Card. Angelo Scola

Patriarch of Venice

1. «The Word was made flesh, he lived among us» (Jn 1:14, Day Mass). «Today in the town of David a saviour has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord. And here is a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger» (Lk 2:11-12, Midnight Mass).

The incarnation is the process of the new creation which the Lord has come to establish in the world as well as in history. It is the process of salvation for all men («all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God» Is 52:10, Day Mass) which includes the prospect of right, justice, and peace («Wide is his dominion in a peace that has no end, for the throne of David and for his royal power, which he establishes and makes secure in justice and integrity» Is 9:6, Midnight Mass). 

2. «He lies in a manger, but embodies the whole universe; he is wrapped in swaddling clothes, but he clothes us with immortality; he does not find shelter in an inn, but he builds his own temple in the heart of every faithful. In order to strengthen weakness, the stronghold  took the form of weakness» (St. Augustine, Sermon 190).

The central feature of Christianity is paradox: the Son of God – He whom the Father «has appointed to inherit everything and through whom he made everything there is» (Heb 1:2, Day Mass), without whom «not one thing had its being but through him» (Jn 1:2, Day Mass) – is born, as any other son of man, through a young woman, in an obscure angle of the earth, he is wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid «in a manger because there was no room for them at the inn» (Lk 2:7, Midnight Mass). He leaves behind him his glory and embodies the human form of a tender and fragile child. God comes down  from heaven to earth to such an extent that in the last tract of his descent we can no longer  follow him [«Who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be  exploited, but he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbles himself and became obedient to the point of death – even death on a cross» (Phil 2:6-8)]. 

3. The liturgy of the Mass of the Day offers us the most profound message of Christmas. The readings change the narrative form inviting us to draw our attention from the characters of the event to the Protagonist: who is the newly born-child? He is the Word of God made flesh: «At various time in the past and in various different ways, God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets; but in our own time, the last days, he spoke to us through his Son, the Son that he has appointed to inherit everything and through whom he made everything there is. He is the radiant light of God’s glory and the perfect copy of his nature, sustaining the universe by his powerful command» (Heb 1:2-3 Day Mass).

For there is a child born for us, the son, as the prophet Isaiah proclaimed; He is the only one to  reveal to us the face of God the Father for ever (cfr Is 9:5, Midnight Mass) and He opens to us the opportunity to become sons in the Son: «To all who did accept him he gave the power to become children of God» Jn 1:12, Day Mass). 

4. Therefore, the retelling us again who we are, to whom do we belong and towards whom we are tending suggests the necessity of good relations which constitute us. In this perspective, the mystery of the Birth of Christ the Lord opens to us the way to those virtuous practices which allow us to share in the needs, the difficulties and the solitudes of others and to contribute to the building of  good life.

The newly established humanity brought forth through the mystery of Christmas encourages us to make ours the suffering of those who have no work and this fact serves to highlight the primacy of the dignity of the working subject also regarding the fair-profit; to participate to the anxieties of the young generations who have the sensation that their future lacks reliable hopes; to feel ours the pain of those who pass these festivities in a sick-bed in hospital and making ours also the sorrow of the separated families, very often, hurt in their affections; to assume our duty to activate in society, everyone according to his own specific vocation, a constructive contribution to recover from the situation of crises which marks economy and policy; to make ours the fear of the Christians and of all those who are persecuted violently for their faith in certain Counties where the free practice of religion does not exist; we should not forget the great number of men, especially in the Southern part of the planet, who suffer hunger and live in miserable conditions.

If we men and women overwhelmed by a frenetic routine of life, live this Christmas only as a break from our activities we would betray the essential invitation which Christmas proclaims; therefore it is necessary to make space to God in our life, to belong completely to Him and to open ourselves to others. «He sacrificed himself for us in order to set us free from all wickedness and to purify a people so that it could be his very own and would have no ambition except to do good» (Tit 2:14, Midnight Mass). 

5. «He came to his own domain, and his own people did not accept him» (Jn 1:11, Day Mass): even today we are faced with this terrible challenge. And yet the condition to recognize him is not difficult, it is not impossible, on the contrary it is easy to reach. It is called simplicity, the same simplicity with which the shepherds, after the extraordinary announcement received by the angels, without any hesitation said to one another: «Let us go to Bethlehem and see this thing that had happened which the lord has made known to us’» (Lk 2:15, Dawn Mass).

Only amazement acknowledges (Gregory of Nyssa) and amazement leads to adoration.May the Blessed Virgin Mary and her  husband Joseph open – on this Christmas – our hearts to a new birth!

Happy Christmas!

(trad. Léonard Azzopardi)

Easter Vigil

 Gn1:1-22; Gn22:1-18; Ex14,15-15,1; Is 55:1-11; Ba 3:9-15.32-4.4;

Ez 36,16-28; Rm 6: 3-11; Lk 24: 1-12

Easter Sunday

Acts 10, 34.37-43; Ps 117; 1Cor 5: 6-8; Jn 20: 1-9

1. «I am Christ who have destroyed death, who have won the enemy and put the Hades under my feet, who have restrained the powerful and have lifted up man to the sublimity of heavens», an ancient Easter homily states. In two splendid mosaics – one present in our basilica and the other in that of Torcello which is much older – we can contemplate the powerful scene of the Anastatis (Resurrection). The Risen, with a vigorous arm, frees Adam and in him all men, from the chains of death trampling on the devil who vainly tempts to keep his victim. However, the victim manages to escape from his hands to enter in the new heavens and on a new earth. Christ is the undeniable protagonist of the scene.

Easter is the feast of Christ’s centrality in the life of man.

He is the centre of the cosmos and of history, the reading key of all the events of the existence of each one of us, of the whole human family and of the entire world.

2. «Why look among the dead for someone who is alive? He is not here; he has risen» (Lk 24; 5-6). The New Testament does not describe directly the moment of the Resurrection, the central event of history. It is expressed through signs and apparitions. First of all it reports the declaration of the Angel to the women who were looking for Christ in the tomb. The announcement was so extraordinary that at the beginning it seemed to be incredible. «but this story of theirs seemed pure nonsense, and they did not believe them» (Lk 24;11). Infact that which associates the versions of the account of the resurrection given by the four Evangelists is, first of all, dismay, total surprise with which the disciples, women and men, have lived the event: «Terrified, the women bowed their heads to the ground… Peter, however, went off to the tomb, running. He bent down and looked in and saw the linen cloths but nothing else; he then went back home, amazed at what had happened» (Lk 24: 5&12). The Gospels report objectivity these first reactions of the disciples in recognizing the fact of the resurrection. For this reason they are more credible and they render reasonable our faith.

The Risen could have chosen to return along the streets, under the arcades of the Temple and to make himself recognized by the crowds who had seen him hanging on the cross. Instead he has singled out another method to attest himself as the eternal Living. «God raised him to life and allowed him to be seen, not by the whole people but only by certain witnesses that God had chosen beforehand» (Acts 10: 40-41). Jesus did not manifest himself to the world, but to the disciples, in order to heal them, in the first place, their incredulity which was making them blind, full of fear and paralysed.

