READING OF THE DAY First reading from the Book of Jeremiah Jer 1:4-5, 17-19
The word of the LORD came to me, saying: Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I dedicated you, a prophet to the nations I appointed you.
But do you gird your loins; stand up and tell them all that I command you. Be not crushed on their account, as though I would leave you crushed before them; for it is I this day who have made you a fortified city, a pillar of iron, a wall of brass, against the whole land: against Judah’s kings and princes, against its priests and people. They will fight against you but not prevail over you, for I am with you to deliver you, says the LORD.
Second reading from the Letter of St. Paul to the Corinthians 1 Cor 12:31—13:13
Brothers and sisters: Strive eagerly for the greatest spiritual gifts. But I shall show you a still more excellent way.
If I speak in human and angelic tongues, but do not have love, I am a resounding gong or a clashing cymbal. And if I have the gift of prophecy, and comprehend all mysteries and all knowledge; if I have all faith so as to move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away everything I own, and if I hand my body over so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.
Love is patient, love is kind. It is not jealous, it is not pompous, It is not inflated, it is not rude, it does not seek its own interests, it is not quick-tempered, it does not brood over injury, it does not rejoice over wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never fails. If there are prophecies, they will be brought to nothing; if tongues, they will cease; if knowledge, it will be brought to nothing. For we know partially and we prophesy partially, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. When I was a child, I used to talk as a child, think as a child, reason as a child; when I became a man, I put aside childish things. At present we see indistinctly, as in a mirror, but then face to face. At present I know partially; then I shall know fully, as I am fully known. So faith, hope, love remain, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
GOSPEL OF THE DAY From the Gospel according to Luke Lk 4:21-30
Jesus began speaking in the synagogue, saying: “Today this Scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing.” And all spoke highly of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth. They also asked, “Isn’t this the son of Joseph?” He said to them, “Surely you will quote me this proverb, ‘Physician, cure yourself,’ and say, ‘Do here in your native place the things that we heard were done in Capernaum.’” And he said, “Amen, I say to you, no prophet is accepted in his own native place. Indeed, I tell you, there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah when the sky was closed for three and a half years and a severe famine spread over the entire land. It was to none of these that Elijah was sent, but only to a widow in Zarephath in the land of Sidon. Again, there were many lepers in Israel during the time of Elisha the prophet; yet not one of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian.” When the people in the synagogue heard this, they were all filled with fury. They rose up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town had been built, to hurl him down headlong. But Jesus passed through the midst of them and went away.
WORDS OF THE HOLY FATHER The power of Jesus confirms the authority of his teaching. He does not just speak with words, but he takes action. In this way, he manifests God’s plan with words and with the power of his deeds. In the Gospel in fact, we see that in his earthly mission, Jesus reveals the love of God both through preaching and through countless gestures of attention and aid to the sick, the needy, children and sinners. (Angelus, 28 January 2018)
HOMILY OF SAINT JOHN PAUL II (FEBRUARY 1980) - 3. Jesus is the prophet of love - of that love which Saint Paul confesses and proclaims in the simple yet profound words of the passage taken from the Letter to the Corinthians. To know what true love is, what its characteristics and qualities are, we must look to Jesus, to his life and his conduct. Words will never render the reality of love as well as its living model. Even words, so perfect in their simplicity, like those of the First Letter to the Corinthians, are only the image of that reality: of that reality, that is, of which we find the most complete model in the life and behavior of Jesus Christ.
Throughout the various generations, there have been men and women who have effectively imitated this most perfect model. We are all called to do the same. Jesus came above all to teach us love. This is the content of the greatest commandment that he left us. If we learn to put it into practice, we will achieve our goal: eternal life. Love, in fact, as the apostle teaches, "will never end" (1 Cor. 13:8). While other charisms and even the essential virtues in the life of a Christian end together with earthly life and thus pass away, love does not pass away, it never ends. It constitutes precisely the essential foundation and content of eternal life. And therefore "the greater the love" (1 Cor 13:13).
