Category: The Last Word

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.

Because of its association with the Baptism of Jesus, the River Jordan is probably the best known river in the world. All three synoptic gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke, describe this event. Matthew writes that “at that time Jesus arrived from Galilee and came to John at the Jordan to be baptized by him… As soon as Jesus was baptized, He came up out of the water. Then heaven was opened to Him, and He saw the Spirit of God coming down like a dove and alighting on Him. Then a voice said from heaven. “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” (Mat 3:13-16; Mark 1:9-11; Luke 3:21-22).  It is clear that each of the synoptic writers view the Baptism of Jesus as a crucial moment in His life, when He is affirmed by His Father and also committed Himself to a Messianic ministry which would be very different from the prevailing aspirations of many contemporary Jews, because it would involve suffering and ultimately death.  At the end of Matthew’s gospel, Jesus tells His disciples: “Go, then to all peoples everywhere and make them My disciples: baptize them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit and teach them to obey everything I have commanded you. And I will be with you always, to the end of the age.” (Mat 28:19-20). In the early Church, as is clear from Paul’s letter to the Romans, baptism literally meant going down into the waters.  The liberation, freedom from sin and incorporation into the life of God which is effected by the Sacrament of Baptism has captured the imagination of poets, painters and song writers for the past two millennia. Artists such as Michelangelo, Leonardo Da Vinci and others have painted the baptism of Jesus. During the 1960s, many of us danced to the song “Michael, Row the Boat Ashore” sung by Peter, Paul and Mary. The lyrics proclaimed that the “River Jordan is chilly and cold, hallelujah, chills the body and not the soul, hallelujah.”  Whatever about chilling the body, one would not expect that the waters of the Jordan could poison someone and make him/her sick. But that is no longer true. A news item in The Jerusalem Post on July 28, 2010 entitled, “Pollution prevents Jordan River baptisms,” claims that the site where Jesus was baptized is in danger of being declared off limits to pilgrims because the waters are heavily polluted. Qasar al-Yahud is the place on the Jordan where tradition holds that Jesus was baptized. It is located a few kilometers from where the Jordan enters the Dead Sea. It is the third most popular site for Christian pilgrims after the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem and the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. Almost 100,000 visitors, mostly Christians, come to the site each year. On July 25, 2010, the site was closed to visitors in order to allow the Jordan waters to be properly tested. Recent

An envoy can be accepted or rejected. But God’s messenger is always rejected, like all the prophets and Jesus Himself. The truth of a love that is poor, serving and humble, disturbs and calls to conversion. For this reason, the wise and powerful, who love to possess, to dominate and to appear (Cf. 1 John 2:16), despise Jesus. His very relatives think He is out of His mind; His disciples betray, deny and abandon Him. No one of the “rulers of this age” was able to know the wisdom and power of this God-love: “For if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory” (1 Corinthians 2:6-8).  Were Jesus to promise wealth, power and prestige, all would accept, even the disciples. Even the Romans would have paid Him tithe in order to have Him as their ally. Their rejection is the cause of the Cross. But Jesus doesn’t reject those who reject Him: He gives life to those who kill Him. His Cross is not a failure but “martyrdom,” witness of an extreme and never-ending love that goes beyond the beyond, and beyond it there is nothing but still love. The cross reveals God as God, overwhelming Satan and his lie about Him and us. Zachary, last of the prophets, used to say of those who were killing him: “God sees and He will avenge!” (2 Chronicles 24:20ff). The Crucified Jesus instead will say: “Father, forgive them” (Luke 23:34). Only God loves in this way, shouldering the evil of those who do evil to Him. Here, every abyss of misery is filled in by mercy. “Whenever you enter a town and they do not receive you” – In the home, we can enter only if accepted; in the city, we enter in any case. Normally, however, after the first curiosity, there is rejection. We tend to accept the rich but not the poor. Unless we recognize that every poor person is also a member of the human race, even represents the human race. It is destiny: darkness doesn’t like light, its mortal enemy. “Go into its streets and say” – The true disciple, as well, doesn’t refuse those who reject him. Even he publicly announces what is good and denounces evil, hoping for conversion. “Even the dust of your town that clings to our feet, we wipe off against you” – Those who enter the Promised Land, in order not to contaminate it with pagan soil, wipe off the dust from their feet. The gesture means that the city that doesn’t welcome the poor brother is still pagan: it refuses God as its Father. The words “cling” and “to wipe off” are somehow medical terms: they remind us of a wound which “clings together” while healing, and that we “wipe off” in order to dry it. Refusal wounds the one whom we refuse. The only cure for his bleeding wound is not to give back a refusal, but to carry it in ourselves; in this way, witnessing