Mary of Magdala is the first – according to the account of John – to verify the empty tomb, but she thinks that someone had taken away and hid the body of Jesus. Peter enters into the tomb, he sees the linen cloths lying on the ground and also the shroud rolled up apart and he remains astonished. The other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, after having entered with Peter «saw and believed» (Jn 20:9). In order to “see” the fact in all its entity it is necessary to dispose and open the heart to embrace God’s design. The choice of the Risen to pass through witnesses to reach the whole humanity teaches us, who follow Him along the course of history, that Easter demands our personal and free adhesion. It is based upon precise historical dates indicated by the direct witnesses. Only because they have met Him “saw Him again” Risen they have passed from fear which was imprisoning them to announce Him in the public square to the point of giving their own life.

3. Faith in Christ, dead and risen is first of all a gift, the most precious gift [«This dear joy upon which every virtue is founded» as the poetical genius of Dante states (Dante, Paradise XXIV, 89-90)] which we cannot produce by ourselves, as we cannot confer life to ourselves. We can only receive it. For this reason the Church collocates the baptismal liturgy in the heart of the paschal Vigil. «You cannot have forgotten that all of us, when we were baptised into Christ Jesus, were baptised into his death. But we believe that, if we died with Christ, then we shall live with him too. We know that Christ has been raised from the dead and will never die again. Death has no power over him any more» (Rm 6: 3.8-9). Imitating in Baptism the death and the resurrection of Jesus which indicates that change of life which is a gift of the Risen and anticipation of our personal resurrection. The gift of faith is for all men. Therefore, we are challenged to accept, custody and love this precious gift. Grace and liberty. Gladness for the greatest gift and an appeal to actualise it in our daily life; in this way the deep needs of our heart can be accomplished and our brother man including the sophisticated post-modern man, can encounter He who expects.

4. «Throw out the old yeast so that you can be the fresh dough, unleavened as you are. For our Passover has been sacrificed, that is, Christ; let us keep the feast, then, with none of the old yeast and no leavening of evil and wickedness, but only the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth» (1Cor 5: 7-8). The resurrection of the Lord is, therefore, first fruit and a pledge of our resurrection. What we will be, infact, has not been completely manifested, but the resurrected Jesus will open our minds and hearts to a sure and reliable hope. «This present reality constitutes for us a “proof” of the things that are still unseen. Faith draws the future into the present, so that it is no longer simply a “not yet”. The fact that this future exists changes the present; the present is touched by the future reality, and thus the things of the future spill over into those of the present and those of the present into the future» (Benedict XVI, Spe Salvi, 7).

5. The sign that our present, as that of the first disciples who met Him resurrected, is touched by the future reality is called witness. «He has ordered us to proclaim this to his people and to bear witness that God has appointed him to judge everyone, alive or dead. It is to him that the prophets bear this witness: that all who believe in Jesus will have their sins forgiven through his name» (Acts 10, 42-43). No one manages to keep for himself such a powerful gift which – as the Virgin, the Apostles and the Saints show us – overflows gratuitously from every fibre of the christian. However, to be a witness does not only, nor mainly mean to give good example, but rather to know and to communicate through our life the true news of the Resurrection.

In our days the witness (martyrion) of an increasing number of christians (in Iraq, in India and in other Eastern Counties, in Africa …) arrives to the spreading of blood. With regards to this Tertullian affirms: «We multiply ourselves every time we are reaped by you: the blood of the martyrs is the seed of new Christians [Plures efficimur quoties metimur a vobis: sanguis martyrum semen christianorum]» (Apol., 50,13: CCL 1,17). Easter intensifies the bond of communion with the martyrs and make us their humble disciples. The grace of the Risen helps us not to forget them. It urges us to proclaim in front of the whole world the power of their defenceless martyrdom and to denounce publicly the unacceptable abuse of power.

Even in the euro-Atlantic societies, willing to be plural, it has become urgent for the faithful christians to expose themselves in communicating, with humility, that the encounter with the ‘Pass’ Lord, dead and risen, appeared and ascended into heaven, is the full sense of life. The Church, our loving mother, helps us to pursue this daily.

Inevitably, from the practice of an authentic faith derives also the beneficial contribution of the christian citizens to common life. With humble frankness they should propose, not imposing, good relations at every level, and proof in every daily life virtuous practices in the sphere of affections, of work and rest. This is a contribution that, in the respect of the procedures agreed on, the christian can give to democratic life. It is a need closely connected to the faith in the Risen.

Reborn during this Easter, let us walk joyfully along the ways of the world following the Beloved Saviour of the human family. The christian, willing or not, is destined – whatever the cost, in every circumstance and in every relationship, according to the ways and the times established by the Spirit – to give witness of the universal character, valid for all men brothers, of the Easter announcement: «Surrexit Christus spes mea».

What do men and women of today long for if not such a trustful hope? Amen.

The gaze of the Redeemer imparts from the cross, with the melody of Mozart, this singular invitation: «Give me your heart». That is to say give me all of yourself. In fact, what is the heart, if not the centre of my self? The space of need-desire that constitutes me is continually stimulated by reality; does it urge to a continuous involvement? The heart is the impulse of every act of my liberty. The whisper of the crucified “Face” (your voice whispers to me) surprises us this evening during the veneration of the ancient and holy relics of the Passion.

But, is not the crucified a defeated person? How can he ask me such an audacious request?

Much more that my heart, as the heart of every man, is traversed by the insuppressible restlessness mentioned by St Agustin. Moreover, the heart is challenged by the contradictory complexity of the socio-cultural context in which today we are called to face “the task of living” which at times is demanding. A Crucified turns to an restless heart… is this not the encounter of two problems, the sum of two negatives? What good can come out?

And yet, as far as man can be alienated by his heart – that is from the centre of his true self – he has always to deal with the question of the questions which is like the wild grass in spring coming out also from thick heaps of detritus. It is remarkably expressed by the poet Leopardi in the Nocturnal canto of the Asian wandering shepherd “And what am I?” (v. 89).

Thus, why not accepting the loving invitation which for two thousand years irresistibly emanates from that singular Man who let himself be put on the shameful pole of the cross. Since two thousand years crowds and most of all, entire generations of our fathers have answered positively to the whisper of the Man of the cross.

Which is the way to recognize and see Jesus? «In order to see Jesus it is necessary to let oneself be gazed by Him». In this way we are introduced into the “overturn” that the christian faith has brought in this world: no longer our searching the face of God, but His gaze upon our face! «You gaze at me from the cross, this evening my Lord».

Allowing ourselves to be gazed by Jesus is the unique possibility to satiate the thirst of our heart so that the desire which constitutes us can be accomplished. Therefore, through the Face of Jesus looking at us also our face takes its form. Every man, infact, takes its form by the gaze of that Man who calls his liberty – vocation – to involve himself with him.

The Face of the Crucifix is the Face of He who has taken upon himself all the evil of men. Of all sin. He took it upon himself. Of my evil, of my sin. Of your evil, of your sin. Of our evil, of our sin. Of the evil of all, of the sin of all. This is why in His face is inscribed the face of every man that suffers. It is the Face of He who accepted to be treated as sin even if he did not experience sin because we, the miserable, become “justice of God” (2Cor 2,21).