4. This great truth about love, through which we carry within us the true leaven of eternal life in union with God, must be profoundly associated with the second truth of today's liturgy: love is acquired through spiritual effort. Love grows in us and develops even amidst the contradictions and resistances that oppose it from within each one of us, and at the same time "from outside", amidst the many forces that are alien and even hostile to it.
This is why Saint Paul writes that "charity is patient". Does it not often encounter in us the resistance of our impatience, and even simply our inadvertence? In order to love, we must know how to "see" the "other", we must know how to "take account" of him. Sometimes we have to "bear it". If we see only ourselves, and the "other" "does not exist" for us, we are far from the lesson of love that Christ gave us.
"Charity is benign," we read later: it not only knows how to "see" the "other," but it opens itself to him, seeks him out, goes out to meet him. Love gives widely and this is precisely what it means: "it is kind" (following the example of God's own love, which is expressed in grace)... And how often, however, we close ourselves up in the shell of our "I", we do not know how, we do not want, we do not try to open ourselves up to the "other", to give him something of our own "I", going beyond the limits of our ego-centrism or even selfishness, and striving to become men, women "for others", following the example of Christ.
-->5. And so on and so forth, rereading Saint Paul's lesson on love, and meditating on the meaning of each word which the Apostle used to describe the characteristics of such love, we touch on the most important points of our lives and of our living together with others. We touch not only the personal or family problems, that is, those that have importance in the small circle of our interpersonal relationships, but we also touch the social problems of primary relevance.
Do not the times in which we live already constitute a dangerous lesson of what society and humanity can become when the Gospel truth about love is considered outdated? When it is marginalized by the way of seeing the world and life, by ideology? When it is excluded from education, from the means of social communication, from culture, from politics?
Haven't the times in which we live already become a sufficiently threatening lesson of what such a social program prepares?
And won't this lesson become even more threatening as time goes by?
In this regard, are not the ever-renewing acts of terrorism and the growing tension of war in the world already eloquent enough? Every man - and all humanity - lives "between" love and hatred. If he does not accept love, hatred will easily find its way into his heart and will begin to invade it more and more, bearing ever more poisonous fruit.
6. From the Pauline lesson we have just heard, we must logically deduce that love is demanding. It demands of us effort, it demands a program of work on ourselves - just as, in the social dimension, it demands an adequate education and suitable programs of civic and international life.
Love is demanding. It is difficult. It is attractive, certainly, but it is also difficult. And therefore it meets with resistance in man. And this resistance increases when from outside there still operate programs in which the principle of hatred and destructive violence is present. Christ, whose messianic mission encounters from the very beginning the contradiction of his own countrymen in Nazareth, reconfirms the truth of the words spoken about him by old Simeon on the day of the Presentation in the Temple: "He is here for the ruin and resurrection of many in Israel, a sign of contradiction" (Lk 2:34).
These words walk with Christ through all the paths of his human experience, all the way to the cross.
This truth about Christ is also the truth about love. Love, too, encounters resistance, contradiction. In us and outside of us. But this should not discourage us. True love - as Saint Paul teaches - "covers everything" and "endures everything" (1 Cor 13:7).
Dear brothers and sisters, may this meeting of ours today serve, at least in a small way, to the victory of this love, towards which the Church of Christ is constantly moving, amid the trials of this earth, with her gaze fixed on the witness of her Master and Redeemer.
In this Sunday's Liturgy we read one of the most beautiful passages of the New Testament and of the whole Bible: the Apostle Paul's "hymn to love" (1 Cor 12: 31-13: 13). In his First Letter to the Corinthians, after explaining through the image of the body that the different gifts of the Holy Spirit contribute to the good of the one Church, Paul shows the "way" of perfection. It does not, he says, consist in possessing exceptional qualities: in speaking new languages, understanding all the mysteries, having a prodigious faith or doing heroic deeds. Rather, it consists in love agape that is, in authentic love which God revealed to us in Jesus Christ. Love is the "greatest gift" which gives value to all the others and yet it "is not jealous or boastful; it is not arrogant"; on the contrary it "rejoices in the right" and in the good of others. Whoever truly loves "does not insist on [his or her] own way", "is "not irritable or resentful" but "bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things" (cf. 1 Cor 13: 4-7). In the end, when we find ourselves face to face with God, all the other gifts will no longer matter; the only one that will last forever is love, because God is love and we will be like him, in perfect communion with him.
