Dear Brothers and Sisters,

This […] Gospel passage begins by indicating the district to which Jesus was going: Tyre and Sidon, to the north-west of Galilee, a pagan land. And it was here that he met a Canaanite woman who spoke to him, asking him to heal her daughter who was possessed by a demon (cf. Mt 15:22).

In her supplication we can already discern the beginning of a journey of faith, which in her conversation with the divine Teacher grows and becomes stronger.

The woman was not afraid to cry to Jesus “Have mercy on me”, an expression that recurs in the Psalms (cf. 50:1), she calls him “Lord” and “Son of David” (cf. Mt 15:22), thus showing a firm hope of being heard. What was the Lord’s attitude to this cry of anguish from a pagan woman?

Jesus’ silence may seem disconcerting, to the point that it prompted the disciples to intervene, but it was not a question of insensitivity to this woman’s sorrow. St Augustine rightly commented: “Christ showed himself indifferent to her, not in order to refuse her his mercy but rather to inflame her desire for it” (Sermo 77, 1: PL 38, 483).

The apparent aloofness of Jesus who said: “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (v. 24), did not discourage the Canaanite woman who persisted: “Lord, help me” (v. 25). And she did not even desist when she received an answer that would seem to have extinguished any hope: “it is not fair to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs” (v. 26). She had no wish to take anything from anyone; in her simplicity and humility a little was enough for her, crumbs sufficed, no more than a look, a kind word from the Son of God. And Jesus was struck with admiration for an answer of such great faith and said to her: “Be it done for you as you desire” (v. 28).

Dear friends, we too are called to grow in faith, to open ourselves in order to welcome God’s gift freely, to have trust and also to cry to Jesus “give us faith, help us to find the way!”. This is the way that Jesus made his disciples take, as well as the Canaanite woman and men and women of every epoch and nation and each one of us.

Faith opens us to knowing and welcoming the real identity of Jesus, his newness and oneness, his word, as a source of life, in order to live a personal relationship with him. Knowledge of the faith grows, it grows with the desire to find the way and in the end it is a gift of God who does not reveal himself to us as an abstract thing without a face or a name, because faith responds to a Person who wants to enter into a relationship of deep love with us and to involve our whole life.

For this reason our heart must undergo the experience of conversion every day, every day it must see us changing from people withdrawn into themselves to people who are open to God’s action, spiritual people (cf. 1 Cor 2:13-14), who let themselves be called into question by the Lord’s word and open their life to his Love.

Dear brothers and sisters, let us therefore nourish our faith every day with deep attention to the word of God, with the celebration of the Sacraments, with personal prayer as a “cry” to him, and with charity to our neighbour.

Let us invoke the intercession of the Virgin Mary, whom we shall contemplate tomorrow in her glorious Assumption into Heaven in body and soul, so that she may help us proclaim and witness with our lives to the joy of having encountered the Lord.

[Pope Benedict, Angelus 14 August 2011]

6. Particularly touching is the episode of the Canaanite woman, who did not cease to ask Jesus' help for her daughter who was "cruelly tormented by a demon". When the Canaanite woman prostrated herself before Jesus to ask him for help, he replied: 'It is not good to take the bread of the children to throw it to the little dogs' (this was a reminder of the ethnic diversity between Israelites and Canaanites, which Jesus, son of David, could not ignore in his practical behaviour, but to which he alluded in a methodological function to provoke faith). And here the woman intuitively comes to an unusual act of faith and humility. She says: 'It is true, Lord . . . but even little dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters' table'. Faced with such a humble, gracious and confident word, Jesus replies: 'Woman, truly great is your faith! May it be done to you as you wish" (cf. Mt 15:21-28).

It is an event difficult to forget, especially when one thinks of the countless 'Canaanites' of every time, country, colour and social condition, who reach out their hand to ask for understanding and help in their needs!

[Pope John Paul II, General Audience 16 December 1987]

This […] Gospel (see Mt 15:21-28) describes the meeting between Jesus and the Canaanite woman. Jesus is to the north of Galilee, in foreign territory. The woman was not Jewish, she was Canaanite. Jesus is there to spend some time with His disciples away from the crowds, from the crowds whose numbers are always growing. And behold, a woman approached Him seeking help for her sick daughter: “Have mercy on me, Lord!” (v. 22). It is the cry that is born out of a life marked by suffering, from the sense of the helplessness of a mamma who sees her daughter tormented by evil who cannot be healed; she cannot heal her. Jesus initially ignores her, but this mother insists; she insists, even when the Master says to the disciples that His mission is directed only to “the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (v. 24) and not to the pagans. She continues to beg Him, and at that point, He puts her to the test, citing a proverb. It’s a bit…this seems almost a bit cruel, but she puts her to the test: “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs” (v. 26). And right away, the woman, quick, anguished, responds: “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table” (v. 27).

And with these words, that mother shows that she has perceived the goodness of the Most High God present in Jesus who is open to any of His creatures necessities. And this wisdom, filled with trust, touches Jesus’s heart and provokes words of admiration: “Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish” (v. 28). What type of faith is great? Great faith is that which brings its own story, marked even by wounds, and brings it to the Lord’s feet asking Him to heal them, to give them meaning.

Each one of us has our own story and it is not always a story “of export”, it is not always a clean story… Many times it is a difficult story, with a lot of pain, many misfortunes and many sins. What do I do with my story? Do I hide it? No! We must bring it before the Lord. “Lord, if You will it, you can heal me!” This is what this woman teaches us, this wonderful mother: the courage to bring our own painful story before God, before Jesus, to touch God’s tenderness, Jesus’s tenderness. Let’s try this story, this prayer: let each one of us think of his or her own story. There are always ugly things in a story, always. Let us go to Jesus, knock on Jesus’s heart and say to Him: “Lord, if You will it, you can heal me!” And we can do this if we always have the face of Jesus before us, if we understand what Christ’s heart is like, what Jesus’s heart is like: a heart that feels compassion, that bears our pains, that bears our sins, our mistakes, our failures. But it is a heart that love us like that, as we are, without make-up: He loves us like that. “Lord, if You will it, you can heal me!” This is why it is necessary to understand Jesus, to be familiar with Jesus. I always go back to the advice that I give you: always carry a small pocket-size Gospel and read a passage every day. There you will find Jesus as He is, as He presents Himself; you will find Jesus who loves us, who loves us a lot, who tremendously wants our well-being. Let us remember the prayer: “Lord, if You will it, you can heal me!” A beautiful prayer. Carry the Gospel: in your purse, in your pocket and even on your mobile phone, to look at. May the Lord help us, all of us, to pray this beautiful prayer, that a pagan woman teaches us: not a Christian woman, not a Jewish woman, a pagan woman.

