The great "commandment": Love

(Mk 12:28-34)

"What is the first commandment of all? Jesus answered [...] The first is: 'Listen to Israel. The Lord our God is one Lord, and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your life and with all your mind and with all your much" (vv.28-30; Deut 6:4-5).

Jesus turns what was the most banal of catechism questions into a crucial question: what is the 'great' commandment? 

Despite the different theological schools, the answer was well known to all: the Sabbath rest, the only prescription observed (even) by God.

The question posed to the Master by the expert in the Law was not so innocent, but "to test him" (Mt 22:35; Lk 10:25) - that is, to answer him: how then do you not fulfil the Sabbath precept?

Christ simplifies the tangle of disputes, about widening or narrowing theoretical cases, and gets to the point.

Always allergic to bickering over doctrines, He makes a proposal of life as a unitive moment of the demands of the Covenant.

All norms have an essence, otherwise they remain a dispersive jumble. They find their spontaneous foundation and natural meaning in the gift of self - but motivated.

But what is the solid point and context of such an invitation? A vague feeling, one emotion among many, a passing motion? Philanthropy? Or an experience?

We are thirsty for affection and grant friendship in an alternating current, so much so that love becomes a source of misunderstandings, rooted in the need to complete each other.

This is why the second commandment appears as an explanation of the first, not a reduction of it [Mt 22:39; Mk 12:31; Lk 10:27].

In the ancient world it made no sense to speak of love towards God, the ineffable Mystery.

It was the Most High who favoured someone by giving him material fortune, and he acknowledged to him a duty of worship, and sacrifices.

Ditto for the unfortunate, at least to avoid retaliation (and keep him good).

With Jesus, one speaks openly of gratuitousness - not simple gratitude - as the unifying core, both of the person and of salvation history.

Gone is the idea of the exchange of favours.

The Father does not need anything; he does not enjoy seeing us submissive and feeling recognised [the pattern of pagan religiosity] as a sovereign would towards his subjects.

The relationship with the Eternal One remains concrete, but honour towards the Most High is manifested by making His plan of good and growth towards man our own, and recognising ourselves in it.

God's plan unfolds ... with a living demand. But there is a Departure, a Centre and an Arrival. In reality, a new Genesis.

In any case, only God's initiative brings out the best in us: more talent, more desire, more interests, more unexpressed capacities, more unseen - instead of soul-denying torments.

It is the difference between religiosity that weakens the personality, and Faith.

Through Faith a special creative relationship is triggered: that of the one who accepts the Calling by Name, as well as the proposals of the Source of being itself - wave upon wave.

They anticipate our initiatives and infallibly guide us to the perfect blossoming of our own and others' Seeds.

Especially in Mt (22:38-39) and Mk (12:29-31) it is clear that love for one's neighbour derives from the experience and awareness of being loved first and unconditionally by God - looked upon, accepted, valued, promoted, gladdened, completed.

One loves not by effort [force is a dirigiste lever: it produces episodes that make life worse] but on the basis of how much we feel loved - and with immediacy, repeatedly, unconditionally.

One loves on the argument of the 'forfeit' already experienced in one's favour by Providence, which gives meaning and value to human acts.

Not out of infatuation with external, induced, however other people's expectations.

Even in the spiritual field, not a few behaviours believed to be able to solve problems, often chronicle them.

In this way, they rely on an idea of permanence - not on the dynamic of vocational gratuitousness, on the unimaginable Gift, to be received.

So the point is to adjust according to resources that come, or the distortion of models, typical of the moralist mentality.

In fact, the scheme of omnipotence in the good, paradoxically, folds the ego and its forces, and distorts its gaze.

But beyond all nuances, we are glad that the first and second commandments are about Love: what we most desire to do and receive. It is an urgency of life.

Yet we must be wise, so that the pattern of paradigms or the urges of natural affection and precipitation do not overwhelm and drag away - overturning - every good intention.

Love does not tolerate the excess of expectations, because it springs from an experience of Perfection that arrives; offered, unexpected, unpredictable. Not already set up according to concatenated and normal intentions.

If authentic, in time we will experience blossoming; not in the expectation of a return, but first and foremost in a Gift outside of time. Because it has already satiated and convinced us - with contemplative amazement - and made us rejoice.

Thus the vocational and foundational Eros will continue to mould us, with its perennially explorative virtue capable of activating new Births.

Personal energy - without the usual baggage of torment, reservations, outwardness... and (again) wrath.

Great Commandment: only Deep Quality obliges

The only disposition in which the Father recognises Himself is Love, all-round and all-round; not some particular precept.

For Jesus there are no rankings in the things of God and man - in fact He showed a marked tendency to summarise the many dispositions - because only the profound Quality obliges.

The spiritual proposition of the Master appropriated the narrative of God's people and the practice of the Prophets: all heart, feet, hands - and intelligence.

Complete Love for God must envelop the creature in every decision [heart].

Likewise, in every moment and aspect of its concrete 'life', and involve all its resources [strength: cf. Mk 12:30; Lk 10:27].

Deut 6:5 (Hebrew text) reads in fact: "with all your 'much'", meaning a concrete participation in both cultic life and material fraternity - providing and helping with one's possessions.

Matthew does not explicitly mention the latter, perhaps to emphasise that the Father does not absorb energies in any way, but transmits them.

But Jesus adds to the nuances of authentic understanding with God enumerated in the First Testament an unexpected side to those who think of love as a delicate feeling only.

The Lord suggests the study, discernment and understanding of our perceptions [Mt 22:37; Mk 12:30; Lk 10:27] accompanied by the mental aspect and deep intelligence (excluded in Deut 6).

At first glance, this seems a secondary facet or even a frill for the qualitative leap from a common religious sense to the existence of wisely and personally configured Faith.

The exact opposite is true: we are children of a Father who does not supplant us, nor does he absorb our potential or energy, depersonalising us.

It is a capital implication of our dignity and promotion - even human - and a specific discriminator in the discernment of Faith in Christ, as opposed to all devotional solutions in search of the Absolute (whatever).

Practicality alone makes us fragile, not very aware; and when we are not convinced, we will not be reliable either, always at the mercy of changing situations and the conformist, fashionable opinion of others.

We not infrequently flee the all-round confrontation that would enrich everyone - precisely because of incompetence.

But we are not one-sided gullible. Being attentive and up-to-date, having the ability to think even critically is a required expansion in the development of one's human, moral, cultural and spiritual vocation.

Trivialities, identifications, impersonal scopiazzature and half-hearted assembly repetitions get in the way of the tide of life, this divine cascade of perennial energy that pulses and does not die down.

On the contrary, it comes with stirring appeals: it calls to open us up to new relationship attractions and other interests, even intellectual; even denominational.

Jesus does not speak of love for God in terms of intimism and sentiment, but of a totally involving affinity, made less uncertain precisely by the development of our sapiential measure, regarding matters.

Devotion swallows up everything. Faith, on the other hand, does not allow itself to be plagiarised by local or external civilisation: it presupposes an ability to competently enter into personal evaluations or those inherent in the community and overall debate - historical and up-to-date.

The testimony of our Hope does not disdain to allow itself to be enriched by dialogue with those who have greater psychological or biblical expertise, specialised pastoral and social, as well as archaeological, bioethical, economic, scientific and so on.

A commitment that shows true interest in the Sacred [of course, all aspects to be evaluated not as school options].

But it must be admitted that one of the most organic expressions of great Catholic theology is what was once called the 'doctrine' of the seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit.

