OUR
NEIGHBOUR –
By
Renato Rosso.
traslated by SHEILA WARREN
The thoughts in the following pages came to me whilst I
was staying in nomad encampments. I felt they could be useful in helping to get
across to my readers something of my life as a vagabond, a ‘priest of the
gypsies’.
I have rubbed shoulders with gypsies since 1964 and lived among them
since 1972. When I was a teenager I often thought about people with leprosy and
I hoped to devote my life to them. Then I realized that, on the outskirts of our
cities, there were also unloved and rejected people who were thought unworthy of
being considered citizens like others.
I realized that, as a Christian,
I had to be at peace with everyone. Later, as a priest, I realized I first had
to make peace with my fellows before breaking the Communion Bread with them. In
my early years at High School, I had managed to make friends with a group of
gypsies, even though by nature they are suspicious of others. This led on in
later years to my decision to spend my life among them. To begin with, their
diffidence and fear of strangers made it difficult to live at peace with them.
However I was determined not to give in and have since devoted my service as a
‘roaming priest’ entirely to these my brethren.
My daily round on weekdays is really made up of little things. I move
from one encampment to another on a light, horse-drawn cart, scarcely weighing
two hundred kilos. On the flat I just let it travel by itself and the only
difficulty is going uphill. Passers-by laugh when they see the large tent on top
of the cart which shields me from rain and snow.
When I reach an encampment, I
leave the cart and pitch a small tent for use as a little church. Inside I place
a Bible, the Communion Bread and Wine and a few cushions, and in winter I add a
lighted candle which gives a touch of warmth. I often celebrate mass by myself
in the evenings, after silently feeling at one in my heart with all the gypsies
in the camp. Then I try to pray as I imagine Jesus might have done. Perhaps
Jesus would have said something like this to His Father:
‘Father, I know that You
long for these brothers and sisters of Mine to ask for
Your forgiveness, praising and
thanking You as they should, but they won’t do this –it’s just not their
way. So Father I ask for forgiveness in their stead, praising You for them and
thanking You in their place.’
So alone in my little tent, I try
to pray my own prayer for them, saying something like this:
‘Lord, I ask for forgiveness
for me and for these my brethren,, for all our mistakes among the caravans
(I
often list them); I praise and thank You in
their name; I offer You my life and their lives, in the name of these brethren
who don’t know they have a Father, a Daddy, in heaven Who can forgive them and
welcome them, together with their sufferings and joys.’
Even
in the early years my presence among the nomads had taken on a definite role. To
begin with I had resolved to stay with the gypsies in order to pray and talk
about God, trying to pass on to them the hope the Lord had given me. In actual
fact even from the outset I had to spend most of my time in social activities,
dealing with hygiene, schooling and helping them solve their everyday problems.
I lived out, and am still living out, the Parable of the Good Samaritan. I went
among them hoping to show them the way towards Jerusalem, but in fact I have
often had to carry them on my shoulders and take them to the inn which is all
too near to Jericho.
Have I taken the wrong path? I don’t think so, because loving service
to the poor and sick is announcing the Gospel. And by so doing, I have become
aware that the Gospel message given to the needy is a two-way process. Often
they themselves show us the Gospel truths by their suffering, solidarity and the
hope they nurse in their hearts in spite of the conflicting situations they have
to face. Therefore the telling of the Good News can really mean something to
them and should be done in a tangible way that is akin to their life-style.
Jesus Christ is my sole point of reference. The gypsies have shown that
they understand this and realise that my being with them is for the sake of the
Love of Christ and is a living demonstration that they, too, are loved by God,
the God Who Loves all people – the God Who makes His
sun to rise on the evil and on the good’ (Matthew
5, 45) and is also ‘kind
to the ungrateful’ (Luke 6, 35),
as Jesus tells us.
I have spoken in these pages about God’s great Lovingkindness. This
book is my ‘travelling companion’ where I have recorded Bible passages read
with friends and texts from the Christian tradition that identify our meeting
with Christ in the Holy Communion (Eucharist) with our meeting with Christ in
our fellows (in fact the Holy Fathers saw our fellows as our second Eucharist).
This brief publication is humbly offered as a possible celebration for
people of all cultures, with Bible readings, notes for reflection and
indications of Christian standards. Its overall message is that the body and
blood of each and every person should be regarded as the Body and Blood of
Christ. As the Word of God tells us, ‘Truly
I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren you did it
to Me’ (Matthew
25, 40).
We
would do well to reflect on this mystery.
Renato
Rosso.
TRANSLATOR’S
NOTE.
The Bibles used for reference
include:
The Revised Standard Version;
The Good News Bible; The King James Version.
FIRST READING (Genesis 1, 24-27).
‘Then God commanded, “Let the
earth produce all kinds of animal life: domestic and wild, large and small –
and it was done. So God made them all , and He was pleased with what He saw.
Then God said, “We will make human beings; they will be like Us and resemble
Us. They will have power over the fish, the birds and all animals, domestic and
wild, large and small.” So God created human beings, making them to be like
Himself.
RESPONSIVE PSALM (8,3-9)
Refrain:
What
are human beings, that You think of them?
‘When I look at the sky, which
You have made,
at the moon and the stars, which
You set in their places –
what are
human beings, that You think of them;
mere mortals, that You care
for them?
Refrain.
Yet You made them inferior only
to Yourself;
You crowned them with glory and
honour.
You appointed them rulers over
everything You
made.
Refrain.
You placed them over all
creation:
Sheep
and cattle, and the wild animals too;
the
beards and the fishes
And
the creatures in the seas.
Refrain.
O Lord, our Lord,
Your greatness is seen in all the world!’
Refrain.
SECOND
READING (1 Corinthians 6, 14-15a & 19-20; 12, 27)
‘And God raised the Lord and will also raise us up
by His power. Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ?.....
Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you,
which you have from God? You are not your own; you were bought with a price. So
glorify God in your body..... Now you are the body of Christ and individually
members of it.’
Hallelujah!
He who receives you receives
Me and he who receives Me
receives
Him who sent Me.
(Matthew 10, 40)
Hallelujah!
(Matthew
25, 31-40)
‘When the Son of Man comes
in His glory, and all the angels with Him, He will sit on His glorious throne.
Before Him will be gathered all the nations and He will separate them one from
another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and He will place the
sheep at His right hand but the goats at the left. Then the King will say to
those at His right Hand, “Come, O blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom
prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave
Me food, I was thirsty and you gave Me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed
Me, I was naked and You clothed Me, I was sick and you visited Me, I was in
prison and you came to Me.” Then the righteous will answer Him, “Lord, when
did we see You hungry and feed You, or thirsty and give You drink? And when did
we see You a stranger and welcome You, or naked and clothe You? And when did we
see You sick or in prison and visit You?”. And the King will answer them, “Truly,
I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it
to Me.”
Jesus took the bread and wine, and blessed them, and gave them to His
disciples, saying “This is My Body... This
is My Blood... Do this in remembrance of Me.”
(cf. Matthew 26, 26-28; Mark 14, 22-24; Luke 22, 17-19).
Jesus
‘had wanted so much to eat’ the Passover meal with his friends (Luke
22, 15) and be able to give a sign of His Presence to those He was leaving – a
sign that would remain throughout the centuries until His coming again at the
end of time. In this way, Jesus gave us the Eucharist or Holy Communion, before
which we may kneel and adore the Body and Blood of Christ Who said He would be
present in that sign.
During my very first celebration of the Holy Communion, after taking the
bread and wine and saying the Words, ‘This is
My Body... This is My Blood...’, I became
distracted and the thought came to me: ‘Is this all?’. Everything seemed
suddenly so banal at the moment when I was nearest to the altar of offering.
I was momentarily nonplussed even though I had not expected to feel a
great mystical emotion.
Jesus scandalizes us and isn’t afraid to shake our faith. We are left
puzzled by this sign of bread and wine, but even more so by the mystery of the
other Eucharist which is our neighbour, in
whose body and blood we recognize Christ. This is the most compromising
Eucharist for Jesus Himself and the most disconcerting for us. Matthew in his
Gospel (25, 31-46) gives us one of the most revolutionary discourses of Jesus.
In the final judgment at the end of time, the Lord will separate the good from
the bad and will say to the good, “Come, O
blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation
of the world; for I was hungry and you gave Me food, I was thirsty and you gave
Me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed Me, I was naked and you clothed Me,
I was sick and you visited Me, I was in prison and you came to Me.” Then the
righteous will answer Him, “Lord, when did we see You hungry and feed You, or
thirsty and give You drink? And when did we see You a stranger and welcome You,
or naked and clothe You? And when did we see You sick or in prison and visit
You?” And the King will answer them, “Truly,
I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren,
you did it to Me.”
(Matthew
25, 34-40)
Yes,
that was the moment when Jesus stretched out His Hands to all the world’s poor
– the sick, the sinners, the whole wide world – and pronounced the words of
consecration: “This is My Body, this is My
Blood; everything you do for them you do in memory of Me.”
or “Because
all you do to them, you do to Me”.
( Matthew 26, 26 & 28; Matthew 25,
40)
TRANSLATOR’S NOTE
The Synoptic Gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke, all speak of the First
Eucharist, celebrated by Jesus at the Last Supper. The Fourth Gospel however,
that of St. John, was written later. It was written after a growing in-depth
understanding of the life of Jesus over a long period of time, illuminated by
the Holy Spirit. In his account of the Last Supper, John chose not to mention
the First Eucharist, concentrating rather on the ‘Second Eucharist’ as seen
in the washing of the disciples’ feet by our Lord. (John 13, 1-17)
People
often talk about God as if they had seen Him. It would be like saying we had
seen the sun when we saw the reflection of the sun’s rays on a pearly dewdrop
on a blade of grass. But people who walk with their heads to the ground can
never see the sun.
It’s true that some, called theologians, are considered to know a lot
about God. They know about His Life, virtues and miracles, they know when He was
born, when He lived and when He died. They have mapped out an exact identikit.
