Rev.

 Dolindo  Ruotolo  
 

 
The  Sacred  Scripture  

The  Gospel  According  to  Luke

Analysis-­‐Comment-­‐Meditation    
In 33 Volumes - Vol  XX/c    

11/14/1938-­‐12/9/1939  

Translated by Giovanna I. Ellis

Edited by Philip B. Ellis
Reviewed by Clarke N. Ellis
From:
Ristampa in lingua Italiana
Apostolato Stampa, Napoli
Tipografia Laurenziana 1996

© Translation Copyright 2014 by Giovanna Ellis.

All rights reserved.

Imprimatur (Original manuscript):

+Vittorio Maria Costantini
S. Theologiae Magister,
Bishop of Sessa Aurunca
December 8, 1978

Nihil Obstat (Translation):

Rev. Christopher Begg, S.T.D., Ph.D.
Censor Deputatus
December 15, 2014

Imprimatur (Translation):
+Most Rev. Barry C. Knestout
Auxiliary Bishop of Washington, D.C.
Archdiocese of Washington, D.C.
December 15, 2014

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 Biblical Quotations herein are taken from:
The Holy Bible Catholic Public Domain Version1
Other quotations herein are used under the “fair use”
terms as defined in section 107 through 118 of US
copyright law (17 U.S. Code).

Disclosure

1
online edition: http//www.sacredbible.org

4
 Don Dolindo Ruotolo

Rev. Dolindo Ruotolo was born, in Naples, Italy on October 6, 1882. Ordained at the
young age of 23 on June 24, 1905, he dedicated every moment of his long life to prayer
and penance at the service of the thousands of faithful who asked for his spiritual direction
and turned to him for help and comfort.

Paralyzed for the last ten years of his life, Don Dolindo Ruotolo died in Naples on
November 19, 1970, in the extreme voluntary poverty he had lived all his life.

His body lies in the Church where he served as Pastor, Our Lady of Lourdes and St.
Joseph of the Aged, Via Salvatore Tommasi, Naples, Italy. Today, more than before,
people knock at his tomb, confident of his intercession and receiving many graces through
his intercession.

Rev. Dolindo Ruotolo wrote a large number of books in his native Italian of high theology
that were highly inspired. Today, his books are sold in Naples, Italy and only in Italian. In
particular, Rev. Ruotolo wrote an analysis, commentary and meditation on the entire Bible
in 33 volumes which has continually been highly acclaimed by Cardinals and Bishops.
This volume is the first-ever English language translation of the volume on St. Luke’s
Gospel of that series.

In the United States, among many others, he is known by the Crosiers Priests, in particular
Fr. Raymond Steffes OSC in Minnesota and Fr. Christopher Rengers, OFM in
Pennsylvania, and Prof. Scott Hahn in Steubenville OH, who wrote a comment on one of
Don Dolindo’s books “Come Holy Spirit”.

Currently a Servant of God, this holy priest’s Cause for Beatification is underway.

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 Contents
Pages 6-11
Introduction p 12-17
The Kingdom of Christ - The Gospel of Mercy - To whom the book is dedicated. When it
was written. - The Gospel of Mary.

Chapter 1 p 18-53
The conception of John the Baptist, and of Christ. The visitation and canticle of the
Blessed Virgin. The birth of the Baptist.
The Prologue. - May our life be a living Gospel. - Gabriel announces the miraculous
conception of John the Baptist. - Zechariah becomes mute. - In an unbeliever the spirit
becomes dumb and prayer is silenced. - Elizabeth becomes pregnant. - How to fight
spiritual sterility. - The annunciation of the Angel to Mary. Humility. - The holy young
Virgin of Nazareth. - Saint Joseph. - The prayer of Mary - And behold an Angel of
appeared. - Faith and reason. - Mary believed: “Here is the handmaid of the Lord” - And
the Word became Flesh. - The Heart of Mary, tabernacle of the Everlasting. - Mary meets
with St. Elizabeth. - The greeting of Mary. - The greeting of St. Elizabeth. - The sublime
canticle of Mary. - The Flower of the Old Covenant - The Magnificat. - The Jewish
people. - Mary announces the Savior. - The fertile Gem of the New Covenant - Synthesis
and Program of the Church. - The Church wants to save, must save. - An example from
history. - The canticle of the loving soul. - The Magnificat of humility. - A shining picture
of the life of the Redeemer and of Mary. - A perpetual voice in the Kingdom of God. -
Dazzling light in the darkness of exile. - The birth of John the Baptist. - His name is John.
- The canticle of Zechariah. - John the Baptist withdraws in the desert.