For now, while we are in this world, love is the sign of Christians. It sums up their entire life: what they believe and what they do. This is why at the beginning of my Pontificate I chose to dedicate my first Encyclical to this very subject of love: Deus Caritas Est. As you will remember, this Encyclical is made up of two parts that correspond to the two aspects of charity: its meaning and hence its practice. Love is the essence of God himself, it is the meaning of creation and of history, it is the light that brings goodness and beauty into every person's existence. At the same time love is, so to speak, the "style" of God and of believers, it is the behaviour of those who, in response to God's love, make their life a gift of themselves to God and to their neighbour. In Jesus Christ these two aspects form a perfect unity: he is Love incarnate. This Love has been fully revealed to us in Jesus Christ. Fixing our gaze on him, we can confess with the Apostle John: "We have come to know and to believe in the love God has for us" (cf. 1 Jn 4: 16; Encyclical Deus Caritas Est, n. 1).
Dear friends, if we think of the Saints, we recognize the variety of their spiritual gifts and also their human characteristics, but the life of each one of them is a hymn to charity, a living canticle to God's love! Today, 31 January, we are commemorating in particular St John Bosco, the Founder of the Salesian Family and Patron of young people. In this Year for Priests, I would like to invoke his intercession so that priests may always be educators and fathers to the young; and that, experiencing this pastoral love, many young people may accept the call to give their lives for Christ and for the Gospel. May Mary Help of Christians, a model of love, obtain these graces for us.
ANGELUS Saint Peter's Square Sunday, 3 February 2019
Last Sunday the liturgy proposed to us the episode of the Synagogue of Nazareth, where Jesus reads a passage from the prophet Isaiah and in the end reveals that those words are fulfilled “today”, in Him. Jesus presents himself as the one on whom the Spirit of the Lord has rested, the Holy Spirit who consecrated him and sent him to carry out the mission of salvation for the benefit of humanity. Today’s Gospel (cf. Lk 4:21-30) is the continuation of that narrative and shows us the astonishment of his fellow citizens in seeing that someone from their country, “Joseph’s son” (v. 22), claims to be the Christ, the Father’s envoy.
Jesus, with his ability to penetrate minds and hearts, immediately understands what his fellow countrymen think. They believe that, since he is one of them, he must demonstrate his strange “claim” by working miracles there, in Nazareth, as he did in neighbouring countries (cf. v. 23). But Jesus does not want and cannot accept this logic, because it does not correspond to God’s plan: God wants faith, they want miracles, signs; God wants to save everyone, and they want a Messiah for their own benefit. And to explain the logic of God, Jesus gives the example of two great ancient prophets: Elijah and Elisha, whom God had sent to heal and save non-Hebrew people, and other peoples, but who had trusted in his word.
Faced with this invitation to open their hearts to the gratuitousness and universality of salvation, the citizens of Nazareth rebelled, and even assumed an aggressive attitude, which degenerated to the point that “they rose up and put him out of the city, and led him to the brow of the hill [...], that they might throw him down” (v. 29). The initial admiration turned into aggression, a rebellion against him.
And this Gospel passage shows us that Jesus’ public ministry begins with a rejection and with a death threat, paradoxically precisely on the part of his fellow citizens. Jesus, in living the mission entrusted to him by the Father, knows well that he must face fatigue, rejection, persecution and defeat. A price that, yesterday as today, authentic prophecy is called to pay. The harsh rejection, however, does not discourage Jesus, nor does it stop the journey and the fruitfulness of his prophetic action. He goes ahead on his way (cf. v. 30), trusting in the Father’s love.
Today too, the world needs to see prophets in the Lord’s disciples, that is, people who are courageous and persevere in responding to the Christian vocation. People who follow the “drive” of the Holy Spirit, who sends them to proclaim hope and salvation to the poor and the excluded; people who follow the logic of faith and not of miraculism; people dedicated to the service of all, without privileges and exclusion. In short: people who are ready to welcome the Father’s will within them and undertake to witness to it faithfully to others.