Well, if someone gave us that identikit, we wouldn’t need others to tell us it
was lacking. No-one has seen God the Father except His Son, Jesus, and He has
told us of the Father. But there is a difference between having heard of someone
and knowing everything about that person. We can imagine something, perhaps when
glimpsing a clearing in the darkness of the night, and thinking of a luminous
source, but actually seeing the light source is another thing. We are told that
it is impossible to see the Light of God’s Countenance and remain alive. Moses
on the mountain was afraid to move towards the burning fire as it was the Light
of God (see Exodus 3, 2-6).
And so the question remains:
‘What is God really like?’
A
young lad has just left the alienating world of drug addiction and, as I write,
he is still taking his first steps in the faith. One night he was talking to me
about suffering, injustice and poverty, about the stars, about hope, faith and
God. At a certain point a smile appeared on his face and the shining depths of
his eyes were translated into words as he said, ‘God, oh yes of course, this
God must be really great!’ One could tell from his expression it was the most
fabulous thing he could imagine. We continued our talk and he asked me again,
‘But who is He really? Can you tell me something more?’ I could find nothing
better than a simple Biblical reply, ‘God is a wonderful man’; in fact the
Bible says ‘God created man in His own
image and likeness.’ There followed another
question, ‘Who is man then?’. Here I found it easier to answer: ‘Man is
God covered with the dust of the earth. Take away the dust and there remains
only the spirit of God, the same spirit that God had put into the dust.’
However that may be, we nearly always see only the dust of the earth and
so we are unable to believe that God has put Himself, His own Spirit, into that
dust. Jesus Christ has confirmed
all this but it remains too great a mystery for us, that God should make Himself
flesh and blood in Adam, in each one of us and that in Jesus Christ He achieved
the full perfection of this incarnation. ‘He
communicated Himself entirely to us’, said
St. Gregory of Nazianzus, ‘All that He was
became wholly ours. We are from all points of view similar to Him. We carry in
ourselves the Image of God, by Whom and for Whom we have been created. The
physionomy and imprint which we have is of God. And so only He can recognise us
for what we are. Thus the differences and physical and social distinctions
between people are of secondary importance. So we can say that there is no
longer male or female, nor barbarian nor Scythian, nor slave nor free...’ (cf.
Colossians 3, 11 and Galatians 3, 28)
In a moment of great courage and mystical intuition, St. John wrote that ‘Whoever
loves is a child of God and knows God’
(1 John 4, 7) and also ‘God
is Love and those who live in love live in union with God and God lives in union
with them’ (1
John 4, 16). St. John realised that only in
loving others, are we truly children of God. However we can understand little of
this – and only in flashes do we see things more clearly.
As we read in John’s First Letter, ‘My
dear friends, we are now God’s children, but it is not yet clear what we shall
become. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like Him because we
shall see Him as He really is.’
‘I am the Living Bread which came down
from heaven’ (John 6, 51).
I hear these words from the heart of a scantily-clad gypsy child, playing beside
the refuse dump. Two other children are playing with stones, drawing a line and
trying to get as near to it as possible so as to win points. The smaller boy,
Lolo, knows he won’t win anyway as he’s not as good as Rushdo but
even if a little sad at losing, he is still enjoying himself. A lad of
about ten arrives on the same patch of ground and starts throwing punches
because his brother
hasn’t been allowed to play.
‘I am the Living Bread which came down
from heaven.’ These words seem to come from
that direction.
I read the same words in the depths of gypsy B. who has had T.B. and
is now relegated to living
‘outside the gates’ of her clan. Relatives and former friends go to
visit her, exchange a few words and then leave. Her world has become small and
time has become eclipsed into those few moments of meeting; they have become
moments of suffering more than relief.
It
is three o’clock in the morning and the night has passed as usual for a
twenty-two-year-old: nine years of tragedy behind him and four years of
searching for happiness - but only searching. He is taking off his ear-rings,
his wig and his women’s clothes in an attic. He gets into bed. His friend is
already asleep. He wakes him up. The solitude is unbearable.... ‘I
am the Living Bread which came down from heaven’
are words that echo and re-echo in those surroundings. What is in the heart of
that lad? I don’t know. And if I don’t know it’s because I haven’t the
courage to ask him – and if I haven’t this courage, it means I don’t love
him enough.
And from the other side of the market we hear: ‘Sir, buy this, or maybe
this. Look – it’s not like the others: the price is exceptional, it’s the
last one – I’ll give you a discount. It’ll last a lifetime I can assure
you. Everyone’s happy with it.’ Here again I seem to hear the words: ‘I
am the Living Bread which came down from heaven’.
At
the station, at the old people’s home, at the poor people’s lunch, at Porta
Palazzo... In the in the suburbs,
on the outskirts of the city, in the council houses, in the lurid smell of the
attics and cellars with their psychedelic lighting, half-way between festivity
and desperation - ‘I
am the Living Bread which came down from heaven’ is
an undetected Presence here, too.
The
following are strong words from the pen of St. John Chrysostom: ‘Do
you want to honour the Body of Christ? Don’t allow it to be despised in its
poorer members. Don’t honour Him
here in church with silken drapes while you ignore Him outside, suffering from
cold and nakedness. He who said, “This
is My Body” confirming it by His Word, also said, “I
was hungry and you gave Me no food” ( Matthew 25, 42) and “
as you did it not to one of the least of these you did it not to Me.”
(Matthew 25, 45).’
The same saint
also said, ‘The Body of Christ on the altar
has no need of drapings but pure souls, while those outside have much need of
help. Let us learn, then, to think of Christ and honour Him as He so desires. In
fact the most welcome honour we can give to Him Whom we want to honour is what
He Himself desires, not that decided by us.’
What
would we do if through our window we saw five children crying with hunger? Would
we be able to eat our meals in peace? Well, there are the most devastating
situations in the whole world just five hours’ journey from where I am now
writing (Turin, Italy). Christ cries out but goes unheard. The price of a
bottle of whisky can heal a leper, yet there still exist millions of lepers
without sufficient medical treatment. In my district here in Italy there are
some who defend the rights of developing countries whilst at the same time
writing to the mayor asking to rid the district of ‘those unbearable gypsies’.
We are living out great contradictions and yet we continue to call ourselves
Christians.
St. Chrysostom also said, ‘What gain
can Christ have if the table of sacrifice is full of gold vases while He then
dies of hunger in the person of the poor? First satisfy the hungry soul and only
then lay what remains on the altar. Would you offer Him a gold chalice and not
give Him a glass of water? Why drape the altar with golden drappings if you don’t
offer Him the clothes He needs? What help is it to Him? Tell me – if you saw a
person with nothing to eat and adorned his table with gold but didn’t give him
food, do you think he would thank you? Wouldn’t he rather be furious with you?
And if you saw someone in rags and freezing with cold and you set up golden
pillars in his honour without clothing him, don’t you think he’d feel
ridiculed and insulted? I think the same
about Christ, when He comes as a wandering pilgrim without a roof over His Head.
You refuse to welcome Him as a pilgrim whereas you adorn the floors, walls and
pillars of your holy place. You fix silver chains on the lampshades but don’t
go to visit Him in chains in prison. In saying this, I don’t want you not to
obtain holy drapes and decorations but I urge you, together with these things,
to give the necessary help to the poor – or rather, do the latter first and
then the former. No-one has ever been convicted for not having helped to
decorate the temple but the one who neglects his poor brother is destined to the
fire of hell and supper with the demons. Therefore while you are adorning your
place of worship, don’t shut your eyes to your suffering brother. He is a
living temple, far more precious than that of stone.’
At this point we can ask ourselves if anyone is left out of the miracle
of this Consecration, as Jesus Himself spoke of the little ones, the smallest
ones, the poor ones. And the question would remain whether a single person could
be missed out of this category of being small, of being poor. For who is not
poor? Who has never sinned and
needs no forgiveness? Some will be so poor as to lack faith, to be unaware that
there is a God to praise, to thank, to ask for forgiveness, a God we can turn to
at all times, in anguish and in joy.
The human condition is essentially one of poverty. This truth reveals
that the proclamation of Jesus regarding the ‘little ones’ really embraces
everyone. This means believing in hope, hoping that His Love is for all. ‘I
trust in the Lord’ not in myself, my merits, my faith – which may be
strong enough to move mountains or uncertain and weak enough to be quenched. No!
I trust in the Lord ... ‘and in His
Word I hope... for with the Lord is steadfast Love... and with Him is plenteous
redemption.’ (Psalm
130 [129])
As I cannot predict the future, it may be that I will become a rebel, a
murderer or a poor man suffering violence from others; I may start swearing at
my God or forget about Him completely. But whatever happens I am convinced that
my Lord will neither forget me nor cease to love me. Like the Father of the
Prodigal Son, He will watch out for me lovingly every day that passes.
Another thought comes to me. If one of us here on earth lacks the courage
to rise up like the Prodigal Son and go to ask the Father for forgiveness, when
we finally find ourselves face to face with Him, we will be bound to fall on our
knees and say, ‘Father, I have sinned against You and my brethren.’ And if
the Lord replied, ‘It’s late – too late,’ I would not give up but would
continue to plead with Him, saying with the Psalmist, ‘I
cry unto You from the depths, Lord, hear my cry...
I hope in the Lord, my soul hopes...’
(Psalm 130 [129],1-2 and 5)
The most important thing is not that we love God but that He loves us.
Our love for Him is weak and vascillating – today it’s strong, tomorrow it
savours of rejection. By contrast, the Love of God is eternal. ‘The
saying is sure: If we have died with Him, we shall also live with Him; if we
endure, we shall also reign with Him; if we deny Him, He also will deny us; if
we are faithless, He remains faithful – for He cannot deny Himself.’ (2 Timothy 2, 11-13) ‘The
property of the Lord is always to have mercy.’
HE
GAVE EVERYONE THE SAME COIN
A week ago I recognized ‘Jesus’ as I saw a drunken 30 year-old,
beating his wife in an encampment on the outskirts of a town in the Veneto
Region of Italy. The next day I recognized Him in a seven-year-old who took a stone and threw it at his mother with all his might.
