Category: The Last Word

God always acts in history, also here and now. Many times His initiative doesn’t start from the Church, but from those whom the Church excludes. As a matter of fact, God sends His angel not to Peter but to a pagan with the order to fish the fisher of man in his fishing. In the announcement to Mary, the Word became flesh in Jesus. In the announcement to the pagan Cornelius, the Word wants to become flesh in every man “so that God may be all in all” (1 Corinthians 15:28). This is the Father’s desire who created the world looking at the Son. Jesus has abolished the separation between heaven and earth: on the Cross, He even became sin and a curse so that every atom of creation may become fullness of glory.   The Gospel continues its run from Jerusalem to Judea, to Samaria and beyond, up to Damascus. With Cornelius, it reaches its end which is to open horizons without end. Every division among human beings is obliterated: Abraham’s blessing extends also to the “pagans.” Humanity becomes one family. In the Son, we are all free, children of God and brothers and sisters among ourselves, although in diversity. It is the eternal mystery of God and humanity now disclosed. To everybody’s salvation, even God’s.   We are not dealing with a kind of homologation under only one power, but “globalization” under the sign of love. Our cultural and religious differences remain, but not as place of fight, instead as communion. Diversities are no longer barriers but mutual openings. Our finitudes become encounter with other finitudes, contact with the others, sacrament of the One who is infinitely Other.   Love is, first of all, freedom from our egoism and respect for the journey of the others, even if mistaken or incomplete (1 Corinthians 7,1ff). In fact, there is “only one God,” who is Father of all and “one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist” (1 Corinthians 8:6).   All cultural and religious taboos come to an end. Things are all good. Evil is not in them: it is in the intention and action of people who use them in order to demolish instead of building up mutual communion. Love makes Paul free to make himself Jew with the Jews and lawless with the pagans. Since he is now within Christ’s law, he can make himself “everything to all” (1 Corinthians 9:19-23). Because Christ’s law is to bear one another’s burden (Galatians 6:2). This is the true freedom of God’s children: through love, to be servants of one another (Galatians 5:13).   Simple principles that demand clever solutions. For example: how to live and eat together, paying respect to cultural differences? The first “Council” of Jerusalem (Acts 15:1ff) will give practical guidelines that will help Jews and pagans to live as brethren among themselves. The following Councils instead will go astray uttering excommunications against those who don’t think as we do. But

It was the first mission outside Judea. A village of Samaritans welcomes the Word and they are baptized. Simon, the magician, who had recently converted, is enthralled by deacon Philip’s prodigious feats. Full of admiration, he cannot part from him. Those prodigies were far greater than his own magic performances! But the real prodigy is the fire that Jesus came to bring into this world (Luke 12:48), fire of a love that knows how to give even to those who want to kill it (Luke 23:34; Acts 7:60). The Spirit of God, free and sovereign, blows  where and how She wants. Even on those who are not yet baptized (Cf. Acts 10:44-48). Peter and John are sent to pray so that the newly baptized may receive the Holy Spirit. The presence of the two Apostles wants to stress that the Spirit is one and unifying. Effused at Jerusalem, She spreads throughout the entire world, embracing every difference and creating communion in the Church and between the Churches. When the apostles communicate the Spirit, Simon, the magician, is literally over the moon. He is ready to give Peter all his money in order to have to himself the power of communicating the Spirit. Religion often weds magic. It expects to have God at its beck and call. Simon wants to buy God with hard cash; pious people with good deeds. It is a blasphemy. It is as if God was not all and only love. His power is the powerlessness of whoever loves and makes himself small in order to hand himself over to all. Magic, instead – like much religiosity – deals with money and wants to put its hands on everything and everybody.  The episode of Simon, called the magician – he has the same name as Simon called Peter! – mirrors the constant danger of the Church: to impound God, manipulating Him at will, to the point of making Him “Gott mit uns” (“God with us”)! God is reduced to a projection and a warranty of our power mania. Even Jesus, at the beginning of His ministry, unmasks in Himself the three temptations into which Israel used to fall (Exodus 16:2-9: the manna; Exodus 32: the golden calf; Exodus 17:1-7: lack of faith). Jesus fights them and overcomes them, from the River Jordan to the Cross (Luke 4:1-13; 23:35-39). We ourselves keep falling into these three temptations. The first two are the temptations of wealth and power. To possess things and people becomes an idol to which we sacrifice our life and that of our brethren. The third, the worst of all, appears with Simon, the magician: money is used in order to possess God Himself. The Spirit of love, the life of both the Father and the Son, is gift. Love is either gratuitous or it is not! To buy God whether with money or good deeds is a sin that goes directly against His essence: it is dealing with God as with a prostitute. The first

