Sunday 17 October 2010 feast of the dedication of the Cathedral
GOSPEL
Reading of the Gospel according to Luke 6, 43-48
at that time. The Lord Jesus told his disciples: "There is a good tree which produces bad fruit, nor There is indeed a bad tree which produces good fruit. Every tree is known by its fruit do not gather figs from thorns, nor do they pick grapes from a bramble. A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good, the bad man from his evil treasure brings forth evil: his mouth it expresses what overflows from the heart. / Why do I cry out: "Lord, Lord," and not do what I say? Whoever comes to me and hears my words and doeth them, I'll show you who is similar: it is like a man building a house, who dug deep and laid the foundation on the rock. When it was full, the river that house but could not to move it because it was built well. "
The Gospel is not a literary exercise, nor a word that is said to encourage a few nice feeling: it aims to build a house, the house of his life. Well, who heard the Gospel and puts it into practice is a prudent man, as he builds his life on the stone, those who listen only, and does not follow the Gospel, is a fool, because they will be overwhelmed by adversity. Of course it is even worse if you listen to the Word of God
light wave on the sand just to run over everything that has been built, hence also on the popular saying "castles of sand. "In truth, life holds for us often violent gusts and strong winds. That is the warning of Jesus is a wise and friendly.
The sand is not far away. We should not take long file or miles of road to get there. We've got heart. The sand is the pride of self, their feelings, their beliefs, it is the arrogance of those who claim to be always right even before the LORD, is the coldness of who is indifferent to the needs of others. The season of the sand can last a day, a month, a year or a lifetime. This is the time where you do not hear the Gospel nor is it put into practice. How many men, how many women would have to admit that their human construction, collapsed, and not admit it because they do not want to reveal that there is sand in their hearts! Let us be careful, because the sand is the desert, and indeed the sand makes the desert creates loneliness, bitterness, lack of a happy life. The Lord has given us the stone where he could build our life. The stone is not us, is the Lord himself, and his Gospel, which remains firm and does not collapse.
Living in an RV instead of the house, almost like Ulysses
try to understand how to build the real man's house that is consciousness.
The transition from acting spontaneously, and 'child' to free choice and is increasingly needed as a second birth. Only with the freedom that is determined you have the life of the spirit, the fulfillment of freedom is when it is reliant not only on the promise of real, but ultimately the promise of God This necessary step is very complex because there affect psychological processes, cultural processes and the same free choices of the subject.
We have a first explanation of this complexity if we ask ourselves what the role played by culture.
culture offers the same personal consciousness a first statement of the meanings of action. But these signs have a double profile: on the one hand they are absolutely necessary, on the other hand, they are insufficient.
are necessary because the subject requires an understanding of the evidence that the good sense of action, which is contained the promise of good life and meaning. Are insufficient, because the free agent, faced with this evidence will decide for himself, only if deemed reliable.
So the life of the spirit, which we called the second birth due exercise of freedom, is not the foregone conclusion of an educational process.
This second birth can never be regarded as a fait accompli, it is likely to be increasingly taken over from scratch, it is a permanent debt or a duty of more of the subject.
We can say that the deepest truth of moral duty is the recognition of a permanent debt that people have to decide for themselves, exercising their freedom.
There is a scan that leads from the provisional the final, at the time recognized the full-time (which coincides with the presence in the Gospel of Jesus), freedom is determined unconditionally. This conception of freedom entails that the human subject the experience of living shooting himself, and not instead of the continual search for new experiments.
The Bible instructs us on plenty of shooting, but before we do some observations in relation to its complete absence in contemporary culture.
We must draw our attention to what is a free act: it is the act by which we recognize the imperative brought together by the consciousness expressed by a particular time (kairos), a time that finally allows the provision of self by the subject and in this sense, a full-time.
The free act is structurally divided into two phases: that of action by which the subject is looking, respectively, and that the subject of action by which instead is given, or otherwise has of himself.