«Afflicted Mother, sad days I have endured in error». This evening we stand, like His Mother, under the cross. «Stabat Mater dolorosa, iuxta crucem lacrimosa, dum pendebat Filius»: for centuries the christians pray with these words at the feet of the redemptive cross. We are under His gaze and, like Mary, we drink his last words.

If «this evening You gaze at me from the cross, my Lord» , if «Your voice whispers to me: “Give me your heart”». What is more reasonable for me: to resist You or to abandon myself to you?

Procession from Santa Maria Formosa to the Basilica, Scripture Reading: Lk 19: 28-40

Holy Mass, Scripture Readings: Is 50:4-7; Psalm 22 (21), 17-18.19-20.23-24; Phil 2:6-11; Lk 22, 14-23.56

1. «As he moved off, people spread their cloaks in the road, and now, as he was approaching the downward slope of the Mount of Olives, the whole group of the disciples joyfully began to praise God at the top of their voices for all the miracles they had seen» (Lk 19:36-37).

Dear brothers and sisters. This commemoration is not a mere participation to a sacred representation nor a human deed to celebrate the beginning of the great events of the Holy Week; it is a liturgical action, an act of God. Its final meaning is given by the Opening Prayer we have said at the beginning of the procession carrying palm branches: “Almighty God, we pray you bless these branches and make them holy. Today we joyfully acclaim Jesus our Messiah and King. May we reach one day to the new and everlasting Jerusalem by faithfully following him”.

Like his disciples, we have accompanied the Lord who, determined, has entered into the Jerusalem of his passion in order to get to the Jerusalem of his glory. But the method (path) of this passage (Easter) is humiliation, suffering and death, as we have listened to in the whole Passion Reading according to St. Luke. “Regnavit lingo Deus” an ancient hymn declares.

2. The “world” was, and still is, full of mockery regarding this type of royalty: “If you are the king of the Jews save yourself! “ (Lk 23:37). The Crucified has never ceased to be a scandal and a folly.

Where was the crowd, when Jesus was agonizing on the cross, and those who had acclaimed him Messiah when he was entering Jerusalem? Weakness is man (also the power of the Roman Procurator Pilate is intrinsic deep weakness and manifests a repulsive cowardliness). Man is absolutely weak, full of incoherence and frailty, easy to doubt and still more to scandal. Powerful is Christ, powerful is his obedience, unshakable his decision, without limits his fidelity. Against Him the world can do nothing. He does not draw back but, as the First Reading states, He goes towards the extreme sacrifice with sovereign liberty: “I have not turned away. I have offered my back to those who struck me, my cheeks to those who plucked my beard; I have not turned my face away from insult and spitting” (Is 50:5-6). The insults of the soldiers, the flight of the disciples, the wickedness of the high priests and the accomplice alliance of the powerful do not bent him. [“And though Herod and Pilate had been enemies, they were reconciled that same day”] (Lk 23:12).

Nothing shows God’s omnipotence as the power of Christ during his passion.

3. “…He humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death” (Phil 2:7-8), the Second Reading proclaimed. In obedience to God’s plan Christ assumed human flesh with all its components, except sin (precisely disobedience). The secret of his strenght is his obedience, that is his powerful relationship with the Father.

Definitively, every “power” is based on the primary acknowledgement proper of the constitutive relationships. A mother that smiles to her child, “recognizes” him as such, and she exercises power over him. Each one of us, actually, exercises a power and is an object of power. It is a bond between subjects, which in no way could be avoided, because it is constitutive of the vital dynamism in which the human person is inserted. Not only, but according to the measure in which the human person is placed in the condition of exercising a power of acknowledgment, the person exercises also a power of authority. Therefore, authority, very often in our days considered to be an outward yoke, is instead required as an inward bond to the dynamism of liberty itself which for this reason does not lose its sovereignty. The logic of a correct power can only be the logic of love. In this context the word “service”, which often evokes an unpleasant perception of submission, receives its true meaning: “But he said to them, ‘Among the Gentiles it is the kings who lord it over them, and those who have authority over them are given the title Benefactor. With you this must not happen. No; the greatest among you must behave as if he were the youngest, the leader as if he were the one who serves” (Lk 22,25-27).

4. In the account of the Passion according to St. Luke the loving power of the relationship of Jesus with the Father remains in the first place also during the dramatic and dark hours of the crucifixion and of death. The terrible cry of abandonment given by Matthew and Mark in Luke it reaches the highest degree of confident entrust: “ Jesus cried out in a loud voice saying, ’Father, into your hands I commit my spirit’ “ (Lk 23: 46). An indefinable something of the grace pouring from the extreme consignment of His love pervades the prayer of the Good Thief.[“Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom” (Lk 23: 42)]. And, after his death, it penetrates the Centurion and the crowd present at the Calvary: “When the Centurion saw what had taken place, he praised God and said, ‘Certainly this man was innocent. And when all the crowds who had gathered there for this spectacle saw what had taken place, they returned home, beating their breasts” (Lk 23, 47-48).

5. Let us live the development of the Holy week, that the Church proposes to us as a figure of the journey of our life, in spirit of prayer, in imitation of the Faithful witness, the Lord Jesus who intensely lived the experience of the Holy Week in his own person and during those dramatic hours has several times invited his disciples to do the same: ”Pray not to be put to the test” (Lk 22:40); “He knelt down and prayed” (Lk 22:41); “In his anguish he prayed more earnestly” (Lk 22:44). Prayer, infact, keeps intact and enduring the bond which spares us the great temptation. [There is an abyss between knowing and doing, between understanding death (our death) and going through… See what our flesh and our temptation is. Be alert and pray” (C. Péguy, Gethsemane)]. Prayer is the chain which does not allow us to separate ourselves from Him, because He is the Faithful.

We will also experience mercy, so impossible and so much longed for by our heart. As Peter: “The Lord turned and looked at Peter. Then Peter remembered the word of the Lord, when he had sad to him, ‘Before the cock crows today, you will deny me three times. And he went our and wept bitterly” (Lk 22: 61-62); or like the Good Thief: “Jesus remember me when you come into your kingdom. He replied, ‘Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise” (Lk 23, 42-43).

Is 52: 7-10; Salm 97; Heb 1: 1-6; Jn 1; 1-18

1. “The people who walked in darkness … upon those who dwelt in the land of deep shadow …” (Is 9: 1). These words of the prophet Isaiah concern us. Proceeding – or maybe living – in the darkness is hard and we are tired. Wearied and devastated is the world states with an acute realism Chesterton. More or less aware, this is the reason why we have gathered here on this Holy Night: here we search light because: “of the world the desire this is” Chesterton continues.

The light is this “child born for us” (Is 9: 5). In the stable of Bethlehem, as here now, in our resplendent basilica, the light shines. In the stable of Bethlehem as in every church in the world, thousands of years after creation rises the first dawn of the world. With the birth of Jesus the virtue of hope in its infancy grows anew for every man. Christmas is the inexhaustible source of revival – and God knows how much this word is precious today for each one of us -.