Let us pray to Mary Most Holy, that we may grow and walk with the same apostolic zeal for the Kingdom of God that inspired Jesus’ mission.
FAUSTI: He presents Himself as the fulfillment of the "Word of Grace", which brings God's blessing and fulfills the promise. The evangelist wants to bring his reader to meet this Word of Grace announced "Today". It has its roots in the past - the promise of Isaiah and the figures of Elijah and Elysée - and it is actualized "today", in the Eternal Today of God, which has been realized once and for all in Jesus and is always actualized whenever the Word is announced in His Name. With Him, the time of promise is closed and the time of reality is opened. The time is finally "fulfilled". The eyes are now fixed on Him, in whom the Word becomes flesh and the Book becomes history. It is the "Gospel", the Good News that the One who realizes it has come among us. The listeners of Jesus are before the One who fulfills every promise. The whole Gospel of Luke will be a listening to His Word, which makes us contemporaneous with Him; in the obedience of faith, we enter into salvation. Jesus is the perfect listener who fulfills the Will of the Father: His Word in Him becomes reality and life, His today. At its turn, whoever listens to Jesus and makes His Word, finds himself living in the same "today" and becomes part of His family. Jesus, in His powerful proclamation, realizes salvation, which becomes present to everyone who listens to it. The Word of Jesus is called the "Word of Grace. In Him, God's grace and benevolence became visible and working. But there is an insurmountable scandal, which will have the cross as its fruit. Such a scandal wouldn't have been lesser even if they were known that the One whom they thought to know was not the son of Joseph, but the Son of God!That God who promised to save man because He loves him, He saved him by assuming his own flesh. It was not sufficient for Him to give His salvation: He gave Himself as Savior, joining Himself to His creature. Man cannot understand this; but it is plan of God, who, being Love, wants to freely unite Himself to His people. Man can only accept it in faith, keeping his astonished eyes fixed on Jesus, the perfect fulfillment of the Word of the Father. Instead of they open themselves up in faith and let themselves be involved in God's gift, His own close themselves up to what they know about Him and demand from Him. The knowledge and claim of the flesh preclude faith. This faith is obeying to God and following Him to know Him, it is not knowing Him and taming Him to be obeyed. Such a claim goes against the essence of God Who is gift. No gift can be claimed, it would be destroyed. The refusal of Jesus is the same as that of the prophets, who could only operate where there was no claim to God's intervention. There the gift has found hands to be received. The cross and salvation offered to all is prefigured, because "every flesh will see the salvation of God". Jesus is rejected by His ones own. He was full of the Holy Spirit, his own are full of anger. In the beginning there is already the prediction of the final. We are on way of His tumultuous elimination, outside the city, which the Gospel tells us, and of the repulsion of His Announcement, narrated in the Acts. In the "his ones " of Nazareth, more than Israel, one should see the"his ones" of all times, and in concrete terms the Church itself of the Gentiles, to whom Luke addresses himself. It is the same "Today" to be received or refused. Jesus, "passed among them, walked", miraculously crosses the crowd of enemies. He does not remain prey to the wickedness of men. It is a foreboding of the Resurrection of the One who continues His journey among us, "benefiting and healing all those who are under the power of satan, for God is with Him" (Acts 10:38).
READING OF THE DAY
RispondiEliminaFirst reading from the Book of Jeremiah
Jer 1:4-5, 17-19
The word of the LORD came to me, saying:
Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,
before you were born I dedicated you,
a prophet to the nations I appointed you.
But do you gird your loins;
stand up and tell them
all that I command you.
Be not crushed on their account,
as though I would leave you crushed before them;
for it is I this day
who have made you a fortified city,
a pillar of iron, a wall of brass,
against the whole land:
against Judah’s kings and princes,
against its priests and people.
They will fight against you but not prevail over you,
for I am with you to deliver you, says the LORD.
Second reading from the Letter of St. Paul to the Corinthians
1 Cor 12:31—13:13
Brothers and sisters:
Strive eagerly for the greatest spiritual gifts.
