Reading I Rv 7:2-4, 9-14 I, John, saw another angel come up from the East, holding the seal of the living God. He cried out in a loud voice to the four angels who were given power to damage the land and the sea, “Do not damage the land or the sea or the trees until we put the seal on the foreheads of the servants of our God.” I heard the number of those who had been marked with the seal, one hundred and forty-four thousand marked from every tribe of the children of Israel.
After this I had a vision of a great multitude, which no one could count, from every nation, race, people, and tongue. They stood before the throne and before the Lamb, wearing white robes and holding palm branches in their hands. They cried out in a loud voice:
“Salvation comes from our God, who is seated on the throne, and from the Lamb.”
All the angels stood around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures. They prostrated themselves before the throne, worshiped God, and exclaimed:
“Amen. Blessing and glory, wisdom and thanksgiving, honor, power, and might be to our God forever and ever. Amen.”
Then one of the elders spoke up and said to me, “Who are these wearing white robes, and where did they come from?” I said to him, “My lord, you are the one who knows.” He said to me, “These are the ones who have survived the time of great distress; they have washed their robes and made them white in the Blood of the Lamb.”
Responsorial Psalm 24:1bc-2, 3-4ab, 5-6 R. Lord, this is the people that longs to see your face. The LORD’s are the earth and its fullness; the world and those who dwell in it. For he founded it upon the seas and established it upon the rivers. R. Lord, this is the people that longs to see your face. Who can ascend the mountain of the LORD? or who may stand in his holy place? One whose hands are sinless, whose heart is clean, who desires not what is vain. R. Lord, this is the people that longs to see your face. He shall receive a blessing from the LORD, a reward from God his savior. Such is the race that seeks him, that seeks the face of the God of Jacob. R. Lord, this is the people that longs to see your face.
Reading II 1 Jn 3:1-3 Beloved: See what love the Father has bestowed on us that we may be called the children of God. Yet so we are. The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we shall be has not yet been revealed. We do know that when it is revealed we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. Everyone who has this hope based on him makes himself pure, as he is pure.
Alleluia Mt 11:28 R. Alleluia, alleluia. Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest, says the Lord. R. Alleluia, alleluia.
GOSPEL Mt 5:1-12a When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain, and after he had sat down, his disciples came to him. He began to teach them, saying:
“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven. Blessed are they who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the land. Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied. Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy. Blessed are the clean of heart, for they will see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. Blessed are they who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when they insult you and persecute you and utter every kind of evil against you falsely because of me. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward will be great in heaven.”
FAUSTI - The speech is addressed to the "crowds", to humanity oppressed by the evil that comes to Him from the four cardinal points (4,23). The words that follow are the therapy that makes them new men, with the same Wisdom as the Son. God on Sinai revealed the Word. Here the Son manifests Himself, the prototype of every brother, a perfectly accomplished Word. In the background is the anonymous crowd. The disciple is the one who "learns" and comes close to Him to listen to Him and follow Him. He opens His mouth to reveal Himself to us, the Eternal Word of the Father. Jesus is the One who says and is said, the One who speaks, it is the Word itself. The discourse on the mountain is a baptismal catechesis, a breviary of Christian life, the rule of life of the Son. It is the new heart promised by the prophets. In fact, what Jesus says is what He lives, and with His Flesh He communicates to all flesh. His words are not law, but Gospel, they are not noble and difficult needs, but the sublime and beautiful gift that He offers us, making Himself our Brother. Without the gift of His Spirit, the beatitudes are a sublime ideology, The more desperate the more sublime they are. Eight times and one more, Jesus repeats the refrain, because the "judgment" of God, so different from ours, is impressed upon us. His Words have a unique subversive charge: they overturn the world and its values. Jesus congratulates the disadvantaged because they have "the great advantage". God is for them, with them, One of them! The root of Bliss, of course, is not being sick, but the "justice of God". which does not give each one its own, but according to need, privileging those who have less. In Greek it is not written "poor", which indicates one who has little and with pain, unlike the rich, who has so much and without effort. It is written "beggar", which indicates one who is hiding, is indigent, mendicant. The beggar has nothing, not even the dignity of a face to be saved: he lives by gift. Poverty is associated with guilt or lesser value. In the A. Testament, wealth is indeed a gift from God, but poverty is the fault of the rich man, who steals or does not share with his brother. The poor are necessarily humble: he lives on what the other gives him. This is the condition of the Son, who receives everything from the Father, even being Himself. Each of us is what he or she has received. Poverty is the emptiness that all receives: the absolute one receives the Absolute. Poverty in spirit is humility, the first characteristic of love. It is understood by those who have the same feelings that were in Christ Jesus (Phil 2:5-11). God is essentially poor, he possesses nothing. He is all of the Other. His own Being is being of the Son, if He is the Father, being of the Father if He is the Son, being of the Father and of the Son if He is the Spirit. "The first and last beatitudes are in the present, the others in the future. The Kingdom of God is already of the poor and persecuted. But the tension for a different future remains. The plant comes from the seed that has been laid down. No one is under any illusion; each one will reap what he has sown (Gal 6:7); and he who sows in tears will reap with jubilation (Ps 126). Against any triumphal or millennial temptation, the Kingdom is, in the present, always of the poor and the persecuted. The poor are afflicted. It is bad for him. "They shall be consoled" The present of affliction has a different future (Is 61,1). "Consolation" indicates the joy of the new world, in which there will be no more evil.