2. “And Joseph too went up from Galilee from the town of Nazareth to Judea, to the city of David that is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and family of David” (Lk 2: 3-4). In the meticulous account of the fact that has changed the sense of history the Evangelist Luke records a decisive datum: Joseph belongs to the house and family of David. He describes the origin. Today this information seems irrelevant, because birth is reduced to the mere biological beginning. Instead, it is mainly a genealogical question as John Paul II brilliantly acclaimed. It is, above all, origin and not only a beginning. Each one of us is rooted in the history of his o her generation. And not only, because the origin owns a further vertical dimension: we are created by God. Obscuring this fact means breaking the generation chain. The educational emergency which troubles us today is the result of this interruption.

3. “Mary … gave birth to her firstborn son. She wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn” (Lk 2: 7). The Greek word used here is found only in one other quotation in the New Testament to designate the room in which the Last Supper was to take place. In the following verses, the proclamation to the shepherds, some facts are repeated: “And this will be the sign for you: you will find an infant wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger” (Lk 2: 12). The description of St. Luke is not an idyllic account, on the contrary it overshadows a deep reflection upon the sense of this birth. In these words there is already a reference to the mystery of the Passion and of the Eucharist.

The Fathers of the Church arrive at saying: “God has reduced himself” to the point of becoming “visible to the eyes, palpable to the hands, portable on the shoulders”. Actually some Fathers use a Greek verb in which the “reducing himself” is connected to his “being impoverished”: God has impoverished himself, he lowered himself, he emptied himself, in order to talk to us the language we speak. Jesus did not only learn Aramaic, as all the children of his country did; Jesus was willing to learn the language through which human creatures could recognize Him.

4. “Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets, but in these last days He has spoken to us by a Son”(Heb 1:1). The Old Testament offers us the letters of the alphabet through which God has revealed himself to men, but only Christ is the Word in whom the old alphabet finds sense and meaning.

“And the Word became flesh and lived among us …” (Jn 2: 14). “He gave himself for us”(Titus 2: 14), up to point of “make himself eatable” in the Eucharistic banquet, involving us in the movement of His self giving.

This is the good news of Christmas: God makes himself familiar to us. And if God is familiar to us, we can surely recognize Him in one way or in another. Through grace the convinced believers are apt to recognize that Jesus of Nazareth is the incarnated Son of God. But, observing attentively we can deduce that every man can recognize Him through the primary experience possible to everyone, that is: being open towards reality and to love our fellow creatures, because as St. Irenaeus declared: “Man is the glory of God”.

And if we recognize him our life changes. In today’s culture signed by trial, His humility becomes a question of simplicity. We all perceive the urgent need of simplifying our life. A simplification which goes from the overcoming of an ill-omened consumerism (we could use the word obscene because it has the same meaning), to the overcoming of complicated and equivocal affective styles, often false. All this causes suffering to the partner and transforms the beauty of love in exploitation and this does not help to experiment a rescuing love, on the contrary it tends to induce the partner in a tying love.

5. Christmas is God’s endlessness charity towards us and through this gift we become charity subjects: “As the objects of God’s love, men and women become subjects of charity” ( Benedict XVI, Caritas in veritate, 5). As a matter of fact, the horizon of charity is at 360 degrees which goes from all those who live in poverty (and the number of these is in continual increase and preoccupies) to the engaging-passion in the edification of the common good. We must be tireless in wide spreading the reasons of ‘philia’(civic friendship) over all the conflicts even in the ambit of direct political involvement. Moreover, we should not forget that politics – as Paul VI used to say – is the highest form of charity.

6. “The true light that enlightens all men was coming into the world” (Jn 1:9). It is necessary that the light we receive transforms us in sons of the light. The great need which comes to us from this Holy Christmas is to persevere in every relationship without taking anything fore granted and avoiding every never ending prejudice.

His nativity purified ours/ His life taught our life/ His death destroyed our death” (St. Bernard, Sententiae). Baby Jesus, beyond our merits, realizes the deepest desire of our heart. Let us ask the simplicity of the shepherds, the first testimonies of Christmas, that we may prepare an adequate space for Him and go, as they did, to proclaim Him to our fellow brothers: “All the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of our God” (Is 52: 10). Amen!

From the 2009 Redeemer Address by Patriarch Card. A. Scola

1. Personally, I was provoked to choose pain and suffering as the topic for the Redeemer Address during the Pastoral Visitation, as I met in their homes people who were seriously sick or very ill. This issue has become more urgent to me, I would say unpostponable, because of the faces, the looks and the few but radical words that were addressed to me by them and by their loved ones. In the history of the human family, it seems that the aggression of pain and suffering never stops. Like all elementary realities that are part of universal human experience (knowledge, love and so on), also pain and suffering are difficult to explain. Here, we just want to reflect a little on the immense travail of pain and suffering that mankind as a whole — but always in the flesh of individuals — has to bear. If –- as St. Augustine said – every man is, as such, a great question, at the heart of the man-question lies the question on pain and suffering.

2. “The shelves of the human pharmacy:” with this colorful expression Balthasar describes the main human attempts to face the agonized question of pain and suffering. In his analysis he examines first of all two categories that are apparently opposed, but that in reality share the same attitude of resignation: “defeatism” and “rebellion.” “Defeatism” is objectively the foundation of the temptation to commit suicide, either carried out directly or “assisted.” This is a true “surrender in front of too much suffering, thinking that in this way one can free oneself from it” (Balthasar). The second position, “rebellion,” is self-contradictory: even if it can blame, in turn, God, mankind or radical evil, in reality it boils down to rebellion for the sake of rebellion, a challenge against suffering which is extreme as it is powerless, in the delusion of keeping it quiet. Nowadays, however, there is an ever more prevalent attitude which wants to mount a frontal attack on pain and suffering in the attempt to eliminate them. It is born out of scientific and technological power which, especially in the field of medicine, seems to make man the master of his own health and life, in the conviction that pain and suffering will be defeated, even in a not too distant future. From this perspective, tragedies like those in L’Aquila or Viareggio become a stumbling stone (scandal), because they reveal starkly that we remain powerless in front of the violence of some evils. In fact, the current obsession with health, which pursues only indefinite physical well-being, clashes with the elementary human experience of being “one in soul and body” (Gaudium et Spes 14). It then becomes abstract, if not unrealistic, to talk about health (and disease)if one does not identify a center to the I, a point of connection between the psyco-physical and spiritual dimensions. Health and disease always concern all of the I.