But I shall show you a still more excellent way.
If I speak in human and angelic tongues,
but do not have love,
I am a resounding gong or a clashing cymbal.
And if I have the gift of prophecy,
and comprehend all mysteries and all knowledge;
if I have all faith so as to move mountains,
but do not have love, I am nothing.
If I give away everything I own,
and if I hand my body over so that I may boast,
but do not have love, I gain nothing.
Love is patient, love is kind.
It is not jealous, it is not pompous,
It is not inflated, it is not rude,
it does not seek its own interests,
it is not quick-tempered, it does not brood over injury,
it does not rejoice over wrongdoing
but rejoices with the truth.
It bears all things, believes all things,
hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never fails.
If there are prophecies, they will be brought to nothing;
if tongues, they will cease;
if knowledge, it will be brought to nothing.
For we know partially and we prophesy partially,
but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away.
When I was a child, I used to talk as a child,
think as a child, reason as a child;
when I became a man, I put aside childish things.
At present we see indistinctly, as in a mirror,
but then face to face.
At present I know partially;
then I shall know fully, as I am fully known.
So faith, hope, love remain, these three;
but the greatest of these is love.
PSALM 71
RispondiEliminaMy mouth shall be filled with your praise!
In you, LORD, I take refuge;
let me never be put to shame.
In your justice rescue and deliver me;
listen to me and save me!
Be my rock of refuge,
my stronghold to give me safety;
for you are my rock and fortress.c
My God, rescue me from the hand of the wicked,
from the clutches of the evil and violent.d
You are my hope, Lord;
my trust, GOD, from my youth.
On you I have depended since birth;
from my mother’s womb you are my strength;e
my hope in you never wavers.
*I have become a portent to many,
but you are my strong refuge!
My mouth shall be filled with your praise,
shall sing your glory every day.
GOSPEL OF THE DAY
From the Gospel according to Luke
Lk 4:21-30
Jesus began speaking in the synagogue, saying:
“Today this Scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing.”
And all spoke highly of him
and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth.
They also asked, “Isn’t this the son of Joseph?”
He said to them, “Surely you will quote me this proverb,
‘Physician, cure yourself,’ and say,
‘Do here in your native place
the things that we heard were done in Capernaum.’”
And he said, “Amen, I say to you,
no prophet is accepted in his own native place.
Indeed, I tell you,
there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah
when the sky was closed for three and a half years
and a severe famine spread over the entire land.
It was to none of these that Elijah was sent,
but only to a widow in Zarephath in the land of Sidon.
Again, there were many lepers in Israel
during the time of Elisha the prophet;
yet not one of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian.”
When the people in the synagogue heard this,
they were all filled with fury.
They rose up, drove him out of the town,
and led him to the brow of the hill
on which their town had been built,
to hurl him down headlong.
But Jesus passed through the midst of them and went away.
WORDS OF THE HOLY FATHER
The power of Jesus confirms the authority of his teaching. He does not just speak with words, but he takes action. In this way, he manifests God’s plan with words and with the power of his deeds. In the Gospel in fact, we see that in his earthly mission, Jesus reveals the love of God both through preaching and through countless gestures of attention and aid to the sick, the needy, children and sinners. (Angelus, 28 January 2018)
HOMILY OF SAINT JOHN PAUL II (FEBRUARY 1980) -
RispondiElimina3. Jesus is the prophet of love - of that love which Saint Paul confesses and proclaims in the simple yet profound words of the passage taken from the Letter to the Corinthians. To know what true love is, what its characteristics and qualities are, we must look to Jesus, to his life and his conduct. Words will never render the reality of love as well as its living model. Even words, so perfect in their simplicity, like those of the First Letter to the Corinthians, are only the image of that reality: of that reality, that is, of which we find the most complete model in the life and behavior of Jesus Christ.