Two evenings ago, the same ‘Jesus’ in a twenty-year-old, arrived in a stolen
car with a caravan. He was very worked up in case the police appeared on the
scene. I wonder if I should call them ‘Jesus’, the One Who did no wrong.
Well, it’s true He is without sin but He dwells in the heart and soul of all
these our brethren. It is not He Who sins but He chose to take sin upon Himself,
to become responsible for all this. He knew that only He would be able to obtain
forgiveness and He came before the Father with Hands and Feet nailed to a cross
in Love.
Evil abounds and creates havoc but it has already been overcome. One day
a friend said to me in all confidence, ‘So you think you can save yourself
without good works?’. I replied that I didn’t presume I could save myself
without good works but I counted on being saved by the merits of Jesus Christ.
And at the end, on the Day of Judgment, there will be scenes like this. The
Judge will ask, ‘Who placed those bombs
in the square, killing so many people?’.
Someone will raise their hand and say, ‘Daddy,
forgive me, it was me – I lost my head.’ And
when the Judge asks, ‘Who started that war?’, someone will perhaps
say, ‘Forgive me, Daddy, it was me –
I lost my head.’ And Jesus will raise His
Hand for me, for you, for all who had ‘lost their heads’; but then others
will realise and confess in a loud voice and with the repentant thief on the
cross have the strength to cry out, ‘Lord,
remember me...’. Then
there will arise for time and eternity the triumphant Hallelujah Chorus as the
Lord remembers and forgives each and every one.
It is clear that Christ’s victory over sin covers the history of all
humanity, embracing both past and future – the first and last voluntary
actions of human beings. If I wanted to analyse this mystery in order to
understand it fully, I would find that all the pages of rationalists and mystics
put together would not suffice. Perhaps even the pages of the Gospels would not
be sufficient as we cannot hope to delve into their depths completely and
penetrate them fully. Jesus explained things simply, speaking of the wheat and
the weeds. The weeds, or sin, have no future and are burnt. The wheat, or
goodness, remains. If we think we can understand completely, we are in danger of
feeling superior and of judging others.
We don’t really know what happened on that tree where our brother Judas
hanged himself or what happened in the hearts of the great dictators and
oppressors in history, or what was triggered off in the spirits of ruthless
exterminators. But one thing is certain: the Consecration of Jesus did not
exclude any of these poor creatures, our brethren. And we may be sure of another
thing too: we should not reckon ourselves better than them. Moreover when we are
before the Father on the Day of Judgment, we’ll see that everyone receives the
same coin: St. Peter, Pope John, Judas Iscariot, St. Catherine, Pontius Pilate
and Caiphus, and ourselves as well. But why all the same coin? In Jesus’
parable of the Labourers in the Vineyard, those who had agreed on a price for a
day’s work discovered that those hired near the end of the day were paid the
same amount. Like those who had worked a full day, we will probably say, ‘But
that’s not fair!’ And
if the Father replies, ‘What are you lacking?’,
we will have to answer, ‘Nothing.
We’re not lacking anything but why have they got the same?’.
We need to understand more fully the Grace of the Master – only He
knows all the obstacles that different people have to face in life, some more
and some less, enabling some to live seemingly better lives than others.
Heredity, background, opportunities, wrong teaching – only He knows it all.
We must admit that we are tempted to judge the Heart of God by our own
limited standards, which fall short of His Perfect Love. It’s disconcerting
but we should remember that we do not love as the Father Loves. Or rather, we
often prefer not to know because it’s too demanding of us. He Who Loves so
completely, however, says:
The
infinite righteousness of God remains a mystery for many. Countless brethren on
reading the Gospel references to hell, eternal damnation and gnashing of teeth,
are tempted to think, ‘Let’s toe the line, otherwise we could find ourselves
in trouble.’ Let us be patient as we read these words, though I dare to think
that those who don’t ‘toe the line’ would not perhaps meet with a Father
Who had such dark cellars that it would be impossible for them to join Him in
the celestial spheres.
The truth is that righteousness and lovingkindness are infinite
characteristics of God – a righteousness which is infinitely loving and kind
and a lovingkindness which is infinitely righteous.
Certainly we cannot and must
not cancel out those inconvenient lines of Scripture I mentioned previously and
not even, ‘Depart from Me, you cursed, into
the eternal fire...’ (Matthew 25, 41).
The key to the reading of
these words was revealed in something that happened to me recently.
A young lad left home for four months, went on drugs and became poorly in
health. On the suggestion that he returned home, he replied aggressively, ‘I’d
rather die.’ Then he decided that perhaps it would in fact be better to go
home. I went with him so that he wouldn’t be alone in facing his father. He
got very worked up on nearing home, ‘I tell you, I’d rather die. I know what
he’s like, he’ll start shouting and I can’t stand that!’. And he was
right. In fact the father’s first words were extremely harsh: ‘Ah, there you
are – you needn’t come in!’..... though he left the door open. ‘Well you
can get lost – I don’t want to look you in the face again!’ he continued,
getting more and more agitated. The lad started shaking (and I admit I did,
too). Every so often we tried to interrupt but it was useless. In the meantime
the father lit the gas and put some milk on the boil, pouring coffee into two
cups. As his ranting and raving continued, my friend turned to the door and
said, ‘O.K. I’m going.’ ‘Now sit down, stupid! What’ll you do outside
at this hour?’, was the reply.
Then he took a tin of fruit salad and opened it. He made us sit down,
still uttering threats, ‘It’s as if you didn’t exist. You’ve struck me
to the core!’. Then he arranged the chairs for supper, still saying that he
wouldn’t give his son so much as a crust of bread, not even if he was starving
to death. After this, he lit a cigarette and sat down with us. Taking from his
wallet a photograph of his dead wife, he put it in front of the lad. ‘You don’t
remember anyone! Of course, you’re as hard as nails.’ Silence followed.....
.
Then
at last, ‘And where have you come from now?’. At this point it became
possible to relax a little and I realised the father wasn’t a bad man. My
young friend rinsed out the cups while the
father took out a pack of cards and we started playing. I can’t even
remember whether I won or lost but it was so wonderful to be playing – it was
like a scene from a novel, too good to be true. My friend deserved to be sent
away for good but to be welcomed back was the logical consequence of Love’s
Redeeming Grace. It taught me a lot about the seeming ‘eternal damnation’ of
sinners in the Bible and the everlasting Mercy and Lovingkindness of our
Heavenly Father.
The
episode just mentioned is an example of human behaviour which helps us begin to
understand something of the deeper mystery of God. But what do we really know of
the Lovingkindness of God and how He regards the sinner He Loves? Well this
question brings to mind a true story about which a Russian priest, Archimandrite
Spirodone, was a witness. A confession took place in the penal baths in Siberia
before the Communist revolution. One of the prisoners, a wealthy man, married
but without children, had been very much in love with his wife. A meeting with a
bishop led to his conversion to prayer and he even recited the Lord’s Prayer
during his sleep. As he confessed to Archimandrite Spirodone, ‘On reaching
home one evening I found my wife lying on the floor stabbed to death and beside
her a man friend who had always been in love with her. He had wanted to marry
her but she didn’t love him and had always refused him. I was horrified at the
bloody scene. The murderer threw himself at my feet and begged for mercy. At
that moment I could have killed him but I remembered Christ’s Words and said, “Go
and don’t do this again.” Then I went to
the police and said that I had killed my wife. I was tried and sent to
prison.... . A person was then murdered in the prison and I also took the blame
for this. As a result I am being sent for hard labour.’ Even though we may
question his not telling the truth, we can see a ‘very faint’ resemblance in
his taking the blame for another’s wrongdoings to Christ’s taking the blame
for our wrongdoings. Let us hear from our prisoner again: ‘You know, Father,
God is my witness as to how deeply I love my fellow prisoners. They are all like
our Holy Father’s angels and Christ will surely save them. On the Day of
Judgment, He will say to all of them, “My
prisoners, My suffering ones, My little brothers, come unto Me! I’ve prepared
a special place for you in My Father’s House, constructed from your sufferings
and burning tears and you will shine like the sun in the Kingdom of your
Heavenly Father!” Father, I want to love
everyone, I want to forgive all people and suffer in eternity for one and
all....’
There
was another man, also rich and condemned unjustly. He had spent his money on
saving prostitutes. One day he was wrongly accused of murdering one of them and
was sent to prison. With the help of an aunt, he continued to help them even
from his prison cell. His thoughts on the matter are similar to those of the
first man quoted: ‘You know, dear
Father, there is no-one more worthy of the pity and compassion of God and all
mankind than these unhappy girls. If I have had to suffer, I sincerely thank our
Lord for being able to have suffered for them. Dear Father, there is nothing
more painful, no-one more needy of Christian charity in action than these
desolate women. I am forever convinced that they are suffering martyrs and
forgiven by Christ. You don’t know how often they go hungry and have neither
blouse nor skirt; most of them are orphans, forced onto the streets by
desperation or by a stepmother; they sell their bodies and also their souls for
a piece of bread. If you see some who are vulgar, uncouth and scathingly
cynical, you may be sure that they are like this because they see all men as
tyrants, savage beasts who suffocate them with their passions. But if only you
knew how many of them are sweet and humble, meekly accepting their cruel destiny
and going to the slaughter like poor little lambs.’
Let
us hear again the words of Archimandrite Spirodone from his experience among
those condemned to hard labour, many of whom had committed the most horrendous
crimes: ‘After entering this world and when I had succeeded in loving one of
them enough to sacrifice myself for him, I heard him open out his heart to me
and let me search in all the hidden corners of his life. And
I have to say, from my
experience in the ministry, that this world of criminals has many more ideals,
more morality and even more faith than us, who are free citizens of a free
society. I have had contact with about 25,000 people. I have often listened to
their confessions, given them Holy Communion, persuaded them with exhortations
to change their way of life and become true sons and daughters of the Gospel.