In the existence of Love, the primacy (also relational) of the Gift of the Spirit was recognised, which completed the possibilities of 'natural' expression of the cardinal and theological virtues, bringing them to fullness.

As many as four of the seven Gifts were related to a character of profound knowledge: Wisdom, Intellect, Counsel and Science.

In short: there is still a decisive appointment here for all-round Love.To indulge in a few jokes along the lines of belief is everyone's domain [individualist or circle], but the ability to enter into it is only of those who have been willing to sift through and experience the issues - because they are more interested in understanding the Face of God and His Design on humanity than in reiterating false narrative certainties.

It would be unnatural to recognise a Master of Heaven who does not come to meet us; as if he towers over us with 'his' objective (extrinsic to us) and thus makes everyone marginal.

[In sects - even those with a good-natured appearance - it is forbidden to delve deeper, to understand: the position is already there, the candidate must "only" adapt].

"As (and because) thou art thyself" [sense of the Greek text: Mt 22:39; Mk 12:31; Lk 10:27]: it is a new Birth of life, new Genesis in the spirit of Gift.

The paradox suggested by Jesus surpasses the ancient norm of Lev 19:18. 

We love not only the children of our people, "by the fact that" we care to meet and want to enrich ourselves together, expanding the I into the Thou.

God's "Great Command" invests real life and concerns not only the quality of our relationship with the world and our neighbour, but the reflexive global with self.

One should not be afraid of other doctrines and disciplines, neglecting analytical challenges beyond the 'organic' ones - the long-term ones.

They all challenge beliefs, works, one's worldview; language, style, and thought itself.

We still have a great need to broaden our minds and become as vast as a panorama. And reharmonise the opposites we drag in.

Hidden Sides and Pearls to which we have not yet given breath, or visibility - and perhaps never considered Allies.

The troubled fate of the prophets remains unique, but it is not the certainties (ancient, or sophisticated, fashionable, à la page) that are the added value of the adventure of Faith in Love - but rather the risk of putting oneself in the balance and the all-round reworking.

It is then useless to complain, if the ecclesial realities that do not update, and remain in the inherited commonplaces, slowly decay, then disappear.

In spite of their resounding heritage and fabulous events.

In this way, the "doctor of the law" may already be close [Mk 12:34; Lk 10:28] but he still has to keep an eye on Jesus, to understand in Him the more dilated sense of the total gift, in the specifically personalising, which is not naive.

The Lord restores the sense of the norms to their profound and original function: to become the viaticum of every encounter that raises events, people of all backgrounds, and creation.

In conclusion, experience and ritual have their fulcrum in the reciprocity of love.

Life in all its facets becomes Liturgy more meaningful than the accredited gesture of worship; its truly broken Bread becomes a convincing call to Communion and Mission.

Even if it does not make the headlines, the authentic thermometer of our journey will not be the volume or the pile of important things we do, but a pulsing of regenerated heart and mind.

That is why to the ancient notes of true Love the Son of God adds the quality of thought: we are not gullible, uninformed, one-sided.

Our outstretched hands are the fruit of free and conscious choice. No forced surrender.

"A faith that does not become culture is a faith that is not fully accepted, not entirely thought out, not faithfully lived" [John Paul II].

To internalise and live the message:

What is Great for you? Titles? Having, power, appearing?

What in your experience of Love is the Starting Point, the Centre and the Arrival?

Do you document and update yourself to better correspond to God's Call?

Deep Relationship

Dear brothers and sisters!

This Sunday's Gospel (Mk 12:28-34) re-proposes to us Jesus' teaching on the greatest commandment: the commandment of love, which is twofold: to love God and to love one's neighbour. The Saints, whom we have recently celebrated all together in one solemn feast, are precisely those who, trusting in God's grace, seek to live according to this fundamental law. Indeed, the commandment of love can be fully put into practice by those who live in a deep relationship with God, just as a child becomes capable of love from a good relationship with its mother and father. St John of Avila, whom I have recently proclaimed a Doctor of the Church, writes at the beginning of his Treatise on the Love of God: 'The cause,' he says, 'that most impels our heart to love God is to consider deeply the love He has had for us... This, more than benefits, impels the heart to love; for he who gives another a benefit, gives him something he possesses; but he who loves, gives himself with all he has, without anything else left to give' (No. 1). Before being a command - love is not a command - it is a gift, a reality that God makes us know and experience, so that, like a seed, it can also germinate within us and develop in our lives.

If God's love has taken deep root in a person, that person is able to love even those who do not deserve it, as God does towards us. A father and mother do not love their children only when they deserve it: they love them always, even if they naturally let them know when they are wrong. From God we learn to always and only want good and never evil. We learn to look at the other not only with our eyes, but with God's gaze, which is the gaze of Jesus Christ. A gaze that starts from the heart and does not stop at the surface, goes beyond appearances and manages to grasp the other person's deepest expectations: expectations of being listened to, of gratuitous attention; in a word: of love. But the reverse also occurs: that by opening myself to the other as he is, by going out to meet him, by making myself available to him, I also open myself up to knowing God, to feeling that he is there and that he is good. Love of God and love of neighbour are inseparable and stand in a reciprocal relationship. Jesus invented neither one nor the other, but revealed that they are, after all, one and the same commandment, and he did so not only with his words, but above all with his testimony: the very Person of Jesus and his entire mystery embody the unity of love of God and neighbour, like the two arms of the Cross, vertical and horizontal. In the Eucharist He gives us this twofold love, giving us Himself, so that, nourished by this Bread, we may love one another as He has loved us.

Dear friends, through the intercession of the Virgin Mary, we pray that every Christian may know how to show his faith in the one true God with a limpid witness of love for his neighbour.

(Pope Benedict, Angelus 4 November 2012)

Since the beginning of my pontificate, I have considered the dialogue of the Church with the cultures of our time to be a vital field, in which the destiny of the world is at stake at this end of the 20th century. In fact, there is a fundamental dimension, capable of consolidating or shaking to the foundations the systems that structure the whole of humanity, and of freeing human existence, both individual and collective, from the threats that weigh upon it. This fundamental dimension is man, in his entirety. Now man lives a fully human life thanks to culture. 'Yes, man's future depends on culture', I declared in my speech on 2 June 1980 at UNESCO, addressing interlocutors so diverse in their origin and convictions, adding: 'We find ourselves on the ground of culture, a fundamental reality that unites us... We find ourselves around man and in a certain sense, in man'.

Picking up the rich inheritance of the Ecumenical Council, of the Synod of Bishops and of my venerable predecessor Paul VI, on 1 and 2 June 1980 I proclaimed in Paris, first at the Catholic Institute, and then before the exceptional assembly of UNESCO, the organic and constitutive bond that exists between Christianity and culture, with man, therefore, in his very humanity. This bond of the Gospel with man, I said in my speech before that areopagus of men and women of culture and science from all over the world, 'is, in effect, the creator of culture in its very foundation'. And, if culture is what makes man, as man, become more man, then man's very destiny is at stake in it. Hence the importance for the Church, which is responsible for it, of attentive and far-sighted pastoral action with regard to culture, in particular what is called living culture, that is, the set of principles and values that make up the ethos of a people: "The synthesis between culture and faith is not only a requirement of culture, but also of faith... A faith that does not become culture is a faith that is not fully accepted, not entirely thought out, not faithfully lived" ("Discorso ai partecipanti al Congresso Nazionale del Movimento ecclesiale di impegno culturale": "Insegnamenti", V, 1 [1982] 131), as I said on 16 January 1982.