Throughout the various generations, there have been men and women who have effectively imitated this most perfect model. We are all called to do the same. Jesus came above all to teach us love. This is the content of the greatest commandment that he left us. If we learn to put it into practice, we will achieve our goal: eternal life. Love, in fact, as the apostle teaches, "will never end" (1 Cor. 13:8). While other charisms and even the essential virtues in the life of a Christian end together with earthly life and thus pass away, love does not pass away, it never ends. It constitutes precisely the essential foundation and content of eternal life. And therefore "the greater the love" (1 Cor 13:13).
4. This great truth about love, through which we carry within us the true leaven of eternal life in union with God, must be profoundly associated with the second truth of today's liturgy: love is acquired through spiritual effort. Love grows in us and develops even amidst the contradictions and resistances that oppose it from within each one of us, and at the same time "from outside", amidst the many forces that are alien and even hostile to it.
This is why Saint Paul writes that "charity is patient". Does it not often encounter in us the resistance of our impatience, and even simply our inadvertence? In order to love, we must know how to "see" the "other", we must know how to "take account" of him. Sometimes we have to "bear it". If we see only ourselves, and the "other" "does not exist" for us, we are far from the lesson of love that Christ gave us.
"Charity is benign," we read later: it not only knows how to "see" the "other," but it opens itself to him, seeks him out, goes out to meet him. Love gives widely and this is precisely what it means: "it is kind" (following the example of God's own love, which is expressed in grace)... And how often, however, we close ourselves up in the shell of our "I", we do not know how, we do not want, we do not try to open ourselves up to the "other", to give him something of our own "I", going beyond the limits of our ego-centrism or even selfishness, and striving to become men, women "for others", following the example of Christ.
-->5. And so on and so forth, rereading Saint Paul's lesson on love, and meditating on the meaning of each word which the Apostle used to describe the characteristics of such love, we touch on the most important points of our lives and of our living together with others. We touch not only the personal or family problems, that is, those that have importance in the small circle of our interpersonal relationships, but we also touch the social problems of primary relevance.
RispondiEliminaDo not the times in which we live already constitute a dangerous lesson of what society and humanity can become when the Gospel truth about love is considered outdated? When it is marginalized by the way of seeing the world and life, by ideology? When it is excluded from education, from the means of social communication, from culture, from politics?
Haven't the times in which we live already become a sufficiently threatening lesson of what such a social program prepares?
And won't this lesson become even more threatening as time goes by?
In this regard, are not the ever-renewing acts of terrorism and the growing tension of war in the world already eloquent enough? Every man - and all humanity - lives "between" love and hatred. If he does not accept love, hatred will easily find its way into his heart and will begin to invade it more and more, bearing ever more poisonous fruit.
6. From the Pauline lesson we have just heard, we must logically deduce that love is demanding. It demands of us effort, it demands a program of work on ourselves - just as, in the social dimension, it demands an adequate education and suitable programs of civic and international life.
Love is demanding. It is difficult. It is attractive, certainly, but it is also difficult. And therefore it meets with resistance in man. And this resistance increases when from outside there still operate programs in which the principle of hatred and destructive violence is present. Christ, whose messianic mission encounters from the very beginning the contradiction of his own countrymen in Nazareth, reconfirms the truth of the words spoken about him by old Simeon on the day of the Presentation in the Temple: "He is here for the ruin and resurrection of many in Israel, a sign of contradiction" (Lk 2:34).
These words walk with Christ through all the paths of his human experience, all the way to the cross.
This truth about Christ is also the truth about love. Love, too, encounters resistance, contradiction. In us and outside of us. But this should not discourage us. True love - as Saint Paul teaches - "covers everything" and "endures everything" (1 Cor 13:7).
Dear brothers and sisters, may this meeting of ours today serve, at least in a small way, to the victory of this love, towards which the Church of Christ is constantly moving, amid the trials of this earth, with her gaze fixed on the witness of her Master and Redeemer.
