Dec 29, 2015 | Non categorizzato, Word of
The huge multitude of Christians should be quite visible. But they are so divided that many peopledon’t notice them and so don’t see Jesus through them. Unity is the only sure way to proclaim God’s mighty acts. When the Lord acts, he does mighty things. As soon as he had created the universe he saw it was ‘good’ (Gen1:25). Indeed, after creating the man and the woman, and entrusting the whole of creation to them, he saw it was ‘very good’ (Gen 1:31). But the act of God that exceeds all else was done by Jesus. In his death and resurrection he created a new world and a new people. It is a people to whom Jesus has given the life of Heaven, a genuine fraternity, in mutual welcome, in sharing with one another and in self-giving. Peter’s letter helped the first Christians realize that God’s love had made them ‘a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people’ (1 Pet. 2:9; see also the whole passage vv. 9-10). If, like the first Christians, we were to become fully aware of what we are, of how much God’s mercy has done in us, among us and around us, we would be amazed. We would not be able to contain our joy and we would feel we want to share with others the need to ‘proclaim the mighty acts of the Lord’. But it is difficult, or virtually impossible, to give witness effectively to the beauty of the new kind of relations in society that Jesus brought about, if we stay isolated from one another. It is normal, therefore, that Peter’s invitation is addressed to the whole people. We cannot show ourselves as argumentative and partisan, or even merely indifferent to one another, and then proclaim that ‘the Lord has created a new people, and has freed us from egoism, from hatred and rancour, giving us mutual love as the law that makes us one heart and one soul…’ Among the Christian people there are indeed differences in our ways of thinking, our traditions and cultures, but these diversities are to be welcomed with respect, recognizing the beauty of this huge variety and aware that unity is not uniformity. This is the journey we will follow during the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity (celebrated in the northern hemisphere on 18-25 January) and throughout the year. The Word of Life invites us among our different Churches and communities to try to get to know one another better, to tell one another of the marvellous works of the Lord. In this way we will be able to ‘proclaim’ these works credibly, giving witness that we are one precisely in our diversity and that we support each another concretely. Chiara Lubich encouraged us with great energy to follow this path:Love is the greatest power on earth: it unleashes the peaceful Christian revolution around those who live it, so that today people can repeat what the early Christians said centuries ago: ‘We were born only yesterday and we have already spread all over the world.’ Love! What a great need there is for love in the world! And in us, Christians! (Tertullian,The Apology, 37:7) All together we Christians of various Churches number more than a billion people. Such a multitude should be quite visible. But we are so divided that many do not see us, nor do they see Jesus through us. He said that the world would recognize us as his own and, through us, would recognize him, by our mutual love, by unity: ‘By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another’ (Jn 13:35). Our world today asks each one of us for love; it asks for unity, communion, solidarity. And it also calls upon the Churches to recompose the unity that has been torn for centuries.’