The disciple comes back to the One who sent him. He was sent like a lamb among wolves: poor, weak, in need of acceptance but exposed to rejection. It is the labor of sowing. Now it is the harvest feast: the valleys are dressed in wheat, “everything sings and cries for joy” (Psalm 65:14). The color of our coming back from the field is joy, the Lord’s final gift to His co-workers. Jesus Himself dances in spirit and proclaims blessed those who see His exaltation. The coming back of the Seventy-Two is prelude of the final result, when the Gospel will be announced to every creature (Mark 13:10) and the whole creation will be rescued from evil (Romans 8:19-23). We harvest what we have sown: coming back, we gather the mission fruits.  The first fruit is the victory over Satan: the announcement of the Father’s love overcomes Satan’s lie that is at the origin of all our evils. Our present history is freed from Satan’s influence. Michael’s victory against the dragon (Revelation 12:7-12) happens in the Gospel witness: the one who keeps us in the fear of death is defeated (Hebrews 2:14ff).  The second fruit is the bringing back of humanity to its dignity: human beings are again the masters of creation, in a life free from fear and egoism.  There is also a third, even greater, fruit. Mission is not only victory over evil and return to the lost garden, it is for the missionary being enrolled in the book of God’s children. Whoever goes towards the brethren becomes the Father’s true son. The Mission’s gift in its fullness is his: he becomes like the Son who has the very same Father’s love towards the brethren. This is why Mission belongs to everybody: every child’s vocation is his mission towards the brethren that makes him/her equal to the Father. “The Seventy-Two returned with joy” – The coming back of the Seventy-Two symbolically anticipates the return from the mission to all peoples. The joy which is the fruit of requited love, is God’s authentic signature because He is perfectly loving and loved. Where there is no joy, there is no God. It is a joy that “nobody can snatch away”: it wells up from a love that is stronger than death. “The spirits are subject to you” – Formerly, we were the slaves of evil; now we rule over it. Satan is defeated by love’s witness: the beauty of those who are poor, helpful and humble unveils the ugliness of egoism, the poisonous fruit of the fear of death. The Gospel witness is the true exorcism that unseats Satan from his power over human beings. But, beware! If we are his slaves, he leaves us alone; if we are the ones to keep him as a slave, he will rebel. “I saw Satan falling from heaven” – Satan was in heaven: he was having God’s place, showing Him as a jealous boss, the antagonist of human beings, of their freedom