BENEDICT XVI
RispondiEliminaANGELUS St Peter's Square
Sunday, 31 January 2010
In this Sunday's Liturgy we read one of the most beautiful passages of the New Testament and of the whole Bible: the Apostle Paul's "hymn to love" (1 Cor 12: 31-13: 13). In his First Letter to the Corinthians, after explaining through the image of the body that the different gifts of the Holy Spirit contribute to the good of the one Church, Paul shows the "way" of perfection. It does not, he says, consist in possessing exceptional qualities: in speaking new languages, understanding all the mysteries, having a prodigious faith or doing heroic deeds. Rather, it consists in love agape that is, in authentic love which God revealed to us in Jesus Christ. Love is the "greatest gift" which gives value to all the others and yet it "is not jealous or boastful; it is not arrogant"; on the contrary it "rejoices in the right" and in the good of others. Whoever truly loves "does not insist on [his or her] own way", "is "not irritable or resentful" but "bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things" (cf. 1 Cor 13: 4-7). In the end, when we find ourselves face to face with God, all the other gifts will no longer matter; the only one that will last forever is love, because God is love and we will be like him, in perfect communion with him.
For now, while we are in this world, love is the sign of Christians. It sums up their entire life: what they believe and what they do. This is why at the beginning of my Pontificate I chose to dedicate my first Encyclical to this very subject of love: Deus Caritas Est. As you will remember, this Encyclical is made up of two parts that correspond to the two aspects of charity: its meaning and hence its practice. Love is the essence of God himself, it is the meaning of creation and of history, it is the light that brings goodness and beauty into every person's existence. At the same time love is, so to speak, the "style" of God and of believers, it is the behaviour of those who, in response to God's love, make their life a gift of themselves to God and to their neighbour. In Jesus Christ these two aspects form a perfect unity: he is Love incarnate. This Love has been fully revealed to us in Jesus Christ. Fixing our gaze on him, we can confess with the Apostle John: "We have come to know and to believe in the love God has for us" (cf. 1 Jn 4: 16; Encyclical Deus Caritas Est, n. 1).
Dear friends, if we think of the Saints, we recognize the variety of their spiritual gifts and also their human characteristics, but the life of each one of them is a hymn to charity, a living canticle to God's love! Today, 31 January, we are commemorating in particular St John Bosco, the Founder of the Salesian Family and Patron of young people. In this Year for Priests, I would like to invoke his intercession so that priests may always be educators and fathers to the young; and that, experiencing this pastoral love, many young people may accept the call to give their lives for Christ and for the Gospel. May Mary Help of Christians, a model of love, obtain these graces for us.
POPE FRANCIS
RispondiEliminaANGELUS Saint Peter's Square
Sunday, 3 February 2019
Last Sunday the liturgy proposed to us the episode of the Synagogue of Nazareth, where Jesus reads a passage from the prophet Isaiah and in the end reveals that those words are fulfilled “today”, in Him. Jesus presents himself as the one on whom the Spirit of the Lord has rested, the Holy Spirit who consecrated him and sent him to carry out the mission of salvation for the benefit of humanity. Today’s Gospel (cf. Lk 4:21-30) is the continuation of that narrative and shows us the astonishment of his fellow citizens in seeing that someone from their country, “Joseph’s son” (v. 22), claims to be the Christ, the Father’s envoy.
Jesus, with his ability to penetrate minds and hearts, immediately understands what his fellow countrymen think. They believe that, since he is one of them, he must demonstrate his strange “claim” by working miracles there, in Nazareth, as he did in neighbouring countries (cf. v. 23). But Jesus does not want and cannot accept this logic, because it does not correspond to God’s plan: God wants faith, they want miracles, signs; God wants to save everyone, and they want a Messiah for their own benefit. And to explain the logic of God, Jesus gives the example of two great ancient prophets: Elijah and Elisha, whom God had sent to heal and save non-Hebrew people, and other peoples, but who had trusted in his word.
Faced with this invitation to open their hearts to the gratuitousness and universality of salvation, the citizens of Nazareth rebelled, and even assumed an aggressive attitude, which degenerated to the point that “they rose up and put him out of the city, and led him to the brow of the hill [...], that they might throw him down” (v. 29). The initial admiration turned into aggression, a rebellion against him.