Chapter 2 p 54 -78
The Birth of Jesus. Circumcision and Presentation in the Temple. Jesus among the
doctors.
The solemn and peaceful moment of the birth of Jesus. - The Birth of Jesus. - The
announcement to the shepherds and their visit. - An Angel appeared to the shepherds. The
shepherds adore Jesus. - The way God operates. - The circumcision. - The Presentation in
the Temple. - The holy old Simeon. - Exultation of Anna, a holy woman of the Temple. -
The infancy of Jesus, The losing Jesus and his hidden life. - Jesus lost and then found in
the Temple. - For our spiritual life.

Chapter 3 p 79-86
Mission, preaching and imprisonment of St. John the Baptist. Baptism and genealogy of
Jesus.
The political status of Palestine at the time of John the Baptist. - The preaching of St. John
the Baptist. - The insignificance of human greatness. The true greatness that is humility. -
John bears witness to Jesus. - The witness of the Father and the Holy Spirit. - Genealogy
of Jesus and the ascending genealogy of the soul.

Chapter 4 p 87-102
Fasting and temptation of Jesus. Preaching in Galilee and in Nazareth. Healing of a
possessed person. Healing of the mother-in-law of St. Peter and other sick people.

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The mystery of the temptations of Jesus in the desert. - The fasting of Jesus. - The first
temptation. - Man does not live of bread alone - but of every word of God. - The second
and third temptations of Satan. - The diabolical psychology of temptation. - The human
ambition. - The diabolical psychology of temptation. - The human ambition. - Satan and
the powerful of the world. - Ambition also tempts in spiritual matters - Jesus preaching in
Galilee. - The ungrateful people of Nazareth. - This is the way men are! - Jesus at
Capernaum. - The possessed - The mother in law of St. Peter. - Some people drive Jesus
away and some welcome Him.

Chapter 5 p103-120
The miraculous catch of fish. The healing of the leper. Jesus prays. The healing of a
paralytic. The vocation of Levi. The fast.
The boat of Peter and the teaching of the Church. - The miraculous catch. - After the night
of apostasy, the boat of Peter will be full of a miraculous catch. - The healing of the leper.
- The leprosy of sin. - Two boats were at sea. - Jesus withdraws to solitary places to pray.
- Jesus praying: the eternal lamp before the Father. - The Eucharist, the great school of our
prayer. - The healing of the paralytic and the remission of sins. - The forgiveness of sins. -
Jesus forgives sins, therefore He is God. - The joy of feeling free from sin. - The vocation
of Levi, the issue of fasting and the prudent consideration of the ways of the spirit. - The
Pharisees are scandalized. - The answer of Jesus to the Pharisees. - For those who guide
the direction of souls - In the ways of the Lord, the holy newness.

Chapter 6 p 121-134
The ears of wheat and the Sabbath. The withered hand. Election of the Apostles. The
Beatitudes and the woes. Love for one’s enemies. Warning to the Pharisees and Christian
charity.
The ears of wheat and the Sabbath. - The withered hand. - Election of the Apostles. - The
Beatitudes and the woes. - Love for one’s enemies. - Warning to the Pharisees and
Christian charity. - Divine dominion over times and mankind. - Jesus heals the man with a
withered hand. The persecutors of the Church. - The election of the Apostles and the
profile of the Church through the centuries. - The election of Judas Iscariot. - The elected
Apostles. - For the Apostles and for those who spread the kingdom of God. - The kingdom
of God can only be established in charity.

Chapter 7 p 135-147
The servant of the centurion. The son of the widow of Naim. John the Baptist’s question
to Jesus. Jesus praises John the Baptist. The sinner at the feet of Jesus.
The servant of the centurion. - The faith of the centurion, model of our faith. - The widow
of Naim’s son. - The young who are dead to grace - The disciples of St. John the Baptist
go to Jesus to ask questions on behalf of their teacher. - Jesus praises John the Baptist. -
The never satisfied. - The irritable. - The repentant sinner at the foot of Jesus. - We the
sinners and the mercy of God.