It is not enough to love the Lord in order to be His collaborators. I may love Him and yet work against Him. This is what Peter did whom Jesus calls “Satan.” He, Peter, actually hates the cross, presumes to be better than anybody else and uses the enemy’s weapons in order to defend Jesus (Mark 8:31-33; 14:28-31,47). Even John and James, out of love (!), like all-time crusaders, want to exterminate those that Jesus wants to save (Luke 9:51ff). And they fight for the first places like all the rest (Mark 10:35-45). They argue about primacy even during the Last Supper, whereas Jesus is among them as One who serves (Luke 22:24-27). What should we do in order not to be after, in God’s name, what He detests? How are we going to collaborate with Him and not with Satan? It is tragic to wear Jesus’ uniform and play for the enemy team. I become “fit for God’s kingdom” when I desire, want and plead with the Lord in order to have such an oversize love for Him that it may take my inordinate affections away. Only thus, free from the possession of things, people or even God, I may be able to follow the Son on the way of self-giving, serving and trusting (Luke 9: 57-62). The beginning of mission is its end: prayer. Prayer is communion with the Lord: it changes us into Him and enables us to bear witness to Him.  “Pray” – Praying or entreating is to ask the other what I need. “Praying” is related to “precarious.” I pray in order to obtain what only the other can give me. Prayer expresses desire, the only condition for obtaining the gift. Love, as all other relationships, is a gift that comes from the other person: I cannot give the gift to myself. God is infinite love: in need of infinite love as I am, I will receive of it as much as I long for. As regards the essential things – earth, water, light, air, life and love – I am “precarious.” I can only receive them. My very being comes from the other: I am not self-made, I did not make myself. Prayer, inasmuch as it is a desire, doesn’t have a specific object. It is like hunger: it desires food, but doesn’t produce it neither does it distinguish good food from poisonous one. Only from the experience of other people do I know what to eat. As in everything else, I learn what to desire in order to receive what gives me life and not death. The Word of God itself suggests to me, time and time again, what to ask. Jesus Himself, before starting His ministry, spent forty days in the desert in order to learn from the Word of God what to do or not to do, what to eat or not to eat. Also, before the call of the Twelve and the Sermon of the Beatitudes, He spent the night

The rich is not lamb: he is wolf, he or his father. The greed for riches is idolatry, source of all evils (Ephesians 5:5; 2 Timothy 6:10), divisions and struggles, injustices and wars. Those who make of money their god, sacrifice to it their own life and the others’. In order to overcome the wolf, the disciple must learn poverty. Poverty makes us serve in humility, like the Lamb. God is poor: He doesn’t possess anything, not even Himself. The Father’s being belongs to the Son and vice versa; and the Spirit is their mutual love that makes them be one for the other. We are not what we possess but what we give: if we have nothing, we give away ourselves and we become ourselves. God is love that gives away everything, even Himself. And in this way, God is Himself. Poverty is necessary to love: the one who loves has nothing because he/she gives everything and in giving everything, he/she fulfills herself/himself. Without poverty, there is market and whoredom. Poverty, instead, creates solidarity: our needs become place of communion and mutual giving. Poverty makes it possible to be accepted and to accept: it fulfills God’s kingdom, love given and received in the one Spirit. Poverty is the “mother” of Christian life: it generates us as children of the Father. Poverty is faith in God, victory over the world.  God chose the poor to make them rich, because of the faith, and heirs of His kingdom (John 2:5): the kingdom already belongs to them (Luke 6:20; Matthew 5:1). To Gideon, rich with a beautiful army, God tells that he cannot win: he is too strong (Judges 7:2). He must reduce his soldiers from 32,000 to 300 who are going to win without weapons. Also David, against Goliath, must get rid of his armor (1 Samuel 17:38 ff). The apostles Peter and John, as well, perform the first miracle because they have neither silver nor gold: only the power of Jesus’ name makes the man, who is lame since birth, walk (Acts 3:6). Jesus Christ, though he was rich, yet for our sake he became poor, so that by His poverty we might become rich (2 Corinthians 8:9). Where missionaries used richness and power, it took centuries, and persecutions, for the evangelization to take off. Poverty is necessary to us so that we may not be wolves and may love. Those who possess things either part from them or separate themselves from people; those who have nothing look for the others’ company and give themselves up. “Carry no purse” – In the purse, there is the money, universal mediator: in itself it is nothing, but it can do everything. Security of the rich and god of this world, it guarantees possession, domination and prestige. The security of the poor, instead, is fraternal love that gives and serves in humility. “No bag” – In it, we usually put bread and provisions: it is the security of the poor. Our security doesn’t