May the Virgin Mary intercede with her prayer so that the joy of faith might grow in every baptized person as well as the desire to communicate it through a consistent witness of life, that she give us the courage to approach Jesus and to say to Him: “Lord, if You will it, you can heal me!”

[Pope Francis, Angelus 16 August 2020]

9 February 2025 V Sunday Ordinary Time Year C

God bless us and may the Virgin protect us! 

I add at the end of the commentary on the Readings some notes that help to better enter into the text and are also useful for lectio divina or catechesis. 

*First Reading From the Book of the Prophet Isaiah (6, 1- 8)

 In the 4th Sunday of Ordinary Time Year C (this year replaced by the liturgy of the Presentation of the Lord) we read the account of Jeremiah's vocation, today instead that of Isaiah: both great prophets and yet both confess their littleness. Jeremiah proclaims that he is unable to speak, but since it is God who has chosen him, it is God himself who will give him the necessary strength. Isaiah, for his part, is seized by a sense of unworthiness but it is always God who makes him 'pure'. The prophets' vocation is always a personal choice on God's part that demands complete adherence, the result of decisive awareness: "To send and to go" are the terms of every vocation and Isaiah too responds in full. If Jeremiah is a priest but it is not known where he received the divine call, Isaiah, on the other hand, who was not a priest, places his vocation in the temple of Jerusalem: "In the year that King Ozias died, I saw the Lord sitting on a high and lofty throne". When Isaiah says: I saw, he is communicating a vision to us, and since the prophetic books are studded with visions, we must be able to decode this language. Isaiah gives us a valuable clue and states that all this happened in the year of the death of King Ozias who reigned in Jerusalem from 781 to 740 B.C. When King Solomon died (in 933 B.C., almost two centuries earlier), the kingdom of David and Solomon was divided: there were two kingdoms with two kings and two capitals. In the South, Oziah reigned over Jerusalem; in the North, Menaem reigned over Samaria. Ozias was leprous and died of this disease in Jerusalem in 740 B.C. It was therefore in that year that Isaiah received his prophetic calling. Subsequently, he preached for about forty years and died a martyr's death under King Manasseh of Judah, according to an accredited tradition, sawn in two with a wooden saw. He remains in Israel's collective memory as a great prophet, particularly as the prophet of God's holiness. 'Holy! Holy! Holy is the Lord of hosts! The whole earth is full of his glory': the Sanctus of our Eucharistic celebrations thus goes back to the prophet Isaiah, although perhaps this acclamation was already part of the temple liturgy in Jerusalem. God is 'Holy': in the biblical sense this means that He is totally Other than man (Qadosh), that is, He is not in the image of man, but as the Bible states, it is man who is created in the image of God. In Isaiah's vision God is seated on a lofty throne, smoke spreads and fills all space, a voice thunders so loudly that the places tremble: "All the earth is full of your glory". The prophet thinks of what happened to Moses on Mount Sinai, when God made a covenant with his people and gave them the Tablets of the Law. The book of Exodus recounts: "Mount Sinai was all smoking, because the Lord had descended there in fire; the smoke rose like that of a furnace, and the whole mountain trembled greatly..." (Ex 19:18-19). Isaiah, in his littleness, feels a reverential awe: "Oh alas! I am lost, for a man of unclean lips am I... yet mine eyes have seen the king, the Lord of hosts'.  Isaiah's fear is above all an awareness of our smallness and the unbridgeable gap that separates us from God. God, however, does not stop and says: "Do not fear". In Isaiah's vision, the word is replaced by gesture: 'One of the seraphim flew towards me, he held a burning coal in his hand... he touched my mouth'. It purifies him because the prophet is purified by the Word that enables him to enter into a relationship with God. Calling God "The Holy One of Israel" also affirms that He is the Totally Other and at the same time close to His people, so that His people can feel Him as their God.  Throughout the Bible God appears as the one who wants to become the 'Holy One' for the whole of humanity, the God who loves us and wants to remain with us all. 

Three additional notes: 

1.The book of Isaiah comprises sixty-six chapters: however, it is not by a single author because it is a collection of three collections. Chapters 1 to 39 are largely the work of the prophet who here recounts his vocation (within these 39 chapters, some pages are probably later); chapters 40 to 55 are the work of a prophet who preached during his exile in Babylon (in the 6th century BC); chapters 56 to 66 record the preaching of a third prophet, a contemporary of those who had returned from exile in Babylon.

2.Holiness is not a moral concept, nor an attribute of God, but is the very nature of God; in fact, the adjective divine does not exist in Hebrew and is replaced by the term holy, which means Totally Other than man: we cannot reach him by our own strength because he infinitely exceeds us, to the point that we have no power over him. The prophet Hosea writes: "I am God and not man; in your midst I am the holy God" (Hos 11:9). Therefore in the Bible no human being is ever considered holy, at most one can be 'sanctified' by God and thus reflect his image, which has always been our calling. 

3.In some language translations, the expression 'The Lord of hosts' is rendered as 'the Lord of the universe', probably to appeal to a sensibility that resents the idea of a God of hosts and at the same time to express a universalistic sense of God's action. 

*Responsorial Psalm (137 /138,1-5.7c-8)