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Chapter 8 p 148 - 166
Jesus and the Galilean holy women. The parable of the sower. The Mother and the
relatives of Jesus. The calming of the storm. The possessed man of Gerasenes. The
daughter of Jairus and the woman with a hemorrhage.
The woman collaborator of the Kingdom of God. - Psychology of the woman. - The
woman in the apostolate. - The Pious Women followers of Jesus. - The woman and her
mission in the Church. - The Divine Sower. - The Word of God, seed of life. - The
journey of the Word of God in the centuries. - The reason of the parables. - The mother of
Jesus and his relatives. - Mary became Mother of God because she welcomed the Divine
Word. - The storm on the lake. - The Church and the good souls in the storms. - The value
of the contradictions. - The victory belongs to God. - The possessed man of Gerasenes and
the loathsome legions who move among souls dead to grace. - The diabolic obsession -
The daughter of Jairus and the woman who had an issue of blood. - The mystery of
immolation and providence.

Chapter 9 p 167-194
Mission of the Apostles. Herod the Tetrarch and Jesus. First multiplication of the loaves.
Confession of St. Peter. Christian abnegation. The Transfiguration. Healing of a
possessed epileptic. Prediction of the Passion. The true greatness. Jesus refused by the
Samaritans. Requirements to follow Jesus.
Mission of the Apostles. - Herod the Tetrarch and Jesus. - First multiplication of the
loaves.- Confession of St. Peter. Christian abnegation. - The Transfiguration. - Healing of
a possessed epileptic. - Prediction of the Passion. - The true greatness. - Jesus refused by
the Samaritans. -Requirements to follow Jesus. - Mission of the Apostles and those of the
Priests - A simple life, without excessive comforts - Poverty, simplicity and trust in God.
- Tell everything to Jesus, visiting Him in the Sacrament - The first multiplication of
loaves. The living “Bread from Heaven”. - You are the Christ of God: The solemn
confession of St. Peter. - Why Jesus prohibits the Apostles to reveal his divine identity. -
Let us not grumble at God - To us God asks: and you, who do you say that I am. Ask me
again, my God: And you, who do you say that I am? - The way that leads to God:
Christian self-denial. - Jesus says: Who wants to save his life, will lose it. - Against
human respect. - The transfiguration of Jesus Christ. - Transfiguring ourselves in Christ
Jesus! - The healing of the possessed epileptic. - Our generation, faithless, perverse and
spiritually epileptic. - Announcement of the Passion. - The least among you is the greatest.
- The apostolate is not a monopoly! Jesus travels toward Jerusalem - The Samaritans
refuse to offer Jesus hospitality. - Jesus does not want to force us to come to Him. - The
religious vocation.

Chapter 10 p 195 -210

The mission of the 72 disciples. Parable of the Good Samaritan. Martha and Mary.
The mission of the 72 disciples. Parable of the Good Samaritan. Martha and Mary. -
Jesus instructs the seventy-two disciples. - As sheep among wolves. - For the
missionaries, poverty, simplicity, trust in Providence - Pilgrims of God in the apostolate
- How to behave with those who reject the Word of Truth. - The disciples return from
their mission. - Jesus rejoices because the Lord reveals himself to little ones. - The
ideologies of the world. - To love God and one’s neighbor: the great way of salvation

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and peace. - The parable of the Samaritan. - Porro unum est necessarium. Only one
thing is necessary! - The true values of life.

Chapter 11 p 211 -230

The Our Father and the persevering faith in prayer. - The possessed mute and the evil
spirits. - The sign of Jonah. - Reproaches to the Pharisees.
The prayer taught us by Jesus, admirable directive of all our prayers The Our Father. -
Conditions for receiving an answer: perseverance in praying and full abandonment to the
mercy of God. - When it seems to us that our prayers are not heard.- Liberation of the
possessed mute. The blind, the deaf and the mutes of Satan. - Beelzebub and his kingdom.
- Blessed are they who listen to the Word of God. - The sign that Jesus would give to His
mission. - The pure eye understands the way of the Lord. - Today mankind is blind and
lacks the light of God. - Jesus reproaches the Scribes and the Pharisees. Jesus reproaches
also us.