Dear Brothers and Sisters, Today we have the joy of meeting on the Solemnity of All Saints. This feast day helps us to reflect on the double horizon of humanity, which we symbolically express with the words “earth” and “heaven”: the earth represents the journey of history, heaven eternity, the fullness of life in God. And so this feast day helps us to think about the Church in its dual dimension: the Church journeying in time and the Church that celebrates the never-ending feast, the heavenly Jerusalem. These two dimensions are united by the reality of the “Communion of Saints”: a reality that begins here on earth and that reaches its fulfillment in heaven.
On earth, the Church is the beginning of this mystery of communion that unites humanity, a mystery totally centred on Jesus Christ: it is he who introduced this new dynamic to mankind, a movement that leads towards God and at the same time towards unity, towards peace in its deepest sense. Jesus Christ — says the Gospel of John (11:52) — died “to gather into one the children of God who are scattered abroad”, and his work continues in the Church which is inseparably “one”, “holy” and “catholic”. Being a Christian, being part of the Church means being open to this communion, like a seed that dies in the ground, germinates and sprouts upwards, toward heaven.
The Saints — those proclaimed by the Church and whom we celebrate today and also those known only to God — have lived this dynamic intensely. In each of them, in a very personal way, Christ made himself present, thanks to his Spirit which acts through Scripture and the Sacraments. In fact, being united to Christ, in the Church, does not negate one's personality, but opens it, transforms it with the power of love, and confers on it, already here on earth, an eternal dimension.
In essence, it means being conformed to the image of the Son of God (cf. Rom 8:29), fulfilling the plan of God who created man in his own image and likeness. But this insertion in Christ also opens us — as I said — to communion with all the other members of his Mystical Body which is the Church, a communion that is perfect in “Heaven”, where there is no isolation, no competition or separation. In today’s feast, we have a foretaste of the beauty of this life fully open to the gaze of love of God and neighbour, in which we are sure to reach God in each other and each other in God. With this faith-filled hope we honour all the Saints, and we prepare to commemorate the faithful departed tomorrow. In the Saints we see the victory of love over selfishness and death: we see that following Christ leads to life, eternal life, and gives meaning to the present, every moment that passes, because it is filled with love and hope. Only faith in eternal life makes us truly love history and the present, but without attachment, with the freedom of the pilgrim, who loves the earth because his heart is set on Heaven.
May the Virgin Mary obtain for us the grace to believe firmly in eternal life and feel ourselves in true communion with our deceased loved ones.
Today we are celebrating All Saints, and in the Liturgy the “programmatic” message of Jesus resounds: namely, the Beatitudes (cf. Mt 5:1-12a). They show us the path that leads to the Kingdom of God and to happiness: the path of humility, compassion, meekness, justice and peace. To be a saint is to walk on this road. Let us now focus on two aspects of this way of life. Two aspects that are proper to this saintly way of life: joy and prophecy.
Joy. Jesus begins with the word “Blessed” (Mt 5:3). It is the main proclamation, that of an unprecedented happiness. Beatitude, holiness, is not a life plan made up only of effort and renunciation, but is above all the joyful discovery of being God’s beloved children. And this fills you with joy. It is not a human achievement, it is a gift we receive: we are holy because God, who is the Holy One, comes to dwell in our lives. It is he who gives holiness to us. This is why we are blessed! The joy of the Christian, then, is not a fleeting emotion or a simple human optimism, but the certainty of being able to face every situation under God’s loving gaze, with the courage and strength that come from him. Even in the midst of many tribulations, the saints experienced this joy and bore witness to it. Without joy, faith becomes a rigorous and oppressive exercise, and runs the risk of ailing with sadness. Let us consider this word: ailing with sadness. A desert Father said that sadness is “a worm that burrows into the heart”, which corrodes life (cf. Evagrius Ponticus, The Eight Spirits of Evil, XI). Let us ask ourselves this: are we joyful Christians? Am I a joyful Christian or not? Do we spread joy or are we dull, sad people, with a funeral face? Remember that there is no holiness without joy!