On the other hand, there is an urgent need for our contemporaries, and Catholics in particular, to seriously question the conditions that underlie the development of peoples. It is increasingly evident that cultural progress is intimately linked to the construction of a fairer and more fraternal world. As I said in Hiroshima, on 25 February 1981, to the representatives of science and culture gathered at the United Nations University: 'The construction of a more just humanity or of a more united international community is not a dream or a vain ideal. It is a moral imperative, a sacred duty, which man's intellectual and spiritual genius can meet by a new mobilisation of everyone's talents and energies and by harnessing all man's technical and cultural resources" ("Teachings", IV 1 [1981] 545).

Consequently, by virtue of my apostolic mission, I feel the responsibility incumbent upon me, in the heart of the collegiality of the universal Church, and in contact and agreement with the local Churches, to intensify the Holy See's relations with all the achievements of culture, ensuring also an original relationship in a fruitful international collaboration, within the family of nations, that is, of the great "communities of men united by different bonds, but above all, essentially by culture" ("Address to UNESCO", 2 June 1980: "Teachings" III [1980] 1636ff).

For this reason, I decided to found and establish a Council for Culture, capable of giving the whole Church a common impulse in the encounter, continually renewed, of the saving message of the Gospel with the plurality of cultures, in the diversity of peoples, to whom it must bring its fruits of grace.

[Pope John Paul II, Letter instituting the Pontifical Council for Culture, 20 May 1982]

At the heart of this Sunday’s Gospel passage (cf. Mk 12:28b-34), there is the commandment of love: love of God and love of neighbour. A scribe asks Jesus: “Which commandment is the first of all?” (v. 28). He responds by quoting the profession of faith with which every Israelite opens and closes his day, and begins with the words “Hear O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord” (Deut 6:4). In this manner Israel safeguards its faith in the fundamental reality of its whole creed: only one Lord exists and that Lord is ‘ours’ in the sense that he is bound to us by an indissoluble pact; he loved us, loves us, and will love us for ever. It is from this source, this love of God, that the twofold commandment comes to us: “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.... You shall love your neighbour as yourself” (Mk 12:30-31).

In choosing these two Words addressed by God to his people and by putting them together, Jesus taught once and for all that love for God and love for neighbour are inseparable; moreover, they sustain one another. Even if set in a sequence, they are two sides of a single coin: experienced together they are a believer’s strength! To love God is to live of him and for him, for what he is and for what he does. Our God is unmitigated giving; he is unlimited forgiveness; he is a relationship that promotes and fosters. Therefore, to love God means to invest our energies each day to be his assistants in the unmitigated service of our neighbour, in trying to forgive without limitations, and in cultivating relationships of communion and fraternity.

Mark the Evangelist does not bother to specify who the neighbour is, because a neighbour is a person whom I meet on the journey, in my days. It is not a matter of pre-selecting my neighbour: this is not Christian. I think my neighbour is the one I have chosen ahead of time: no, this is not Christian, it is pagan; but it is about having eyes to see and a heart to want what is good for him or her. If we practice seeing with Jesus’ gaze, we will always be listening and be close to those in need. Of course our neighbour’s needs require effective responses, but even beforehand they require sharing. With one look we can say that the hungry need not just a bowl of soup, but also a smile, to be listened to and also a prayer, perhaps said together. Today’s Gospel passage invites us all to be projected not only toward the needs of our poorest brothers and sisters, but above all to be attentive to their need for fraternal closeness, for a meaning to life, and for tenderness. This challenges our Christian communities: it means avoiding the risk of being communities that have many initiatives but few relationships; the risk of being community ‘service stations’ but with little company, in the full and Christian sense of this term.

God, who is love, created us to love and so that we can love others while remaining united with him. It would be misleading to claim to love our neighbour without loving God; and it would also be deceptive to claim to love God without loving our neighbour. The two dimensions of love, for God and for neighbour, in their unity characterize the disciple of Christ. May the Virgin Mary help us to welcome and bear witness in everyday life to this luminous lesson.

[Pope Francis, Angelus 4 November 2018]

Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed

On the occasion of the recent passing of my parents, to the torment of the illness and the loss of both (soon) was added the annoyance of an environment that continued to give me "condolences".

As for good manners, of course, but who has assimilated the language of the Faith does not mourn anyone, nor does he speak of "dead" but of Deceased ones. They live.

Not as survivors of the blows that life holds, but as ‘dilated’, authentic, adorned ones - and finally fully realized.

Women and men… ‘blossomed’ in everything, experiencing a new kind of being in their own essence; a different existence.

As in an atmosphere of pure love, where like Jesus we no longer live for ourselves, but one with the other and one for the other.

With no pressing chronometers, nor abandonments.

The term comes from the Latin verb «defungor» [infinitive «defungi»] which indicates the partial term of a story, not a total fulfillment.

Not a definitive border that would open on the nullifying and cavernous abyss of lost shadows or larvae without momentum, devoid of identity and future - after the transit in time.

The condolences [from the Latin «cum-dolēre»] turned willingly within a purely pagan mentality or linked to an archetypal sense of religiosity.

That kind of conviction led relatives and friends to grieve - a hopeless cry - which Jesus openly rebukes [Jn 11:33 Greek text; some translations are uncertain].

To believe that with death everything ends means to imagine that existence is a progressive decay into the void.

This conviction makes any path of growth, even spiritual, consider absurd. And it postulates the senselessness of getting involved, of committing oneself to the ideal of the lasting Good - for a Beautiful that continues beyond our earthly life and in favor of our neighbour.

“Condolences” therefore indicate in themselves that everything is over.

In the epigraph on the portal of a cemetery of a town not too far from me we read an inscription in large letters: «here over the centuries lay affections vanity hopes».

The cold of the end of all beautiful things, and the "ice" of the neoclassical revisited in early twentieth century style... perfectly matched on whitewashed travertine coating.

Instead, Hope attracts us and refreshes the spirit, overcomes outrage, gives meaning to our going.

Already the believers of the first centuries had supplanted the pagan idea of the appointment of our sister death as «dies infaustus», replacing it in its opposite: «dies Natalis».

Day of true Birth, within the same Life now complete, healed.

Life, which precisely proceeds - beyond the temporal or locality parameters. 

Without the fatigue of existing that we experience. Immersed in the vastness of being.

Life without the struggles against oneself, and which continues in the satisfying, blessing Embrace of a Father who does not depersonalize but expands the character existence, the qualities of his sons.

In this blossoming full of light and warmth we are as if we were refounded on the prototype-Project of the authentic Son.

Alliance Trait that we should and perhaps could have been.

Overwhelmed ones with blissful Happiness, for our shadow-part is now included; devoid of judgments and comments.

[Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed,  November 2, 2024]

(Mt 25:31-46)

The famous Judgment passage presents the Risen One coming (v.31) as the "Son of Man", that is, the authentic and complete development of the divine plan for humanity: his kind of "verdict" follows.

God embraces the condition of limitation of his creatures, so the behaviour that fulfils our life is not about our religious attitude per se, but about our attitude towards our fellow human beings.

This is the evangelical call of the recent encyclical [October 2020] on fraternity and social friendship.

Aware of the situation, the Magisterium is now becoming the sting of every obvious and unimportant group spirituality, of every folklore mysticism, of every hollow, intimist, still sitting on the fence.... empty, intimist, still sitting in bedside armour.

In all ancient beliefs, the soul of the deceased was weighed on a notarial basis and judged according to its positive or negative balance.

