into the light and the kingdom of God " [St. Leo the Great, The word is 21, 3].

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Who do men say, the crowds that I am? And you, who do you say that I am?

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The Christian does not profess a vague theism intellectual, whose divinity is an unknown be supreme or an ethereal transcendent value.

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The Christian "believes firmly and openly admits that there is only one true God, eternal and immense, Almighty, unchangeable, incomprehensible and ineffable, Dad, Son and Holy Spirit: three people, but one essence, substance, that is absolutely simple nature " [Fourth Lateran Council, Catholic Faith, 1].

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The Christian recognizes in him who revealed himself to Israel as "I am who I am!» [Exodus 3, 14], the only true God, that is God of the Fathers and, together, It tightens generations alliance, establishing a "throne of love and fidelity" and is "a people to walk in the light of his countenance" [Salmo 89].

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Professing "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God!» [Matteo 16, 16] Christian recognizes "a fundamental truth: "We have a Master. More than a Maestro, a Emmanuele, that is, a God with us; we Jesus Christ! It's impossible, indeed, apart from Him, if we know something for sure, full, of God revealed; or better, if we want to have a living relationship, direct and authentic relationship with God " [Paul VI, General Audience, 18 December 1968].

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Who do men say, the crowds that I am? And you, who do you say that I am?

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The Christian does not adhere to an unspecified creationist doctrine that confuses the image and likeness with God the Creator and Father with a universal equality. Professa, instead, that only Son-Logos is the perfect image of the Father and our

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"It's an imperfect resemblance, the one for which the man is said a image and adds our because the man was image of the Trinity; not equal to the Trinity, as the Son of the Father, but accostandosene for a certain resemblance in the way of distant beings are not neighbors for spatial contact, but by imitation. That's what they signified the following words: “Be transformed by the renewal of your spirit“ and to its recipients the Apostle also says: “Be ye therefore followers of God, as beloved children“. It is in fact the new man which is said: “It is renewed in proportion to the knowledge of God, conforming to the image of him that created him "» [St. Augustine, The Trinity, VII, 6.12].

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Who do men say, the crowds that I am? And you, who do you say that I am?

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The Christian is not such because it adheres to an unknown and changing code of pious intentions and honest behavior: "We believe the love of God, the Christian can express the fundamental decision of his life. Being Christian is not an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, with a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction " [Benedict XVI, Emër, 1].

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Who do men say, the crowds that I am? And you, who do you say that I am?

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The Christian does not base his Faith, his hope and his charity on a hypothetical great and universal brotherhood, capable of generating tolerance, truth and peace in an indistinct molasses of religions and cults where it is not a question of abandoning one's faith - as the theorists of the New Universal Religion profess - to be part of this new and universal institution and where one believes without belonging [cf.. Grace Davie, Believing without Belonging, in: Social Compass 37(4), 1990, 455-469].

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The Christian is such precisely because he confesses "You are the Holy One of God" [Giovanni 6, 69] recognizing that we belong intimately and essentially to the very Body of Christ «not only because it made us Christians, but why did he become Christ himself. Which made us God's grace, giving us Christ as Head? Rejoice, gioite, we become Christ. If he is the Head, we are the members: We are a complete man, he and we. […] The fullness of Christ: the head and members. What is the Head, and what are the limbs? Christ and the Church " (St. Augustine, In Evangelium Tractatus, 21, 8].

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Who do men say, the crowds that I am? And you, who do you say that I am?

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The answer to this question makes it essential and radical Christian being the disturbing drama, that is, to belong to Christ! That is His Church, of the Church of Christ! And not the Church of someone else!

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Faced with the execrable misdeeds of so many, and too many of his, even the most distinguished and honored sons, the horrendous perjury many and too many of those they claim to serve, the complicit silence and abominable falsehoods many and too many of the acclaimed prophets e Masters New time, those of Christ and the Church still find grace to exclaim in his heart: "What a wonderful mystery! There is only one Father, a single Logos the universe, and also one Holy Spirit, same everywhere; there is also one virgin become mother, and I should like to call the Church " [Clement of Alexandria, The tutor, 1, 6, 42].

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Who do men say, the crowds that I am? And you, who do you say that I am?

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Faith, Hope and Charity, They are for the Christian existential its reply to the Revelation of the Divine Person and the name for which "there is no other name under heaven in which it is established that we can be saved" [Acts 4, 12] and to which - as the Sacrosanct Council Vatican II dogmatically writes - "the obedience of faith is due, with which the man his whole self freely making the full submission of intellect and will, and freely assenting to the revelation that he does " [God's word, 5].

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Who do men say, the crowds that I am? And you, who do you say that I am?

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The answer to that question reveals the essential, radical, disturbing and dramatic choice between believing and not believing, between the profess or not profess, between faith in Christ and his betrayal of Christ.

