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A Cross-Shattered Church: Reclaiming the Theological Heart of Preaching by  Stanley Hauerwas We live in a death-denying world that seems determined to develop technologies that will enable us to get out of life alive. Yet the more we strive to be free of death the more our lives are shaped by the death-determined means we create to try to free ourselves of death. Even more paradoxical, the means we use to free ourselves from death only serve to increase our isolation from one another. We fear the loneliness we think death entails, but it turns out that the loneliness we fear death entails is the expression of the loneliness made unavoidable by our attempts to avoid death. Jesus raised his friend Lazarus from the dead. But Lazarus is still to die. We are still to die. Jesus, by contrast, has been raised never again to die. His death makes possible a communion that overwhelms the loneliness our sin creates. ... That feast we call Eucharist, for in eating it we are made “living member...

  From 9-15-2023 Audience A Heart Expanded by the Unspeakable Sweetness of Love [B]y contemplating creation, by letting yourselves be challenged by daily events, by experiencing work as prayer, to the point of transforming the very means of your work into instruments of blessing, and finally through people, in those brothers and sisters whom divine Providence leads you to encounter. In all this, you are called to be seekers of God . [...] Indeed, nowadays, in a globalized but fragmented and fast-paced world devoted to consumerism, in settings where family and social roots sometimes almost seem to disappear, there is no need for Christians who point fingers, but for enthusiastic witnesses who radiate the Gospel “in life through life.” This is always a temptation: go from being “Christian witnesses” to “Christian accusers.” There is only one accuser, the devil. We should not assume the role of the devil but of Jesus. We are students of the school of Jesus, of the Beatitudes. [...] [Y...

From the homily Let us never forget: the Mass is the Memorial that heals memory, the memory of the heart. The Mass is the treasure that should be foremost both in the Church and in our lives. Through the Eucharist, the Lord also heals our negative memory , that negativity which seeps so often into our hearts. The Lord heals this negative memory, which drags to the surface things that have gone wrong and leaves us with the sorry notion that we are useless, that we only make mistakes, that we are ourselves a mistake. Jesus comes to tell us that this is not so. He wants to be close to us. Every time we receive him, he reminds us that we are precious, that we are guests he has invited to his banquet, friends with whom he wants to dine. And not only because he is generous, but because he is truly in love with us. He sees and loves the beauty and goodness that we are. The Lord knows that evil and sins do not define us; they are diseases, infections. And he comes to heal them wi...

continue reading:  https://english.clonline.org/news/culture/2020/04/01/pasolini-my-foot-caught-in-the-stirrup

continue reading:  http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/homilies/2020/documents/papa-francesco_20200327_omelia-epidemia.html

From the homily At Christmas, the question is this: “Do I allow myself to be loved by God? Do I abandon myself to his love that comes to save me?” The grace of God has appeared. Tonight we realize that, when we failed to measure up, God became small for our sake; while we were going about our own business, he came into our midst. Christmas reminds us that God continues to love us all, even the worst of us. To me, to you, to each of us, he says today: “I love you and I will always love you, for you are precious in my eyes”. God does not love you because you think and act the right way. He loves you, plain and simple. His love is unconditional; it does not depend on you. You may have mistaken ideas, you may have made a complete mess of things, but the Lord continues to love you. How often do we think that God is good if we are good and punishes us if we are bad. Yet that is not how he is. For all our sins, he continues to love us. His love does not change. It is not fickle; i...

From the homily Each of us is called tonight to rediscover in the Risen Christ the one who rolls back from our heart the heaviest of stones. Why do you seek the living among the dead?” (Lk 24:5). Why do you think that everything is hopeless, that no one can take away your own tombstones? Why do you give into resignation and failure? . . . What is the stone that I need to remove, what is its name? . . .  Why do you seek the living among the dead? Why not make up your mind to abandon that sin which, like a stone before the entrance to your heart, keeps God’s light from entering in? Why not prefer Jesus, the true light (cf. Jn 1:9), to the glitter of wealth, career, pride and pleasure? Why not tell the empty things of this world that you no longer live for them, but for the Lord of life? . . . Let us ask ourselves: In my life, where am I looking? Am I gazing at graveyards, or looking for the Living One? . . . Let us ask ourselves: In my life, where am I going? So...

To you glory and praise forevermore.

From the homily Never give in to “failure”. It is the “perfect terrain for the devil to sow his seeds” and leads to live like professional mourners, amid complaints and dissatisfactions . “The spirit of fatigue takes away our hope...tiredness is selective: it always causes us to see the negative in the moment we are living, and forget the good things we have received”. It also happens to us “When we feel desolated and cannot bear the journey, we seek refuge either in idols or in complaint... (…) This spirit of fatigue leads us Christians to be dissatisfied (…) and everything goes wrong… Jesus himself taught us this when he said we are like children playing games when we are overcome by this spirit of dissatisfaction.”. . . We must reverse the course, especially in this time that is preparing for Easter: “Brothers and sisters, we only remember this phrase: “The people of God could not bear the journey “, Francis concludes. “Christians do not bear hope. Christians do not endure...