The moral journey as a quest for self
Now contemporary culture focuses on the first time, the research does not call and almost never reached the second stage, the in which the subject decides to himself.
Forget the second moment of the free, is to deny human freedom.
emblematic figure of this cultural situation is that of Ulysses , the hero who is always looking, never landing in the country, because he does not believe that there is home. For him and for contemporary culture, there is no promised land to which go far. To this the hero prefers to roam and experience the thrill of new experiences as a response to its aspirations. In this sense he is not free.
But if contemporary culture recognizes no promised land, thus becomes unable to propose also the first evidence of the good life is the new generation is the same adults who have to live all over again its commitment to morality.
The situation can be summarized as follows: the public culture is not proposing an ideal of the good life and consciousness of the individual remains at the mercy of itself, without any reference point. This results in a regression of individual conscience, which tend to act only on the basis of emotions (how children persist in the behavior of adults). fact to the extent that the relationship between public culture and consciousness of the subject struggles to realized, for the growing difficulty in moving the subject from the behavior emotional than intentional and free. The subject threatens to child: for a first hand bullying as a child, on the other side as helpless as a child. The impotence of which is to say that expresses the attitude of the spectator who can only be pathetic of a lifetime as appropriate, the viewer is satisfied, or instead of offended and resentful for the disappointing quality of what he had to see. In any case, he remains a spectator and actor.
It is clear that this cultural situation, which lack full-time, time for the exercise of freedom, is a challenge to the Christian conscience. In fact described in the social context becomes problematic psychological training of the same consciousness that is the condition can also occur in an appropriate manner the same decision of faith.
The moral journey of recovery as self
as we said in a rather different picture of human life is recommended by the biblical tradition.
The Bible offers the figure of the recovery, not of the permanent research . The early history reveals a sense of life, or more sincerely promise, that man can and must choose to end without uncertainties. Only when he reaches such a choice, arrives with his real birth (John 3). The shape of life find its fulfillment in destiny of Jesus, and therefore the gospel that proclaims the eschatological destiny as the revelation of the truth of the fate of every man. And yet the same recognition the truth of the gospel of Jesus, precisely because the truth of a completion, expected recovery of a previous story: that of Moses and the prophets, indeed everything, but through that and beyond that of the universal story of the sons of Adam.
In the book of Exodus shows two days of freedom: first, Israel is conducted as on "wings of an eagle", the journey is easy, the result of liberation from Israel is called God in this covenant and context of gift and promise of God received the law. As if to say that the meaning of the law can only be understood in the context of God's liberating is Israel as a people.
But there will come a time when we must face the evidence. Only through them the people will understand the truth of the law.
A similar pattern can be recognized as active even if the experience of the prophets. In their existential event occurs this law: personal identity in the first place is surprising given the initiative of God, anticipating all the more aware and any choice of the man himself. Foreseeing the initiative of God, which elected him and calls him, the prophet must allow freely. The scheme is an eloquent illustration in the 'confessions' of Jeremiah, he was allowed to start with enthusiastically to the call easy, but then, painfully learned from the fate that the actual call him reserved, suspicious that her first response was the result of treacherous seduction by God, that answer would withdraw and not speak in his name but a burning fire shut up in his bones almost prevents him from physically silence the word of God (cf. Jer 20.7-9).
scanning in two stages of the response to God's call is also active in the story of the disciples to follow Jesus, they were chosen as apostles by Jesus, even before that they could understand and comply fully with this initiative. Of course, the call of the master they responded freely from the beginning. But the repeated misunderstandings that arise between them and the teacher questioning their awareness, and thus the freedom of their initial response. A second answer, yes, but must be only after they are instructed by their own each year. The shape of their choice then it will be precisely that the fate of the consent given by the initiative of the Master alone. Do you know what I did?, Asks Jesus to her after the washing of the feet (Jn 13:12), only to proceed from such awareness, only to extent that you become partakers of my intentions, you will also know what the commandment to conform your life. What Jesus made them - and in some sense to them too - just makes the figure of full-time, allowing you to will and to have accomplished in the form of life. The second birth is a reprise of the first.
is only the second birth is as stable as the house built on rock.