And among them I have discovered exceptional people.’
(From ‘My Missions in Siberia’ by A Spiridone – Gribaudi
Publishers).
St. Maximus of Turin offers us another word of encouragement. He said in
a sermon:
‘The Resurrection of Christ
opens up hell. The novices of the Church repopulate the earth. The Holy Spirit
uncovers the heavens. The gates of hell give up its dead. The renewed earth
flourishes again with its risen ones. Even the thief enters into Paradise while
the bodies of the saints make their entry into the Holy City. The dead rejoin
the living. All things are elevated to higher dignity in virtue of the
Resurrection of Christ. Hell gives back to Paradise all it had kept prisoner.
The earth sends to heaven what was hidden in its depths. Heaven presents to the
Lord all who dwell therein. By virtue of the one and only Passion of the Lord,
the soul rises from the depths, is liberated from the earth and finds its place
in the heavens.’
WHOEVER
BELIEVES WILL BE SAVED
My profound and heartfelt prayer is this: ‘Lord, I believe that in the
end, we will all be given the same coin, those who have worked more and those
who have worked less, those who have loved much, like Mary Magdalene, and those
who have loved little, like the delinquent crucified with You. But Lord, if for
any reason there should be two worlds in eternity, one for the good and one for
the bad, I ask You, Lord, to be with the bad, simply because I’m not good and
because I’m sure You’ll be with the bad ones and that’s enough for me.
In fact when You were here on earth You came for us bad ones and not for
the good ones, for us who were lost and unwell, and at the end it will still be
like that, because Your Gospel doesn’t change. As You have said, ‘I
came not to call the righteous but sinners’ (RSV)
or as the Good News Bible puts it, ‘I
have not come to call respectable people but outcasts.’
After having thought and said these things, I want to shout out before my
Lord:
‘Behold,
I am of small account;
what
shall I answer You?
I
lay my hand on my mouth.
I
have spoken once, and I will not answer;
Twice,
but I will proceed no further.’ (RSV)
(Job
40, 4-5)
Or
as we read in the Good News Bible:
‘I
spoke foolishly, Lord.
What
can I answer?
I
will not try to say anything else.
I
have already said more than I should.’
(Job
40, 4-5)
St. Augustine commented thus on the Ascension of the Lord: ‘Christ has
become exalted above the heavens but He suffers all the tribulations that we
endure here on earth as Members of His Body. He assured us of this when He cried
out, ‘Saul, Saul, why are you
persecuting Me’ (Acts
9, 4). And also, ‘I
was hungry and you fed Me, thirsty and you gave Me drink’ (Matthew
25, 35).
The saint later added, ‘.....
we are in Him in a similar way, because He is the Son of man for us and we are
the sons and daughters of God because of Him.’
In all things we are ‘all one in Christ
Jesus’ (Galatians 3, 28),
in suffering and joy, in persecution, in temptation and in failure. It’s
difficult to understand how a human countenance can reflect that of the Lord,
especially when the countenance is distorted by wrongdoing. But God is not
discouraged and continues to transform us.
‘All
of us, then, reflect the glory of the Lord with uncovered faces; and that same
glory, coming from the Lord, Who is the Spirit, transforms us into His likeness
in an ever greater degree of glory.’
(2 Corinthians 3, 18)
St.
Hilary said that God is in us and we are in Him, as what we are is found in Him
A Pope, St. Clement 1st, said, ‘All that we are in mind,
body and spirit, we remain in Jesus Christ.’ After this, he recommended taking
care of one another, each according to his/her gifts, helping the weak and the
strong, the poor and the rich, the wise, the humble and the chaste. Moreover the
Holy Fathers climbed further into the heights by telling us to regard this our
body as the Body of Christ.
St.
Peter Chrysologus uttered the following in a sermon: ‘
“So then, my friends, by the mercies of God, I appeal to you...” (Romans
12, 1). Here it was Paul asking the Roman
communities, or rather God was asking them through Paul; as God wants to be more
loved than feared, He asked them through someone they loved. God wants to be
thought of not so much as Lord but as Father. The Lord asks out of
Lovingkindness, not wanting to suggest punishment. It is as if the Lord were
saying to the Roman communities: “See Me in
and through your beloved Paul”. We remember
that St. Martin as a young soldier gave half his cloak to a naked beggar in whom
he was led to recognize Christ, and soon afterwards the saint was baptized. St.
Irenaeus commented on St. Paul’s words with clarity and conviction, saying, ‘We
are members of His Body, His Flesh and Blood’
(Ephesians 5, 30) and he added, ‘These
things were not said of an invisible spiritual
man – in fact a spirit doesn’t have flesh or bones (Luke
24, 39) – but of a real man with flesh, nerves
and bones.’
It
is true that these reflections of the Holy Fathers were directed mainly at
Christians, the converted ones, those ‘branches
attached to the vine’,
the ‘sheep of the single flock’. Nevertheless St. Augustine goes a
step further, even though as rigid in some ways as the other Fathers. He said,
‘Whether one considers the lost sheep far from the flock or the branches cut
off from the vine, God is powerful enough to lead the lost sheep home and
replace the cut branches on the vine. He is the Supreme Shepherd, the True
Keeper of the Vineyard.’ The same
Saint commented on Ezekiel 34, saying that ‘the sheep are safe’ because ‘the
Lord is alive.’ ‘And you are My
sheep, the sheep of My pasture, and I am your God, says the Lord God.’
(Ezekiel
34, 31)
I was once asked to celebrate Christmas Mass and before the start I had
time to put a heap of straw at the foot of the lesson stand. When beginning the
mass, I assured the congregation that this straw was there for a purpose. After
the Gospel lesson I was able to comment on the reading, following the custom of
evangelists of giving a reflection on the birth of Jesus rather than an
analysis. I, too, was able to do this and the straw served for the following
talk to the children:
‘A
person entering the church might be upset by the fact that the front of the
church is so little decorated but that was my intention. I’m sorry if I’ve
offended anyone. In fact I wanted to cover those tiles with dung instead of
straw. Are you surprised? We should remember that Jesus was born in a stable –
a real stable with real animals and real dung. It was only a stable and nothing
else. We’ve made that stable into a lovely grotto of papier-maché with a
little nativity hut and lights that go on and off. We’ve made the simple cave
into beautiful dwellings cut out of plywood, of multicoloured plaster, even of
sugar and chocolate. How lovely is our little grotto of Baby Jesus! What an
attractive nativity scene we have in our homes at Christmas - and if it snows
with its cold and dung. But that cave was where Jesus was born, not in those
dwellings carved out and painted by artists or described by poets.
And
do you know, boys and girls, why Jesus was born there? Because with all the
goodwill in the world, Mary and Joseph were unable to find a better place; they
were poor and, as you know boys and girls, nobody wants poor people. If when you
go home this evening a woman rings your doorbell because she is suffering from
sudden pains – perhaps a baby is about to be born – what would happen in
your home? Well, the first thought would be to call an ambulance, not only to
solve her problem but perhaps more to set your minds at rest. If it were like
this, Jesus would certainly not be born in your home. Some may think this is
just a made-up story. Well, a few days ago I found a mother in hospital and she
said, “I was overcome by very strong pains, I was sweating and couldn’t go
on any longer. I was ashamed to ring on a door-bell but in the end I did. A man
came to open the door and was about to close it again when I fell at his feet in
the doorway. His wife then appeared and they were both annoyed. They immediately
rang for an ambulance and left me outside to wait – but then I was fairly wet
and dirty.” How different things would have been if she had been invited
inside, if that other mother who had knowledge of birth pains had reassured her
with kind words. How different if, after ringing the hospital, that mother had
gone with her in the ambulance and waited outside the delivery room, so that
there was someone to rejoice with the woman at the birth of her baby.
What
can we say then? In such cases Jesus will be born elsewhere and will leave us
with our nativity scenes, our Christmas trees with coloured lights and our cakes
with sugar angels, and we’ll be happy but without the Christ Child, because if
there’s no place for the poor in our homes then there’s no place for Jesus
either.’
Someone
may think this is just a made-up story. Well, a few days ago I found a mother in
hospital and she said, ‘I was overcome by very strong labour pains. I was
sweating and couldn’t go on any longer. I was ashamed to ring on a door-bell
but in the end I did. A man came to open the door and was about to close it
again when I fell at his feet in the doorway. His wife then arrived and they
were both annoyed. They immediately rang for an ambulance and left me outside to
wait – but then, I was fairly wet and dirty.’
How different things would have been if she had been invited inside, if
that other woman, probably a mother who knew about birth pains, had reassured
her with kind words. How different if, after ringing the hospital, that mother
had gone with her in the ambulance and waited outside the delivery room so that
there was someone to rejoice with the woman at the birth of her baby.
What can we say then? In such cases, Jesus will be born elsewhere and
will leave us with our nativity scenes, our Christmas trees with coloured lights
and our cakes with sugar angels, and we will be happy all together but without
the Christ Child – because if in our homes there is no place for the poor then
there is no place for Jesus either.
GOD
LOVES THOSE WHO LOVE THE POOR
An encounter with our neighbour always poses certain questions. And if
the person we meet is poor and needy, that person should galvanise us into
action just like a convincing sermon, because we find ourselves facing the
Almighty. Serving the needy is serving God.
St. Vincent de Paul wrote the following text, which I call his ‘hymn of
charity’:
‘We should not measure our
attitude towards the poor by external appearances or by interior qualities. We
should rather consider them in the light of faith. The Son of God chose to be
poor and to be represented by the poor. During His Passion He hardly appeared a
man; the Gentiles thought Him crazy; He was a stumbling stone for the Jews; and
yet He called Himself the evangelizer of the poor:
“He has chosen Me to bring Good News to the poor”.’ (Luke 4, 18). We must make
these sentiments our own and do as Jesus did – look after the poor, comfort
them, help them and encourage them. He Himself chose to be born poor, to live
among the poor, to serve the poor, to put Himself in the place of the poor, so
much so that the good or bad things done to the poor would be
seen as those done to His Own
Divine Person.