Chapter 12 p 231-242
The hypocrisy of the Pharisees. - The sin against the Holy Spirit. - Greed and the self-
assured rich man. - Confidence in God. - Jesus came to bring fire and war.
Reconciliation.
The hypocrisy of the Pharisees - Do not be afraid to confess the faith.-The sin against the
Holy Spirit. - The martyrs, heroes of the Church. - Not worrying about worldly
possessions and living trusting in God is the strong foundation of a Christian character. -
The parable of Jesus - Everything is precarious in life except to trust in God - The strong
foundation of a Christian character: to think of ourselves as travelers on this earth, as
servants waiting for their master and being stewards of his possessions.- The Priest and his
mission. True love and heroic sacrifices in true charity and forgiveness.- The various
epochs of the Church.

Chapter 13 p 243 - 251

The need for penance.- The barren fig tree.- Healing of a crippled woman. -The mustard
seed and the yeast.- The number of the saved.- Hostility of Herod. - Punishment of
Jerusalem.
Without repentance we go to perdition. -When God calls we must answer if we do not
want to be cut off from life as a barren fig tree.- The public calamities. -The parable of the
fruitless fig tree. -The story of Israel as the story of many nations and individuals. -
Healing of a woman who could not look up and a rebuke to the Pharisees who always
looked down. -The kingdom of God. - We have to strive to get to heaven, regardless of the
pitfalls of evil. - Evil cannot ruin the plan of God.

Chapter 14 p 252 -259

The healing of the man with dropsy on the Sabbath. -Do not seek the first place.- Practice
of charity.- Parable of the banquet.- How to follow Jesus.
The healing of a man suffering from dropsy and about charity. -The first places at the
table The etiquette, a basic virtue. The banquets and the parties. - The great meal prepared
by God for His people in their Redemption, and the way to acquire Redemption. - God’s
invitations. - The careful and serious response to the invitation of God.

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Chapter 15 p 260 - 269

The lost sheep. -The lost coin.- The prodigal son.

The infinite mercy of God in searching for sinners and welcoming them, in an overview of
the parables of Jesus.- The three parables of the mercy of God: the lost sheep. -The lost
coin that was found - The prodigal son.

Chapter 16 p 270 279

The dishonest steward. - The hypocrisy of the Pharisees. - Indissoluble marriage. - The
parable of the rich man and Lazarus.
The dishonest steward and the necessity of using wealth in a good way for eternal life -
The parable of the dishonest steward - We are all “stewards” of our Celestial Father -
The false righteousness of the Pharisees and the deep divergence between what is human
and what is divine. - Today goodness is despised and evil is exalted. - The Parable of the
rich man. - Illusions and realities of life.

Chapter 17 p 280 - 289

Things that cause sin. - Correcting one’s brother. - The power of faith. - Our duty. The
ten lepers. The kingdom of God and the return of the Son of Man.
There are things that cause sin, but woe to those who enable them! - Scandal and
occasions of sin, today. - The power of faith and the duty to serve God. - The useless
servants - The healing of the lepers - The leprosy of sin - The gratitude of men - We, the
ungrateful - The Kingdom of God and its fulfillment - Upheavals, revolutions and death -
The Kingdom of God will not be a political triumph.

Chapter 18 p 290 - 299

The unjust judge. -The Pharisee and the publican. - Jesus and children.- The rich young
man. - Reward to the followers of Jesus. - Prophecy of the Passion. - The blind man of
Jericho.
Persistent and humble prayer.- The simplicity of children. - Are we near the times
predicted by Jesus? - The Pharisee and the Publican. - The children and the Kingdom of
God. - The true ideal of youth.- The heroism of renunciation. - The light of Golgotha. -
The “Age” of the Youth - Jesus said: Why do you call me good? - How Francis of Assisi
answered Jesus. - Jesus predicts His Passion to the Apostles - The blind man of Jericho -
Unhappiness and adversity are the cries of blind humanity.

