Immaculate Heart of Mary

After the solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus we celebrate Mary's Immaculate Heart. The gospel for this feast is the episode of Young Jesus remaining in the Temple of Jerusalem without telling anything to his parents, Mary and Joseph (Lk 2:41-51).

Here we have the perfect family of the Son of God Incarnate, and this passage shows us that they had the same difficulties of every family: misunderstandings, stress, anxiety ... and a teenager doing his "thing". By the way, Jesus doesn't hesitate to correct his Mother as to who his real Father is. Doesn't He sound like any family with a teenager on board?

The circumstances were so trying that the gospel concludes:

"Jesus' Mother pondered all these things in her heart."

Mary met here, probably for the first time, a Jesus she didn't know yet: the obedient Jesus who had a mind of his own as to Who he would ultimately obey.

Jesus was already attuned with the Inner Voice but this visit to the magnificent Temple of Jerusalem, a first as a young adult Jew, was a very special experience. He got in touch with his calling and his sense of identity in such a powerful way that everything else dropped off his attention, including his parents. Jesus had to respond to that experience and did so by probing his insights in conversation with the teachers of Israel and breaking with the expectations of behavior of a good son.

But then, as it always happens with authentic experiences of encounter with God, Jesus went down to the ordinary and was obedient to Joseph and Mary. He was free to "disobey" them for a greater obedience, but he was free also to obey them again afterwards in humble alignment with the ordinary.

This is no small lesson on freedom and obedience which, with Mary, we too are invited to ponder in our heart in order to be able to live our lives and make decisions with mature fidelity to God first, and then to our elders, in the different aspects of life. Let us ask Mary for the wisdom she learned from Jesus as she was teaching him to live as a human son of God.

God's Love: Meek and Humble of Heart

Father, forgive them for they do not know what they are doing. Lk 23:34

Jesus hardly could speak when he pronounced these words. "They" had nailed him to a cross and were now casting lots on his garments and hurling insults at him. He was dying and very short of breath and yet his concern was on his Father's "pain" in the face of what was happening with him, and with the lack of conscience and consciousness of his executioners. He loved these men as they were, they didn't need to change in order to be loved by Jesus, but his love was the most powerful of invitations to making the choice for love and for the change of behavior.

A few moments later Jesus breathed his last entrusting himself to his Father's hands. That was the end of his living among us but not the end of his giving of himself to us. A soldier pierced his side with a spear and, like in any birthing, messy water and blood came forth together with the new life, the Church. This is the beginning of our birthing into the Christ being in the womb of Love, the Love that we celebrate today on the solemn Feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

Jesus had said, "Who sees me has seen the Father" (John 14:9). Now he was showing us what Love looks like, how God loves, and also what it means for us the invitation "Learn from me because I'm meek and humble of heart".

In St. Paul's Hymn to Love (1Co 13) we learn some beautiful characteristics of Love, but looking now at Jesus we can see that God's Love in a human person is utterly free. Here is where the puzzling mystery of evil and sin become part of the picture as they represent our real choice of saying "no" to Love, to life, and to our existential calling.

What we call the Christian spiritual journey is our life-long gestation of growing into the freedom of this kind of Love, a Love created through God's grace at work with our free choice. It is not an easy journey but knowing the destination may help us get through some of the more trying territories in the way. Because we are to be partakers of God's very being, our transformation is about becoming Love ourselves like Christ and in Christ.

Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ

Pope Benedict is visiting Cyprus. The event is getting attention from the Media as crowds gather and special celebrations mark the importance of this exceptional visit.

It would make world news if the Pope, the Vicar or representative of Christ and the head of the Church on earth, were to visit my humble Hermitage and grant me a private audience. And yet as significant as that would be, it would not be even close to the privilege I enjoy every day of my life: several hours of private audience with Christ Himself, our Risen Lord and Savior, present in the tabernacle of the Hermitage.

Jesus, on the night He was betrayed, handed over to his apostles a divine invention to allow every human being of every time and place to get in direct contact with Him in that decisive moment and event in human history in which all power on heaven and on earth was given to a human being. (Cf. Mt 28:18)

The power of Jesus of Nazareth risen from the dead is so complete, absolute, total, universal, and perfect as is the power of God. This ultimate power is utterly humble and self effacing, self-giving. It is the power of Love, the power of Humility.

In the mystery of God's Humility, Christ gives his real human-divine person in sacrifice of love for us in this invention called the Sacrament of Thanksgiving, the Eucharist. By uniting through faith our intention and willingness to his power at work in the sacrament, we can be part with Christ in his sacrifice, which happened at a given time and place in human history but belongs in the eternal "now" of God. This is the priestly privilege of our Christian baptism.

But the Eucharist is even more. God's Humility made this sacrament the means to God's becoming food for the insatiable hunger of the human soul. A small piece of bread, a wafer, is at the same time the most ordinary and the most extraordinary -and Divine- of things, it is the Body and Blood, the Soul and Divinity of Christ Himself, of God. As any piece of bread, this Bread too is for us to eat, and as we eat the Body of Christ in the form of bread or drink his Blood  in the form of wine they don't become "us" as it happens with any other food or drink we take, but rather it is us who become Christ, not in a figurative but in a real way. This is, par excellence, the sacrament of our Divine transformation. It is here where the power of God is most available to us in our choice to grow and to mature into the full stature of our nature and our calling. It is up to us to unleash in ourselves and in the world the power of this Gift from potential to operative, from invitation to response, from God's desire to our reality.

God is Love. As a Lover, and as a human (and Divine) Lover, there is still more to the Eucharistic invention. The little piece of Bread is also the place of encounter, of Presence, where Christ is with us [Emmanuel = God-with-us] always, even to the end of the Age (Mt 28:20). The tabernacle of our churches, the Eucharistic celebration and communion, the silent adoration before the Monstrance with the Sacrament of Love is the trysting place where we meet the Beloved and are fed into greater hunger and desire. We don't learn this through readings though; we only get this by direct experience.

Let us respond to this and so much more that God has for us in this Mystery of Presence and Union, and as we drink from the Well let us become what we contemplate, let us be living Eucharist for our brothers and sisters. And let's give God THANKS as we rejoice in the Lord, always.

A Faith as Precious as Ours

The first reading at Mass for the Ninth Week in Ordinary Time presents us with the Second Letter of Peter, which starts with this enthusiastic introduction (2 P 1:1-2):

Simon Peter, servant and apostle of Jesus Christ,

to those who have received a faith 

as precious as ours ...

May Grace and Peace be yours in abundance

through the knowledge of God and Our Lord ...

Many years later the passionate fisherman from Galilee is still in awe at the newness and the marvel he found in Jesus of Nazareth, the Rabi who spoke with words of everlasting life. Peter's experience evolved from curiosity to engagement, to commitment, to discipleship, to a whole new self identity, mission, and life that he could never have dreamed of in his most wild dreams.

The Letter continues in verses 3 and 4:

His divine power has granted us everything that leads to life and devotion through the true knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and power. For by these He has granted to us His precious and magnificent promises, so that by them you may become partakers of the divine nature.

This is Peter, the fisherman become first Pope, and what he is saying in a nutshell, what he is offering, what he is inviting others is that which he himself still hardly can fully grasp or find words to speak about. In very few words the Christian faith, the treasure he discovered, is about becoming partakers of the divine nature. Nothing less.

This blog is about our transformation into who we are called to be, partakers of the divine nature, in Christ. I will be reflecting on this core truth of our faith again and again, because it seems to me that somewhere in the twenty centuries of development of Christianity we have -if not lost completely, at least buried the essence of our life under layers of things to do and -too human- goals to achieve.