This psalm conveys a feeling of deep joy and from the very first verse everything is said. The expression 'give thanks' is in fact repeated several times: 'I give thanks to you, Lord, with all my heart... I give thanks to your name'. The believer is the one who lives in God's grace and simply acknowledges it, with a heart full of gratitude. Here the believer is the people of Israel who, as always in the psalms, speak and give thanks for the covenant God has offered them. This is understood from the repetition of the name 'Lord', which returns several times in these verses. "Lord" is the Name of God, the so-called "tetragrammaton", consisting of four consonants (YHWH), revealed to Moses at Sinai in the episode of the burning bush (Ex. 3). The four Hebrew letters are: yod, he, vav, he and the exact pronunciation has been lost over time, as the original vowels are not indicated in the Hebrew text. We generally say 'Yahweh', a sacred name that is rarely pronounced out of respect. It is almost always replaced by Adonai ("Lord") or HaShem ("The Name") during the reading. God revealed himself to Moses during the Exodus on Sinai, also under the name 'Love and Loyalty', and we hear it here too: 'I give thanks to your name for your love and faithfulness'. This same expression "Love and Faithfulness" recurs several times in other psalms and throughout the Bible, a precious discovery of Israel, thanks to the Spirit of God: "I am the Lord, the merciful and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness" (Ex 34:6). It is no coincidence that the revelation of God's tenderness occurs after the episode of the golden calf, i.e. at a time of severe infidelity of the people because it was in their repeated infidelities that Israel experienced God's mercy. God's faithfulness sung unceasingly in the temple of Jerusalem: "I prostrate myself towards your holy temple" (v.2) and the psalm continues: "I give thanks to your name for your love and your faithfulness". As it appears in the life of the prophet Isaiah, the gap that separates us from God, unbridgeable by meritorious deeds, is bridged by God himself by inviting us into his intimacy. And in this psalm we discover what God's holiness consists of: Love and faithfulness. At the end of the psalm we read "your love" is forever and "your right hand saves me", a further reference to the Exodus where it is said that He has delivered us "with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm" (Deut 4:34). Israel knows that it is the recipient of Revelation, the confidant of God, but it also realises that it must become His prophet by proclaiming His Love and Faithfulness to all mankind. This is the meaning of the verse: 'All the kings of the earth shall give thanks to thee, O Lord, ... when they hear the words of thy mouth' (v.4). Only when Israel has fulfilled its mission as a witness of God, then can one truly sing: 'I thank thee, O Lord, with all my heart' and... 'All the kings of the earth will thank thee, O Lord'. The psalm ends with a prayer: 'Do not forsake the work of your hands', which means: Continue despite our infidelities. The two phrases should be read together: 'Lord, your love is forever ... do not forsake the work of your hands. His everlasting love gives us assurance that he will never forsake the work of his hands, and for this we do not cease to give thanks: "The Lord will do all things for me" (v.8).

Additional note. The Italian translation bears: "All the kings of the earth will give thanks to you, Lord" (v.4). Exegetes point out that here we are dealing with an unaccomplished or imperfect Hebrew verb that can indicate either future actions, habitual and repeated actions or continuous or incomplete actions in the past or present. Thus it could be validly translated with the present tense: 'May all the kings of the earth give thanks to you' or with a subjunctive: 'May all the kings of the earth give thanks to you' and it is obvious that in each choice the meaning changes somewhat.*Second Reading From the Epistle of St Paul the Apostle to the Corinthians (15:1-11)

If today we reread what St Paul writes, it is because over these millennia, from generation to generation, the gospel has been passed on as in an uninterrupted relay race where, along the way, the 'witness' is handed on to the next person who in turn will hand it on to the next.  The Church is called upon to faithfully transmit the gospel. Paul, apart from the apparition on the road to Damascus, did not know and witness the life of Jesus of Nazareth; his sources are the Apostles of the first generation and for him, in particular, Ananias, Barnabas and the Christian community of Antioch of Syria. Thanks to them, he received the Gospel, which he transmits by summarising it in two sentences: Christ died for our sins and rose again on the third day, which can be summarised in just two words: died/resurrected, which constitute the two pillars of the Christian faith, and this is in accordance with the Scriptures, i.e. also with the Old Testament where, however, no explicit statements on the death and resurrection of the Messiah are found. The formula 'according to the Scriptures' does not therefore mean that everything was written in advance, but that everything that happened is in conformity with God's merciful plan. One could then replace the expression 'according to the Scriptures' with 'according to God's plan and promise'. Christ by dying on the cross wiped out our sins and, according to his own promise, rose again: death was conquered and it is easy to see that the entire Old Testament is filled with promises of forgiveness of sins, salvation and life. For example, in the Old Testament, the expression 'on the third day' evoked a promise of salvation and deliverance because to say that there will be a third day was equivalent to saying: 'God will intervene'. On the third day on Mount Moria, God rescued Isaac from death (Gen 22:8); On the third day, Joseph in Egypt restored freedom to his brothers (Gen 42:18); On the third day, the Lord appeared to his people gathered at the foot of Mount Sinai (Ex 19:11- 16); On the third day, Jonah, finally converted, returned to the land and to his mission (Gen 2:1). This is how the word of Hosea was interpreted: "He will restore us to life after two days; on the third day he will raise us up and we will live before him" (Hos 6:2). The third day is therefore not a chronological datum, but the expression of a hope: that of the triumph of life over death. To proclaim that Christ is risen on the third day according to the Scriptures is therefore to affirm that salvation is universal: the triumph of life and salvation are for all times and for all men, since Christ lives forever. Grafted into him we are already part of the new humanity made alive by the Holy Spirit. Paul recounts that he personally experienced this salvation by being a persecutor forgiven, converted and transformed into a pillar of the Church, and he will never forget this by testifying to the wonder of God's love for humanity: a love that is unconditional and continually offered. Paul, like Isaiah, like Peter, is deeply aware of his own sin; but he allows God's grace to work in him: 'By God's grace, however, I am what I am, and his grace in me has not been in vain. Indeed I have laboured more than all of them; not I, however, but the grace of God which is me' (v.10). From a persecutor God made him an apostle, the most ardent, as from a timid youth, he made Jeremiah a courageous prophet and Isaiah, from a man with unclean lips, made him the 'mouth of God' and Peter, from a renegade, made him the foundation of his Church. The gospel to be shouted from the rooftops of humanity is precisely God's Love and Mercy for all.

.

*From the Gospel according to Luke (5:1-11)