According to the rabbis, divine mercy intervened in favour, only when good and bad deeds were balanced out.

Jesus does not speak of a tribunal that proclaims unchangeable negative judgements on the whole person, but of the traits of complete existence that - being in themselves indestructible because they are humanising - are saved and assumed, introduced into definitive existence.

"Life of the Eternal" (v.46 Greek text) alludes to a non-biological but relational kind of life and completeness of being, which we can already experience.

These are episodes in which our divine DNA, the Gold that inhabits us, has surfaced: when we have been able to respond to the needs not of God, but of life itself and of our brothers and sisters.

These are the moments when we have been deep listeners to nature, to the hope and vocation of all - sensitive to the needs of others.

Opportunities that have allowed us to bring the human condition closer to the heavenly one.

Comparing the "works" declared as "paradigm" with those in the lists of classical Judaism (Is 58:6-7) and other religions - even ancient Egypt [Book of the Dead, c.125] - we note the difference in v.36: "I was in prison and you came to me" (cf. vv.39.43).

The difference is remarkable precisely under the criterion of divine justice: it overrides forensic considerations, because it creates justice where there is none.

The Father lays down life in every case, because he is not good as is believed in all devout persuasions, but exclusively good.

The "righteous" - then - did not even realise that they had done who knows what: they spontaneously corresponded to their innate and transparent nature as sons (v.39).

They have had sympathy for the "flesh" in the reality in which it is found - and where it is found - valuing it as family. They have loved with and like Jesus, in Him.

They have not loved for Jesus - as if the other's condition could be bracketed, and underneath considered a nuisance on which to build a fiction, albeit a sympathetic one.

The other observant people, on the other hand, all caught up in formalisms of ritual, doctrine and discipline that God does not care about, are surprised that the Father is not all there where they had imagined Him to be.

That is, respectable but empty and stagnant like them, caught up in the sentences of ordinary justice: "When did we see you [...] in prison and did not serve you?" (v.44).

The vocation to meet leads us spontaneously to transgress divisions: legalistic, of retribution, or prejudices, and gender of worship.

This is the eminent, weighty Salvation - lurking in the direct and genuine. Not so much in organised intentions; nor does it have any substance on the basis of opinion.

We realise ourselves in responding to the instinctive call that arises from our own essential altruistic imprint: even minimal, ill-considered, or eccentric, shaky and unfulfilling - not extraordinary.

Without excessively external conditions, it is recognised to be disseminated in the soul and in the beneficial, divinising fullness of the 'Son of Man'.

Jesus' ultimate teaching: Distinguished, global and all-human judgement. 

Not qualunquist or contraband response, to concept and account.

Jesus' identification with the little ones remains singular: "what you have done even to one of the least of these brothers of mine, you have done to me" (v.40).

Otherwise: "not even to me have you done" (v.45).

His Person has a central meaning, with no distinction between friends and counter-legislators, between pious doers and non-doers.

Adherence to Christ is not judged on the basis of works far removed from the humanising Core.

Beautiful things that can also be accomplished without a spirit of benevolence [out of duty and culture, or even lustre and calculation] - but on love.

God is not obliged to reward merit.

Good works can also be displayed or performed against the Father: as if to bind his hands.

A misinterpretation typical of religions, which provide rewards for the pious.A misinterpretation alien to the experience of Faith, whose only security lies in the risk of exploration, growth, the quality of relationships - indeed, humanising relationships.

Life and death are quite distinct ['right and left': proverbially, fortune and misfortune] according to the characteristics of authentic piety towards God Himself... because His honour is reflected in the promotion of woman and man, caught in their concrete situation.

The only non-negotiable principle is service to the good of each person. 

Works of love are an expression of true Communion with Christ - in this way freed from cerebral tares and mannerisms: from any kind of limitation or judgement that conditions their value.

In short, there is no need to do targeted and extraordinary, or mechanical things, but to let God act - respecting and valuing the brother for what he is.

Even outside the visible realm of the kingdom of the apostles (or a doctrine-discipline) there is authentic 'Christianity': civilisation of children.

In short, no predestination to the condemnation of the distant or errant and imperfect, except for a lack of fraternity that retrieves the impossible - even 'counter-law'.

Authentic Kingship of Christ and His own.

In Palestine, in the evening, shepherds used to separate the sheep from the goats that needed shelter from the cold.

In order to emphasise its importance, the question raised by the evangelist adopts the colourful forms of rabbinic preaching.

The question is not who is saved and who is not.

If anything, the question is: on which occasions are we willingly out in the open even at 'night', and humanise - and on which do we behave in a more belligerent, closed manner, but without becoming... lambs?

In Christ, the victory over selfishness loses its meaning of annihilation of the possibilities of individual growth - which is not achieved by stubbornness.

His power is anything but stagnant and divisive. It does not conceal the capabilities we do not see, or what we do not know.

Opposite situations are the glorious moments of the same victory. This is evident in the continuation of the passage, which proclaims the other extreme of love: "the Son of Man is delivered up to be crucified" (Mt 26:2).

Thus, the purpose of Mt is not to describe the end of the world, but to provide guidance on how to live wisely [today] in order to form a family and not to be fascinated by the immediate glitter of false jewels - even well-prepared ones.

The Recall of the Gospels insists on contrasting this with a frivolous spirituality: the only appropriate distinction.

The man of God does not satisfy the lusts of even ecclesiastical careers, and every whim.

The Tao Tê Ching (iii) suggests, addressing even the wise ruler: "Do not exalt the most capable, do not let the people contend; do not covet the goods that are obtained with difficulty, do not let the people become thieves; do not obtain what can be coveted, do not let the hearts of the people be troubled.

Commented Master Wang Pi: "When the most capable are exalted, it brings prestige to their name; the glory goes beyond their office, and they are always binge-watching, comparing their abilities. When goods are prized beyond their usefulness, the greedy rush upon them, haggling; they drill walls, break into coffers, and become thieves at the risk of their lives'.

And Master Ho-shang Kung adds, about "those whom the world judges to be excellent": "With their specious speech they adapt to circumstances, distancing themselves from the Tao; they stick to form, rejecting substance.

The Lord's Appeal emphasises the qualitative aspects, of Person in relation: He illustrates how life is worth betting on.

This is so that all may experience fullness of being - which is not the result of opportunism.

Nor is it the result of belonging: all discrimination between 'called' in the visible Church and those far from it is suspended.

The strong images of the Gospel passage serve to make us reflect, to open our eyes, to shift the horizon, to impress on our conscience what is worth putting into play: everything, about the choices to be made.

Genuine love that moves heaven and earth is that which succeeds in making the wicked right - in the free Gift, free of conditions and forms of self-love. Even exempt from sacred evaluations.

Intuates the Tao (xxxiii): "Who does these things? Heaven and Earth [...] Those who give themselves to the Tao identify with the Tao.

The genuine arises and flourishes from the disinterested and spontaneous way, without any effort or contrived purpose.

Here man is a different Subject, far richer - firm in himself, but expanding into the divine and human You, even destitute.

"In today's Gospel page, Jesus identifies himself not only with the shepherd-king, but also with the lost sheep. We could speak of a "double identity": the king-shepherd, Jesus, also identifies himself with the sheep, that is, with the smallest and neediest brothers and sisters. And so he indicates the criterion of the judgement: it will be taken on the basis of the concrete love given or denied to these people [...] Therefore, the Lord, at the end of the world, will review his flock, and he will do so not only on the side of the shepherd, but also on the side of the sheep, with whom he has identified himself. And he will ask: "Have you been a little shepherd like me?" [...] And we only go home with this sentence: "I was there. Thank you!" or: "You forgot about me"".