The second aspect: prophecy. The Beatitudes are addressed to the poor, the afflicted, those who hunger for justice. It is a message that goes against the grain. Indeed, the world says that in order to have happiness you must be rich, powerful, always young and strong, and enjoy fame and success. Jesus overturns these criteria and makes a prophetic proclamation — and this is the prophetic dimension of holiness — the true fullness of life is achieved by following Jesus, by putting his Word into practice. And this means another poverty, that is, being poor within, hollowing oneself to make room for God. Those who believe themselves to be rich, successful and secure base everything on themselves and close themselves off from God and their brothers and sisters, whereas those who know that they are poor and not self-sufficient remain open to God and to their neighbour. And they find joy. The Beatitudes, then, are the prophecy of a new humanity, of a new way of living: making oneself small and entrusting oneself to God, instead of prevailing over others; being meek, instead of seeking to impose oneself; practising mercy, instead of thinking only of oneself; committing oneself to justice and peace, instead of promoting injustice and inequality, even by connivance. Holiness is accepting and putting into practice, with God’s help, this prophecy that revolutionises the world. So, we can ask ourselves: do I bear witness to the prophecy of Jesus? Do I express the prophetic spirit I received in Baptism? Or do I conform to the comforts of life and to my own laziness, assuming that everything is fine if it is fine with me? Do I bring to the world the joyful newness of Jesus’ prophecy or the usual complaints about what is wrong? Questions that are good for us to ask ourselves.
May the Holy Virgin give us something of her soul, that blessed soul that joyfully magnified the Lord, who “has put down the mighty from their thrones, and exalted those of low degree” (cf. Lk 1:52).
Solemnity of All Saints
RispondiEliminaLectionary: 667
Reading I
Rv 7:2-4, 9-14
I, John, saw another angel come up from the East,
holding the seal of the living God.
He cried out in a loud voice to the four angels
who were given power to damage the land and the sea,
“Do not damage the land or the sea or the trees
until we put the seal on the foreheads of the servants of our God.”
I heard the number of those who had been marked with the seal,
one hundred and forty-four thousand marked
from every tribe of the children of Israel.
After this I had a vision of a great multitude,
which no one could count,
from every nation, race, people, and tongue.
They stood before the throne and before the Lamb,
wearing white robes and holding palm branches in their hands.
They cried out in a loud voice:
“Salvation comes from our God, who is seated on the throne,
and from the Lamb.”
All the angels stood around the throne
and around the elders and the four living creatures.
They prostrated themselves before the throne,
worshiped God, and exclaimed:
“Amen. Blessing and glory, wisdom and thanksgiving,
honor, power, and might
be to our God forever and ever. Amen.”
Then one of the elders spoke up and said to me,
“Who are these wearing white robes, and where did they come from?”
I said to him, “My lord, you are the one who knows.”
He said to me,
“These are the ones who have survived the time of great distress;
they have washed their robes
and made them white in the Blood of the Lamb.”
Responsorial Psalm
24:1bc-2, 3-4ab, 5-6
R. Lord, this is the people that longs to see your face.
The LORD’s are the earth and its fullness;
the world and those who dwell in it.
For he founded it upon the seas
and established it upon the rivers.
R. Lord, this is the people that longs to see your face.
Who can ascend the mountain of the LORD?
or who may stand in his holy place?
One whose hands are sinless, whose heart is clean,
who desires not what is vain.
R. Lord, this is the people that longs to see your face.
He shall receive a blessing from the LORD,
a reward from God his savior.
Such is the race that seeks him,
that seeks the face of the God of Jacob.
R. Lord, this is the people that longs to see your face.
Reading II
1 Jn 3:1-3
Beloved:
See what love the Father has bestowed on us
that we may be called the children of God.
Yet so we are.
The reason the world does not know us
is that it did not know him.
Beloved, we are God’s children now;
what we shall be has not yet been revealed.
We do know that when it is revealed we shall be like him,
for we shall see him as he is.
Everyone who has this hope based on him makes himself pure,
as he is pure.
Alleluia
Mt 11:28
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened,
and I will give you rest, says the Lord.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
GOSPEL
Mt 5:1-12a
When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain,
and after he had sat down, his disciples came to him.
He began to teach them, saying:
“Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are they who mourn,
for they will be comforted.
Blessed are the meek,
for they will inherit the land.
Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
for they will be satisfied.