 The first reading almost always recalls the gospel, and we perceive it very well today. We are not used to comparing the apostle Peter to the prophet Isaiah, yet the liturgy texts help us to do so by offering us the stories of their vocation. The scenarios are different: for Isaiah, everything takes place during a vision in the temple in Jerusalem; for Peter, on Lake Tiberias. Both, however, suddenly find themselves in the presence of God: Isaiah in his vision, Peter witnessing a miracle after a night out. The details provided by Luke leave no doubt. Peter says to Jesus: "Master, we have toiled all night and caught nothing" and Jesus invites them to cast their nets again.  Then something extraordinary happens against all expectations and human experience. If, in fact, nothing was caught during the night, it is certainly even worse during the day, and all the fishermen who work at night know this. The miracle, however, takes place because at the simple word of Jesus, Peter, an experienced fisherman shows humble and boundless trust and obeys. the result was such an enormous quantity of fish that he risked breaking his nets. Both Peter and Isaiah react in the same way to God's irruption in their lives; both perceive his holiness and the gulf that separates them from him. Their expressions are similar: 'Lord, depart from me, for I am a sinner', exclaims Peter, while Isaiah says: 'Alas! I am lost, for a man of unclean lips I am'.  The teaching is clear: our sins, our unworthiness, do not stop God because he is content for us to become aware of them and present ourselves to him in truth. Only when we acknowledge our poverty, however, can God fill us with his grace. Peter and Isaiah are seized by a reverential fear before his presence: Isaiah sees a burning coal touching his mouth, Peter hears Jesus' words: 'Do not fear', and in the end both are called to the service of the same project of God, the salvation of mankind. Isaiah as prophet, Peter will become fisherman of men for their salvation. To the words of Jesus: "Fear not, thou shalt henceforth be a fisher of men" Peter does not respond directly, but together with the others performs a gesture of impressive simplicity: "And having pulled the boats ashore, they left everything and followed him". The disciples become Christ's co-operators even if the enterprise seems doomed to failure according to human judgement and they must always continue to cast their nets. This is the mystery of our collaboration in God's work: we can do nothing without him, and God does not want to do anything without us. As Paul says in the second reading, it is his grace that does everything: 'By God's grace I am what I am, and his grace in me was not in vain'. On closer inspection, the only cooperation that is asked of us is a trusting willingness as Peter does who courageously risks a new fishing attempt. And after the miracle he no longer calls Jesus Master, but Lord, the name reserved for God: he prostrates himself at his feet ready now to do whatever he says. Ultimately, it is thanks to the yes of Isaiah, of Peter and his companions, and of Paul, that we too are here today. The word of Jesus still resounds for us: "Put out into the deep and cast your nets for fishing" and it is our turn to respond: on your word we will cast our nets. For a miraculous catch, the secret is always to trust Christ, which is not easy but possible for everyone.

Additional note. In verse 6, the verb 'they caught a quantity of fish' is συνεκλεισαν (synekleisan), derived from the verb συγκλείω (synkleió), which means 'to enclose', 'to trap' or 'to enclose together' and means to catch the fish with the net by pulling them out of the sea in order to kill them. In his works, St Augustine often uses the image of fishermen to describe the work of the Apostles, especially Peter and Andrew, called by Jesus to become "fishers of men" (Matthew 4:19). Thus he notes in his Commentary on the Psalms (Psalm 91, Discourse 2): "They fish men, not to kill them but to vivify them; they fish, but to lead them to the light of truth, not to death. So when it comes to men, snatching them from the sea (symbol of evil) means saving them: taking men alive means preventing them from drowning, that is, saving them from the whirlpools of death: bringing them to breath, to Light, to Life.

+Giovanni D'Ercole

*Synthesis 9 February 2025 V Sunday Ordinary Time Year C

God bless us and may the Virgin protect us! 

I add at the end of the commentary on the Readings some notes that help to better enter into the text and are also useful for lectio divina or catechesis. 

*First Reading From the Book of the Prophet Isaiah (6, 1- 8)

 In the 4th Sunday of Ordinary Time Year C (this year replaced by the liturgy of the Presentation of the Lord) we read the account of Jeremiah's vocation, today instead that of Isaiah: both great prophets and yet both confess their littleness. Jeremiah proclaims that he is unable to speak, but since it is God who has chosen him, it is God himself who will give him the necessary strength. Isaiah, for his part, is seized by a sense of unworthiness but it is always God who makes him 'pure'. The prophets' vocation is always a personal choice on God's part that demands complete adherence, the result of decisive awareness: "To send and to go" are the terms of every vocation and Isaiah too responds in full. If Jeremiah is a priest but it is not known where he received the divine call, Isaiah, on the other hand, who was not a priest, places his vocation in the temple of Jerusalem: "In the year that King Ozias died, I saw the Lord sitting on a high and lofty throne". Isaiah gives us a valuable indication and states that this happened in the year of the death of King Ozias, who reigned in Jerusalem from 781 to 740 B.C. When King Solomon died (in 933 B.C., almost two centuries earlier), the kingdom of David and Solomon was divided: there were two kingdoms with two kings and two capitals. In the South, Oziah reigned over Jerusalem; in the North, Menaem reigned over Samaria. Ozias was leprous and died of this disease in Jerusalem in 740 B.C. It was therefore in that year that Isaiah received his prophetic calling. Subsequently, he preached for about forty years and died a martyr's death under King Manasseh of Judah, according to an accredited tradition, sawn in two with a wooden saw. He remains in Israel's collective memory as a great prophet, particularly as the prophet of God's holiness. 'Holy! Holy! Holy is the Lord of hosts! The whole earth is full of his glory': the Sanctus of our Eucharistic celebrations thus goes back to the prophet Isaiah, although perhaps this acclamation was already part of the temple liturgy in Jerusalem. God is 'Holy': in the biblical sense this means that He is totally Other than man (Qadosh), that is, He is not in the image of man, but as the Bible states, it is man who is created in the image of God. Calling God "The Holy One of Israel" also affirms that He is the Totally Other and at the same time close to His people, so that His people can feel Him as their God.  Throughout the Bible God appears as the one who wants to become the 'Holy One' for the whole of humanity, the God who loves us and wants to remain with us all. 

Three additional notes: 

1.The book of Isaiah comprises sixty-six chapters: however, it is not by a single author because it is a collection of three collections. Chapters 1 to 39 are largely the work of the prophet who here recounts his vocation (within these 39 chapters, some pages are probably later); chapters 40 to 55 are the work of a prophet who preached during his exile in Babylon (in the 6th century BC); chapters 56 to 66 record the preaching of a third prophet, a contemporary of those who had returned from exile in Babylon.

2.Holiness is not a moral concept, nor an attribute of God, but is the very nature of God; in fact, the adjective divine does not exist in Hebrew and is replaced by the term holy, which means Totally Other than man: we cannot reach him by our own strength because he infinitely exceeds us, to the point that we have no power over him. The prophet Hosea writes: "I am God and not man; in your midst I am the holy God" (Hos 11:9). Therefore in the Bible no human being is ever considered holy, at most one can be 'sanctified' by God and thus reflect his image, which has always been our calling. 

3.In some language translations, the expression 'The Lord of hosts' is rendered as 'the Lord of the universe', probably to appeal to a sensibility that resents the idea of a God of hosts and at the same time to express a universalistic sense of God's action. 