Compiled by Fabio Ciardi
Nov 27, 2015 | Non categorizzato, Word of
We are offered the possibility of meeting Jesus in our daily lives and among us. If we take it, we will experience a living Christmas. The words are spoken to me. The Lord is coming and I must be ready to welcome him. Every day I pray, ‘Come, Lord Jesus.’ And he replies, ‘Yes, I am coming soon’ (see Rev. 22:17, 20). He is standing at the door and knocking. He asks to come in (see Rev. 3:20). I cannot leave him outside my life. The invitation to welcome the Lord came from John the Baptist. It was directed to the Jewish people of his time. They were asked to confess their sins and be converted, changing their lives. He was certain that the coming of the Messiah was about to happen. Would the people, who had been waiting for him for centuries, recognize him, listen his words and follow him? John knew that to welcome him they had to get ready, hence his pressing invitation: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.’ These words are spoken to me because Jesus continues to come every day. Every day he knocks at my door and for me too, as for the Jews at the time of the Baptist, it is not easy to recognize him. So, contrary to what was commonly expected, he presented himself as a humble carpenter from Nazareth, an unimportant village. Today he presents himself under the guise of a migrant, someone with no work, an employer, a schoolmate, relatives, even of people who don’t always seem to shine with the face of the Lord, indeed where his face seems hidden. His subtle voice, which invites us to forgive, to give trust and friendship, to refuse to give in to choices against the Gospel, is often drowned out by other voices that incite us to hate, get our own back, become corrupt. This is the basis for the metaphor of tortuous and impenetrable paths that recall the obstacles hindering God’s coming into our everyday lives. It’s almost pointless to list the baseness, the egoism, the sin that dwells in our hearts and makes us blind to his presence and deaf to his voice. Each one of us, if we are sincere, knows what are the personal barriers obstructing our meeting with Jesus, with his word, with the persons with whom he identifies himself. Hence the invitation in the Word of Life that today is spoken directly to me: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.’ Correcting that judgement which makes me condemn the other person, ceasing to speak to them, so that instead I come to understand, to love and put myself at the other’s service. Correcting a twisted way of behaving that makes me betray a friendship, makes me violent, cheating civil law, and instead letting myself be converted into a person who is ready even to put up with injustice so as to be able to salvage a relationship, someone willing to pay in person the cost of encouraging fraternity in my neighbourhood. It is hard and a strong word, the one we have this month. But it is also a liberating word, one that can change my life, open me to meeting Jesus, so that he may come to live in me and it be he who acts and loves in me. This word, if it is lived, can do even more. It can give birth to Jesus among us, in the Christian community, in our families, in the groups where we are active. John spoke it to the whole of the people. And God came ‘and lived among us’ (Jn 1:14), in the midst of his people. For this reason we want, by helping one another to straighten the paths of our relationships, to wipe out any kind of distortion there may be between us, and so live out the mercy we are invited to have this year. Like this we will become, together, the home, the family, that is capable of welcoming God. It will be Christmas. Jesus will find an open highway and will be able to stay in our midst. Fabio Ciardi
Oct 29, 2015 | Non categorizzato, Word of
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‘That they may all be one’ (Jn 17:21). We can share God’s own dream and, as Jesus did, live and pray for unity. It will lead us down his path of death and resurrection together with him. This is the last, heartfelt prayer that Jesus spoke to the Father. He knew he was asking the thing closest to his heart. God, indeed, created humanity as his family, to give it every good thing, sharing his very own divine life. What do parents dream for their children if not that they should care for one another, help one another, live united with one another? And what saddens them more than seeing their children divided by jealousy or money matters, even to the point of not speaking to each other? God too has dreamt from all eternity of a family of his own living united as children in a communion of love with him and with one another. The Bible’s dramatic origin story speaks to us of sin and of the progressive break-up of the human family. As we read in the book of Genesis, the man accused the woman, Cain killed his own brother, Lamech took pride in his exaggerated vendetta, Babel generated misunderstanding and the separation of peoples… God’s project looked like a failure. Nonetheless, he did not give in and with determination sought the reunification of his family. The story begins again with Noah, with the choice of Abraham, with the birth of the chosen people. And so it goes on, to the point of deciding to send his Son to earth entrusted with a great mission: to gather into one family the separated children, to welcome the lost sinners into a single fold, to break down the walls of separation and the hostilities among peoples to create one new people (see Eph 2:14-16). God does not cease to dream of unity, and for this reason Jesus asks it of him as the greatest gift he can implore for all of us – ‘Father, I pray That they may all be one.’ Every family looks like its parents. So too the family of God. God is Love not only because he loves what he creates; but he is Love in himself, in mutual giving and communion, lived out by each of the three divine Persons with the others. Therefore when God created the human race he made it in his image and likeness and he impressed upon it the same capacity for relationship, so that every person may live in mutual self-giving. A more complete version of the words in the prayer of Jesus that we want to live this month, in fact, says: ‘that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us.’ The model for our unity is nothing less than the unity that exists between the Father and Jesus. It seems impossible, so profound is it. It is, however, made possible by that ‘As’, which means also ‘Because’. We can be united as the Father and Jesus are united because they draw us into their own unity, they give it to us as a gift. ‘That they may all be one.’ Precisely this is the work of Jesus, making all of us one, as he is with the Father, one single family, one people. To do this he made himself one of us, took upon himself all our divisions and our sins, nailing them to the cross. He himself pointed out the way he would take to bring us to unity: ‘And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself’ (Jn 12:32). As the High Priest had prophesied, he had to die ‘to gather into one the dispersed children of God’ (Jn 11:52). In his mystery of death and resurrection, he has gathered up all things into himself (see Eph 1:10), has recreated the unity broken by sin, has remade the family around the Father and has made us again brothers and sisters of one another. Jesus has completed his mission. What is left now is our part, our participation, our ‘yes’ to his prayer: ‘That they may all be one.’ What is our contribution to fulfilling this prayer? In the first place we have to make it our own. We can offer our lips and heart to Jesus so that he can continue speaking these words to the Father and with trust we can repeat his prayer every day. Unity is a gift from above, to be asked with faith, without ever growing tired. More than this it must be constantly at the forefront of our thoughts and wishes. If this is God’s dream, we want it to be ours as well. Periodically and before every decision, every choice, every action, we can ask ourselves: does this help to build unity, is it the best thing to do to bring about unity? And finally we ought to run to wherever disunity is most evident and take it upon ourselves as Jesus did. There may be friction in our family or among people we know, tensions in our neighbourhood, disagreements at work, in the parish, among the Churches. Never shy away from dissension and incomprehension, never be indifferent, but take to them our love that becomes listening, attention to the other person, sharing in the pain that results from that open wound. And above all live in unity with whoever is open to sharing Jesus’s ideal and prayer, without giving weight to misunderstandings or contrasting ideas, but content with ‘what is less perfect in unity more than what is more perfect in disunity’, accepting the differences with joy, indeed considering them richnesses for a unity that is never a reduction to uniformity. Yes, at times this will put us on the cross, but is it precisely the way Jesus chose to remake the unity of the human family, the way we too wish to walk with him. Fabio Ciardi
Sep 26, 2015 | Non categorizzato, Word of
Listen to the Word of Life
We can be like the first Christians and replicate their dramatic effect on society around them, if we live like them. For this we must focus on the Gospel’s core message and love one another in the power and the style of Jesus. Here we have the badge, the mark, the typical brand of Christians. Or at least it ought to be, because Jesus saw his community in this way. A fascinating text from Christianity’s early centuries, the Letter to Diognetus, recognizes that ‘Christians cannot be distinguished from the rest of the human race by country or language or customs. They do not live in cities of their own; they do not use a peculiar form of speech; they do not follow an eccentric manner of life.’ They are ordinary people, just the same as others. And yet they have a secret and it allows them to influence society profoundly, becoming as it were its ‘soul’ (see chs 5-6). It is a secret that Jesus passed on to his disciples shortly before dying. Like the ancient sages of Israel, like a father for his child, so too he, the Master of Wisdom, left as his legacy the art of knowing how to live and to live well. He had taken it directly from the Father: ‘I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father’ Jn 15:15), and it was the fruit of the relationship between them. It consisted in loving one another. This is his Last Will and Testament, the life of heaven that he brought to earth, which he shares with us so that it can become our very own life. He wants this to be the identity of his disciples, who should be recognizable as his followers by their mutual love: ‘By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.’ Are Jesus’s disciples recognized by their mutual love? ‘The history of the Church is a history of holiness’ wrote John Paul II. Nonetheless ‘history also records events which constitute a counter-testimony to Christianity’ (Incarnationis Mysterium, 11). For centuries, in the name of Jesus, Christians have fought endless wars with one another and their divisions continue. There are people who still today associate Christians with the Crusades, with the Inquisition, or who see them as the defenders to the bitter end of an outdated morality, and as opposing the progress of science. It was not like that for the new-born community of the first Christians in Jerusalem. People admired the communion of goods they practised, the unity that reigned among them, the ‘glad and generous hearts’ that characterized them (see Acts 2:46). In the Acts of the Apostles we read that ‘the people held them in high esteem’ so that more and more ‘believers were added to the Lord, great numbers of both men and women’ (Acts 5:13-14). The living witness of the community had a powerful attraction. Why today are we not known as people who stand out because of their love? What have we done with the commandment of Jesus? ‘By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.’ Traditionally, in Roman Catholic circles, the month of October is dedicated to mission, to reflecting upon the command of Jesus to go into all the world and proclaim the Gospel, to pray for and support those who are in the frontline. This Word of Life could be a help for all to put into focus the fundamental dimension of every Christian proclamation. It is not about imposing faith on others, nor proselytism, nor a self-serving handout of aid to the poor so that they will be converted. Neither is it primarily a matter of the challenge to defend moral values or a firm stand against injustice and war, even though such stances are a duty the Christian cannot evade. Before all else the Christian proclamation is a witness of life that every disciple of Jesus must offer personally. People in the modern world ‘listen more willingly to witnesses than to teachers’ (Evangelii Nuntiandi, 41). Even persons hostile to the Church are often touched by the example of those who dedicate their lives to the sick and the poor and who are ready to leave their homelands, going far away to the toughest places and offering help and solidarity to those in most need. But above all the witness Jesus requires is that of a whole community which demonstrates the truth of the Gospel. It must show that the life he brought really can generate a new society, where we live genuinely as brothers and sisters, helping and serving one another, collectively attentive to the most fragile and needy. The life of the Church has seen these kinds of witness, such as the settlements for indigenous peoples built by Franciscans and Jesuits in South America, or monasteries with the townships that grew up around them. Today too ecclesial Movements and communities give life to little towns of witness where it is possible to see signs of a new society, the fruit of Gospel life, of mutual love. ‘By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.’ Without abandoning our homes and the persons we know, if among us we live that unity which Jesus gave his life for, we can create an alternative way of living and sow seeds of hope and new life around us. A family that every day renews their will to live mutual love in a practical way can become a ray of light in the mutual indifference of a housing block or a district. An ‘environmental cell’, in other words two or more persons who agree to put into practice the demands of the Gospel with total commitment – in the field of their work, at school, in local government offices, in administrative buildings, in a prison – will cut through the logic of the struggle for power and create a collaborative atmosphere that favours the birth of true fraternity, a fraternity previously unhoped-for. Did not the first Christians behave like this at the time of the Roman Empire? Is not this the way they spread the transformative new life of Christianity? In our own day it is we who are the ‘first Christians’, called, as they were, to forgive one another, to see each other as always new, to help one another – in a word, to love one another with the intensity that Jesus loved us, in the certainty that his presence in our midst has the strength to draw others too into the divine logic of love. Fabio Ciardi
Aug 28, 2015 | Non categorizzato, Word of
Listen to the Word of Life
If we all truly loved our neighbour as ourselves, wars would cease, corruption would disappear, universal brotherhood wouldn’t be a utopia, and the civilization of love would soon become a reality. Here is one of those words of the Gospel that demand to be put into action immediately, this very instant. It is so utterly clear, and demanding, that it does not need a huge amount of comment. To see the power it contains, it may be useful, all the same, to look at it in its context. Jesus is replying to the question of one of the scribes (one of the students of the Bible) who had asked him which was the greatest commandment. It was an open question, especially as 613 precepts to be followed had been identified. One of the great teachers who had lived a few years before, Rabbi Shammai, had refused to say what he thought was the chief commandment. Others instead, as Jesus also did, focused on the central place of love. Rabbi Hillel, for example, affirmed: ‘Do not do to your neighbour anything that is hateful to yourself: this is the whole of the Law. The rest is commentary.’