Dear brothers and sisters, Fiat!

Here’s another passage of the “Sermon on the Mount” after that of last Sunday. It is a rather ample passage (Mt 5:17-37), concerning various rules, unified by the recurring expression: ” You have heard that it was said to the people long ago… But I tell you …”.

On a superficial reading, it seems that Jesus wants to dismantle the whole structure of the relationship between man and God, that His countrymen had inherited from Moses and the prophets, to re-found everything on different bases. That’s  not the case!

The revelation that God made of Himself, and that we find in the Bible, was progressive; it did not happen all at once, but it has been broadening and deepening over the centuries. Something like what happens in the field of school education: successive studies do not cancel the concepts we learned in primary schools, but they expand and deepen them. In His infinite goodness, God revealed Himself little by little, giving man time to gradually assimilate some realities that his intelligence couldn’t understand on its own.

The fullness of divine revelation was accomplished through Jesus, the fullness, not another one; for this, He explains in the passage of today that He does not want to abolish “the Law or the Prophets”, that is, what had already been revealed in the Old Testament: “I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them”. And He immediately gives four examples, relating to the rules that his listeners already knew about murder, adultery, divorce and oaths.

Jesus says that a minimalistic and exterior observance is not enough; we must adhere to God with all our heart. Therefore it is not enough that we do not kill: even if we get angry or offend others we go against the commandment. It is not enough that we avoid the physical act of adultery: “But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” Divorce was introduced into the Jewish law: in this regard Jesus restores God’s will, which does not allow it. The ancients were used to oaths, with which they called God as guarantor of what they said; But Jesus says to us not to swear at all: man must give truth to his words, all he needs to say is simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’.

Man would hardly have understood these teachings on his own, as well as many other gospel teachings that inspect the depths of consciousness and the most hidden depths of the heart. Moreover, other teachings, concerning the very nature of God and the earthly mission of God’s Son, even though they are important for man, they would be out of his reach: we understand them only because He revealed them. That’s why, in today’s second reading (1Cor 2:6 – 10), Paul writes that “We do, however, speak a message of wisdom but not the wisdom of this age. What no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, and what no human mind has conceived the things God has prepared for those who love him.”

He created man, and – as the only one of the creatures – endowed him with intelligence, to talk to him, explain to him his confidence, render him part of realities that man could not even imagine on his own. How much mercy from God, and how much honor to the man! The revelation of God to man shows, in the most wonderful way possible the importance, dignity, greatness that is inherent in every human being.

His greatness, however, implies a dramatic component: the risks of freedom.

God created us free, and as such He treats us; He did not make some computers or some robots that are programmed to perform only His commands, but He created thinking and autonomous beings, capable of choosing: they can even choose whether to join or not to Him. He does not force us; we might also refuse Him, and proceed as we wish, with our only human “wisdom”: but we should assess exactly where it may lead us and where, instead, the wisdom He gives “to those who love Him” leads us.

Jesus gave life in the Divine Will to the acts of all creatures, making them free. He associated His Mother with this work, now He wants the third “Fiat” by Luisa and the other children of the Divine Will, always in freedom.

As God created the heavens, the sun, the stars, etc., for all He fixed the limits, the place, the number, and they can neither increase nor decrease; In the same way, in creating man, at the same time He created all the intelligences and each thought, all the words, the works, the steps, and all the rest of man, from the first to the last who will exist. All the operating of creatures swims inside God’s Will, like the fish swim inside a vast sea. However, having created man, not a slave, but free – because it would not have been decorous for God, nor a work worthy to come out of His hands, had He delivered this man hampered, without freedom; nor could He has said, ‘Let Us make him in Our image and likeness’, had He not made him free – He wanted to endow him with freedom.

God was free – free was man also to be. Besides, there is nothing that tortures a person more than to give a forced love, which causes diffidences, suspicions, fears, and almost reluctance in the one who receives it.

God’s Will grieved in seeing the acts of many, of which It was the actor, changed into deadly acts for Him and for them. Therefore He wanted that His Will, making Itself, in a double way, actor of each act, lay another divine act over all, which was to repay Him with as many other divine acts, according to the sanctity of His Will.

However, someone was needed in order to do this: and here is Jesus’ Humanity, holy and free as well, which, wanting no other life than the Divine Will alone, swimming in this immense sea, went on doubling each thought, word and work of creature, and laid an act of Divine Will over everything. This satisfied and glorified the Divine Father, in such a way that He was able to look at man and open the doors of Heaven to him; and Jesus retied the human will with more strength, leaving it always free not to detach from the Will of its Creator.

Jesus wanted also His Mother, holy as well, to follow Him in the immense sea of the Supreme Volition, and to duplicate all human acts together with Him, placing the double seal, after His own, of the acts done in the Divine Will upon all the acts of creatures. The company of Mary in operating makes happiness, delight, love of tenderness, competition, accord and heroism arise; isolation produces the opposite.