Blessed are the merciful,
for they will be shown mercy.
Blessed are the clean of heart,
for they will see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers,
for they will be called children of God.
Blessed are they who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness,
for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are you when they insult you and persecute you
and utter every kind of evil against you falsely because of me.
Rejoice and be glad,
for your reward will be great in heaven.”
FAUSTI - The speech is addressed to the "crowds", to humanity oppressed by the evil that comes to Him from the four cardinal points (4,23). The words that follow are the therapy that makes them new men, with the same Wisdom as the Son. God on Sinai revealed the Word.
RispondiEliminaHere the Son manifests Himself, the prototype of every brother, a perfectly accomplished Word.
In the background is the anonymous crowd.
The disciple is the one who "learns" and comes close to Him to listen to Him and follow Him.
He opens His mouth to reveal Himself to us, the Eternal Word of the Father. Jesus is the One who says and is said, the One who speaks, it is the Word itself.
The discourse on the mountain is a baptismal catechesis, a breviary of Christian life, the rule of life of the Son. It is the new heart promised by the prophets.
In fact, what Jesus says is what He lives, and with His Flesh He communicates to all flesh.
His words are not law, but Gospel, they are not noble and difficult needs, but the sublime and beautiful gift that He offers us, making Himself our Brother.
Without the gift of His Spirit, the beatitudes are a sublime ideology,
The more desperate the more sublime they are.
Eight times and one more, Jesus repeats the refrain, because the "judgment" of God, so different from ours, is impressed upon us. His Words have a unique subversive charge: they overturn the world and its values. Jesus congratulates the disadvantaged because they have "the great advantage". God is for them, with them, One of them!
The root of Bliss, of course, is not being sick, but the "justice of God". which does not give each one its own, but according to need, privileging those who have less.
In Greek it is not written "poor", which indicates one who has little and with pain, unlike the rich, who has so much and without effort. It is written "beggar", which indicates one who is hiding, is indigent, mendicant. The beggar has nothing, not even the dignity of a face to be saved: he lives by gift.
Poverty is associated with guilt or lesser value. In the A. Testament, wealth is indeed a gift from God, but poverty is the fault of the rich man, who steals or does not share with his brother.
The poor are necessarily humble: he lives on what the other gives him.
This is the condition of the Son, who receives everything from the Father, even being Himself.
Each of us is what he or she has received.
Poverty is the emptiness that all receives: the absolute one receives the Absolute.
Poverty in spirit is humility, the first characteristic of love.
It is understood by those who have the same feelings that were in Christ Jesus (Phil 2:5-11).
God is essentially poor, he possesses nothing. He is all of the Other.
His own Being is being of the Son, if He is the Father, being of the Father if He is the Son, being of the Father and of the Son if He is the Spirit.
"The first and last beatitudes are in the present, the others in the future.
The Kingdom of God is already of the poor and persecuted.
But the tension for a different future remains. The plant comes from the seed that has been laid down.
No one is under any illusion; each one will reap what he has sown (Gal 6:7); and he who sows in tears will reap with jubilation (Ps 126).
Against any triumphal or millennial temptation, the Kingdom is, in the present, always of the poor and the persecuted. The poor are afflicted. It is bad for him.
"They shall be consoled"
The present of affliction has a different future (Is 61,1).
"Consolation" indicates the joy of the new world, in which there will be no more evil.
BENEDICT XVI
RispondiEliminaANGELUS 1 November 2012
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
Today we have the joy of meeting on the Solemnity of All Saints. This feast day helps us to reflect on the double horizon of humanity, which we symbolically express with the words “earth” and “heaven”: the earth represents the journey of history, heaven eternity, the fullness of life in God. And so this feast day helps us to think about the Church in its dual dimension: the Church journeying in time and the Church that celebrates the never-ending feast, the heavenly Jerusalem. These two dimensions are united by the reality of the “Communion of Saints”: a reality that begins here on earth and that reaches its fulfillment in heaven.
On earth, the Church is the beginning of this mystery of communion that unites humanity, a mystery totally centred on Jesus Christ: it is he who introduced this new dynamic to mankind, a movement that leads towards God and at the same time towards unity, towards peace in its deepest sense. Jesus Christ — says the Gospel of John (11:52) — died “to gather into one the children of God who are scattered abroad”, and his work continues in the Church which is inseparably “one”, “holy” and “catholic”. Being a Christian, being part of the Church means being open to this communion, like a seed that dies in the ground, germinates and sprouts upwards, toward heaven.