[1] Jesus is not the only one to take up the teaching about the central place of love, but he put together, as a single commandment, the love of God (see Dt 6:4) and the love of neighbour (see Lev 19:18). The reply he gives to the scribe who is questioning him is in fact: ‘The first [commandment] is, “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.” The second is this, “You shall love your neighbour as yourself.” There is no other commandment greater than these.’ ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself’ The second part of the single commandment is the expression of the first, love for God. Every one of God’s creatures is so close to his heart that to give him glory, to show him in action the love we have for him, there is no other way than to be the expression of his love for all. As parents are happy when they see their children getting on with each other, helping each other, staying united, so also God – who for us is like a father and a mother – is happy when he sees we love our neighbour as ourselves, and so contribute to bringing about the unity of the human family. For centuries Prophets had already been explaining to the People of Israel that God wants love and not sacrifices and holocausts (see Hosea 6:6). Jesus himself recalled their teaching when he said: ‘Go and learn what this means, “I desire mercy, not sacrifice.” For I have come to call not the righteous but sinners’ (Mt 9:13). How indeed can we love God who we cannot see, if we don’t love our brother or sister (see 1 Jn 4:20)? We love them, we serve them, we honour them to the measure that we love, serve, honour every person, both the friend and the unknown, from our own or from another people, above all the ‘small’, those most in need. This is the invitation to the Christian in today’s world: to translate worship into life, to go forth from the churches, where we adore, love, praise God, so that we go to meet others, in such a way as to practise what we have just learnt in prayer and communion with God. ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself’ How then can we live this command of the Lord’s? Let’s remind ourselves that it is part of an inseparable pair that includes love for God. We have to give ourselves time to get to know what love is and how we can love, and so we need to give space to moments of prayer, of ‘contemplation’, of dialogue with him. We learn love from God, who is Love. We don’t steal any time from our neighbour when we stay with God, indeed we prepare ourselves to love in a way that is increasingly generous and appropriate. At the same time, when we come back to God having loved other people, our prayer is more genuine, more true, and is filled with all the persons we have met, who we bring back to him. To love our neighbours as ourselves we need, then, to get to know them as they know themselves. We ought to reach the point of loving as the other wants to be loved and not as we would like to love. Now that our societies are becoming always more multicultural, with the presence of people from a huge variety of backgrounds, the challenge is even greater. Someone who goes to a new country has to learn its traditions and values; only in this way can they understand and love the people who live there. The same thing is true for those who receive new immigrants, who are often bewildered, struggling with a new language, and finding it difficult to fit in. Differences are present within the same family, in the workplace or in the locality, even when they are made up of persons who belong to the same culture. Would we like to find someone who’s ready to set aside time to listen to us, to help us revise for an exam, to find a job, to tidy our house? Perhaps the other person has similar needs. We have to know how to intuit them, being attentive to the other, adopting a sincere attitude of listening, putting ourselves in the other’s shoes. The quality of our love also matters. The apostle Paul, in his celebrated hymn to charity, lists some of its characteristics, which it could be useful to remember: it is patient, kind, not envious, not boastful or arrogant, does not insist on its own way, is not irritable, keeps no score of wrongs, but bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things (see 1 Cor 13:4-7). How many chances and how many nuances there are to living: ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself’! In conclusion we can recall that this principal for human existence is at the basis of the well-known ‘golden rule’ that we find in all religions and in all the great teachers of ‘secular’ culture. We could try to find, at the origins of our own cultural tradition or religious belief, similar invitations to love our neighbour and then help one another to live them together: Hindus and Muslims, Buddhists and followers of traditional religions, Christians and men and women of good will. We have to work together to create a new mentality that gives value to the other, that instils and encourages respect for the person, that cares and protects minorities, that is attentive to the weakest, that sets aside one’s own interests to put those of the other into the first place. If we were all truly aware of having to love our neighbour as ourselves, to the point of not doing to the other what we do not wish to be done to us and that we should do to the other what we wish the other would do for us, wars would cease, corruption would disappear, universal fraternity would be no utopia and the civilization of love would soon become a reality. Fabio Ciardi [1] Babylonian Talmud, Shabbath Folio 31a.