Stephen is one of the seven deacons. Chosen in order to serve at the table of the poor, they are also at the service of the Word like the Apostles. They are the ones who take the Word outside Jerusalem. Whoever meets with Jesus becomes “apostle,” sent to announce all that the Lord has done on his behalf and the mercy God has used to him (Matthew 5:19). Martyr means witness. Stephen is the first who witnesses his faith by means of his life. John the Baptist’s martyrdom, we come to know by a delayed report, but the one of Stephen, like Jesus’, is “live” in the Acts. Christian tradition is summed up in “Jesus’ body, given for us” (1 Corinthians 11:23ff). In Him, every promise is fulfilled: God gives Himself to us. Stephen is the living tradition. In him Jesus’ story continues. He, like his Master and Lord, witnesses a love that is stronger than death. His death is the giving of his life for the brethren who are killing him. His countenance, transfigured by the Word he embodies, is a pledge of resurrection. We are in the heart of the Gospel. His martyrdom is the climax of early Christianity. The gift of self that he accomplishes tops up the Apostles’ witness in Jerusalem. It is also fertile seed from which Paul, missionary to the pagans, will spring up. The Church is born of the martyrs’ blood. Our religion is not made up of laws, doctrines or liturgies. It is a person! Not the Pope or the charismatic leader, but Jesus. A Christian is whoever loves Jesus and all the brethren, near and far, more than life itself. Humanity is rescued by the martyrs: in a world deprived of values, for them life is indeed valued by the gift of life. They remind us of Christian wisdom. Even the thousands of Christians killed in 2012 – by the detainers of “power” and not in order to acquire “power” – show that only Jesus’ cross reveals God and saves us, human beings.  According to Saint Paul, the whole wisdom of God is summarized in Jesus Crucified (1 Corinthians 2:2). His evangelizing work aims at “portraying Jesus in front of the eyes” of his listeners (Galatians 3:1). If we contemplate Jesus’ unconditional love, we will answer love with love: “The life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me” (Galatians 2:20).  The fifth Gospel is each one of us. Saint Paul says: “You are a letter from Christ delivered by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts” ( 2 Corinthians 3:3). Life, either you give it up or you lose it: “For whoever would save his life will lose it; and whoever loses his life for My sake, He will save it” (Luke 9:24). We are all called to

If the external persecutions make the Church grow, this inner crisis runs the risk of breaking her up. Difficulties and mistakes will always be there. The normal procedure is to ignore them and act in order to choke the dissenting voices: “Cut down, hush!.” But the remedy is worse than the disease: it kills brotherhood and the prophetic word which would like to build it anew. To deny the sickness provokes mortal cancer! The Apostles give us a good example: they recognize their sin of omission. Only in this way can they come to understand their identity. Not everything depends on them. Let the community choose those who are going to serve at the widows’ table whereas they themselves will dedicate themselves to prayer and the service of the Word. This is the Apostles’ task and their successors’! It is in this way that they should build up the Church. Without this basis, she collapses and falls into ruin. It is the Year of Faith. The danger of all Jubilee Years is to celebrate beautiful liturgies if only the necessary changes are not faced (Cf. Isaiah 1:10–17). In the present account of the Acts, we are told what the faith, the Apostles have to pass on to every person, consists of. Faith doesn’t consist of our own ideas or knowing the catechism by heart: “Even the demons believe, but they shake with fear” (James 1:19). Faith becomes steadfast in prayer and in the ministry of the Word. These are the two means by which the twelve patriarchs of the Church “lay the foundation” of their community of new people. The genetic patrimony they are offering us are prayer and the Word. The former puts us in communion with the Father and the latter, with all the brethren to whom we are indebted of the Gospel (Cf. Romans 1:14ff). Other types of service, although useful or even necessary, belong to other people. There are different gifts. Everyone is responsible for putting what is his own at the disposal of the others. Our limitations are the need we have of the others: they create communion in diversity. And this is our likeness with God, Trini-Unity of Love. Prayer and ministry of the Word are the essence of the Christian faith. This binomial is fruitful. It generates every gift and is like the flesh of the service to the poor. Otherwise, our faith is empty (Cf. James 2:26; Matthew 25:40). Let us not love in word or speech but in deeds and in truth (1 John 3:18). This year is also marked by the “celebration” of the 17th centenary of Constantine’s Edict, the Edict of Milan, 313 AD, which gave freedom to Christianity. Religious freedom is something good. It must be respected, especially that of the others. All religions demand it but very few of them grant it. Perhaps none. Nobody can take our Christian freedom away from us, not even persecution. Only our betrayal of the Gospel will take it away, whenever

A community is never perfect. After Ananias and Sapphira’s lie (see previous article), there appears an injustice: the Apostles seem to favor the widows from their own country and neglect the others. This ethno-cultural discrimination gives rise to conflict.