(Pope Francis)

That which gives value to every moment

(Jn 6:35-40)

Jesus' words imply the clear dissimilarity between ordinary food and Bread that does not perish.

The distinction is taken from Deut 8:3 - with reference to the Manna-Word of the Lord (wisdom food that liberates and imparts life).

Wis 16:20-21.26 recognises the manna of the desert to be food prepared by angels, but what really keeps one alive is the Word.

Those heavenly fruits, though delicious and able to satisfy every taste, do not satiate - they do not nourish completely.

Cultural paradigms that identified manna with wisdom also enter into the symbolic language used by Christ.

He thus self-evangelises in his discourse on the Bread of Life.

Coming to the Lord is not within our reach. Doing the works of the law, perhaps yes - with effort - but doing the Work of God is not unnatural.

It does not depend on a thought, a choice, or a disciplinary practice.

In short, the Subject of the walk in the Spirit is God Himself, working in us. 

Human action is at every juncture a response to his own self-revelation and action [cosmic and in one's soul; convergent or not].

The Coming from Above is critical: it provokes the relationship of Faith. Personal relationship, which is not mere assent and fulfilment, but reading and vision.

Forward action and discovery of resurrection - in particular, of shadow sides that become resources.

So Faith-love expands life, because it has its input from divine generosity, from Grace.

It thus becomes decision, occupation, responsibility; inescapable and diriment duty - despite this, personal.

Christ is Food that must be eaten, minced, by means of Faith.

The evocation becomes Eucharistic, realisation of the "Life of the Eternal" (v.40 Greek text) even in a manner different from the manner sought; here and now.

By dying, without any delay Jesus delivers the Spirit (Jn 19:30) that suddenly arouses the sacramental experience (Jn 19:34).

The Life of the Eternal is not a pious hope in the afterlife: the term designates God's own intimate life, which unfolds and bursts into history [sometimes unceremoniously] in a multifaceted manner.

Energy, Food, New Lucidity: it reaches women and men who see and believe in the Son.

It is a Faith-Vision that reads meaning, and enables direct appropriation: it overcomes insurmountable obstacles.

A Faith-Gesture that gushes forth; a Faith-Action that becomes a ferment of expansion, because it has already aroused acumen, global attention, and intimate consensus.

It sharpens and expands the transformative resources of souls and events themselves.

It bestows overall generative abilities - outward and inward, indestructible; which lose nothing [no longer doomed to death: v.39].

The obtuse gaze around the first fraternities already sealed the Mystery.

But contrary to the First Testament (Ex 33:22-23), by Faith one now sees God and lives, no longer afraid (Ex 3:6).

He who "sees" the Son "has" the same Life as the Eternal (v.40).

The Vision of Faith, the Vision of the Son, the Vision of the glorious outcome of the one who was rejected by the religious authorities and considered accursed by God, makes one become One with Him.

It is actual Resurrection, even in the swift and crushing experience of dispersive existence.

The Image considered impossible and that could not be held, gives way to a process of interpretation, action, rearrangement, which attracts future.

It gives way to the completeness of God's humanising and different world.

The shift of gaze breaks the web of appearances, of banal, inherited or à la page convictions.

In short: perceiving Him becomes the engine of salvation, the foundation that surpasses the pre-human.

Perceiving it becomes Encounter; in its own and perennial dimension. Principle of blissful eternity.

At the end of the first century, the churches feel the risk of collapse.

The progressive split from pagan religion in general, and Judaizing devotion in particular, entailed a wide-ranging debate with customary and internal, even liturgical implications.

The battle with Pharisaical purism sparked all kinds of controversies, including whether or not foreigners should be segregated.

Differences of opinion even arose over the canon of Scripture itself (for Christians, already in Hellenistic Greek).

According to believers in Jesus, the Source of full and indestructible life ["Life of the Eternal": v.40 Greek text] is not material bread.

Already on this earth the all-embracing Food does not lie in any trivial certainty.

One must rather "see the Son" (v.40).

It means to grasp in the Master a story that does not end in failure, because despite the rejection of the leaders, the outcome of his-our story is the divine condition. Indestructible glory.

And "Believing in Him" (v.40) does not depend on cultural extraction or social position, but on an unrepeatable elaboration.To see and have Faith is to trust in the luminous [seemingly absurd] Vision that is communicated in the most intimate fibres and from the very first 'Birth'. Certain of the full attunement and realisation in that super-eminent Figure.

We do not adhere to enthusiasm or initiatives [the 'Church of events', as Pope Francis says].

The life of the Eternal in us begins in the eye of the soul; echoing the primordial Dream.

It enters into the grasping of the Father's trajectory. He wants for his least ones a fullness of imprint and character, without conformity.

Only thanks to the Gift in which we recognise ourselves from our roots and in essence, do we perceive joyful consonances that identify desires, words, actions and the kind of path of the Risen One Himself, pulsating within us.

The Person of Christ is the only Food without homologation.

Sustained by the Bread-Person we can avoid both the search for false security and the craving for support. E.g., acquaintances, financial backers, conspicuous institutions that guarantee privileges; and so on.

Preferring Broken Bread.

The food of the earth preserves physical life, but it cannot revive us through unique personal Genesis, nor open a way through death.

This gives value to each moment.

To internalise and live the message:

What does it mean for you to see the Son and believe in Him?

Do not project onto God the image of the servant-master relationship

The multiplication of the loaves and fishes is a sign of the great gift that the Father has given to humanity and that is Jesus himself!

He, the true "bread of life" (v. 35), wants to satiate not only bodies but also souls, giving the spiritual food that can satisfy a deep hunger. That is why he invites the crowd to procure not the food that does not last, but the food that remains for eternal life (cf. v. 27). This is food that Jesus gives us every day: his Word, his Body, his Blood. The crowd listens to the Lord's invitation, but does not understand its meaning - as happens so often to us too - and asks him: "What must we do to do the works of God?" (v. 28). Jesus' listeners think that He is asking them to observe the precepts in order to obtain other miracles such as that of the multiplication of the loaves. It is a common temptation, this, to reduce religion only to the practice of laws, projecting onto our relationship with God the image of the relationship between servants and their master: servants must perform the tasks the master has assigned, in order to have his benevolence. This we all know. So the crowd wants to know from Jesus what actions they must do to please God. But Jesus gives an unexpected answer: "This is the work of God: that you believe in him whom he has sent" (v. 29). These words are also addressed to us today: God's work is not so much in 'doing' things, but in 'believing' in Him whom He has sent. This means that faith in Jesus enables us to do the works of God. If we allow ourselves to be involved in this relationship of love and trust with Jesus, we will be able to do good works that smell of the Gospel, for the good and the needs of our brothers and sisters.

The Lord invites us not to forget that if it is necessary to worry about bread, it is even more important to cultivate a relationship with Him, to strengthen our faith in Him who is the "bread of life", who came to satisfy our hunger for truth, our hunger for justice, our hunger for love.

(Pope Francis, Angelus 5 August 2018)

Turnover in the Church, antidote to one-sidedness

(Mt 5:1-12)

In the Gospel of Mt Jesus is the new Moses ascending "the Mount". But the young Lawgiver does not proclaim rules on a stone code, but rather his own experience of the Father... "seeing the crowds" (v.1).