*Responsorial Psalm (137 /138,1-5.7c-8)

This psalm conveys a feeling of deep joy and from the very first verse everything is said. The expression 'give thanks' is in fact repeated several times: 'I give thanks to you, Lord, with all my heart... I give thanks to your name'. The believer is the one who lives in God's grace and simply acknowledges it, with a heart full of gratitude. Here the believer is the people of Israel who, as always in the psalms, speak and give thanks for the covenant God has offered them. This is understood from the repetition of the name "Lord", which returns several times in these verses. "Lord" is the Name of God, the so-called "tetragrammaton", consisting of four consonants (YHWH), revealed to Moses at Sinai in the episode of the burning bush (Ex. 3). We generally say 'Yahweh', a sacred name that is rarely pronounced out of respect. God revealed himself to Moses during the Exodus at Sinai, also under the name 'Love and Loyalty' and we hear it here too: 'I give thanks to your name for your love and faithfulness'. This same expression "Love and Faithfulness" recurs several times in other psalms and throughout the Bible: "I am the Lord, the merciful and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness" (Ex 34:6). In this psalm, we discover that God's holiness consists in Love and faithfulness. Israel realises that it must become His prophet by proclaiming His Love and Faithfulness to all mankind. It is only when Israel has fulfilled this mission that one can truly sing: 'I thank Thee, Lord, with all my heart' and... 'All the kings of the earth will thank Thee, Lord'. 

Additional note. The Italian translation reads: "They will give thanks to you, Lord, all the kings of the earth" (v.4). Exegetes point out that here we are dealing with an unaccomplished or imperfect Hebrew verb that can indicate either future actions, habitual and repeated actions, or continuous or incomplete actions in the past or present. Thus it could be validly translated with the present tense: 'May all the kings of the earth give thanks to you' or with a subjunctive: 'May all the kings of the earth give thanks to you' and it is obvious that in each choice the meaning changes somewhat.

*Second Reading From the Epistle of St Paul the Apostle to the Corinthians (15:1-11)

Paul, apart from the apparition on the road to Damascus, did not know or witness the life of Jesus of Nazareth; his sources are the Apostles of the first generation and thanks to them, he received the Gospel, which he in turn transmits by summarising it in two sentences: Christ died for our sins and rose again on the third day, which can be summarised in just two words: died/rose which constitute the two pillars of the Christian faith and this is in accordance with the Scriptures, i.e. also the Old Testament where, however, no explicit statements on the death and resurrection of the Messiah are found. The formula 'according to the Scriptures' does not therefore mean that everything was written in advance, but that everything that happened is in conformity with God's merciful plan. One could then replace the expression 'according to the Scriptures' with 'according to God's plan and promise'. Christ by dying on the cross wiped out our sins and, according to his own promise, rose again: death was conquered and it is easy to see that the entire Old Testament is filled with promises of forgiveness of sins, salvation and life. For example, in the Old Testament, the expression 'on the third day' evoked a promise of salvation and deliverance because to say that there will be a third day was equivalent to saying: 'God will intervene'. On the third day on Mount Moria, God rescued Isaac from death (Gen 22:8); On the third day, Joseph in Egypt restored freedom to his brothers (Gen 42:18); On the third day, the Lord appeared to his people gathered at the foot of Mount Sinai (Ex 19:11- 16); On the third day, Jonah, finally converted, returned to the land and to his mission (Gen 2:1). This is how the word of Hosea was interpreted: "He will restore us to life after two days; on the third day he will raise us up and we will live before him" (Hos 6:2). The third day is therefore not a chronological datum, but the expression of a hope: that of the triumph of life over death. To proclaim that Christ is risen on the third day according to the Scriptures is therefore to affirm that salvation is for all times and for all men, since Christ lives forever. As a persecutor, God made St Paul an apostle, as a timid youth, he made Jeremiah a courageous prophet, and Isaiah, as a man with unclean lips, made him the 'mouth of God', and Peter, as a renegade, made him the foundation of his Church. 

*From the Gospel according to Luke (5, 1-11)

 The first reading almost always recalls the gospel, and we perceive this very well today. We are not used to comparing the apostle Peter to the prophet Isaiah, yet the texts of the liturgy help us to do so by offering us the stories of their vocation. The scenarios are different: for Isaiah, everything takes place during a vision in the temple in Jerusalem; for Peter, on Lake Tiberias. Both, however, suddenly find themselves in the presence of God: Isaiah in his vision, Peter witnessing a miracle after a night out. The details provided by Luke leave no doubt. Peter says to Jesus: 'Master, we have toiled all night and caught nothing' and Jesus invites them to cast their nets again.  Then something extraordinary happens against all expectations and human experience. If, in fact, nothing was caught during the night, it is certainly even worse during the day, and all the fishermen who work at night know this. The miracle, however, takes place because, at the simple word of Jesus, Peter, an experienced fisherman shows humble and boundless trust and obeys. the result was such an enormous quantity of fish that he risked breaking his nets. Both Peter and Isaiah react in the same way to the irruption of God in their lives; both perceive his holiness and the gulf that separates them from him. Their expressions are similar: 'Lord, depart from me, for I am a sinner', exclaims Peter, while Isaiah says: 'Alas! I am lost, for a man of unclean lips I am'.  The teaching is clear: our sins, our unworthiness do not stop God because he is content for us to become aware of them and present ourselves to him in truth, and when we recognise our poverty, God can fill us with his grace. To the words of Jesus: "Fear not, thou shalt now be a fisher of men" Peter does not respond directly, but together with the others he performs a gesture of impressive simplicity: "And having pulled the boats ashore, they left everything and followed him". The disciples become Christ's co-operators even if the enterprise seems doomed to failure according to human judgement and they must always continue to cast their nets. It is the mystery of our collaboration in God's work: we can do nothing without him, and God does not want to do anything without us. The word of Jesus still resounds for us: 'Put out into the deep and cast your nets for fishing' and it is up to us to respond: at your word we will cast our nets. 

Supplementary note. In verse 6, the verb "they caught a quantity of fish" is derived from the Greek verb synkleió, which means "to enclose", "to trap" or "to enclose together" and means to catch fish with a net by snatching them out of the sea in order to kill them. St Augustine often uses the image of fishermen to describe the work of the Apostles, particularly Peter and Andrew, who were called by Jesus to become "fishers of men" (Matthew 4:19). In his Commentary on the Psalms (Psalm 91, Sermon 2) he writes: "They fish men, not to kill them but to make them alive; they fish, but to lead them to the light of truth, not to death. So when it comes to men, snatching them from the sea (symbol of evil) means saving them: taking men alive means preventing them from drowning, that is, saving them from the whirlpools of death: bringing them to breath, to Light, to Life.

+Giovanni D'Ercole

Purity, impudity and misrepresented holiness

(Mk 7,14-23)

The Lord is for a comprehensive humanization. But in ancient cultures the mythical vision of the world led people to appreciate any reality starting from the category of ‘holiness’ as ‘detachment’.