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From it depends, indeed, that διχάζω - split in two, to separate, and disunity - αφορίζω - Muslim, expel, Banish - verbs that are frequently used by Jesus in his daily train men and crowds, especially in the Parables of the Kingdom, to indicate the tragic fate of the demanding, and nothing to good price, answer this question requires.

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Halve, to separate, disunite, to distinguish, expel, ban: verbs the final decision on who refuses to answer the question of Christ.

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Verbs that the Gospels put on the lips of the Bridegroom not expected by the foolish virgins [Matteo 25, 1-13]; Groom of refusing the invitation [Luca 14, 16-24] or that the guests disappoint due to the negligence of clothing [Matteo 22, 1-14]; Man disillusioned by the ability of his servants to make money from its assets [Matteo 25, 14-30] ; the owner of the field who patiently waits for the good wheat grow with the tares, before it is thrown into the fire that devours [Matteo 13, 24-30]; Fisherman in whose network entangled bad fish that will be divided by the good "to be thrown into the fiery furnace, There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth " [Matteo 13, 47-50]; and the Eternal Judge, whose implacable judgment concludes with two separated and separating verdicts: "And they will go, to eternal punishment, and the righteous to eternal life " [Matteo 25, 46].

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Who do men say, the crowds that I am? And you, who do you say that I am?

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The answer to this question does not raise nor fatuous joy nor un'ammorbante laetitia! The meeting with the Christ of God is always just a Grace dearly! The high price of single sanctifying Truth!

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The answer to this question requires answer to dear price for a grace, as written by the Lutheran theologian Dietrich Bonhoefer, "Grace is never a cheap '.

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Who do men say, the crowds that I am? And you, who do you say that I am?

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Apostasy increasingly widespread grabbing like a pestilential disease the Catholic Church by its hierarchical summit as among an increasing number of his ministers, you forget that you have only been constituted which ones co-workers of the truth and not as Curiously, the Truth this question of God's Son, the Jesus of Nazareth of History and the Gospels demands, Today more than ever, only one answer and unambiguous, without hesitation and vacillation in front of the increasingly tragic "conformed to the mentality of this world" that makes it urgent for the whole Church the need to "renew your mind, in order to discern the will of God, What is good, and acceptable and perfect " [Romans 12, 2]. It deals with, in truth, to face a Grace dearly, which alone, however, It can be liberating and salvific.

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Who do men say, the crowds that I am? And you, who do you say that I am?

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Resound in Rome these days – We hope and pray – prophetic words when Bonhoefer unnecessarily warned his Lutheran Church, but with it the whole of Christendom, the risk of deadly silence this existential, radical, disturbing and dramatic truth of "Christ, Son of the living God " [Matteo 16, 16].

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The entire and true Body of which Christ is the Living Head will only be admonished: without a courageous and decisive answer - at great cost - To the question of Jesus wears the same Logos of our faith, our Hope, our Charity.

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"A people had become Christian, Luterno, but sacrificing the desire to follow Jesus; it had become cheaply. Grace cheap won. But we know that this cheap grace has been extremely merciless towards us? The price we have to pay today with the ruin of the institutional churches is perhaps not the necessary consequence of the grace acquired too cheaply? Preaching and sacraments were granted at a price too low; He is baptized, you cresimava, It gave absolution to all people without asking questions and without putting conditions; Human love for sacred things were dispensed to men scornful and incredulous; They were distributed rivers of grace without end, while the invitation to follow Jesus with commitment was very rarely heard. […] When was the world ever Christianized in a more hideous and fatal way? What are the three killed thousands of Saxons by Charlemagne physically in front of millions of souls killed today? The admonition is fulfilled upon us that the sins of the fathers shall be punished upon the children unto the third and fourth generation. Cheap grace has proved quite merciless to our evangelical church. And cheap grace has been merciless to most of us personally as well. He has opened us the way to Christ, but rather he has blocked. He has invited us to follow him, but he has hardened us to disobedience. Or was it not cruel and hard if, after having heard the invitation to follow Jesus as an invitation of grace, after, perhaps, once dared to take the first steps on the path that led us to follow the discipline of obedience to his commandments, We were caught by word of cheap grace? […] The smoking flax was off ruthlessly. It was ruthless talk like that to a man, why he, upset by such a cheap offer, he necessarily left the path to which he was called by Jesus, for now he wanted to seize the cheap pardon which forever barred him from recognizing the cheap pardon. It could not be otherwise; the weak man, deceived, possessing the grace at a price had to suddenly feel strong, while, in reality, He had lost the strength to obey, to follow Jesus. The word of cheap grace has ruined more men than any commandment of good works." [Dietrich Bonhöfer, succession, 2007, p. 51-55].

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from Aachen to the island of Patmos, 20 February 2019

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* Under the pseudonym of Charlemagne there is a baptized Catholic, jurist, political expert, philosopher, expert in international and diplomatic relations that for many years he held several high offices in major international organizations, inter-governmental.

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