Dear brothers and sisters, Fiat!

On the night of Christmas the world’s darkness was pierced by a beam of light that assembled the shepherds who watched over their flocks. In the sky without stars, the  angels showed the origin of the light that indicated a perspective and a hope to those men heartbroken by darkness. The Gospel tells us that the shepherds, at the sight of that light and of the angel were filled with great fear, because one gets used to the dark and ends up loving it. We too are often used to a way of living in the dark, where the other’s face is unrecognizable and makes each person a shadow from which we must defend ourselves and of which we must be wary. It is the normal condition of the world today, where everyone is away from his own brother and sister, divided by mountains of hostility and valleys of fears.

 Moreover, even in the dark each of us finds a way to get some light: some passing satisfaction, the fervor for a moment of success, the prospect of a  little bit of wealth. But, John tells us that on that night “The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world”. Yes, we do not need a passing flash that illuminates and then vanishes, but we need the true light that does not disappear and turn off. It’s the Lord Jesus who was born, and His Word remains among us and is born every time it is proclaimed and announced and brings light and warmth that dispels the darkness and warm our hearting permanently

So, the birth of Jesus puts us before the need to choose: either to go towards Him, like the shepherds, without fearing that the light of His Word  might enlighten our life, or to stay at home and remain in the background of a life all based on ourselves. John says: ” He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him”. It is not obvious to accept that at Christmas also for me a question arises, a new word that asks me to look at the world with new eyes and to work so that it can be better. We have a thousand ways to justify our refusal, at Christmas we are very busy because of many tasks, we are taken with gifts and focused on the traditions to be respected, and woe betide us if we shift our attention to something new that asks us to be reborn…

 But today, Christmas, the light brightens the horizon in which we can look with new eyes, the eyes of a child.

Yes, God chose to be born as a baby, but it’s even more amazing that when He grew up, He always showed Himself with the humble and meek nature of the child and of the servant. He was never arrogant and violent, but ingenuously ready to trust his brother and to help those in need, just like a child.

The Lord Jesus took as His way of being the child’s humanity to be a sign of contradiction. Yes because our world is made up of people with an ageing humanity because they no longer believe in the possibility of changing the world and in the novelty of the Gospel that asks us a different way of being. Our world is also made up of arrogant adults, who consider their physical, economic strength and their social dominant role the armor with which they hide their fear.

Jesus comes to bring salvation to men and women of our time. This  salvation consists in allowing oneself to be touched by the childhood humanity of God. It is confident, trusts, naive, generous, willing to take the first step, without malice or resignation. It is open to the unpredictable future that is before those who risk to love your neighbor.

This is what Jesus asked His disciples when they showed Him a child who was there with them, He said, ” unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” (Mt 18,2)

 Before the cradle of the infant Jesus, therefore, let us ask if it’s worth living in the dark, or rather, here and now, allowing ourselves to be covered by the light of the Gospel and accepting to look at ourselves and the world through the eyes of the baby Jesus

The evangelist John says in this regard: “But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, 13 who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.”Yes, paradoxically, we can become children of that Child, of His childlike innocence that trusts in a better and more human future to build with others,

The Sun of Justice which centuries have awaited and that enlightens our dark humanity is shining in that manger that becomes the cradle for Jesus in Bethlehem.

On Christmas Day 1932, Jesus told Luisa that when the Son of God was born, He found Himself in the condition of the sun, that whether they want, or don’t want, all created things, all the Creation and all creatures must receive its light, its heat, from the heights where it descends with His empire of light and with His supremacy that it possesses over everyone and over everything it seems that the sun says with his muteness but stronger than if he might speak: ‘whether you receive me with love or I invest you with the rights that I possess to give you light and if you don’t want to receive me I will surround you from all sides in a way that you can’ escape from my light and I will have the great glory that I have given my light to everyone.’

The sun is symbol of Jesus’ birth that also is reborn in all days for everything and for each and He is not only reborn in a universal way but He makes an invasion while He is reborn, He is not only reborn in the heart but He invades the mind with His thoughts, the eyes with His tears, the voice with His whimpers, in a way that He makes the universal invasion of all creatures, He takes her from all sides so that she can not escape Him,

If they receive Jesus with love, His life is not only born in them, but it grows in a surprising way, if then they don’t receive Him with love, He is reborn in them with the rights of God that He possesses, but He doesn’t grow in them, He remains tiny and He remains only to reserve waiting that who knows with His whimpers and tears they are induced to love Him and if He doesn’t succeed with this His life changes for them into justice.

And  how it tears Jesus’ little heart to pieces, to see His birth all love, changed into justice for poor creatures. Hence since Jesus is already born in us, let’s give Him the good to make Him grow thus we will change His tears and His whimpers into joys.”

 “My daughter, love me, love me,

I am born in order to love and to be loved,

and in order to do it as God my birth is universal,

I would not have done as God

if I might not had been reborn in a universal way,

in a way that everyone can say with facts

the Celestial Infant was born for me, he is mine

and it is so very true that I already possess Him”.

(Jesus to Luisa)

don Marco

http://www.luisapiccarretaofficial.org/gospels/solemnity-of-the-nativity-of-the-lord/49

Dear brothers and sisters, Fiat!