The Saints — those proclaimed by the Church and whom we celebrate today and also those known only to God — have lived this dynamic intensely. In each of them, in a very personal way, Christ made himself present, thanks to his Spirit which acts through Scripture and the Sacraments. In fact, being united to Christ, in the Church, does not negate one's personality, but opens it, transforms it with the power of love, and confers on it, already here on earth, an eternal dimension.
In essence, it means being conformed to the image of the Son of God (cf. Rom 8:29), fulfilling the plan of God who created man in his own image and likeness. But this insertion in Christ also opens us — as I said — to communion with all the other members of his Mystical Body which is the Church, a communion that is perfect in “Heaven”, where there is no isolation, no competition or separation. In today’s feast, we have a foretaste of the beauty of this life fully open to the gaze of love of God and neighbour, in which we are sure to reach God in each other and each other in God. With this faith-filled hope we honour all the Saints, and we prepare to commemorate the faithful departed tomorrow. In the Saints we see the victory of love over selfishness and death: we see that following Christ leads to life, eternal life, and gives meaning to the present, every moment that passes, because it is filled with love and hope. Only faith in eternal life makes us truly love history and the present, but without attachment, with the freedom of the pilgrim, who loves the earth because his heart is set on Heaven.
May the Virgin Mary obtain for us the grace to believe firmly in eternal life and feel ourselves in true communion with our deceased loved ones.
SOLEMNITY OF ALL SAINTS
RispondiEliminaPOPE FRANCIS
ANGELUS 1st November 2021
Dear brothers and sisters, buongiorno!
Today we are celebrating All Saints, and in the Liturgy the “programmatic” message of Jesus resounds: namely, the Beatitudes (cf. Mt 5:1-12a). They show us the path that leads to the Kingdom of God and to happiness: the path of humility, compassion, meekness, justice and peace. To be a saint is to walk on this road. Let us now focus on two aspects of this way of life. Two aspects that are proper to this saintly way of life: joy and prophecy.
Joy. Jesus begins with the word “Blessed” (Mt 5:3). It is the main proclamation, that of an unprecedented happiness. Beatitude, holiness, is not a life plan made up only of effort and renunciation, but is above all the joyful discovery of being God’s beloved children. And this fills you with joy. It is not a human achievement, it is a gift we receive: we are holy because God, who is the Holy One, comes to dwell in our lives. It is he who gives holiness to us. This is why we are blessed! The joy of the Christian, then, is not a fleeting emotion or a simple human optimism, but the certainty of being able to face every situation under God’s loving gaze, with the courage and strength that come from him. Even in the midst of many tribulations, the saints experienced this joy and bore witness to it. Without joy, faith becomes a rigorous and oppressive exercise, and runs the risk of ailing with sadness. Let us consider this word: ailing with sadness. A desert Father said that sadness is “a worm that burrows into the heart”, which corrodes life (cf. Evagrius Ponticus, The Eight Spirits of Evil, XI). Let us ask ourselves this: are we joyful Christians? Am I a joyful Christian or not? Do we spread joy or are we dull, sad people, with a funeral face? Remember that there is no holiness without joy!
The second aspect: prophecy. The Beatitudes are addressed to the poor, the afflicted, those who hunger for justice. It is a message that goes against the grain. Indeed, the world says that in order to have happiness you must be rich, powerful, always young and strong, and enjoy fame and success. Jesus overturns these criteria and makes a prophetic proclamation — and this is the prophetic dimension of holiness — the true fullness of life is achieved by following Jesus, by putting his Word into practice. And this means another poverty, that is, being poor within, hollowing oneself to make room for God. Those who believe themselves to be rich, successful and secure base everything on themselves and close themselves off from God and their brothers and sisters, whereas those who know that they are poor and not self-sufficient remain open to God and to their neighbour. And they find joy. The Beatitudes, then, are the prophecy of a new humanity, of a new way of living: making oneself small and entrusting oneself to God, instead of prevailing over others; being meek, instead of seeking to impose oneself; practising mercy, instead of thinking only of oneself; committing oneself to justice and peace, instead of promoting injustice and inequality, even by connivance. Holiness is accepting and putting into practice, with God’s help, this prophecy that revolutionises the world. So, we can ask ourselves: do I bear witness to the prophecy of Jesus? Do I express the prophetic spirit I received in Baptism? Or do I conform to the comforts of life and to my own laziness, assuming that everything is fine if it is fine with me? Do I bring to the world the joyful newness of Jesus’ prophecy or the usual complaints about what is wrong? Questions that are good for us to ask ourselves.
May the Holy Virgin give us something of her soul, that blessed soul that joyfully magnified the Lord, who “has put down the mighty from their thrones, and exalted those of low degree” (cf. Lk 1:52).