The purity laws indicated the conditions necessary to stand before God and feel good in His presence - but in fact always dismayed, because [obviously] not totally complying.

At Mk’s time some converted Jews believed they could abandon the ancient customs and get closer to the pagans; others were of the opposite opinion: it would have been like rejecting substantial parts of the Torah.

In fact, the evangelist emphasizes that the problem is «in the Home» (v.17) that is, in the Church. Fraternity where the Master who came to free us from artificial obsessions, wasn’t yet understood.

Christ must insist on his teaching, now not addressed to strangers but to disciples [precisely] incapable of «understanding» (vv.14.18).

In this way, the Gospel rejects the distinction between the religious sphere of life and "contaminated" daily arrangement; a source of corruption. But normal, ground, harsh reality - therefore assessed distant from the ‘divine’.

Quintessence that vice versa does not intend to subjugate anyone.

The active presence of a new Order abolishes legal prescriptions and shifts the center of morality of our acts.

Here the teaching of Jesus is recalled: impurity does not come from outside [that is, from external to the inside]. That’s not the threat.

The realities of the world are never wicked and unsuitable - not even by the worship.

They become an abomination only by passing through decisions that are sacrilegious, because block life. And detachments that barbarize.

There is no sacred and profane in itself.

Mystery and Beatitude come into the world exclusively through the channel of dialogue and encounter with respect for intelligence, personal soul, and differing cultures. Not by pursuing entities of merit, nor misrepresented bottlenecks.

Here formal legalism kills the expansion of life and ideals: “impure” is what poisons the existence and spontaneous realization of people, their relationships, and creation itself.

Jesus frees the crowd of the voiceless and lost from the obsession of torments and fears, from always being on the defensive.

We are called to love the limits: they are the ground of preparatory energies of the real flowering -  impulses and signs of our ‘task in the world’ according to the Newness of God.

Every Exodus values alternatives.

And we find the realization, the meaning of life, and gradually greater completeness, indeed by meeting our opposite sides.

We are not called to stare in one direction. There are others.

Anyone who intimidates the "inadequate" woman and brother threatens the life of the cosmos and makes the most sensitive and attentive people self-doubtful.

It is the imperfections that make us new, exceptional, unique!

Let’s therefore learn not to feel dismay at the fact that ‘we are not’ religiously "successful" - but Firstfruits!

[Wednesday 5th wk. in O.T.  February 12, 2025]

Purity, impurity and holiness misrepresented

(Mk 7:14-23)

The Church has retained faith in the goodness of creation; it does not view nature, society, and the Father's concrete work in a negative light, as is unfortunately advocated in certain squeamish mentalities (in a devout key).

Neither does he believe that to feel saved, there are instruments or zones of refuge that one only needs to use, enjoy, or reach out to. The Lord is for an all-round humanisation.

In ancient cultures, the religious and mythical view of the world led people to appreciate any reality from the category of holiness as detachment and separateness - even inaccessibility.

Purity laws indicated the conditions necessary to stand before God and feel good in his presence - but in fact always dismayed, because (obviously) not totally fulfilled.

One could not present oneself where the person was, or on any occasion and in any way - but according to rules related to food, contact, dress, recommended times of prayer; and so on.

In the context of Achaemenid rule, in order to enhance identity, rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem, and maintain their class, the priests accentuated purity norms and sacrificial obligations, repeatedly manipulating the meaning, contexts, and postulates of Scripture.

Obviously, a substantial part of the offerings thus inflated remained with the class that performed the rites.

All this, at the expense of a flattened conception of the propitiatory and (supposedly) thaumaturgical cultic style, which invested every aspect of people's ordinary lives.

A multitude enslaved by the imposed vision - childish in itself - algid perhaps, but swampy and irritating.

At the time of Mk some Jewish converts believed they could abandon the ancient customs and approach the pagans; others were of the opposite opinion: it would be like rejecting substantial parts of the Torah [e.g. Lev 11-16 and 17ff].

In fact Mk emphasises that the problem is "in the house" (v.17 Greek text: inside the house) i.e. in the Church and among its intimates [the CEI translation reads in "a" house].

A place where paradoxically we still do not understand the Master [!] who came to free us from invented and contrived obsessions.

Christ must insist in his teaching, now not addressed to strangers, but precisely to the habitués, incapable - unlike the crowds - of "understanding" (v.14) even the rudiments of spiritual things.

In order to educate the stubborn ones still "devoid of intellect" (v.18) who consider themselves masters, he does not go to just any dwelling place, but precisely to the place where, unfortunately, expectations are cultivated that are sometimes far removed from the people (vv.14.17).

The evangelist rejects the distinction between the religious sphere of life and a 'contaminated' daily set-up; a source of corruption. But normal, trivial, summary - for this reason assessed as distant from the 'divine'.

Quintessence that conversely does not intend to subjugate anyone.

Prescriptions remain insufficient to give us access to God: they are but symbols, trajectories, and images.

The active presence of a new Order abolishes legal prescriptions, and shifts the centre of the morality of our acts.

Here we recall Jesus' teaching: impurity does not come from without [i.e. from outside to inside].

It is not the threat to the life of the woman, the man, and the community, according to God's trickless design.

The realities of the world are never wicked and unfit - not even for worship.

They only become obnoxious by passing through decisions that are sacrilegious, because they block life. And detachments that barbarianise.

The canonicity of the bigot and the cassock has nothing to do with divinisation, which conversely rhymes with what is concretely humanising.

The debate on the pure and the impure should not be placed on the level of things [e.g. food that goes to the stomach] but of behaviour, which starts and goes to the heart. A place that is not always serene and well 'ordered'.

There are no sacred apriorisms: it is not enough that a place, a house, objects, a person, etc. have been legitimised by ceremonies. have been legitimised by ceremonies or even exchanges, for them to become untouchable, honest and eminent.

In this way, there is no sacred and profane in itself.

Mystery and bliss come into the world exclusively through the channel of dialogue and encounter with respect for intelligence, personal souls, and differing cultures. Not through entities of merit, nor through misrepresented straits.

Sanctification is linked to conduct. And in cases of consistency, even to the failure, anguish, and frustrations that result from demanding field choices.

These are decisions that jeopardise, and sometimes ridicule us in comparison with, the custom of compulsory authentication - where it sometimes seems necessary to avoid life. Or you are 'nobody'.

Here, formal legalism unfortunately kills any expansion of resources and ideals. 