Jul 28, 2015 | Non categorizzato, Word of
Love is the fulfilment of our life, the one secure guiding principle we can follow. The whole of Christian ethics is contained in these words. Human behaviour, if it wishes to be according to what God thought when he created us, and so genuinely human, must be animated by love. If our ‘walk’ (which stands for our life) is to reach its objective, it must be guided by love, the summary of the entire law. The apostle Paul is speaking to the Christians in Ephesus when he makes this exhortation. It is the conclusion and summary of what he has just written to them about the Christian way of life: going from the old self to the new self, being true and sincere with one another, not stealing, knowing that we are forgiven, doing what is good, in a word ‘walking in love’. It would be useful to read the couple of sentences that give us these incisive words which will be with us throughout the month: ‘Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children. And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.’ Paul is convinced that our every move must be modelled on God’s way of behaving. If love is God’s distinguishing feature, it must be also for his children. They must imitate him in this. But how can we know God’s love? For Paul it is extremely clear. God’s love is revealed in Jesus, who shows how and how much God loves. The apostle experienced it at first hand: Christ ‘loved me and gave himself for me’ (Gal. 2:20), and now Paul reveals this to everybody so that it may become the experience of the whole community. ‘Walk in love’ What is the measure of Jesus’s love which should be the model for our love? It, we know, has no limits, no exceptions, no partiality. Jesus died for all, even his enemies, those who were crucifying him, just as the Father in his universal love makes his sun shine and his rain fall upon all, good and bad, sinners and righteous alike. He knew how to care above all for the little ones and the poor, the sick and the excluded. He loved his friends with intensity. He was particularly close to his disciples… His love spared nothing and went to the extreme of his giving his life. And now he calls all to share in his same love, to love as he has loved. This call could scare us, because it demands too much. How can we be imitators of God, who loves everyone, always, taking the initiative? How can we love with the measure of Jesus’s love? How can we live ‘in love’, as this Word of Life asks of us? It is possible only if we ourselves have first had the experience of being loved. In the expression ‘walk in love, as Christ loved us’, the word ‘as’ can also be translated ‘because’. ‘Walk in love’ Walking means acting, behaving, which means to say that everything we do must be inspired and moved by love. But perhaps it is not by chance that Paul uses this dynamic word to remind us that we learn by loving, that there is a whole road to go before reaching the wideness of God’s heart. He uses other images to point out the need for constant progress, such as the growth of infants to adulthood (see 1 Cor. 3:1-2) or races in the stadium to win a prize (see 1 Cor. 9:24). We are always a work in progress. Time and constancy are required to reach our goal, without giving up in the face of difficulties, without ever letting ourselves be discouraged by failures and mistakes, ready always to start again, without giving in to mediocrity. Augustine of Hippo, perhaps thinking of his own painful journey, wrote: ‘You always dislike what you are, if you want to reach what you are not yet. In fact where you feel at ease, you stop, and you say, “That’s enough,” and like that you sink. Build up continuously, walk ahead always, go forward without ceasing; do not pause long on the way, do not look behind, do not leave the track. The one who goes not ahead, stays behind.’ ‘Walk in love’ How can we walk most swiftly upon the way of love? Since the invitation is given to the whole community (the word ‘walk’ is in plural form), it is a good idea to help one another. Indeed, it is sad and tough to go on a journey alone. We could start by finding the opportunity to declare to one another again (with our friends, families, the members of the same Christian community) our will to walk together. We could share our positive experiences about how we have loved, so as to learn from one another. We could share with someone able to understand us the mistakes we have made and our slips along the way, so as to be corrected. Prayer together too can give us light and strength to go ahead. United among us and with Jesus (who called himself the Way!) in our midst we will be able to travel along the whole of our ‘Holy Journey’. We will sow love around us and we will reach the goal: Love. Fabio Ciardi