God loves the poor and because of this
He loves those who love the
poor. In actual fact when we love someone greatly, we also love their friends
and followers. So we have reason to believe that because of God’s Love for the
poor, He will also love those who help the poor. When we as Christians visit the
needy, we try to understand them and share their sufferings, following the
example of the apostle Paul who said: ‘I
become all things to all people...’ (1
Corinthians 9, 22).
So then let us try to become
more sensitive to the sufferings and hardships of our neighbour. Let us pray for
God’s grace, that it might fill us with the spirit of lovingkindness and
compassion, and that this spirit might remain with us. Helping the poor must be
in the forefront of our service and there must be no delays. If you take
medicine to someone or help a needy person during the hour of adoration in
church, then do it without any qualms. Offer your service to God, uniting it
with the intention of adoration. Don’t worry and fret or think you have done
wrong if you leave aside adoration in this way. It is not ‘leaving God’ if
you substitute adoration for ‘His Will’, that is if you leave worship of God
for action on behalf of God. Charity surpasses all the rules and everything must
revolve around it. It is an all-encompassing Power and we must follow its
leading.
We may be led to think, ‘How hard it is to understand our God – a God
Who becomes man like many others, an unfortunate baby in the straw of a stable
in Bethlehem, a God made man Who dies on a cross like many others. In an attempt
to make our God too commonplace some of us have made Him into an idol, which
is always acceptable whatever that idol may be.
We have built up a god to our liking, one who is compassionate without
being just, who has risen but did not die, who is a king but not a poor baby on
the straw or a man on Calvary’s cross, a god who grants blessings but is not
demanding, who forgives without asking for us to change. Furthermore our god has
become a distant god up there in heaven who cannot interfere with our earthly
goings-on.
Yesterday I passed in front of an elderly gypsy lady as I was going into
church. I didn’t know her but saw she was numb with cold as she sat selling
flowers. I felt I was exempt from buying her flowers as I also had little money.
I said to myself, ‘I can hardly solve
the problem of all the poor old ladies in Turin – there must be thousands.’
So I went into the church to pray to my God; I was
sure I was in the right, or tried to think so. I spoke to God in the tabernacle
and then answered myself, convinced it was He Who was speaking. I said I was
right about things, respecting all logic and
thinking it was He Who was saying
this.
It’s really good to have a silent god, under lock and key, that
symbolises only this: ‘2000 years ago
they put Me on a cross, like so many others.’
What a likeable god who doesn’t say anything
unpleasant about us. But I can understand that He doesn’t speak because we don’t
give Him the chance as we continue speaking and are afraid of silence. If there
were silence in our hearts we would find that God would really speak and tell us
what we often don’t want to hear.
Yesterday in church I was pleased to be in the company of my God and I
protected myself well from listening to that God Who was outside the church in
the form of the lady who perhaps had never spoken His Name. I had truly
attempted to justify my behaviour by reasoning like someone with his feet on the
ground and not swayed by passing emotions. However I was unable to stay long in
that church. At a certain point I realised that I wasn’t making contact with
God; He was not there for me and I could never find Him there, no matter how
hard I searched. And so I decided to leave. I went out and bought the loveliest
flower the old lady had. It was a rose and that rose was for me a foretaste of
Easter. I entered the church again and the Risen Lord Jesus was there waiting
for me. I went to confess, asking
for forgiveness, and that flower became my Communion with God and my fellows,
the bread broken with the real Jesus outside the church.
However there is a long way to go from a single religious experience
where Christ points His Finger at us to a really deep understanding of this
Crucified Jesus and always being able to see Him where He is, instead of
searching for Him in other places. Perhaps many will continue as before, some
speaking, some listening, some writing and some reading, but continuing to run
away while Jesus waits to speak and ask them to decide for Him. It costs a lot
to follow the path of our real God. In fact the path of Jesus leads us to
Calvary, among the poor and needy, among the lowest and the outcasts, among the
gypsies and the slum dwellers. It passes among the rich as well; in fact it
passes in our own homes and hearts, opening them out towards others. He causes
us to die to ourselves but brings about our glorious resurrection: this is our
hope and our faith, experienced step by step as we follow Him.
What
good is it if we love only those who love us? Even non-believers do the same. It’s
not difficult to recognise Christ in a saintly person but it is Christianity
lived out to recognise Him in someone who dislikes us. We can’t belong fully
to the Church of Christ if we can’t make peace with all and sundry. I
sometimes hear people say, ‘Christ yes, but the Church no!’ How can
we accept the Christ of the Gospels and of history and our faith, and not accept
Christ present in the brothers and sisters of our community?
I undertook a pathway of faith with a young man who had had experience of
drugs and loneliness before passing to one of friendship and faith. He took his
Confirmation in Turin when 19 years old and wrote a summary of his walk in life.
He explained why he chose the Catholic Church and why he felt he was
compromising with it. The resulting texts are an expression of courageous faith.
The following is his announcement
of the Communion ceremony:
‘Today I’ll receive my
Confirmation. I’d have liked a ‘cathedral’ of mountains and glaciers and a
sunrise on the horizon. I’d like to have been on a different footing, in a
field of poppies and mimosas with sunlight, waterfalls and skylarks, staring up
into the sky and blinded by the sun to receive the great gift of the Spirit.
When I was blind I wanted You to do something great. I wanted to hear Your Voice
echoing from the rocky heights and onto the flowers in the sunshine, mixed with
the song of the skylark. Instead of this, You spat on the ground, made some mud
with your saliva and placed it on my eyes so that everyone could understand Your
simple and seemingly mundane signs.
Dear Lord, today I’m in an ordinary church with simple, disconcerting
symbols, to receive
You, the God of the universe.
Come Oh Holy Spirit, I am here waiting to embrace You with open arms and empty
hands.’
The following letter was written and signed by this lad on the day of his
Confirmation:
‘To my Friend.
Lord, I need to find a community where I can feel part of the Church that
You wanted, so that You could be present, as You have said: “Where two or
three are gathered together in My Name, there am I in the midst of them.” I
believe what You believe but in so doing Iought
to feel no higher than others. But
when I find myself near a mother who lights a candle in front of an icon I’m
tempted to laugh and think: “What a childish faith!”. I’m tempted to
remain standing when I see someone kneeling in front of the Tabernacle of Bread
and Wine. Lord, You tell us: “Blessed are those who will not be scandalized
by Me.” I’m often scandalized but I want to say this: I’m not above
others, I’m one of them. I need signs and sacraments like You have provided
for us, because of our weakness.
Lord,
what is Your sign in the Eucharist (Holy Communion)? In what way are You present
in the bread and the wine? Lord, I believe all You wanted to say. You said: “This
is My Body, this is My Blood”. I believe in Your Presence but I don’t
know in exactly what way. I think of what You said and believe You are present,
that You are there in that sign. Lord, You did not take a stone or a flower and
say, “This is My Body, this is My Blood” but You took bread and wine. I don’t
kneel before a stone or flower that can only speak to me of You, but I kneel
before consecrated bread and wine, because You said You are present there. In
the same way I can kneel before a sleeping child or before one who has just
committed a crime, because Your Presence, Lord, is also within them.
Lord, accept my prayer even if
I sometimes kneel before emptiness because I’m afraid of the mud over my eyes
if I look You in the Face - but make me see You here in the mud as well. Lord,
open my eyes and show me the Way I must go (because there is part of You in
every community even though You have chosen one in particular for me). I hear someone praying trivial prayers that go on and on and
am tempted to think, “No, I prefer to pray silently to the Father, in spirit
and in truth”. Lord, sometimes I’m tempted to say, “Thank you that I’m
not like others, superficial, commonplace, credulous.” Lord Jesus, these
temptations are stumbling blocks as I’m no better than others and want to be
one with my brothers and sisters. At times I feel humiliated when I enter a
church and would like my prayers to be so pure that I would no longer need to
resort to words.
When
You were asked, “Where should we worship God, on Mount Gerizim or in
Jerusalem?” You replied, “The day will come when you will worship the
Father in spirit and in truth.” Lord, it’s true that You withdrew to the
mountain to pray but You also went to the imperfect synagogue and temple while
waiting for the great time of trial. Lord, I’m not afraid to compromise if You
did the same. Lord, I want to call myself a Christian, I’d like a church full
of saints where I can feel proud to belong; instead all the church communities
contain sinners. On the other hand, if I found a church full of sinless people,
I wouldn’t be able to join them as I’m a sinner. You, O Christ , are in all
Christian churches but also in the communities that don’t recognize You and in
the people who don’t belong to any religion. I’d like a pure church, perhaps
disincarnate so as not to create scandal with the sumptuous robes of bishops and
churches preciously decorated with gold and silver.
O
Lord, it’s true I want a sinless spiritual church and not a worldly church,
because I want to face others with a clear conscience (even if I’m a sinner)
and instead You are suggesting an ‘earthly domain’. And so belonging to the
Catholic Church I’ll always witness with an unclean conscience, with a dirtied
identity card, even when I myself feel clean. Lord, I am part of this church,
called the Universal Catholic Church, called Apostolic because it has retained
its links from the first apostles to the latest bishop, from St. Peter to the
latest pope. But what a dismal scenario! If my identity card bears the name of a
Catholic Christian, this card will be blemished by a thousand misdoings. There
will be the wrongdoings of bishops and popes who lived more like princes than
shepherds, there will be the marks of the inquisition where thousands were
sentenced to death in the Name of Christ. My card is weighed down by all this,
as well as by the abuses of every Catholic who has obtained power in order to
tread down and emarginate others.
I
am fearful of such a blemished Catholic identity vard. But I find encouragement
in knowing that Your Identity Card, Lord Jesus, was the most soiled of all. You
let all the wrongdoings of humanity, including myself, fall upon it to tarnish
it. You appeared before the Father to ask for forgiveness and so I will do the
same. But I believe the Catholic Church I’ve chosen is wonderful because You
are there and You are Wonderful. It is holy because You are Holy. It is
believable because You are Believable. O Lord, I thank the Protestant Church
that made it possible for me to start on a pathway of faith in You and thank the
Catholic Church where my faith matured and with Your help I have made the
Catholic faith my own – not all is clear, many things are still to be
clarified and many will be better understood by my brothers and sisters in the
faith as we walk the pathway together. But the Spirit of Jesus will lead us on
to the Truth of Ages. Many things will remain a mystery until I see Him face to
Face.