At the crossroads between divine condition and fullness of humanisation, the new Rabbi outlines a kind of self-portrait of himself: as a Son; on behalf of his brothers. Gathered in the spirit of Family.

A sprout of a hospitable world - which in his small churches Mt wants to encourage. Where there is no man above and man always below; or character in front and character behind.

Only humanising upheavals [such as the reversal of roles and conditions] that strengthen the concordant fabric.

Hence in the House of All there must be reciprocation and reversal of figures, situations and criteria of eminence, hence chains of command - signs of the Kingdom to come. 

Reversal capable of sharpening sensitivities to Communion [at that time there was lively friction between experienced Judaizers, first of the class, and latecomers at the threshold of the fraternities of faith].

At the time, the mentality of precedence and supremacy was ingrained to the point that all religions recognised hierarchies.

Those who considered themselves entitled to precedence [in the community!] always raised a question of seeming obviousness:

Is it not in the natural order of things that in human society there are first and last, learned and ignorant, sovereigns and subjects?

After all, the legal principle that once governed e.g. all private property law in the Latin world is also the motto in the epigraph of a well-known official Catholic newspaper: Unicuique Suum.

Even Leo XIII, pope of the Social Encyclicals, recognised that 'in human society it is according to the order established by God that there are princes and subjects, masters and proletarians, rich and poor, learned and ignorant, nobles and plebeians; the obligation of charity of the rich and the powerful is to help the poor and destitute'.

It was the mentality of a sin of simple omission: it is enough to do charity.

The Lord's position is very very different: the powerful are by no means the blessed of God - as the rich patriarchs of the First Testament were also supposed to be.

Their estranged world, their palaces, and even their fancy clothes, are perfect metaphors for the inner emptiness and ephemerality they enjoy.

Their gorging themselves is a sign of an inner abyss to be filled - a kind of nervous hunger that feels dizzy.

So on, from alienation to alienation.

On "the Mount", on the other hand, the discreet work of the Spirit is announced, which designates the character of a modest holiness, animated by the Love of gift, in itself divinising and humanising [a quality manifested in the so-called "poor in Spirit"].

Holiness that surpasses the ancient fiction of the dominators, who piled on top of one another reciting the same script.

For hitherto the masses remained dry-mouthed: whichever ruler seized power, the little flock remained submissive, sad and suffocated; unworthy even to present themselves to the Lord.

All condemned and inadequate.

The people of the disciples are also heartbroken, because they do not accept the inequalities of the pyramidal society, which tends to level and annihilate the Gifts of God spread throughout humanity - of whatever social class.

In fact, the authentic disciple goes as far as tears: they express the dimension of intimate energy that purifies external ideas; it makes us true from within, essential outside.

Affliction guides one back into oneself; it reintroduces contact with our earth and the primordial virtues, which regenerate.

Sadness that in the condition of finitude and conscious limitation, makes us empathetic, beautifully human.

Intimately dissatisfied: opponents of injustice. Because every person who is not placed in a position to express his or her abilities is an insult to the Plan of Salvation.

It is not a matter of charity or philanthropy: it is a precise, social choice (v.5).

In fact, each ostracised person is concealed as an artist who is not allowed to express himself, who is neither discovered nor valued in favour of himself and others; rather, considered an outsider or a deviant.

Indeed, Annalena Tonelli spoke of the last people whose pain she wished to diminish as 'murdered Mozarts': she wished to recover and involve them, to enrich them together. She had a mother's heart - and her heart in the misery of her abandoned brothers and sisters.

Identical severity prevailed in religions, whose leaders bestowed on the people a strong and vulgar nationalist horde drive, and the contentment of the gregarious.

In contrast, in the Kingdom of Jesus there must be a lack of ranks - which is why the plan of the ambitious and error-free does not match his.The Spirit of Christ spontaneously identifies itself not with the usual aggressive energy of the beasts, of those who prevail because they are more cunning and stronger - but with the person who makes himself available.

We are women and men characterised by a heart of flesh - not of beast (Dan 7).

The Beatitudes - the new Decalogue of "the Mount" - allude precisely to a kind of divine condition incarnate and transmissible to anyone, pacified and creative like love, therefore all to be discovered.

Blessed is the trait and outcome of the true and full development of the divine plan on humanity.

In the Gospels, this character is not hindered by the frequenters of bad places, but paradoxically by the habitués of the holy precincts.

According to Jesus, purity of heart is not linked to external legal purity - as was believed in all devotions - but to a purified gaze and lack of duplicity. 

The growth and humanisation of the people is thus not thwarted by sinners, but precisely by those who would have the ministry of making the Face of God known to all!

In short, the load of preconceptions with which they face reality and relationships, does not allow the established and fixed authorities to recognise the calls of the Lord in the facts of life and Nature itself.

Thus for the peacemakers.

They work for the complete reconstruction of Life and Fraternity, of Nature itself and of Equal Coexistence.

All of this, in the spirit of selflessness that integrates selfishness by recognising the poor We that expands in the world.

The self-portrait of Jesus as it transpires from the Beatitudes of Mt embraces the icon of a little boy - who at that time counted for nothing.

The Lord identifies himself precisely in a house valet; a shop assistant, who nevertheless has a mysterious and pleasant divine spark within him.

It is the only identification that Jesus loves and wishes to give us: that of the one who cannot afford not to recognise the needs of others.

A dimension of sacredness without distinctive haloes: not cynical, but shareable. Because it is linked to instinctive perception and reciprocity, to spontaneous friendship towards woman and man - experienced in the likeness of the Father.

Obviously: this is not a proposal compromised with the usual inexorable rigmarole [doctrine and discipline] that drives back eccentricities: on the contrary, it is very sympathetic and amiable, inclusive.

That of the blessed is therefore the condition that makes one unique - not sanctity regulated by procedures, which always abhors, exorcises, the danger of the unusual.

This is precisely why - instead - the fixation on antecedents has characterised the life of the Church for centuries; as has the feudal and monarchical idol of stability for life.

The Master does not exclude our right to do something great... but he does not identify it with having, power, appearance.

For a path of Bliss and Divinisation, the Master does not excite the impulses of holding, rising, dominating: they do not give Happiness.

Rather, he counts on our spontaneous freedom to give, to descend and to serve - a franchise entrusted first and foremost to the top of the class. Those who, throughout history, have made the callus to overwhelm others with moralism and guile.

God does not deny the legitimate urges of the self to be recognised. We do not participate in life as if we were destined to fail, but as those who are promoted - who do not suppress their own requirements.

But not to win 'the race'. In this way, the Lord makes us reflect on authentic fulfilment.

It is not an external achievement, but an intimate and self-made one. It is thus able to sculpt our profound inclination, in its wealth of faces and in the time of a Path.

Aristotle asserted that - beyond artificial petitions of principle or apparent proclamations - one really only loves oneself. This is no small question mark.

Granted and not granted, the growth, promotion and blossoming of our qualities lies within a wise Path.

An even interrupted path that knows how to give itself the right pace - even to encounter new states of being.

Genuine and mature love expands the boundaries of the ego lover of primacy, visibility and gain. It integrates it with primordial, dormant energies to which we have not given space - understanding the You in the I.

Itinerary and Vector that then expands capacities and life. Otherwise, in all circumstances and unfortunately at any age, we will remain in the puerile game of those who scramble up the steps to prevail.

As Pope Francis said about the mafia phenomena: "There is a need for men and women of Love, not honour!"