3. In the development of history pain and suffering keep rising again from their ashes in new forms, like a tragic phoenix. So much so that man is tempted to call God to task for the existence of pain in the world. Christian tradition, but also western thought, record repeated attempts to “justify” God in this regard. In order not to attribute evil to God himself, or in order not to regard it as an original principle independent of God, the traditional doctrine has stated that God allows evil for the sake of good. It does so in order to put man to the test, to purify him or even to make the beauty of good more evident and to express the whole richness of the cosmos. But, is the thesis that God allows evil enough for a man who experiences radical evil (Kant), unjustifiable evil (Nabert), innocent evil (Fr. Gnocchi)? Jesus Christ did not elaborate any theory to explain the existence of pain and suffering in the world. He learned “obedience from what he suffered, and made perfect” (Heb 5:8-9) he carried out a work of redemption by whose power every suffering receives light. In the opus Dei of Jesus Christ, the Son made man for us by dying nailed all evil, taking it directly upon himself. Not only did he experience terrible physical suffering, but he also went through an unrepeatable experience of moral pain: abandonment by the Father. Writing to the Corinthians, St. Paul uses extremely strong words: “He who had not known sin, God treated him as sin for our sake” ( 2Cor 5:21). What does this mean? It can only mean that Jesus experienced the most radical pain and suffering: the loss of Love. Sin indeed separates, destroys every relationship. We glimpse the abyss of the mysterious dialogue between the agonized question by the Son abandoned on the cross and the Father’s answer, made of silence. Now, “in the father’s silence on front of the question by the son is found the proper place of suffering.” Of every human suffering. Jesus lived this experience freely. His mission was not only the choice of God’s solidarity with suffering humanity, but also a choice made in our place. Not only with us, but for us (vicarious substitution). The suffering, death and resurrection of Jesus have the power to expiate all the sins of the world. We face the unfathomable mystery of the human sorrow of the Son of God, sorrow embraced by the human freedom of the divine Person of the Word. A few elements from experience help us understand it: for man it is impossible to accomplish worthy enterprises of any kind without a high dose of suffering; in every man’s life there is no genuine fecundity without pain; above all, a man who has committed injustice is restored to his dignity though expiation leading him back into the truth. The redeemer, by dying on the cross in our place, reveals all the fecundity of sorrow.

4. The work accomplished by the love of Christ is not confined to his individual person. It has the power to touch every human suffering in order to turn it into a work of love and hope. Human suffering, embraced by the love of the crucified one, also becomes fruitful. For those who adhere to Christ, explicitly or implicitly, the possibility of full (eternal) life is already realized. Here, in history, not only in the next life. Suffering is able to change the fortunes of personal and social history (see the little shepherds of Fatima) because it shares in the Redemption of Jesus. “Why have you abandoned me?”: a son’s question that receives as an answer the father’s silence. Not a question without answer, because also silence is an answer. Is this not the dominant experience that all of us have when we face somebody else’s suffering? To be quiet, not to know what to say. Well, such silence, in a seemingly paradoxical fashion, (as always in Christianity) brings us closer to God instead pushing us farther away.

The Redeemer did not try to erase pain through a more brilliant theory, but accomplished a work of total self-identification with suffering, shedding light on its deep meaning: collaboration to His redemption of the world. Even though speaking of expiation for the sins of the world may bother our post-modern sensitivity, we cannot deny this reality. Thus, the suffering of Christ is inclusive, that is it opens the way to other sufferings, which can expiate vicariously in union with his suffering. This awareness does not give up on the tireless effort to fight human suffering, but gives rise to a creativity which is not utopian.

5. Now I would like to let the logic of incarnation, which is proper to the Christian faith, lead me to consider our behavior in front of certain situations of extreme suffering, patients in a vegetative state and those terminally ill. They raise very delicate questions which, incidentally are being debated in parliament in these very days. Viewed in the context of the previous reflections, the experience of people tested by sickness and disability, together with the unavoidable burden of pain and suffering, sheds light also on medicine’s therapeutic action. The latter is authentic only if the intervention to alleviate suffering is offered within an integral image of the human being. It seems impossible to refute the conclusion reached by many experts that what is commonly called “vegetative state” is not a disease, but rather the most serious form of disability. Vegetative state does not require extraordinary devices to support the vital functions, but only action on the patient’s behalf to satisfy the needs he/she cannot fulfill independently any longer: hygiene, movement, nutrition (that is, food and water).

This is perhaps the most mysterious situation, very hard to diagnose, and it raises deep questions about the dignity of the human person and the mystery of our being. Care of somebody in this state means, then, simply taking care, with minimal technological content but a very intense human and nursing engagement. Even if aware of the very low likelihood of recovery, one can keep accompanying the patient, without falling into the opposite extremes of obstinacy or abandonment. According to the experts the case of so-called “terminal patients” is very different. It is precisely in this context that questions arise regarding putative therapeutic excesses and forms of euthanasia. When I was visiting some of these sick people, a question came to me: is it not us, the healthy ones, who ask for a “dignified death,” whereas those who are sick ask for a dignified life even with disease, a dignified life to the last instant, made of what characterizes man: the ability to love and to be loved? A precious and concrete example of what it means to take care of these sick people is given us by palliative treatments. The modern definition of such treatments, as given by the European Association for Palliative Care, says: “Palliative treatments respect life and regard dying as a natural process. Their goal is not to accelerate or postpone death, but rather to preserve the best possible quality of life till the end.” This definition shows great realism. It must be especially kept in mind by the care-givers, since quite a few studies have shown that requests for euthanasia or assisted suicide by terminal patients depend to a significant extent on the attitude that health workers and relatives have towards life, disease and especially the patient.

6. Among the factors that truly affect a person’s choices — both by forbidding practices and granting rights, and by helping shape a mentality –one must include a country’s laws. This why the legislator must be very careful to produce “objectively just laws.” Regarding the Dichiarazione anticipata di trattamento (DAT, a kind of living will), I feel the responsibility to invite the legislator to guarantee the essential principles that have been recalled several times by the Italian Bishops’ Conference. At the same time, the law promoting palliative treatments must be implemented as soon as possible and given all the necessary funding so that these treatments may be practiced everywhere in our country. Adequate funds must also be spent on conventional pain therapy.

7. The mystery of pain and suffering stands inexorable in front of each one of us, but its value is already kept safe in the burning core of trinitarian love. Thus, we have been given a light-filled road to face them. Under the condition that the freedom of each one of us must raise them up daily into the horizon of true love of God, of others and of oneself.

]]> http://english.angeloscola.it/2009/09/14/human-pain-and-redeemers-work/feed/ 0 http://english.angeloscola.it/2009/06/17/let-us-taste-and-adore-christ-present-here-and-now-the-inexhaustible-fascination-of-venice-is-marked-by-this-new-and-eternal-covenant-with-god/ http://english.angeloscola.it/2009/06/17/let-us-taste-and-adore-christ-present-here-and-now-the-inexhaustible-fascination-of-venice-is-marked-by-this-new-and-eternal-covenant-with-god/#comments Wed, 17 Jun 2009 07:53:07 +0000 ufficiostampa http://english.angeloscola.it/?p=135 “On the stump of the ancient memorial Jesus grafts the radical novelty of his redemptive sacrifice: “This is my body… This is my blood” (Mk 14, 22 and 24). In the semitic language “Take, this is my body” (Mk 14,22) simply and paradoxically means “This is myself.” By operating the substantial transformation of the bread and the wine into his body made into a gift and his blood poured out, Jesus anticipates the glorious passion on Golgotha.