After His Celestial Mother, Jesus called Luisa, so that all human acts may have the first seal done by Him, the second done by His Mother, and the third by one creature of common stock. God’s eternal love would not be content, if He did not raise one of common stock, who would open the doors for those who would dispose themselves to enter through these doors in order to live in the Divine Will.

However, in order to enter into God’s Will and follow the sublime flight of His acts and of those of His inseparable Mother, as much as Luisa is of common stock, she could not enter into the Divine Will if she did not have, or had at least been transformed into, the nature which came out of His hands before man withdrew from the Divine Will. As Jesus engraced Luisa, so He removed from her the seeds, the tendencies, the passions of the rebellious nature, always leaving her will free. Having to call her into the center of His Will to live a communal life in It, to make her cover all the acts done by Him, which are not yet known by creatures, it was necessary to restore her nature to this happy state. Otherwise, she could not have run with Him in the interminable acts of His Will, nor be with Him with that ease which is needed in order to operate together. The passions, the seeds of tendencies that are not good, would have been like many bars of division between Jesus and Luisa. At the most, she would have been at the commands of the Divine Will, like many other faithful ones of His, but she would have been very far from doing what Jesus did, and neither Luisa nor Jesus would have been happy; while living in the Divine Will is precisely this – to live fully happy on earth, to then move on to live more happy in Heaven.

By doing the Divine Will, every man, will ascend and acquire the new transformation into the nature created by God. Then God Himself will be able to say: ‘I have accomplished everything; the order of the whole Creation has returned to Me, and I will rest in It.”

don Marco

Dear brothers and sisters, Fiat!

These Sundays we are reading some passages from the “Sermon on the Mount”: Jesus’ teachings,  which are gathered as to chart the program of His subsequent work. In today’s passage (Mt 5:13-16), Jesus calls his disciples “the salt of the earth” and “the light of the world.” What does it mean? Maybe someone remembered the passage from the prophet Isaiah (58:7- 10), which is proposed again today as the first reading: “Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter when you see the naked, to clothe them, then your light will break forth like the dawn; If you do away with the yoke of oppression, with the pointing finger and malicious talk, and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness, and your night will become like the noonday”. In short, the Prophet says to act in accordance with justice and charity, and Jesus simply meant that.

To be the salt of the earth and the light of the world, is to give flavor, ie a sense, a higher purpose, to the reality that however many people live as demeaning because they suffered because of them or they consider them to be insignificant; it means giving light to the soul of those who are desperate,  of those who are blind or simply asleep, and for this reason they do not see the good which exists around them, or that they can accomplish.

The task that Jesus entrusted to His disciples appears to be great and exciting, but difficult; Indeed, those who have conscience of their limits are tempted to believe that it’s impossible. Here, however, the second reading. The apostle Paul also felt inept to be the salt of the earth and the light of the world; but nevertheless he didn’t refrain from doing what he could do to bear witness concerning the One who sent him. In this regard, he wrote: “And so it was with me, brothers and sisters. When I came to you, I did not come with eloquence or human wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. I came to you in weakness with great fear and trembling. My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God’s power.”  (1 Corinthians 2:1-5)

It is difficult to present and especially to experience the cross as our ideal of life. So it was also for Luisa, but when we experience the cross, Jesus also gives us light to know it deeply and understand,  even in sorrow, the great treasure of suffering.

One day Luisa wrote what Jesus taught her about the cross just in a really difficult time for her, because of the death of her mother and the sudden illness of her father that after a few days lead to his death.

Jesus explained to Luisa that the cross is a thorny fruit, which is bothering and prickly on the outside, but once the thorns and the cortex are removed, one finds a precious and delicious fruit. But only one who has the patience to bear the bothers of the prickings, can arrive at discovering the secret of the preciousness and flavor of that fruit. And only one who has come to discover this secret, looks at it with love, and goes in search of this fruit with avidity, without caring about the prickings, while all the others look at it with contempt, and despise it.

At those words Luisa was troubled and wanted to Know from Jesus the secret contained in the fruit of the cross. And Jesus said to her that it is the secret of eternal beatitude, because in the fruit of the cross there are many little coins which circulate only to enter into Heaven, and with these little coins the soul is enriched and makes herself blessed for eternity.

The behavior of the apostle seem humanly unwise almost self-defeating. Instead, as  he continues to explain in the letter, in doing so, we  can see that in reality faith does not arise from someone’s speeches: it arises from “God’s power”.

The apostle, missionary, priest, catechist, the mother who teaches prayers to her child, and all those who try to bear witness to the gospel by word and example, “must” be conscious of being weak and must face the task “with fear and trembling”; but this must not prevent them from realizing that they are only a tool in the hands of God: It’s God Alone Who can penetrate into men’s minds and hearts. Therefore, every Christian can be the salt of the earth and the light of the world, not through his own capacities, or any sort of talents, merits and privileges, but because it is God who, in reality, works through him.

don Marco