miniZibaldone

“All that you have, bequeathed to you by your father, earn it in order to possess it” (Goethe, Faust ) There is a disease that can strike the baptized, which the Holy Father calls “spiritual Alzheimer’s.” It consists in forgetting the history of our personal relationship with God, the first Love that won us over and made us His own. If we become “forgetful” of our encounter with the Lord, we are no longer sure of anything. We are assailed by fear that blocks our every movement. If we abandon the sure harbor of our bond with the Father, we become prey to the caprices and whims of the moment, slaves to “false infinities” that promise the moon but leave us disappointed and sad, in the frenetic search for something that fills the emptiness of the heart. How can we avoid this “spiritual Alzheimer’s”? There is only one road: actualize the beginnings, the “first Love,” which is not a discourse or abstract thought, but a Person. The grateful memory of this beginning ensures that we have...

Humility is like an emptiness that gives place to God....First of all and above all other graces, which we also have at heart: the grace that is Jesus Christ! And when Mary arrives, joy overflows and bursts from hearts, because Jesus’ invisible but real presence fills everything with meaning: life, the family, the salvation of the people . . . everything!... The great things that God has wrought with humble persons, the great things the Lord does in the world with the humble, because humility is like an emptiness that gives place to God. The humble is powerful because he is humble, not because he is strong. And this is the grandeur of the humble and of humility. I would like to ask you – and also myself – but don’t answer in a loud voice: each one answer in his heart: “how is my humility doing?”...  Always ask for first of all and above all other graces, which we also have at heart: the grace that is Jesus Christ!   [link]

Faith isn’t an easy way out of life’s problems, but it supports us on the way and gives it meaning. When one doesn’t grip the Lord’s word to have greater security, one consults horoscopes and fortune-tellers, one begins to go down. It means that faith isn’t that strong. Today’s Gospel reminds us that faith in the Lord and in his word doesn’t open a way for us where everything is easy and tranquil; it doesn’t subtract us from life’s storms. Faith gives us the certainty of a Presence, the presence of Jesus that drives us to overcome the existential storms, the certainty of a hand that grips us to help us face the difficulties, pointing out the way to us also when it’s dark. In sum, faith isn’t an easy way out of life’s problems, but it supports us on the way and gives it meaning.... This episode is a stupendous image of the reality of the Church of all times: a boat that, along the crossing must also face adverse winds and storms, which threaten to sink it. What saves it is not th...

[arrest, freedom, prison]

My heart is glad because you live, oh Christ.

[T] he light of faith, which is in us through Christ and the action of the Holy Spirit, we must not keep as if it were our property.  From the Angelus The mission of Christians in society is to give “flavour” to life with the faith and love that Christ has given us, and at the same time to keep away the polluting germs of egoism, of envy, of malicious gossip, and so on. These germs ruin the fabric of our communities, which instead should shine as places of hospitality, of solidarity and of reconciliation. To fulfill this mission, it is necessary first of all that we ourselves are liberated from the corrupting degeneration of worldly influences, which are contrary to Christ and the Gospel; and this purification never ends, it goes on every day!   [full text]

The shepherds grasped this in that night. They were among the marginalized of those times. But no one is marginalized in the sight of God and it was precisely they who were invited to the Nativity. Those who felt sure of themselves, self-sufficient, were at home with their possessions; the shepherds instead “went with haste” (cf. Lk 2:16) From the homily The Child who is born challenges us: he calls us to leave behind fleeting illusions and go to the essence, to renounce our insatiable claims, to abandon our endless dissatisfaction and sadness for something we will never have. It will help us to leave these things behind in order to rediscover in the simplicity of the God-child, peace, joy and the meaning of life. Let us allow the Child in the manger to challenge us, but let us also allow ourselves to be challenged by the children of today’s world, who are not lying in a cot caressed with the affection of a mother and father, but rather suffer the squalid “mangers that devour d...