In the Eucharistic supper his disciples participate in it beforehand. but we also, two thousand years afterwards, have the immense gift of joining it. Let us taste and adore Christ present here and now, winner over time and space, master of the cosmos. The blood of the Redeemer circulates through the Eucharist as a vital lymph in the Church…”

Homely given by H.E. Angelo Card. Scola, Patriarch of Venice for the Corpus Domini Sunday.

Ex 24,3-8; Ps 115; Heb 9,11-15; Mk 14,12-16.22-26

1. After rising early in the morning, Moses builds an altar and, aided by “young men of the children of Israel” (Ex 24,5), draws from the sacrificial oxen the blood which, after having been poured into basins, he is going to sprinkle half on the altar and half on the people. The people, summoned for this purpose, listens to Moses reading the Book of the covenant. Above all, the people consents to it by shouting in one voice “All the commandments that the Lord has given, we will obey” (Ex 24,3).
Let us, in this moment, pull ourselves away from any possible distraction in order to immerse ourselves into this sacred scene. What does it express?
In the Old Testament blood is life and belongs to God. It signifies that, because of the covenant, from now on the same life is participated by God and by His “firstborn” Israel. God and his people belong to each other because, in a sense, what is created between them is a blood relation. Thus, we understand the concluding act of that most ancient liturgical action, which Moses brings to a close with a sober but solemn statement: “Behold the blood of the covenant, which the Lord has made with you based on all these words” (Ex 24,8).

2. “Not by means of the blood of goats and calves, but by means of his own blood” (Heb 9,12) Jesus places himself as “the mediator of the new covenant” (Heb 9,15). The life that springs from His blood is eternal life. The blood of Christ has the disarming power of reality. In order to expiate for man’s sin, for our sin, Christ offers His own life. This is why Christ’s redemption, unlike the ancient liberation, is not transitory and does not need to be continuously renewed, but rather is unique and definitive (“an eternal redemption” Heb 9,12). “This is thus the man who in himself alone offered all that he knew was necessary for the fulfillment of our redemption, he who is at the same time priest, sacrifice, God and temple: priest, through whom we are reconciled, sacrifice, which reconciles us, God, to whom we are reconciled, temple in which we are reconciled” (St. Fulgentius of Ruspe. from the treaty: On the faith in Peter).

3. The sublime prayer pronounced by Jesus when he institutes the Holy Eucharist reveals forcefully that his Covenant brings us the gift of unending life.
On the stump of the ancient memorial Jesus grafts the radical novelty of his redemptive sacrifice: “This is my body… This is my blood” (Mk 14, 22 and 24). In the semitic language “Take, this is my body” (Mk 14,22) simply and paradoxically means “This is myself.” By operating the substantial transformation of the bread and the wine into his body made into a gift and his blood poured out, Jesus anticipates the glorious passion on Golgotha. In the Eucharistic supper his disciples participate in it beforehand. but we also, two thousand years afterwards, have the immense gift of joining it. Let us taste and adore Christ present here and now, winner over time and space, master of the cosmos. The blood of the Redeemer circulates through the Eucharist as a vital lymph in the Church and gives us a foretaste of an intimacy with God without any shadows and any boundaries.
And we, through our full, aware and active participation in the Holy Mass, are progressively educated to that “worship fit for a human being” (“spiritual worship” Rm 12,1) which is the offering of our whole life. Thus, nothing of what we live is banal if we receive it from His hands, but everything – every circumstance and every relationship – is taken over by the same sacramental power as the Eucharistic act.

4. Let us ask ourselves with a contrite heart: are we worthy of such a great gift? Do we really desire above everything else that our life take this Eucharistic shape? (Benedict XVI, Sacramentum Caritatis, 70). Our way of participating in the Eucharist opens us up to share with our fellow human beings every aspect of life starting from the liberation that was inaugurated by the passion, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Let us begin by not forgetting the still enormous mass of people who do not have bread to eat.
In this solemn vesper, may these questions reach the heart of all the Christians of Venice, who by now have been engaged for five years in the Pastoral Visitation: let the Holy Eucharist make us rediscover the sweet Christ among us and in us.

5. Shortly we will carry in procession the sacramental Jesus in the heart of our city. We will do this so that His presence may bless our Venice, and Venetians and guests may adore God truly present in the Most Blessed Sacrament. With this gesture we want to remind visually Venetians and guests that the inexhaustible fascination of Venice is indelibly marked by this new and eternal covenant with God that lives and pulsates in the Eucharistic reality.
Venice, never forget your Lord, the Nicopeia Virgin, your saints!
Humbly proud of belonging to the new people of God that travels across history, we shall walk behind the white host certain that Jesus present and alive is the power that gives new strength to every human being. We too, the so-called post-secular and post-modern people, are pilgrims, more than ever. Why should we then forgo the Panis Angelorum, factus cibus viatorum? Amen.

English translation by Carlo Lanellotti

]]> http://english.angeloscola.it/2009/06/17/let-us-taste-and-adore-christ-present-here-and-now-the-inexhaustible-fascination-of-venice-is-marked-by-this-new-and-eternal-covenant-with-god/feed/ 0 http://english.angeloscola.it/2009/04/05/the-truth-is-not-only-morality-is-this-man/ http://english.angeloscola.it/2009/04/05/the-truth-is-not-only-morality-is-this-man/#comments Sun, 05 Apr 2009 17:23:33 +0000 ufficiostampa http://english.angeloscola.it/?p=98 “The passion of Our Lord is not a myth, but it consumes itself «under Pontius Pilate» and standing on the solid base of history. However, in the same time, the manifestation of what sorrowfully accompanies the whole history of humanity from the beginning to the end: God is beaten and held in contempt while He humbles himself to the extreme level for us and to take over himself our sins (kenosis is the total emptying of oneself).
Let us therefore com-move ourselves and get involved in the life of this Man. Truth is not a doctrine, but it is first of all this Man, the Man of sorrows who for love experiences suffering….

The Palm Sunday’s homily of the Patriarch His Eminence cardinal Angelo Scola given in the Basilica of Saint Mark.

1. As we have often mentioned, Holy Week, starting with this solemn celebration, is the typical week: the events that our Mother the Church makes us live on today and during the Easter Triduum give sense to time and history, enlightening the existence of each one of us and of all men of every time.
The passion of Our Lord is not a myth, but it consumes itself «under Pontius Pilate» and standing on the solid base of history. However, in the same time, the manifestation of what sorrowfully accompanies the whole history of humanity from the beginning to the end: God is beaten and held in contempt while He humbles himself to the extreme level for us and to take over himself our sins (kenosis is the total emptying of oneself).
Let us therefore com-move ourselves and get involved in the life of this Man. Truth is not a doctrine, but it is first of all this Man, the Man of sorrows who for love experiences suffering.

2. The account of the Passion according to Mark is a kind of a transcript of the events. The evangelist offers us facts, an objective narration, highly dramatic, without any reference to feelings. Through violent actions and pressing dialogues is described the fight between good – yet this Man «did not cling to his equality with God but emptied himself to assume the condition of a slave, and became as men are, he was humbler yet, even to accepting death, death on a cross» (Phil 2: 6-8) – and evil without excluding the tremendous blows.