From the Angelus address Jesus is left alone with the woman, there, in the midst: “misery and mercy,” says Saint Augustine ( In Joh 33:5 ). Jesus is the only one without fault, the only one who could throw a stone against her, but He doesn’t do it, because God has “no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live” (Cf. 33:11). “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her” (v. 7). So Jesus appeals to the conscience of those men: they felt themselves “champions of justice,” but He recalls them to the awareness of their condition of sinful men so that they cannot arrogate to themselves the right of life or death over one of their fellow beings. At that point, one after the other, beginning with the eldest — namely those more expert in their miseries — went away, giving up stoning the woman. This scene also invites each one of us to become conscious that we are sinners and to let the stone fall from our hands of ...

From the homily P ray face-to-face to the Lord, bringing all our lives to Him with courage. Jesus prays for us, in this moment. And when I pray – whether I am convinced or pray like a mercantilist or stutter or struggle with the Lord – it is He who takes my prayer and presents it to the Lord. Jesus has no need of speaking before the Father: He shows Him His wounds. The Father sees His wounds and extends His grace. When we pray, let us recall that we do so with Jesus. Jesus is our courage. Jesus is our security, who in this moment intercedes for us.   [link]

From the general audience Christian prayer begins from this level. It’s not an exercise for ascetics; it starts from reality, from the heart and from the flesh of people that live in need, or who share the condition of those that don’t have what is necessary to live. Not even the highest Christian mystics can do without the simplicity of this request. Jesus’ prayer begins with a pressing demand, which is very similar to the entreaty of a beggar: “Give us our daily bread!” This prayer comes from evidence that we often forget, that is, that we aren’t self-sufficient creatures, and that every day we need to eat. The Scriptures show us that for many people the encounter with Jesus began from a question. Jesus doesn’t ask for refine invocations, rather, the whole of human existence, with its most concrete and daily problems, can become a prayer. . . .   Therefore, Jesus teaches us to ask the Father for daily bread. He teaches us to do so united to so many men and women fo...

“What I grasped most covetously in my clenched fist came apart like the rose under the vault of eternity. . .the more so for what I most treasured.” The more one loves, the more he needs Christ, because Christ saves what man loves, forever. At least from this point of view, we have to accept Him. Either we love nothing or, the more we love, the more Christ is necessary to safeguard what we love, to maintain what we love, otherwise we lose it. The day after tomorrow it’s gone. —Luigi Giussani

From a homily This then is the consecrated life: praise which gives joy to God’s people, a prophetic vision that reveals what counts. When it is like this, then it flowers and becomes a summons for all of us to counter mediocrity: to counter a devaluation of our spiritual life, to counter the temptation to reduce God’s importance, to counter an accommodation to a comfortable and worldly life, to counter complaints, dissatisfaction and self-pity, to counter a mentality of resignation and “we have always done it this way”. Consecrated life is not about survival, but new life. Everything, therefore, meets as Jesus arrives. What does this mean for us? Above all, that we too are called to welcome Jesus who comes to meet us. To encounter him: the God of life is to be encountered every day of our lives; not now and then, but every day. To follow Jesus is not a decision taken once and for all, it is a daily choice. And we do not meet the Lord virtually, but directly, we encounter hi...

From a homily You, dear young people, are not the future. We like to say, “you are the future”. No, you are the present. You are not the future of God, you young people are the now of God . In Jesus, the promised future begins and becomes life. When? Now. Yet not everyone who was listening felt invited or called. Not all the residents of Nazareth were prepared to believe in someone they knew and had seen grow up, and who was now inviting them to realize a long-awaited dream. Not only that, but they said, “Is not this Joseph’s son?” ( Lk 4:22 ). The same thing can also happen with us. We do not always believe that God can be that concrete and commonplace, that close and real, and much less that he can become so present and work through somebody like a neighbour, a friend, a relative. We do not always believe that the Lord can invite us to work and soil our hands with him in his Kingdom in that simple and blunt a way. It is hard to accept that “God’s love can become concrete ...

Mary: Faith and Faithfulness Notes from Fr. Luigi Giussani’s words at the XV Pilgrimage to the Sanctuary of Our Lady of the Snows in Andro, Italy, on May 7, 1989 I would like to thank Our Lady and also Fr. Gino for giving me the opportunity to participate, at least in part, in this great, beautiful gesture that a pilgrimage is. It is a great and beautiful gesture because it is a symbol of life: without our willing it, without our thinking of it, one step after the other, life, too, is a walk toward the destiny that is God, He who made us, He who gave us our father and mother, and He who awaits us at the end of our labors–yes, because life is toil. If God came among us (you’ve already meditated on this along the course of your pilgrimage), if God came among us to die, to work like everybody else, but above all to die, it means that life is something toilsome. And, in fact, it is the test for going where there awaits us, as Jacopone da Todi says, the “heavenly reign, that fulfil...

God Is Mercy Notes from a talk by Luigi Giussani during the Memores Domini Lenten Retreat in Pianazze, Italy, on February 16, 1975 The prayer last night [ “Through our annual Lenten observance, Lord, deepen our understanding of the mystery of Christ and make it a reality in the conduct of our lives.” ] called us to the two results of conversion: the passion of the knowledge of Christ (“knowledge” in the full, biblical sense of the word), thus the passion for Christ, the love of Christ as the desire to cling to Him, and hence the second result, good works. Lent is the instrument–the sacramental instrument–for fostering this conversion. In other words, operating the Lenten sign, making ours the pedagogic indications that the Church uses for the Lenten call to conversion, something happens in us through the power of the Holy Spirit that is greater than what our usual efforts would yield. It is a sacramental time, a time destined by God to give us a greater impetus of transf...