The Tao Tê Ching (XL) writes: 'Weakness is what the Tao uses'. And Master Wang Pi comments: 'The high has for its foundation the low, the noble has for its foundation the vile'.

We feel ephemeral and often disappointed, yet we want to be happy, not just here and there: we are uncertain, yet we seek full and lasting joy. Of course we can only find it in a disconcerting proposition.

In ancient times people thought they could meet God in the intoxicating emotions generated by successful experiences, typical of successful men. But the persecuted and crucified Son disputes the externality of this.

Other decisive appointments were considered to be those on the summits of suggestive heights, or the devout and paroxysmal rushing right into the sacred precincts that Jesus intended to dismantle, forcing the people out of them [Jn 10:1-16 Greek text].

Luther interprets the Son of God on the Mount as "Mosissimus Moses". However, Matthew speaks of "the Mount" - not a tribune - as the figure and context of an eternal call, not only intended for the members of the best equipped and most able institutes of perfection to ascend.

Specifically, it is about the moments when we ourselves incorporated into the human completeness of Christ feel fullness of being: like the passing of the bride-soul into its sacred centre, and a special attunement of ideas, words and actions between our nature - and the divine.

"The Mountain" is the (theological) place where the cunning, conformist thoughts, knowledge and calculations of the worldly plain are abandoned. Where the assumptions of hilarious and transient happiness [that which lasts a minute or an hour] are levelled.

So blessed are the poor 'to the Spirit' - that is, 'for the Spirit' - says Jesus [v.3a Greek text].

In the Christian community it is important (precisely) to enrich together.

The Lord delights in those who take this direction, where his feelings become deeply ours - and important are not the minutiae, but the direction of travel.

Particular details of the life of love are left to personal creativity and the variety of people; sensitivities, cultures, situations. 

What counts is the fundamental option for goodness and communion, understood not as uniformity - but conviviality of differences.

This is not to despise wealth hysterically: it is a matter of exchanging it, so that it multiplies, avoiding keeping it for oneself. Otherwise everything becomes an insurmountable obstacle to life, and the prerogative of the quickest.

He who has freely dispossessed himself of the superfluous in order to share it, does so 'by the Spirit', that is to say, out of Love: out of free choice, with passion and without distinction between circle and non-circle beneficiaries.

Thus the rich man becomes lord.

In turn, the wretch may not be poor "by the Spirit" if he is puffed up, boastful, haughty, disinterested in others; if he lacks openness of heart, estranged from dialogue, intent on improving his condition by compromise and deception - only desirous of substituting himself for the rich and then tracing their lying, subjugating and opportunistic ways.

The voluntary renunciation of the selfish and mediocre use of one's material and sapiential resources marks us out as children of God.

Consanguineous; already here and now able to experience the blessed life of Heaven: being with and for others, being oneself.

In fact, the promise accompanying the first Beatitude (v.3a) does not guarantee access to Paradise in the afterlife, in the distant future.

The exchange of gifts guarantees the experience of divine life itself, right on earth.

In pagan religions, the condition of blessed life was a jealous and exclusive characteristic of the deities, who unwillingly participated in it; and reassuringly, only after death. However, halfway.

In Christ and through Via, despite our partial failures, or our possible lack of natural abilities and frailties - indeed, because of them - we discover a Father who is the friend of full, charged Joy: immediate, energetic, limitless Happiness. Which arises even from shaky states.

The Father is not the God of religions that fog and whet life: he does not bless the gluttony of the few, which makes the multitudes needy.

Did the last of the commandments dictate to feel content and not covet the stuff of others?

The first of the Beatitudes proposes to desire that others also have the same things and possibilities of life as we do.

The dynamic of falling in love supposes in each of its declensions, a quivering Fullness that flows everywhere - recognising the opposites in us and the legitimate desire for expressive fulfilment in our brothers and sisters.

To internalise and live the message:

How do you overcome doubt by retreating? What do you announce with your life? Does it go beyond direct experience? Do you know realities that manifest the Risen One? How do you point out exuberant paths of hope? Or are you selective and silent?

They let the Light through

All Saints, Between Religious Sense and Faith

Embodying the spirit of the Beatitudes, we ask ourselves what is the difference between common "religious feeling" and "living by Faith".

In ancient devotions, the Saint is the composite man sui, perfect and detached [but predictable]; and the opposite of Saint is 'sinner'.In the proposal of full life in the Lord, the 'saint' is a person of communicative understanding and who lives for conviviality, creating it where there is none.

In the path of the sons, the saint is indeed the excellent man, but in its full sense - full and dynamic, multifaceted; even eccentric. Not in a one-sided, moralistic or sentimental sense.

In the Latin language perfìcere means to complete, to go all the way.

In such a complete and integral meaning, 'perfect' becomes an authentic embodied value: a possible attribute - of every person who is aware of his or her own condition of vulnerability, and does not despise it.

The woman and man of Faith value every occasion or emotion that exposes the condition of nakedness [not guilt] in order to open new paths and renew themselves.

From the point of view of life in the Spirit, the saint [in Hebrew Qadosh, a divine attribute] is indeed the 'detached' man, but not in a partial or physical sense, but ideal.

He is not the person who at a certain point in life distances himself from the human family to embark on a path of purification that would elevate him. Deluding himself that he is getting better.

As the encyclical Fratelli Tutti emphasises: 'A human being [...] does not realise himself, does not develop, cannot find his own fullness [... and] does not come to fully recognise his own truth except in the encounter with others' (No.87).

The authentic witness is not animated by contempt for existential chaos - nor eager to outsource the difficulties of managing one's own freedom by handing it over to an alienating agency with a secluded mentality (which solves the drama of personal choices).

In Christ, man is "disjointed" from the common mentality, insofar as he is faithful to himself, to his own Fire that is not extinguished - to the passions, to his own unrepeatable uniqueness and Vocation.

And at the same time, "separated" from external competitive criteria: of having, of power, of appearance. Self-destructive powers.

To the latter, he concretely substitutes the fraternity of giving, of serving and of diminishing [from "character"]. Fruitful energies.

All for the global Communion, and in Truth also with one's own intimate character seed - avoiding proselytising and being noticed in the catwalks.

The true believer knows his redeemed limit, sees the possibilities of imperfection.... Thus he replaces the presuppositions of keeping for oneself, of climbing over others and dominating them, with a fundamental humanising triptych: giving, freedom to 'come down', collaboration.

This is the authentic Detachment, which does not flee one's own and others' inclinations, nor does it despise the complex trait of the human condition.

In this way, the "saint" lives the essential Bliss of the persecuted (Mt 5:11-12; Lk 6:22-23) because he has the freedom to "lower himself" in order to be in tune with his own essence; co-existing in his originality.

In terms of Faith, the saint is thus no longer a physically "separate", but rather "united" to Christ - and banished like Him, into the weak brothers and sisters.

In short, the divine Design is to compose Families of the small and shaky, not to carve out a group of "strong" friends, and "better" than the others.

Only this horizon of the Hearth drives us on.

Consequently, the opposite of Saint is not "sinful", but rather unrealised or unfinished.

Let us see again why (vocational and personal paths).

Jesus was a friend of publicans and public sinners not because they were better than the good, but because in religion the 'righteous' are often not very spontaneous; making themselves impermeable, closed, refractory to the action of the Spirit.

Surprisingly, the Lord Himself repeatedly experienced that it was precisely the devoutly deficient people who were prone to questioning, realising, reworking, deviating from habit - for the building up of new paths, even groping.