3. Mark is not afraid of scandalizing us with his strong expressions. In the Garden of Gethsemane Jesus is afraid («and a sudden fear came over him, and great distress» Mk 14: 33), he stagers exhausted («threw himself on the ground» Vs. 35). In the account of the arrest and in the pressing events one perceives the violent fury overwhelming over him: «Even while he was still speaking, Judas one of the Twelve, came up with a number of men armed with swords and clubs, sent by the chief priests and the scribes and the elders» (Vs. 43). In Mark’s narration, unlike that of the other synoptic Gospels, Jesus does not say anything to the traitor nor to the disciple hitting the servant of the high priest.
His silence impresses in front of the deafening clamour of evil («Several, indeed, brought false evidence against him» (Vs. 57); «And they all gave their verdict: he deserved to die. Some of »hem started spitting at him and, blindfolding him, began hitting him with their fists and shouting, “Play the prophet!” And the attendants rained blows on him» Vs. 64-65). Peter, after having followed him from a distance, terrified he persists in his betrayal («but he denied it saying: I do not know, I do not understand , what you are talking about» (Vs. 71). At the end of the scene Jesus is abandoned by all.

4. After the supplication of the Son of God crucified «My God, my God , why have you abandoned me?» (Mk 15:34), «But Jesus gave a loud cry and breathed his last» (Vs. 37): the life of the Saviour of the world ends with an appalling cry giving voice to the inconceivable and unspeakable injustice. Yet, it does not manage to detach Him from the relationship that connects him with the Father. Suffering, even dreadfully, which without Him is an inescapable principle of suspicion leading to hostility and separation, while with Jesus man recoups the possibility to open himself and to abandon himself totally. This firm certainty of God’s love is witnessed in the passage of Isaiah which we have just listened in the First Reading. The servant of Yahweh, prophecy of Christ the Lord – the Passion according to Mark is full of scripture quotations – is he who receives everything from the Father:- «The Lord has given me a disciple’s tongue. Each morning he wakes me to hear, to listen like a disciple. The Lord has opened my ear. For my part, I made no resistance, neither did I turn away… The Lord comes to my help» (Is 50; 4-7).

5. “Waste” is the measure of love. The whole Passion is under the sign of “auto-waste” of God’s love for man.
The woman anointing Jesus’ head is not called by her name. She does not pronounce one word. Her gesture speaks for her. And it was so loud that Jesus himself declares: «Truly I tell you, wherever the gospel is preached all over the world, what she has done will be told in memory of her» (Vs. 9).The expression «in memory of he» recalls the words pronounced in the Eucharistic Supper «Do this in memory of me» and seals the forever an essential component of love.

6. «The centurion, who was standing in front of him, had seen how he had died and he said: “In truth this man was a son of God”» (Mk 15:39).
In this moment of pitch dark Jesus’ mystery is fully revealed. The witness is he who has limpid eyes and a simple heart to recognize Him and proclaim Him to all.
We beseech the Holy Virgin to accompany us in following Jesus our beloved Saviour, in this Holy Week. Amen!

]]> http://english.angeloscola.it/2009/04/05/the-truth-is-not-only-morality-is-this-man/feed/ 0 http://english.angeloscola.it/2009/01/18/lets-turn-our-eyes-to-the-measure-of-divine-love/ http://english.angeloscola.it/2009/01/18/lets-turn-our-eyes-to-the-measure-of-divine-love/#comments Sun, 18 Jan 2009 18:15:58 +0000 ufficiostampa http://english.angeloscola.it/?p=105 “The cross is the symbol of charity par excellence, the symbol of objective and effective love whose source lies in God. This is the reminder that the Order’s ensign with the eight-pointed cross- reminiscent of the eight Beatitudes – continues to bring into the world.

But before being a human action, charity is a divine action. In fact, it is possible for humans only as a totally gratuitous fruit of imitation and identification with divine Charity, that is, with the person of Jesus, our Lord…

Holy Mass closing the International seminar of the Sovereign order of  Malta.

Liturgy of the feast of the Hezaltation of the Holy Cross
Nm 21,4b-9; from Psalm 77; Phil 2,6-11; Jn 3,13-17

1. «We will take glory in nothing other than the Cross of Jesus Christ, our Lord: he is our salvation, life and resurrection: through him we were saved and freed» (Entrance Àntiphon). That is what we prayed at the beginning of this Eucharistic celebration.
The cross, which in the pre-Christian world represented the most fearsome way of torture, is the tree of life for the Christian, the marriage bed, the throne, the altar of the new alliance. The Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross, which is comparable to that of Easter in the Eastern Church, is linked to the dedication of the Holy Sepulchre Basilica in Jerusalem, the mother Church of your Order, where your glorious and almost millenary history started.
At the beginning of this Eucharistic celebration, which concludes your important international Seminar, I am glad to remember His Eminence Cardinal Patronus Pio Laghi, recently departed, whose merits as a man of the Church I had the pleasure to appreciate in my years as Rector of the Lateran Pontifical University. I associate him in my memory with Fra’ Andrew Bertie, who served for many years as Grand Master. I am also pleased to send my Christian respects to the Grand Master Fra’ Matthew Festing, to the Prelate of the Order, H. E. Angelo Acerbi, to the Sovereign Council, to the High Offices of the Order. I especially greet the Great Prior of Lombardy and Venice and his close collaborators, as well as all of you here present.

2. The cross is the symbol of charity par excellence, the symbol of objective and effective love whose source lies in God. This is the reminder that the Order’s ensign with the eight-pointed cross- reminiscent of the eight Beatitudes – continues to bring into the world.
But before being a human action, charity is a divine action. In fact, it is possible for humans only as a totally gratuitous fruit of imitation and identification with divine Charity, that is, with the person of Jesus, our Lord. «God so loved the world as to send his only begotten son, shat whoever believes in him may not be lost, but may have eternal life» (John 3: 16)
The passage we have heard proclaimed from the gospel of John allows us, while we tremble in front of the great mystery, to turn our eyes to the measure of divine love. Man could never have supposed that the eternal Father, giving all his love entirely in the Son he generated, could love the created world to the point of delivering his beloved Son to the darkness of God’s abandonment and to the extreme torments of the cross. Thus the folly of the Cross acquires meaning solely in the love of the One and Triune God. Going right to the depths of his love («having loved his own, he loved them til the end») the Son shows all the Father’s love. And the love between the Two is demonstrated by means of the power of the Holy Spirit. In the crucified dedication of the Son lies his supreme glorification [«For this God exalted him» (Phil 2:9)].