Lord,
pray with me and let us say together:
“I
believe in God the Father Almighty,
Maker
of heaven and earth,
And
in Jesus Christ His only Son, our Lord,
Who
was conceived by the Holy Spirit,
Born
of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was
crucified, dead and buried;
He
descended into hell.
The
third day He rose again from the dead according to the Scriptures;
He
ascended into heaven and sits on the right hand of God the Father Almighty.
From
there He will come to judge the living and the dead.
I
believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy Catholic Church,
The
communion of Saints, the forgiveness of sins,
The
resurrection of the body
And
the Life everlasting. Amen”.’
Turin,
14th May, 1978.
Our
attitude towards our brethren should be one of veneration, as if they were our
Lord in the Eucharist Sacrament. The Psalmist asks, ‘What are human beings,
that You think of them? Mere mortals that You care for them? To which the
reply is, ‘You made them inferior only to Yourself; You crowned them with
glory and honour, You appointed them rulers over everything You made...’
(Psalm 8, 4-6).
The
same night that Jesus instituted the Eucharist of Bread and Wine, He indicated
clearly to His disciples what kind of action this Eucharist should lead to. He
was at supper with the disciples on the eve of Pentecost. And what did He do?
Knowing the time had come for Him to pass from this world to His Father, knowing
He had loved His own to the end, knowing the Father had put all things into His
Hands, and knowing that He came from God and was now returning to Him... He
stood up, laid aside His cloak, took a towel, put water in a bowl and started to
wash His disciples’ feet. These words from St. John’s Gospel, chapter 13,
leave us puzzled to say the least. Jesus, God made man, on a cross – almost
impossible. But to see Him kneeling in front of His disciples is just as
unbelievable. Furthermore, to think that Jesus washed the feet of him who would
flee from fear shortly after, of him who would betray Him, of Him who would deny
Him, swearing he didn’t know Him – well, it leaves us speechless. He washed
the good and the bad. In fact, at that very moment He said, ‘You
are not all pure.’
Jesus did
not refuse even that betrayer but washed his feet as well and said, ‘If
I, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet , you must also wash each other’s
feet.’ (John 13, 14).
St.
Cyril of Alexandria made this comment on St. Paul’s letter to the Romans:
‘We should all share the
same feelings. If one member suffers, all members should suffer and if one
member is honoured then all members should rejoice. So welcome one another as
Christ has welcomed you, for the Glory of God
(Romans
15, 7). We enjoy one another’s company if we try to have the same
sentiments, bearing each other’s burdens, eager to maintain “the unity of
the Spirit in the bond of peace” (Ephesians 4, 3). God has also welcomed us in Christ in the
same way. In fact we read that “God so loved the world that He gave His only
begotten Son” for us (John 3, 16).
Christ was sacrificed for the
lives of all and we have all passed from death to life and redeemed from sin and
death’.
The
cry echoes again: ‘What are human beings that
You think on them?’ (Psalm
8). These words often remind me of a legend
concerning the ancient Greek hero, Ulysses. His life was filled with a series of
exploits, often victorious, and with numerous adventures amid suffering and
glory. He was often fraught with anguish, knowing he was only mortal, of dust
and ashes, and would return to the earth like all men. This thought was common
to his fellow-countrymen at that time. He often prayed to the gods, those
fortunate ones who lived forever on Mount Olympus. One day a messenger came to
him from Olympus and said, ‘The gods have
decided to let you join them because of all your great exploits. You, too, will
feed on ambrosia (the elexir of life) and
live in eternity.’
Can you imagine how Ulysses must have felt? Now this is just a legend but
the Christ I believe in really came down to earth announcing that ‘Olympus’
is possible for all people, that Eternal Life is in the Kingdom of God, and that
God’s Kingdom is within us (see
Luke 17, 21).
How is it possible – this is the mystery of Love! St. Cyril of
Alexandria said in his commentary on St. John’s writings: ‘We
are no longer called just “people” but “sons and daughters of God” and
celestial people. That is, we are made participants of the Divine Nature. We are
one with the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, regarding the identity of condition,
the cohesion in love, the communion with the Holy Body of Christ and the working
of theone and only Holy Spirit.’ And
St. Paul still cries out today: ‘Be always
humble, gentle and patient. Show your love by being tolerant with one another.
Do your best to preserve the unity which the Spirit gives by means of the peace
that binds you together. There is one body and one Spirit, just as there is one
hope to which God has called you. There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism;
there is one God and Father of all people,Who is Lord of all, works through all,
and is in all.’ (Ephesians 4, 2-6).
HE
TOOK A CHILD AND PLACED HIM IN THE MIDST OF THEM
Original sin is the sin of all people and has marred every individual
from the start, when humanity first began to err. If we say ‘in the
beginning’ there was no sin in humanity we are right in the sense that a
sleeping baby emerging according to the Will of God reflects this Divine beauty.
The beauty of the baby who grows and becomes a teenager undergoes the same
transformation as a buried seed which opens and reappears from death to a new
life and thus a new beauty. The baby’s beauty is lost and it is up to the life
which follows to recover it. And this will be a beauty built up by God and
people together, a divinely incarnate beauty, a Word of God made flesh with the
freedom to accept God. But during the period of growing and trying, people often
fail and the beauty of the new-born baby becomes the weight of the suffering
adult. Because of this it is often hard to recognise the work of God in the
conscience and freedom of a human life.
I think of that girl I saw waiting for clients at the exit of the
motorway. Perhaps she’d been waiting for a long time; she looked tired – and
what of her beauty? And that lad I went to visit in the minors’ prison a few
days ago; what of his beauty? Jesus came for the sick and not for the healthy
(see Luke 5, 32). He said so Himself so He will certainly be thinking of that
girl, of that boy and of millions of young and old like them. It’s true that I’m
captivated by the beauty of a saint but I feel
more attracted by the partial beauty of those others. Perhaps there is
never a free, conscious and total refusal to God in any human heart but if it
exists then these people are the first to be affronted by Christ, using all God’s
Power to convince them to change their ways. If this is to no avail, then Christ
will substitute for them before the Father, having received the punishment, the
cross and the curse of death, accepted once and for all for everybody so that
there may be their resurrection.
I believe Jesus came for the sick, that He died for them and also for us.
I believe I can be saved by Him. I believe in Life, that Life that Jesus earned
for us. Because of this, if there exist people,
young or old, whose heart responds with free, conscious and total refusal to God’s
Love, sinners deserving eternal death, then it is to those people I must go. I
must love them and tell them I love them and that after God I love them more
than any other creature in the world. How I’d long to have the courage to go
to someone who had exterminated millions of people and be able to say: ‘Dear
friend, all the world hates you and is cursing you but I am on your side because
God is still on your side. I’m not on the side of your wrong-doings but on
your side because you are still a man and God is still on the side of men.’
I would love to tell him this to help him realise
that Love exists, that someone loves him, that he is still able to love and can
still believe in God, a God Who is greater than all his sins. I would like to
love him because he, too, made the Son of God come down on earth. Jesus did this
kind of thing and it is in His Strength that we can also do it.
There are people with seemingly insatiable hearts, seeking freedom at all
costs and following desires leading to folly and destruction. But what of the
depths of their beings? Here at the root of human desire is the straining
towards God, towards life and towards goodness. We need
to read again the faces of the
people around us without judging or condemning them, as this would actually be
condemning ourselves.
Considering the inward desires of people, we can reckon their thirst for
‘true living’ to be already a sign of goodness. Indeed violence itself could
be considered as ‘good’ when it seeks to rectify what appears to be bad.
Even the morally lax could be said to share in goodness by way of their
friendships and communion with others. We would do well to reflect again on the
words of St. Dionysius the Areopagite: ‘Those
lax in morals take part in the world’s goodness despite their irrational
desires. There remains within them an echo of communion and friendship. Even
anger has its place in goodness through its very dynamism whereby it seeks to
better things that seem bad and to bring them to a more acceptable state.
Likewise the person who wants only the worst in life, just to live in the way he
thinks best for himself – he also has a part in goodness by means of that same
desire to live out his life to the full.’
We
are in danger of being blinded here in the Western world by computer science and
cultural deformation. There is a tendency to become scientific calculators and
moralists in our interpretation of the deep things of life. Such is the
situation that if asked how to interpret the love in people, some are tempted to
think it is where the ‘identikit’ finds a response. It may be for this
reason that we sometimes find little love in people –they have become blind to
its reality.
A
girl is filled with the joy of living – can we not call this inexplicable
thing by the name of love? A teenager or young man, aged by sad happenings,
gazes longingly at a passing girl, turning to watch her in the distance, struck
by an erotic desire – what name would you give to that gaze? The homosexual’s
love is a desperate search for the joy of living – he is closer to God than
the Levite who, while jealously practising the Law of Moses, ignores the man
attacked by robbers (Luke 10, 30-32). That girl who continues her painful
passionate procedure on the streets, living out new experiences but finding only
the deviation of Light – there, too, can still exist love.
St.
John Climacus tells us: ‘I have seen creatures
bound by insatiable carnal passions who have opened themselves out to the Love
of the Creator, overcoming all fear of servitude. In like manner Christ did not
focus on the sins of the repentant woman sinner but rather on the fact that she
had loved much...’ (Luke
7, 47).
The
image of God is present in every person existing in that all people love and
respect their own life (and continue to do this, unless instability creeps in).
It is certain that people have not been created just to find out about love,
which can involve a somewhat tortuous pathway. The end of that
pathway is the realisation of Love Itself, the directing of self towards
the Almighty. The initial love, sometimes frustrated, has the possibility of
becoming fruitful with the discovery that only God can satisfy the heart and the
yearning for enjoyment, and with
the discovery of the need to relate passion to the Infinite.