In short, impure is that which poisons the spontaneous existence and realisation of people, their relationships, and creation itself.

Yet it is imperfections that make us new, exceptional, unique!

Jesus opens up a new Way to bring all of us imperfect people closer to God, to others even far away, and to ourselves - without puritanical exclusions.

When, for example, we do not accept ourselves as we are - inside, or in the field, not welcoming the different and the opposite - because in common opinion 'it is not right', we risk transforming dissatisfaction into an atmosphere of intimate nagging.

Even the religious sense of impurity will lead us from unrest to disaster.

But outside the commitment to friendship with ourselves, with created things, and the spirit of fraternity, of conviviality of contraries, the fear of contamination is unfounded.

On the contrary, we are called to love limits: they are the ground, even broken and impudent, of preparatory energies for real flowering.

They are primordial impulses and signs of our task in the world according to God's newness.

Every Exodus values alternatives.

And we find fulfilment, the meaning of life, as well as gradually greater completeness, by encountering precisely our opposite sides.

Anyone who intimidates the 'inadequate' brother threatens the life of the cosmos and makes the very people who are most sensitive and attentive distrustful.

Jesus frees the crowd of the voiceless, the lost, from the obsession of apprehensions and fears, from always being on the defensive.

We are not called to fixate on one direction. There are others.

Let us therefore learn not to feel dismay that we are not religiously 'successful' - but Firstfruits!

To internalise and live the message:

What do you think makes you presentable in society? In what sense are you impeccable - because you are embellished and conform to opinion?

Does being a 'child' and 'firstfruit' make you defensive or does it restore your desire to live to the full?

The Evangelist Mark reports the following words of Jesus, which are inserted within the debate at that time regarding what is pure and impure: “There is nothing outside a man which by going into him can defile him; but the things which come out of a man are what defile him … What comes out of a man is what defiles a man. For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts” (Mk 7, 14-15, 20-21). Beyond the immediate question concerning food, we can detect in the reaction of the Pharisees a permanent temptation within man: to situate the origin of evil in an exterior cause. Many modern ideologies deep down have this presupposition: since injustice comes “from outside,” in order for justice to reign, it is sufficient to remove the exterior causes that prevent it being achieved. This way of thinking – Jesus warns – is ingenuous and shortsighted. Injustice, the fruit of evil, does not have exclusively external roots; its origin lies in the human heart, where the seeds are found of a mysterious cooperation with evil. With bitterness the Psalmist recognises this: “Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me” (Ps 51,7). Indeed, man is weakened by an intense influence, which wounds his capacity to enter into communion with the other. By nature, he is open to sharing freely, but he finds in his being a strange force of gravity that makes him turn in and affirm himself above and against others: this is egoism, the result of original sin. Adam and Eve, seduced by Satan’s lie, snatching the mysterious fruit against the divine command, replaced the logic of trusting in Love with that of suspicion and competition; the logic of receiving and trustfully expecting from the Other with anxiously seizing and doing on one’s own (cf. Gn 3, 1-6), experiencing, as a consequence, a sense of disquiet and uncertainty. How can man free himself from this selfish influence and open himself to love?

[Pope Benedict, Message for Lent 2010]

Old Testament Tradition and the New Meaning of Purity

1. An indispensable complement to the words pronounced by Christ in the Sermon on the Mount on which we have centred the cycle of our present reflections must be the analysis of purity. When Christ, in explaining the proper meaning of the commandment "Thou shalt not commit adultery", made reference to the inner man, he specified at the same time the fundamental dimension of purity, with which the mutual relations between man and woman in and out of marriage are to be marked. The words: 'But I say to you, whoever looks at a woman to lust after her has already committed adultery with her in his heart' (Mt 5:27-28) express what is contrary to purity. At the same time, these words demand the purity that in the Sermon on the Mount is included in the statement of the beatitudes: "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God" (Mt 5:8). In this way Christ addresses an appeal to the human heart: he invites it, not accuses it, as we have already made clear above.

2. Christ sees in the heart, in man's innermost being, the source of purity - but also of moral impurity - in the fundamental and most generic meaning of the word. This is confirmed, for example, by his reply to the Pharisees, scandalised by the fact that his disciples "transgress the tradition of the ancients, for they do not wash their hands when they take food" (Mt 15:2). Jesus then said to those present: "Not what goes into the mouth makes a man unclean, but what comes out of the mouth makes a man unclean" (Mt 15:11). To his disciples, however, answering Peter's question, he explained these words thus: "...what comes out of the mouth comes from the heart. This makes a man unclean. For from the heart come evil intentions, murders, adulteries, prostitutions, thefts, false witness, blasphemies. These are the things that make a man unclean, but eating without washing one's hands does not make a man unclean" (cf. Mt 15:18-20; cf. Mk 7:20-23).

When we say "purity", "pure", in the first meaning of these terms, we indicate that which contrasts with uncleanness. 'Soiling' means 'make unclean', 'pollute'. This refers to the different spheres of the physical world. We speak, for example, of a 'dirty street', a 'dirty room', we also speak of 'polluted air'. Likewise, man can also be 'unclean' when his body is not clean. To remove the filthiness of the body, it must be washed. In the Old Testament tradition, great importance was attached to ritual ablutions, e.g. washing one's hands before eating, which is mentioned in the quoted text. Numerous and detailed prescriptions concerned the ablutions of the body in relation to sexual impurity, understood in an exclusively physiological sense, which we mentioned earlier (cf. Lev 15 ). According to the state of medical science at the time, the various ablutions could correspond to hygienic prescriptions. Insofar as they were imposed in the name of God and contained in the Sacred Books of the Old Covenant legislation, the observance of them acquired, indirectly, a religious significance; they were ritual ablutions and, in the life of the man of the Old Covenant, they served ritual "purity".

3. In relation to the aforementioned legal-religious tradition of the Old Covenant, an erroneous way of understanding moral purity(1) was formed. It was often understood in an exclusively outward and 'material' manner. In any case, there was an explicit tendency towards such an interpretation. Christ radically opposes it: nothing makes man unclean "from the outside", no "material" filthiness makes man impure in a moral, that is to say, inner sense. No ablution, not even ritual, is suitable in itself to produce moral purity. This has its exclusive source within man: it comes from the heart. It is probable that the respective Old Testament prescriptions (those, for example, found in Leviticus) (Lev 15:16-24; 18:1ff; 12:1-5) served not only for hygienic purposes, but also to attribute a certain dimension of interiority to what is corporeal and sexual in the human person. In any case, Christ was very careful not to link purity in the moral (ethical) sense with physiology and related organic processes. In the light of the words of Matthew 15:18-20, quoted above, none of the aspects of sexual "uncleanness", in the strictly somatic, biophysiological sense, enters per se into the definition of purity or impurity in the moral (ethical) sense.