3. As Paul writes to the Christians of Philippi (Second Reading) we too can have the same sentiments as Christ the Lord. Only on the strength of this identification with Him is communion not an unachievable utopia, an abstraction merely on our lips; only thus can it really be practised in objective terms because it is welcomed and received through the Eucharistic power of Jesus, who gave his life as an innocent on the Cross in order to generate this communion. For this reason, as the late lamented Cardinal Pio Laghi wrote in a recent publication of your Order, «Applying to our Order John Paul II’s words to the Church (and it is by no means an exaggeration!), to be able to be faithful to God’s plan and answer the needs of the society we are part of and that we serve, we must make our Order “the home and school of communion”» (Per una spiritualità di comunione, Roma, 2002, p 26). Identifying with the Divine Master is what characterizes all the members of the Order of Malta, according to the three-fold forms of belonging to the charism in which the Lord calls them: the Professed knights, the Knights of Obedience and the members of the Third Class (Knights and Dames, Conventual and Magistral Chaplains, and Donats).

4. «While being in the form of God, Jesus Christ did not hold it a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant» (Phil 2:6) Only by conforming yourselves to Christ the Lord will you continue to live out the logic of service which has characterized your Order from the beginning, according to the chivalric spirit well summed up by your programme: Tuitio fidei et obsequium pauperum (defence of the faith and veneration of the poor). And thus you will continue to be servants of the “poor and the sick” even today, just as your founders put themselves at the service of pilgrims in Jerusalem. I think of your vast and intelligent initiatives in health care, of which the St John the Baptist Hospital in Rome is a crowning achievement. But I also think of your operations in war situations, natural calamities, pilgrimages with the sick, and the multifarious activities in which your mission is lived out, which has recently gained you the prestigious recognition of the UN and the participation of an Ambassador and Permanent Observer of the Order to the United Nations General Assembly.

5. From faith to action: faithfulness to its origin is where lies the secret of the life of your charism, now over a thousand years old and yet still fresh with youth. Let us entrust your work and yourselves to the Madonna of Nicopeia, whose icon has come down to us from the times and places where your history flowered most gloriously. May she sustain and bless your precious commitment on behalf of all men and women – our brothers and sisters. The Church is deeply grateful to you for it. Amen.

Mass During the Day: Is 52: 7-10; from Psalm 97; Heb 1: 16; Jn 1: 1-18

1. “For there is a child born to us, a son given to us” (Is 9: 5). “[So Joseph set out] in order to be registered together with Mary, his betrothed, who was with child. While they were there the time came for her to have her child, and she gave birth to a son, her first born. She wrapped him in swaddling cloths….”(Lk 2: 5-6).

Christmas is the feast of the Incarnation: “The Word was made flesh” (Jn 1,14). In the heart of the most impressive and decisive mystery of history there is the normality of a basic experience that every human being endures: a betrothed couple, a pregnant woman awaiting to give birth to her child because the time has come, a birth, a newborn child wrapped in swaddling cloths by his mother…. So, in the Holy Family of Bethlehem every family is reflected and this enables them to rediscover the freshness of their own original portrait – the stable nuptial tie between a man and a woman, public, faithful and open to life – always, even when faced with hard contradictions and sorrowful trials.

2. The simple words “to us” in the First Reading [ a child is born to us “ (Is 9:5)] echoing in the Second Lecture [“He sacrificed himself for us” (Tit 2:14)] and in the announcement to the shepherds according to the Gospel of Luke [“today a Savour has been born to you” (Lk 2: 11)] is repeated every day in every corner of the world where the sacrifice of the Eucharist is celebrated as the Fathers of the Church proclaimed, “He has become man in order to die” for our sake. The joy of Christmas does not need to censor the sacrifice (tomorrow the Church will introduce the figure of saint Stephen, the first martyr). The fullness and the maturity of love helps the married couples to remain united in an indissoluble bond, as any betrothed man or parent here present can proof. The result of the nexus between joy and sacrifice is love. From the unlimited dynamism of the Eucharist, the gift of this Child is continually offered to us so that true peace may flourish. Peace is the unique power able to break violence, always ready to interfere in the personal and social relationships, as well as among men and among peoples. “For all the footgear of battle, every clock rolled in blood, is burnt, and consumed by the fire” (Lk9:4).

3: While we post-modern men have the presumption of prescribing to God the conditions of his revelation, the shepherds are not scandalized to find the Saviour in a manger. As John the Baptist, as the Virgin Mary and many years before as Abraham and many others, are poor in spirit, persons ready to renounce to their personal ideas and expectations to make space to the Other, to God, He who surpasses all our ideas and expectations.

At the proclamation of the angel: “Peace to men who enjoy his favour” (Lc 2: 14) and the upsetting idea of being loved by God, without bearing any deserved title, the shepherds run to the grotto. This great love discovered and accepted makes them good (“Men of good will” as the old good tradition says), and enables them to answer with gratitude. Jesus’ true love enlightens God’s design upon every man and upon the whole human family. It is the key of the destiny of history; the unique and sure criterion to make use of the extraordinary techno-science results without any harm. This love is the source of ecclesial and civil commitment, an indomitable commitment, certain that God leads the course of history in favour of men: “How beautiful on the mountains, are the feet of one who brings good news, who heralds peace, brings happiness, proclaims salvation” (Is 52: 7).

4. In the passage of the Letter to Titus which we have just listened, Saint Paul talks about this commitment; he mentions the origin, the features and the ultimate horizon: “God’s grace has been revealed and it has made salvation possible for the whole human race and taught us … we must be self-restrained and live good and religious lives here in this present world, while we are awaiting in hope for the blessing which will come with the Appearing of the glory of our great God and saviour Christ Jesus” (Tit 2: 11-13). The grace already revealed – this Child – educates us to live in a true way our relationship with God (with piety), with others (justly) and with things (with sobriety), while awaiting the glorious return of the Lord at the end of times. From this tension between the already in which He makes himself our companion of life and the not yet of His final return originates our authentic moral action. Therefore, no acquiescent passivity living at the mercy of an absolute lord, nor the presumption of saving oneself by the power of our own works, but the indomitable resumption of he who, thanks to this Child, recognizes himself in an indefectible relationship with the loving Father: “I will be a father to him and he a son to me” (Heb 1,5). This is the perspective in which the whole reality, personal and social extended to its highest level, planetary, must be lived. Everything, even the epochal turn towards which the economic-financial crises is driving us must be faced through a new vision of globalization. This requires that every interested subject, starting with the destitute of the continents still seized by poverty and hunger, must be involved in an incessant dialogue aiming at rightful distribution of material and spiritual goods. The New life-styles can emerge only through a new and joint globalization, starting with those who live near us. Therefore, everyone, starting from those who exercise government responsibilities at every level, ought to be responsible for those who loose their job, often without any social security cushion, the temporarily laid-off workers, the temporary employees and all those who are in need. As every development stage even the present one will cause sacrifices which will surely be felt by the affluent North of the planet. But only the practice of global and articulated justice can realize authentic development and peace in the world.

5. With a grateful and deeply moved heart in front of the Event which we contemplated again in this Holy Night we beseech the Child and His Mother with the words of a Medieval abbot: “Sweet Lord, Sweet Lady, since he is my Lord, my mercy, she is my Lady the door of mercy. May the Mother lead us to the Son, the Son to the Father, the bridge to the bridge-groom, because he is the Blessed God for ever” (Dom Nicholas of Chiaravalle, XII cent.).

(Translation by sr Léonard Azzopardi)

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