The
atrocities of sin could destroy the whole universe and penetrate the depths of
every human creature; however they are unable to destroy God Who dwells within
every human being and they cannot desecrate the ‘second Eucharist’,
that is, the true Christ dwelling within each person. No-one on earth is
excluded from an encounter with God although of course, like all others, they
have to take off their sandals when drawing near and cover their faces in awe
and adoration.
These
writings would be incomplete without mentioning the experience of a friend who,
like many others, decided to live a ‘life of liberation’. Before getting
married, he decided to wander in the desert, ‘following
the cloud and the fire’, so
as to be close to God and not remain alone as he left adolescence. In their ‘song
of songs’, his future wife and he agreed to prepare themselves by letting
their love mature without consuming it before marrying. This is not the attitude
of those who want to rationalise love and measure it in a test-tube. Love cannot
be short-circuited.
The
truth is that purity and fasting facilitate compassion, respect and veneration,
which prevent our soul from becoming opaque. The inner beauty of Christ is still
present in the soul that follows another way, but this figure of Christ loses
its transparency. This is why I think that the nuptial bliss of these friends of
mine enabled the fullness of life to become part of them in their personal
encounter. This gives rise to the possibility of truly ‘free love’,
immersion into the mystery of the human person enabling immersion into the
mystery of God. Here, too, the Song of Songs terminates and Holy Communion
(Eucharist) begins. ‘This is My Body,
this is My Blood’ –
the consecration of this ‘second Eucharist’ or ‘Human Holy Communion’
becomes a reality. It is offered on the cross of everyday life and continually
remodelled by the Love that never fails.
Continuing
our thoughts on people in love, let us turn in our imagination to the young men
and girls there at the side of the lake who are listening to the Master. He
might address them in this way:
‘Whoever wants to follow
Me, let him come. If you are prepared to leave home, family and friends for Me,
then come. If you feel able to begin on a pathway without turning back, then let’s
go. You should know that the foxes have their lairs and the birds of the air
have their nests but I have nowhere to lay my Head. If you trust Me, you can
come and I’ll send you as lambs in the midst of wolves and without shoes or
rucksack. If you have possessions then sell them, give the money to the poor and
follow Me. Is anyone willing? If there is, then please raise your hand.’ Yes,
there is someone – one, two, three..... many. We see love in the embracing of
a young couple, in kisses exchanged between a boy and a girl, but what of those
who direct their steps towards the shore and smile without embracing anyone?
This is also the mystery of Love, a witness that Someone Invisible exists. It is
the profession of faith in a deeper Holy Communion, where there exists
neither
body nor blood, neither bread nor wine, but only Christ Himself.
Maybe, dear friend, we find ourseves isolated in a monastery cell, in a
prison cell or in the middle of a desert and we are all alone. It could be the
ultimate consequence of our decisions and actions which lead us to isolation
before death. Perhaps we are unable to communicate with a loved one who could
represent for us the Face of Christ. Perhaps we can adore Christ only
in a fragment of bread such as Jesus distributed to His followers. Maybe
there remains for us only a glimpse of the sky that filters into our cell, a ray
of that sun which rises on the good and the bad. Or perhaps this is also taken
from us and all that remains is the ground on which we stand. If this is so, we
still have the possibility of universal communion. Let me try to explain.
Maybe there remains something else – the voice of the slaughterers
approaching our cell, the sound of the steps of the last person to visit us
before we are alone forever. Yes,
it could be nothing more than the sound of steps which is the sign before which
we can focus our adoration and gather within ourselves
communion with every creature in the world. As we realise that the sky is
the same sky for everyone, the sun is the same sun and the earth is the same
earth, then we will understand that we are not alone. The very iron bars enable
us to enter into communion with millions of miners who have extracted that metal
so that they and their families could survive. They link up with the others who
have laboured to make that metal into iron bars or chains for us. This is linked
to a mystery, the mystery of the one who builds up and the one who breaks down.
The remedy for the breaking down is often with chains (either tangible or
intangible) so that someone pays
the price – but among the ones who pay the price there are also those who
believe in the Mystery of the Cross and allow themselves to be enchained. These
people enter into our cell, so to speak, and break our chains by means of their
own freedom.
I
HAD HEARD ABOUT YOU BUT NOW MY EYES SEE YOU
One
afternoon I had an exchange of views about faith with a man who gave me a lift.
He maintained that he didn’t believe in God and in the end I said he was
right. The God he denied was the one he had heard about and seen demonstrations
of and is not the true God. I couldn’t tell him in words about the God I
believe in. The only One able to talk about Him is Jesus Himself but the man
couldn’t spare the time to stop and listen to Him. ‘So
continue on your way,’ I
told him, ‘but immerse yourself in the people
of today, supporting their battles, in empathy with their desperation and
anxieties, and continue to love and show solidarity with the victims of
injustice, the exploited, those who seek freedom. You can become an ally of God
if committed in this way. Perhaps later on He will tell you His Name or perhaps
He will remain anonymous.However you are sure to meet Him one day and He may say
to you, “Have you been on My side?” and you will reply, “When?”. He will
say, “Every time you have been on the side of one of the least of your
fellows, you have been on My side”. If you answered, “Lord, I’ve heard
people talk about You but I didn’t want to believe in You”, then
I imagine God’s reply might be, “Your fellows spoke to you of the God
they believed in and you spoke to them of the God you didn’t believe in, but
why didn’t you both think of the God Who believed in you? It was I”.’
LOVE
AND THE FIGHT FOR RIGHTEOUSNESS
Do we have to worship every person because God is in each and every one
of us? With regard to kneeling before the consecrated bread in my little church
– is this to be likened to kneeling before one who is convicted as a criminal?
I feel it is the same thing. The same Christ is on the altar and in that
unrecognisable state within the person who has committed crimes. Yes, Christ is
still there, truly alive and to be worshipped. If a piece of consecrated bread
falls to the ground in the mud, it becomes unrecognisable
but is still consecrated. I can still kneel before it because the soiled
appearance does not destroy God.
But the question arises: ‘If Christ is
present in the poor and needy, in prisoners, and in the same way is present in
the rich and powerful, what is the use of the struggles of suppressed working
classes against the powers that be?’ I think
we can and must fight in similar situations and not let thoughts about God’s
Presence in everyone act as a passive tranquillizer. The oppressed, the
outcasts, the slaves – they can all find the pathway to liberation through
fighting for their rights. But it is important that they fight in the correct
way, without hatred for those they are fighting against. Class struggle does not
mean class hatred. One thing is certain and that is we should not hate anyone if
we are reflecting the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
When Jesus went up to the Temple and overturned the tables of the
moneychangers and made a whip to drive out the animals ( John 2, 15 ) and when
He cried out to those who were hard of heart, ‘You
are like whitewashed tombs’ (Matthew 23, 27) ‘You
snakes and children of snakes’ (Matthew 23, 32 ),
in none of these situations did He hate anyone, He always loved. He said and did
those things in love and for righteousness to prevail. If Jesus had hated those
people He would not have been coherent in His Life and teaching. From the Cross,
He prayed for his murderers, ‘Father, forgive
them for they don’t know what they are doing’
(Luke 23, 34).
By reflecting on His Words and Actions, we learn to hate the sin but not the
sinner.
Therefore
we can take up battle against those who oppress, even though they have Christ
within them. Here perhaps we can imagine that the Christ within them is
enchained by their selfishness and wrongdoing. In battling against these
oppressors, we can loosen the chains and liberate the Christ within them, so
that they have the chance to change into loving people. And in battling, we have
to bear in mind this possible outcome so that we can fight lovingly.
One
can of course choose the path of non-violence and pay the price with one’s own
life but if one’s conscience stirs one to struggle, it can never ask one to be
unloving. And what if such struggling evolves into armed combat? What authority
do we have to kill a person? Even if we kill in self-defence, someone else dies.
God alone has authority over life and death and if He wishes, He Himself can
remove the oppressor. How can our God entrust men with the task of killing, when
He has given us the Commandment, ‘Do not kill’ ? However, maybe our
conscience , perhaps distorted by events, asks us to take part in armed combat
to protect the defenceless. Even so, we have no right to bear hatred. Will we
need to discover how to kill while loving, something requiring superhuman force
but seemingly necessary if we are to act as Christians? These things need
pondering over.
Here are some lines of a letter I wrote to a friend who left Italy for
South America, determined to fight for his people at all costs, even through
armed intervention:
And every so often, in order
to realise fully what you are doing, face towards the ‘other side’ beyond
no-man’s land, and continue your worship.This will enable your conscience to
be transformed, refined by Pentecost fire rather than by the fire of the
opposing side.’
A philosophy of life and a new light on anthropology are offered with
these few notes. They can perhaps lead to greater commitment:
‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart’. You
will find the heart of God in your neighbour and in yourself
as you contemplate the God of mankind iin silence, and you will see the
true countenance of your neighbour. It is not enough to pray on the train, at
the station, walking along the street and waiting in the queue, in order to
reach this understanding. We must close ourselves in our own room in secret and
for a long time.
Every day I must bow before
that piece of bread, broken as a sign of His Presence, so that my heart can
reflect in timeless freedom on the Creator of history. I must celebrate Holy
Communion, offering, thanking, praising, asking and singing Christian hymns,
either alone or in company. If I do not, I’ll end up by no longer recognising
this Christ of the streets, of the world, of dust. Christ will become ever more
just an idea, a fleeting thought, if I neglect silent prayer and worship, a ‘meditation
in the desert’ before the altar of my church. I will finish up by believing
only in the world if I consider only and always that aspect of reality.
PRAYER
THE
EUCHARIST OF OUR NEIGHBOUR
As
it was warm on 26th November there was no problem about spending the
night in Zagabria Station. I wasn’t very tired as I’d slept on the train. I
opened my breviary (priest’s book of daily meditation) for the evening prayer.