And this Gospel passage shows us that Jesus’ public ministry begins with a rejection and with a death threat, paradoxically precisely on the part of his fellow citizens. Jesus, in living the mission entrusted to him by the Father, knows well that he must face fatigue, rejection, persecution and defeat. A price that, yesterday as today, authentic prophecy is called to pay. The harsh rejection, however, does not discourage Jesus, nor does it stop the journey and the fruitfulness of his prophetic action. He goes ahead on his way (cf. v. 30), trusting in the Father’s love.
Today too, the world needs to see prophets in the Lord’s disciples, that is, people who are courageous and persevere in responding to the Christian vocation. People who follow the “drive” of the Holy Spirit, who sends them to proclaim hope and salvation to the poor and the excluded; people who follow the logic of faith and not of miraculism; people dedicated to the service of all, without privileges and exclusion. In short: people who are ready to welcome the Father’s will within them and undertake to witness to it faithfully to others.
Let us pray to Mary Most Holy, that we may grow and walk with the same apostolic zeal for the Kingdom of God that inspired Jesus’ mission.
FAUSTI: He presents Himself as the fulfillment of the "Word of Grace", which brings God's blessing and fulfills the promise. The evangelist wants to bring his reader to meet this Word of Grace announced "Today".
RispondiEliminaIt has its roots in the past - the promise of Isaiah and the figures of Elijah and Elysée - and it is actualized "today", in the Eternal Today of God, which has been realized once and for all in Jesus and is always actualized whenever the Word is announced in His Name.
With Him, the time of promise is closed and the time of reality is opened.
The time is finally "fulfilled". The eyes are now fixed on Him, in whom the Word becomes flesh and the Book becomes history. It is the "Gospel", the Good News that the One who realizes it has come among us. The listeners of Jesus are before the One who fulfills every promise.
The whole Gospel of Luke will be a listening to His Word, which makes us contemporaneous with Him; in the obedience of faith, we enter into salvation.
Jesus is the perfect listener who fulfills the Will of the Father: His Word in Him becomes reality and life, His today. At its turn, whoever listens to Jesus and makes His Word, finds himself living in the same "today" and becomes part of His family. Jesus, in His powerful proclamation, realizes salvation, which becomes present to everyone who listens to it.
The Word of Jesus is called the "Word of Grace. In Him, God's grace and benevolence became visible and working. But there is an insurmountable scandal, which will have the cross as its fruit.
Such a scandal wouldn't have been lesser even if they were known that the One whom they thought to know was not the son of Joseph, but the Son of God!That God who promised to save man because He loves him, He saved him by assuming his own flesh. It was not sufficient for Him to give His salvation: He gave Himself as Savior, joining Himself to His creature. Man cannot understand this; but it is plan of God, who, being Love, wants to freely unite Himself to His people. Man can only accept it in faith, keeping his astonished eyes fixed on Jesus, the perfect fulfillment of the Word of the Father.
Instead of they open themselves up in faith and let themselves be involved in God's gift, His own close themselves up to what they know about Him and demand from Him. The knowledge and claim of the flesh preclude faith.
This faith is obeying to God and following Him to know Him, it is not knowing Him and taming Him to be obeyed. Such a claim goes against the essence of God Who is gift.
No gift can be claimed, it would be destroyed.
The refusal of Jesus is the same as that of the prophets, who could only operate where there was no claim to God's intervention. There the gift has found hands to be received.
The cross and salvation offered to all is prefigured, because "every flesh will see the salvation of God".
Jesus is rejected by His ones own. He was full of the Holy Spirit, his own are full of anger.
In the beginning there is already the prediction of the final.
We are on way of His tumultuous elimination, outside the city, which the Gospel tells us, and of the repulsion of His Announcement, narrated in the Acts.
In the "his ones " of Nazareth, more than Israel, one should see the"his ones" of all times, and in concrete terms the Church itself of the Gentiles, to whom Luke addresses himself.
It is the same "Today" to be received or refused.
Jesus, "passed among them, walked", miraculously crosses the crowd of enemies.
He does not remain prey to the wickedness of men.
It is a foreboding of the Resurrection of the One who continues His journey among us, "benefiting and healing all those who are under the power of satan, for God is with Him" (Acts 10:38).