On this Fourth Sunday of Advent the Gospel according to St Matthew recounts the birth of Jesus from St Joseph’s viewpoint. He was betrothed to Mary who, “before they came together… was found to be with child of the Holy Spirit”. The Son of God, fulfilling an ancient prophecy , became man in the womb of a virgin and this mystery at the same time expressed the love, wisdom and power of God for mankind, wounded by sin. St Joseph is presented as “a just man”, faithful to God’s law and ready to do his will. For this reason he enters the mystery of the Incarnation after an Angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, announcing: “Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary your wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit; she will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins”. Having given up the idea of divorcing Mary secretly, Joseph took her to himself because he then saw God’s work in her with his own eyes.

“Joseph did as the angel of the Lord commanded him and took Mary as his wife”. These words already point to the mission which God entrusts to Joseph: he is to be the custos, the protector. The protector of whom? Of Mary and Jesus; but this protection is then extended to the Church, as St. John Paul II pointed out: “Just as Saint Joseph took loving care of Mary and gladly dedicated himself to Jesus Christ’s upbringing, he likewise watches over and protects Christ’s Mystical Body, the Church, of which the Virgin Mary is the exemplar and mode

How does Joseph exercise his role as protector? Discreetly, humbly and silently, but with an unfailing presence and utter fidelity, even when he finds it hard to understand. From the time of his betrothal to Mary until the finding of the twelve-year-old Jesus in the Temple of Jerusalem, he is there at every moment with loving care. As the spouse of Mary, he is at her side in good times and bad, on the journey to Bethlehem for the census and in the anxious and joyful hours when she gave birth; amid the drama of the flight into Egypt and during the frantic search for their child in the Temple; and later in the day-to-day life of the home of Nazareth, in the workshop where he taught his trade to Jesus.

How does Joseph respond to his calling to be the protector of Mary, Jesus and the Church? By being constantly attentive to God, open to the signs of God’s presence and receptive to God’s plans, and not simply to his own. This is what God asked of David, as we heard in the first reading. God does not want a house built by men, but faithfulness to his word, to his plan. It is God himself who builds the house, but from living stones sealed by his Spirit. Joseph is a “protector” because he is able to hear God’s voice and be guided by his will; and for this reason he is all the more sensitive to the persons entrusted to his safekeeping. He can look at things realistically, he is in touch with his surroundings, he can make truly wise decisions. In him, dear friends, we learn how to respond to God’s call, readily and willingly, but we also see the core of the Christian vocation, which is Christ! Let us protect Christ in our lives, so that we can protect others, so that we can protect creation!

Here I would add one more thing: caring, protecting, demands goodness, it calls for a certain tenderness. In the Gospels, Saint Joseph appears as a strong and courageous man, a working man, yet in his heart we see great tenderness, which is not the virtue of the weak but rather a sign of strength of spirit and a capacity for concern, for compassion, for genuine openness to others, for love. We must not be afraid of goodness, of tenderness! (Pope Francis)

In the most difficult moments of Joseph’s life (to take Mary as his wife, the Flight into Egypt, the return from Egypt itself) there is always the same pattern: he dreams, he wakes up and goes! This means that he knows to be with all of himself in mystery, but he never insisted on telling God what to do, he was never “scandalized” by God and thus he could see His faithfulness and experience first hand His prodigies. But how did he do? Perhaps the answer is easy: he took God seriously! Joseph, without chatting, but through his life , made his profession of faith, and announced that he believed in the Lord, that the Word of God is worth more than what I can see with my eyes.

One day Jesus said to Luisa how the Holy Family lived in Nazareth and how the Divine Will reigned in it.

Certainly Jesus had the Kingdom of His Will during His hidden life. As the Sovereign Lady possessed His Fiat, He was the Divine Will Itself, and Saint Joseph, in the middle of these seas of endless light – how could he not let himself be dominated by this Most Holy Will?’

The Divine Will reigned in the house of Nazareth on earth as It does in Heaven.  Jesus and The Celestial Mother knew no other will, and Saint Joseph lived in the reflections of Their Will. But Jesus was like a king without a people, isolated, without cortege, without army, and Mary was like a queen without children, because She was not surrounded by other children worthy of Her to whom She could entrust Her crown of queen, so as to have the offspring of Her noble children all kings and queens.

The King of Heaven when He came to earth had the sorrow of being a king without a people; and if those who surrounded Him could be called a people, it was a sick people – some were blind, some mute, some deaf, some crippled, some covered with wounds. It was a people that gave Him dishonor – not honor; even more, it did not even know Him, nor did it want to know Him So, He was king only for Himself, and His Mother was queen without the long generation of Her offspring of royal children.

But in order to be able to say that Jesus had His Kingdom, and to rule, He had to have ministers; and even though He had Saint Joseph as prime minister, one minister only does not constitute a ministry. He had to have a great army, all intent on fighting to defend the rights of the Kingdom of the Divine Will; and a faithful people that would have, as law, only the law of God’s Will.

So, on coming upon earth, Jesus had not the Kingdom of the Fiat it was a Kingdom  of heaven only, because the order of Creation and the royalty of man were not restored. However, by Jesus and Mary living wholly of Divine Will, the seed was sown, the yeast was formed, to make the Kingdom of the Divine Will arise and grow upon earth. Therefore, all the preparations were made, all the graces were impetrated, all the pains were suffered, so that the Kingdom of the Divine Will might come to reign upon earth. This is why Nazareth can be called the point of recall of the Kingdom of the Divine Will.”

Like Mary, the Virgin who conceived by the power of God, said her generous, humble and complete “Fiat”, also for us, God says “Fiat” to man.  Man is called to fulfill his own aspirations and to access salvation, saying his “Fiat” to God. So it is a “Merry Christmas”!            don Marco   http://www.luisapiccarretaofficial.org/gospels/fourth-sunday-of-advent/48