Not being able to enjoy the respectable cloak of social screens, after an awareness of one's own situation (and over time) - compared to those who considered themselves 'arrived' and friends of God - from 'distant' they became people more than the 'impecunious' willing to love.

Questioning is fundamental in a biblical perspective.

At every turn, Scripture proposes a spirituality of the Exodus, that is, a road of liberation from fetters and walked as if on foot, step by step. Hence one that values paths of seeking, exploring, self-discovery and the Newness of a God who does not repeat, but creates.

The call that the Word makes is to embark on an itinerary; that is the point. And we have always been "those of the Way" and who do not pass by, do not look the other way [cf. Lk 10:31-33; FT, 56ff].

For the classical pagan mentality, woman and man are essentially 'nature', therefore their being in the world is conditioned [I remember my professor of theological anthropology Ignazio Sanna even used to say 'de-centred'], even determined by birth (fortunate or not).According to the Bible, woman and man are creatures, splendid and adequate in themselves for their mission, but pilgrim and lacking.

God is the One who 'calls' them to complete themselves, making up for their deficient aspects.

To come to be the image and likeness of the Lord, we must develop the capacity to respond to a Vocation that makes us not phenomena, nor exceptional 'perfect' ones, but particular Witnesses.

Chosen by Name, just as we are; who embrace their deep being - even unexpressed - to the point of recognising it in the You, and unfolding it in the We.

A person's holiness is thus combined with many states of dissatisfaction, boundary, and even partial failure - but always thinking and feeling reality.

For a New Covenant.

In the Old Testament, the believer came into contact with divine purity by frequenting sacred places, fulfilling prescriptions, reciting prayers, respecting times and spaces, avoiding embarrassing situations; and so on.

Our experience and conscience infallibly attest that strict observance is too rare, or mannered: within, it often does not correspond to us - nor does it humanise us.

It sooner or later becomes a house of cards, shaky the more it points 'upwards'. All it takes is to lay one of them out clumsily, and the artificial construction collapses.

We realise our natural inability to meet such high sterilisations, (other people's) maps and standards.

With Jesus, Perfection is not about 'thinking', nor is it about adherence to an abstract code of observances. Completeness is about a quality of Exodus and Relationship.

In ancient contexts, the path of the sons has been cloaked with a mystical or renunciatory proposal of abstinence, fasting, retreats, secluded living, obsessive cultic observances... which in many situations formed the backbone of pre-Conciliar spirituality.

But in Scripture, saints do not have a halo or wings.

They are not such because they performed incomparable and astounding miracles of healing: they are women and men embedded in the ordinary world and in the most ordinary aspects. 

They know the problems, weaknesses, joys and sorrows of everyday life; the search for their own identity-character, or deep inclination.

And the apostolate; the family, raising children, work. The seductive power of evil, even.

In the First Testament, 'Qadosh' exclusively designated an attribute of the Eternal [the only non-intermittent Person] - and its separateness from the entanglement of often confused earthly ambitions.

Despite the flaws, however, in Christ we become capable of listening, of perception; thus enabled to seize every opportunity to bear witness to the innate, vital Gratuity of divine and real initiative.

Unceasingly, providential life proposes itself and comes to open unthinkable, breaching gaps.

Its unprecedented journeys of growth renew the existence all linked and conforming.

This also makes us marvel at intimate resources, previously unconscious or unconfessed and concealed, or unforeseeably hidden behind dark sides.

That which is Insignificant is no longer moved behind clouds and placed in fortified enclosures.

Therefore, God's adversary will not be transgression: instead, it becomes the lack of a spirit of communion, in differences.

The enemy of the Salvation story is not religious incompleteness, but the gap from the Beatitudes - and from the unfolding spirit of the 'wayfarer' for whom 'wandering' is also synonymous [not paradoxical] with 'wandering'.

God's counterpart is thus not 'sins', but 'the' Sin [in the singular, a theological term, not a moralistic one].

"Sin" is the inability to correspond to an indicative Calling, which acts as a spring to complete us, to regenerate us not to be partial. This by harmonising opposite sides - in being ourselves and being-With.

Here it is the Faith that 'saves', where we are - because it annihilates 'the sin of the world' (Jn 1:29), that is, the disbelief and guilt; the humiliation of unbridgeable distances.

In fact, Jesus does not recommend doctrines, nor does he recommend parcelling out one's life with punctual ethylisms. Nor does he envisage any religious ascent [in terms of progressiveness] peppered with effort.

To no one in the Gospels does Christ say 'become holy', but with Him, like Him and in Him - united, to encounter one's deepest states unceasingly.

Recognising them better, also through the You and the We.

The Saint is the little one, not the all-in-one, uniform, predictable hero.

The saint is he who, walking his own path in the wake of the Risen One, has learnt to "identify himself with the other, regardless of where [or] from where [...] ultimately experiencing that others are his own flesh" (cf. FT 84).

12. I think that in this very precise and permanently valid way, Augustine is describing man's essential situation, the situation that gives rise to all his contradictions and hopes. In some way we want life itself, true life, untouched even by death; yet at the same time we do not know the thing towards which we feel driven. We cannot stop reaching out for it, and yet we know that all we can experience or accomplish is not what we yearn for. This unknown “thing” is the true “hope” which drives us, and at the same time the fact that it is unknown is the cause of all forms of despair and also of all efforts, whether positive or destructive, directed towards worldly authenticity and human authenticity. The term “eternal life” is intended to give a name to this known “unknown”. Inevitably it is an inadequate term that creates confusion. “Eternal”, in fact, suggests to us the idea of something interminable, and this frightens us; “life” makes us think of the life that we know and love and do not want to lose, even though very often it brings more toil than satisfaction, so that while on the one hand we desire it, on the other hand we do not want it. To imagine ourselves outside the temporality that imprisons us and in some way to sense that eternity is not an unending succession of days in the calendar, but something more like the supreme moment of satisfaction, in which totality embraces us and we embrace totality—this we can only attempt. It would be like plunging into the ocean of infinite love, a moment in which time—the before and after—no longer exists. We can only attempt to grasp the idea that such a moment is life in the full sense, a plunging ever anew into the vastness of being, in which we are simply overwhelmed with joy. This is how Jesus expresses it in Saint John's Gospel: “I will see you again and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you” (16:22). We must think along these lines if we want to understand the object of Christian hope, to understand what it is that our faith, our being with Christ, leads us to expect.

[Pope Benedict, Spe salvi]

Dear Brothers and Sisters, 

1. After having celebrated yesterday the Solemnity of All Saints, today, 2 November, our prayerful gaze is directed toward those who have departed from this world and are awaiting arrival into the Heavenly City. The Church has always strongly advised that we pray for the dead. She invites believers to regard the mystery of death not as the "last word" of human destiny but rather as a passage to eternal life. As we read in the Preface of today's Mass:  "When the body of our earthly dwelling lies in death we gain an everlasting dwelling place in heaven". 

2. It is an important obligation to pray for the dead, because even if they have died in grace and in God's friendship, they may still need final purification in order to enter the joy of Heaven (cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church, n. 1030). Prayer for the dead is expressed in various ways, one of which is also visiting the cemeteries. Pausing in these sacred places becomes an ideal occasion to reflect on the meaning of earthly life and at the same time to nourish hope in the blessed eternity of Paradise. 

May Mary, Gate of Heaven, help us never to forget and never to lose sight of the Heavenly Homeland, the final destination of our pilgrimage here on earth.

[Pope John Paul II, Angelus 2 November 2003]