4. The above statement ( Mt 15:18-20 ) is especially important for semantic reasons. In speaking of purity in the moral sense, i.e. the virtue of purity, we make use of an analogy, according to which moral evil is compared precisely to uncleanness. Certainly, this analogy has been part of the sphere of ethical concepts since the earliest times. Christ takes it up and confirms it in its full extent: 'What comes out of the mouth comes from the heart. This makes a man unclean'. Here Christ speaks of every moral evil, every sin, i.e. transgressions of the various commandments, and enumerates "evil intentions, murders, adulteries, prostitutions, thefts, false witness, blasphemies", without limiting himself to a specific kind of sin. It follows that the concept of 'purity' and 'impurity' in the moral sense is first and foremost a general concept, not a specific one: hence every moral good is a manifestation of purity, and every moral evil is a manifestation of impurity. The statement in Matthew 15:18-20 does not restrict purity to a single area of morality, i.e. to that connected with the commandment 'Thou shalt not commit adultery' and 'Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife', i.e. to that which concerns the mutual relations between man and woman, linked to the body and its concupiscence. Similarly, we can also understand the beatitude of the Sermon on the Mount, addressed to men who are 'pure in heart', both in a generic and more specific sense. Only the eventual contexts will allow us to delimit and specify this meaning.

5. The broader and more general meaning of purity is also present in the letters of St Paul, in which we shall gradually identify the contexts that explicitly restrict the meaning of purity to the "somatic" and "sexual" sphere, i.e. to that meaning that we can grasp from the words pronounced by Christ in the Sermon on the Mount on concupiscence, which is already expressed in "looking at the woman", and is equated with "adultery committed in the heart" (cf. Mt 5:27-28 ).

St Paul is not the author of the words on triple concupiscence. They are, as we know, found in the first letter of John. It can, however, be said that analogous to what for John ( 1 Jn 2:16-17 ) is the opposition within man between God and the world (between what comes "from the Father" and what comes "from the world") - an opposition that arises in the heart and penetrates into the actions of man as "concupiscence of the eyes, concupiscence of the flesh and pride of life" - St Paul notes another contradiction in the Christian: the opposition and at the same time the tension between the "flesh" and the "Spirit" (written with a capital letter, i.e. the Holy Spirit): "I say to you therefore, walk according to the Spirit, and you will not be led to satisfy the desires of the flesh; for the flesh has desires contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit has desires contrary to the flesh; these things are opposed to each other, so that you do not do what you would" ( Gal 5:16-17 ). It follows that life 'according to the flesh' is in opposition to life 'according to the Spirit'. "For those who live according to the flesh, think about the things of the flesh; but those who live according to the Spirit, about the things of the Spirit" ( Rom 8:5 ).

In the following analyses we will try to show that purity - the purity of heart, of which Christ spoke in the Sermon on the Mount - is properly realised in life "according to the Spirit".

[Pope John Paul II, General Audience 10 December 1980]

The Gospel for today’s liturgy shows a few scribes and Pharisees amazed by Jesus’ attitude. They are scandalized because his disciples pick up food without first performing the traditional ritual ablutions. They think among themselves: “This way of doing things is contrary to the religious practice” (cf. Mk 7:2-5).

We too could ask ourselves: why do Jesus and his disciples disregard these traditions? After all, they are not bad things, but good ritual habits, simple cleansing before eating.  Why is Jesus  not concerned with this? Because for him it is important to bring faith back to its centre. We see it repeatedly in the Gospel: this bringing faith back to the centre. And to avoid a risk, which applies to those scribes as well as to us: to observe outward formalities, putting the heart and  faith in the background. Many times we too “put makeup” on our soul. Outward formality and not the heart of faith: this is a risk. It is the risk of a religiosity of appearances : looking good on the outside, while neglecting to purify the heart. There is always the temptation to “deal with God” with some outward devotion, but Jesus does not settle for this worship. Jesus does not want outward appearances, he wants a faith that touches the heart.

 In fact, immediately afterwards, he calls the people back to speak a great truth: “there is nothing outside  a man which by going into him can defile him; but the things which come out of a man are what defile him” (v. 15). Rather, it is “from within, out of the heart” (v. 21) that evil things are born. These words are revolutionary, because in the mindset of the time, it was thought that certain foods or external contacts would make one impure. Jesus reverses the perspective: it is not what comes from the outside that is harmful, but rather, what is born from within.

Dear brothers and sisters, this also pertains to us. We often think that evil comes mainly from the outside: from other people’s conduct, from those who think badly of us, from society. How often we blame others, society, the world, for everything that happens to us! It is always the fault of “others”: it is the fault of people, of those who govern, of misfortune, and so on. It seems that problems always come from the outside. And we spend time assigning blame; but spending time blaming others is wasting time. We become angry, bitter and keep God away from our heart. Like those people in the Gospel, who complain, who are scandalized, who cause controversy and do not welcome Jesus. One cannot be truly religious while complaining: complaining poisons, it leads you to anger, to resentment and to sadness, that of the heart, which closes the door to God.

Let us ask the Lord today to free us from blaming others — like children: “No, it wasn’t me! It’s the other one, the other one…”. Let us ask in prayer for the grace not to waste time polluting the world with complaints, because this is not Christian. Jesus instead invites us to look at life and the world starting from our heart. If we look inside ourselves, we will find almost all that we despise outside. And if, with sincerity,  we will ask God to purify our heart, then indeed we will be starting to make the world cleaner. Because there is an infallible way to defeat evil: by starting to conquer it within yourself. The first Fathers of the Church, the monks, when they were asked: “What is the path of holiness, how should I begin”? The first step, they used to say, was to blame oneself: blame yourself. Blaming ourselves. How many of us, during the day, in a moment of  the day or a moment in the week, are able to blame ourselves within? “Yes, this one did this to me, the other one … that one, a  barbarity…”. But me? Do I do the same thing, or do I do it this way.... It is wisdom: learning to blame yourself. Try to do it, it will do you good. It does me good, when I manage to do so, but it is good for us, it is good for everyone.

May the Virgin Mary, who changed history through the purity of her heart, help us to purify our own, by overcoming first and foremost the vice of blaming others and complaining about everything.

[Pope Francis, Angelus 29 August 2021]