I was sitting near a Wukomerec gypsy who was rather drunk. He was sitting
slumped forward on the seat with his head down. I knew him only by sight. He
looked at me, mumbled something and fell asleep again. I still hadn’t
celebrated mass and had no bread or wine, only tea in my thermos.
There were a lot of men and women in that big waiting room. Many were
absorbed in their thoughts; they didn’t look at anyone and didn’t want to be
looked at. There was this ‘Second Eucharist’ (through Christ dwelling in
all people) in front of me, in
the form of the body and blood of all these brothers and sisters. I could have
immersed myself in the adoration of God but I would have missed the celebration
of the real ‘Holy Communion’, the ‘Second Eucharist’ of my brethren. I
sat in front of the gypsy and tried silently to achieve inner peace and quiet
before saying the evening prayer.
It was Thursday and the reading was Psalm 16 [15]
PSALM
16
(Translation
from Good News Version)
You,
Lord, are all I have
And
You give me all I need;
my
future is in Your Hands. (verse 5)
(I
continued to look at the gypsy in front of me. My Lord was there. He was all I
needed).
How
wonderful are Your Gifts to me;
How
good they are! (verse 6)
(The
Lord Himself was a Gift to me in the form of the brother in front of me;
I
was rapt for a moment in adoration).
I
praise the Lord because He guides me
And
in the night my conscience warns me. (verse 7)
(I
thought of that very night).
I
am always aware of the Lord’s Presence.
He
is near and nothing can shake me. (verse 8)
(The
Lord was there before me,
within
that man, and I felt safe).
You
will show me the path that leads to life;
Your
Presence fills me with joy
and
brings me pleasure forever. (verse 11)
(That
evening He showed me the path of life more clearly.
It
was the Joy of His Living Presence in that man before me).
I completed the evening
prayers. It was now the moment for the celebration of Mass with the Eucharist
(Holy Communion). I began the
celebration in front of the unleavened Bread and Wine as represented by that
gypsy, the Second Eucharist. I read the readings: Genesis chapter 1, part of 1
Corinthians and Matthew chapter 25. After reflecting for a while, I continued
with the offering, saying these words:
Blessed
be the Lord, God of the universe,
From
Whose Bounty we have received this gift of a human body;
It
is among the greatest of Your gifts, fruit of the earth, of suffering and of
joy,
And
above all of Your Love.
We
present it to You that it may become for us what it already is for You,
‘communion
of salvation’.
May
each of us be able to recognise this.
Blessed
be the Lord throughout all ages.
Then I turned to the silent
assembly, who had not noticed what I was doing, and shouted in my heart:
Pray,
brothers and sisters,
That
our sacrifice might be acceptable to God the Father Almighty.
There was silence, except for
the clinking of a few bottles. Some people came in while others went out. The
reply came from within myself:
May
the Lord receive from your hands this living holy sacrifice
For
our good and for the good of all His Holy Church,
The
Church of all people and of all peoples.
The
Lord be with you.
And
with your spirit.
Let
us lift up our hearts.
They
are lifted up towards the Lord.
Let
us give thanks to the Lord our God.
It
is right and good to do so.
(the
replies came from the silence).
It was truly right and good. Gathering all my
strength, I concentrated on silently reciting my
prayer
of praise and thanksgiving:
Thank
You, Father,
For
everything around us,
For
being the Absolute
And
for us with our limits.
O
Father, we are Your boundary,
There
where You end and start again,
The
song of Your Existence,
Of
Your Greatness and of Your Beauty.
And
when we interrupted the song of freedom,
You,
O Father, did not leave us
In
the silence of hell and desperation
But
sent us Jesus Christ,
Who
has again offered us that song
That
You Yourself had taught us.
This
same Jesus took humanity in His Hands
And
blessed the people that You Yourself had blessed
And
said:
“Each
time you do this to one of the smallest of My brethren,
you
do it to Me.”
Then
taking a child and placing him in their midst,
He
repeated:
“Each
time you welcome a little child
You
welcome Me.”
So,
Father, we have seen Your Glory on the face of each of them,
as
was seen in a more perfect way in the Person of Your Son.
For
this reason these Your children will lift up their song of liberation
And
we unite with them to shout Your praise:
“Holy,
Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty!
Heaven
and earth are full of Your Glory.
Hosannah
in the highest!
Blessed
is he who comes in the name of the Lord.
Hosannah
in the highest!”
I continued with the Holy
Mass, holding out my hands and saying:
Father,
true Saint and Fount of all holiness,
Sanctify this gift, sending
Your Spirit so that it becomes for us
The
Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, Your Son and our Lord.
Certainly it was already the
Body and Blood of Christ but I always needed to realise this for myself and for
others. It was for this reason that I had to pray, consecrate and bless. I
continued with the consecration:
One
day Jesus took a child and placed him in the midst of them and said:
“Everything
you do to the smallest of My brethren, you do to Me”.
(Mark
9, 37)
I paused in adoration, then
continued:
While
Jesus was sitting on the Mount of Olives, He spoke of the end of all things and
of the Judgment of God. He said: “I was hungry and you gave Me food. I was
thirsty and you gave Me drink. I was a stranger and you took Me in, naked and
you clothed Me, sick and you visited Me, in prison and you came to Me. Truly I
tell you, each time you did these things to one of the smallest of these My
brethren, you did it to Me.” (Matthew
25, 35-40)
I was unable to lift that man
up with my hands but I lifted him up in my heart and continued:
Mystery of the faith,
we
announce Your death, Lord,
We proclaim Your Resurrection,
which
has paid the price for one and all,
In
expectancy of Your Coming.
By this time the ‘cathedral’
in which I was worshipping became quieter. I continued:
Celebrating
the remembrance of the death and Resurrection of Your Son,
Who
died for our salvation and rose again to Glory,
Ascending
into heaven,
In
expectancy of Your Coming in Glory,
We
offer you this living and holy sacrifice with thanksgiving.
Look
in Love upon Your Universal Church
And
on this small church in Zagabria Station,
And
recognise in it the Pure, Holy and
Immaculate
Victim,
The
Holy Body of Eternal Salvation.
Remember,
Father, Your Church throughout all the earth,
make
it perfect in Love, in unity with our Pope, the Bishops, the priests
and
the whole world which You have redeemed.
Remember
our brethren who have passed on from this world,
The
poor and the rich, the mystics and the demon-possessed;
enable
them to enjoy the Light of Your Presence
and
have mercy on all of us.
Give
us the grace of Eternal Life,
Together
with Mary, the mother of Jesus, the apostles, the saints
And
all people, both of goodwill and of
bad
will,
who
in all ages were acceptable to You,
and
in Jesus Christ Your Son, we sing of Your Glory.
For
Christ, with Christ and in Christ,
To
You O Father, All Powerful, in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
Be
all honour and glory for ever and ever. Amen.
Someone began shouting but it
didn’t disturb me as I was entering more fully into our Eucharist Communion.
Obedient to the Lord’s command and
according to His Divine Teaching, with heads bowed, with impure lips and sinful
heart, hoping that no-one will be ashamed to have us as brethren as Jesus was
not ashamed, we dare to say:
Our
Father, Who are in heaven,
Hallowed
be Your name,
Your
Kingdom come,
Your
Will be done,
on
earth as it is in heaven.
Give
us this day our daily bread
And
forgive us our trespasses
As
we forgive those who trespass against us,
And
lead us not into temptation
but
deliver us from evil.
Free
us, Lord, from all ills and grant us peace in our time
and
with the help of Your Lovingkindness
we
will always be free from sin and safe from fear,
in
the expectation of the completion of our blessed hope,
the
coming of our Saviour, Jesus Christ.
The chorus was getting even
louder.
Yours
is the Kingdom aqnd the Power and the Glory,
for
ever and ever. Amen.
Lord
Jesus Christ, Who said to Your
apostles, ‘I leave you peace, I give you My Peace’, do not look at
our shortcomings but at the faith of Your Church. Your Church is faithful
because You, Lord Jesus, are in it and
You are
Faithful. Your Church is wonderful because You, Lord Jesus,
are there
and You are Wonderful. Your Church is credible because You, Lord Jesus, are in
it and You are Credible. Your Church is holy because You are there and You are
Holy. Look therefore at the loveliness of this Church and grant it unity and
peace, O Lord, Who live and reign for ever and ever.
I looked at all the others present, one by one, and said:
May the Peace of God be ever
with you –and
from the silence came the reply – and with
your spirit.
I tried to shift into a
sitting position a man who had fallen on his side, so that he would feel more
comfortable and relaxed. But he took fright and gave a yell. I didn’t
understand what he said but probably he thought I was trying to steal from him.
I returned to my place and continued my service of mass in front of my gypsy
friend, who also appeared vacant and abandoned.
Blessed
are those invited by the Lord.
Here
is Jesus, the lamb of God Who takes away the sin of the world:
O
Lord, at this moment You are there, in that man who is drunken and sleeping.
How
can I have Communion with You,
Communion
with the Victim offered at the altar,
Communion
with the Holy Sacrifice?
I took the thermos of tea and approached the gypsy. I woke him up with
much effort and offered him some warm tea. He didn’t refuse but seemed pleased
more for the attention received than for the tea itself. I gave the remaining
tea to another man nearby and he finished it. In this way I had participated in
‘Communion’ with them. I quietly sang the prayer of St. Francis:
‘Where
there is hatred let me bring Love...’.
Prayer
after the ‘Communion’
Now
Lord, I feel in communion with my brothers and sisters all over the world. I
believe You are within me and by Your gift of faith I embrace all the bad ones
like myself, all the good ones, the poor and the rich, the settled and the
homeless, the workers and the unemployed, those who are suffering and dying as
well as those who are singing... .
In embracing You, O Christ, I embrace the murderers, those who are
attempting suicide, the drug addicts, the missionaries, prostitutes, mothers,
fathers, homosexuals, apostles, receivers of stolen goods , saints and sinners.
I embrace their body and blood in this boundless communion which You have made
possible for me.
AMEN