Roman Rite
Gospel: Lk 18:1-8
At that time, Jesus told his disciples a parable about the need to pray always and not tire: "There was a city a judge who neither feared God nor had respect for anyone. In that city there was a widow who kept coming to him and said: Give me justice against my adversary. For a time he refused, but then he said to himself: Although I do not fear God and I have no respect for anyone, because this widow is so annoying I'll Justice, because it is constantly bother me. "
And the Lord said, "You heard what the unjust judge says. And God will do justice to his elect who cry to him day and night? He will long to wait? I tell you that will make them swift justice. But the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth? ".
We are reaching the end the liturgical year. It 'been a time when, Sunday after Sunday, we were taken to the contemplation of the mystery of Jesus our weeks, our days have been leavened by the yeast as the Word of God In this Sunday, we receive a gift the Word of God which are buried in the lives of our days. It 's the short parable of the persistent widow: a typical situation, not only in the legal use of the Old Testament. Even today, not infrequently happens that an overwhelming reliance on legal technicalities to rip a poor defenseless little they have. The court - taking the Gospel parable - it should, with impartiality and timeliness, to defend this poor woman. But the judge behaves exactly the reverse: fears neither God nor man ("There was in that city a judge who neither feared God nor had respect for anyone"). In a way you represented the arrogance of power, which are often found in human history. Even the prophet Isaiah had denounced: "Woe to those who decree unjust and oppressive judgments written in haste, to deny justice to the poor law and to defraud the poor of my people, to make widows their prey and rob orphans, says the Lord "(Isaiah 10: 1-2). At this point the story told in the parable, what will the poor widow of manifest injustice in this situation? Moreover, in the Jewish world, women like you were the symbol of weakness, besides the most prone to abuse. God becomes their advocate, it is invoked with the title "defender of widows", now without the protection of her husband (Ps. 68.6). This woman, however, did not resign himself to injustice, as is usually instead used to do them all. It was certainly a victim, but by no means resigned. Insistently, in fact, went to court claiming the right satisfaction. He did not just once but several times with tenacity never tired of claiming the right, until the judge decided not to consider his case. "He said to himself, even if I do not fear God and I have no respect for anyone, because this widow is so I'll harass justice, because there is more to bother me. "Thus ends the parable. Important findings are the brief asked by Jesus first appear somewhat puzzling, because it puts the judge in the parable in parallel with God himself. It is a paradox, used at other times in the Gospels, to remove any doubt from our minds: "You heard what the unjust judge says. And God will do justice to his elect who cry to him day and night? He will long to wait? I tell you that will make them swift justice. "Yes, God will not make us wait long, swift justice will (someone translated as" suddenly "," when you least expect it ") if persistently turn to Him our prayers. Indeed, believers have incredible power in prayer, an energy that can change the world. We are all, perhaps, as that poor widow, weak, with no special powers, and yet this weakness, in persistent prayer, it becomes a powerful force, indeed, like the widow who managed to affect the hardness of the court.
Unfortunately, it is easy for us to fall into distrust and disbelief, overwhelmed by the things of this world, our anxieties, our safety, and forget the prayer. The first reading of the liturgy from the Book of Exodus (17, 8-13), is an incredible example the "weak force" of prayer. Scripture presents us with the figure of Moses with his hands raised to heaven, while Israel faces Amalek in battle in the plain of Rephidim. Moses embodies all the people in prayer. When he asks the people of Israel wins, and not just lower your hands, the enemy now prevails. Aaron and Hur are involved, one on one side and the other part, to support your hands, until the final victory. In constant prayer, we believe, we can find the foundation to build our lives and to build the same city of men, some of the words of Psalm 127: "Unless the Lord builds the house, in vain do its builders labor."
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