Chapter 19 p 300 - 307

Zacchaeus. - The parable of the ten gold coins. - Triumphal entry of Jesus into
Jerusalem.- The cleansing of the Temple.
Zacchaeus. - Oppressed by the world, we are powerless to see heavenly things - The
parable of the coins and the manifestation of the Kingdom of God. - The entry of Jesus
into Jerusalem, and the expulsion of the moneylenders from the temple.- Jesus weeps
over Jerusalem.- Jerusalem as the nations of today.

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Chapter 20 p 308 - 319
The authority of Jesus questioned. - The parable of the tenant farmers.- Paying the tax to
Caesar. - The Sadducees and the resurrection. -The Messiah son of David. -The hypocrisy
of the scribes.
Confusion of humanly constituted authority before the divine authority of Jesus - The
parable of the tenant farmers - And us? - Painful statistics. - The tribute to Caesar - The
aberrations of state-worshippers - The resurrection and the eternal life. -Christ, the son of
David.- But do we believe in eternal life?

Chapter 21 p 320 - 329

The poor widow’s contribution. -The foretelling of the destruction of the Temple. -
Persecution that the Church will have to bear until the end of the world. -The Ruin of
Jerusalem. - Signs of the second coming of the Redeemer. - Be vigilant and pray.
The poor widow’s contribution at the temple. - What we offer to God.- The ruin of
Jerusalem, the Kingdom of God on earth and the end of the world. - Are we in the
historical period foretold by Jesus? - The end of Jerusalem - The end of the world - What
this means for us who await the great tribulation, the Kingdom of God and the Universal
Judgment.

Chapter 22 p 330 - 349

Conspiracy of the Sanhedrin and betrayal of Judas. The last supper and the Institution of
the Eucharist. The traitor revealed. The last admonitions of Jesus. At Gethsemane.
Betrayal and arrest of Jesus. Denial of Peter. Jesus mocked before the Sanhedrin.
The betrayal of Judas and the psychology of his betrayal. - The act of Judas is repeated
everyday. - Preparation for the Passover supper and Institution of the Eucharist - Jesus
proclaims His betrayal and Peter’s denial - The infallibility of the Pope - The Church in
her fights -The Adoration on the Mount of Olives and the capture of Jesus. - Jesus Christ
is captured - Peter denies Jesus - How many times do we also betray and deny Jesus! -
Jesus is mocked and condemned by the Sanhedrin.

Chapter 23 p 350 - 363

Jesus before Pilate and Herod. Jesus and Barabbas. The Sentence of Death and the Way
of the Cross. The Crucifixion. The Agony and Death of Jesus. The Burial.
The trial of Jesus before Pilate and before Herod. - Jesus before Herod -For souls who
constantly seek thrills. - Jesus is sentenced to death in place of Barabbas -Pilate, in the
centuries - The way of the cross and the weeping women of Jerusalem. - The Way of the
Cross in our life. -The crucifixion, agony, death and burial of Jesus. - The good thief -
Jesus dies on the Cross. - The burial.

Chapter 24 p 364 - 379

The Resurrection of Jesus. The disciples of Emmaus. Jesus appears to the Apostles. The
last instructions He gives to them. The Ascension into Heaven.
The conqueror of death. -The holy women go to the tomb-They were not believed-The
tender and wonderful story of the disciples of Emmaus.-Charity attracts Jesus to us. Jesus
hidden in the Eucharist - Jesus appears to all the Apostles. Last instructions. Ascension
into Heaven. Conclusion Luke contemplates the merciful love of God. Come, Lord Jesus!

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 Introduction to the Gospel of St. Luke

I. The Kingdom of Christ

Jesus Christ does not rule in the universe like an earthly king; he said this himself:
“My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my ministers would
certainly strive so that I would not be handed over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not now
from here.”. He did not say that he was not reigning over the world, but that his kingdom
is not now from here.”, that is it did not have its characteristics and it was of a different
nature: but as it is my kingdom is not here (Jn 18:36). The kings of this earth impose
themselves with power and seek their own gains and glory; they dominate not reign,
because in reality, with all their laws and their malice, they represent more accurately a
violent imposition rather than a government of love. Their subjects are always more or
less rebellious, and they champ at the bit; the faithful to the regime represent an interested
minority that remains faithful only because they have their own gains. This is the true
story of all kingdoms on earth.
Never has a king succeeded in having a kingdom of love: had he succeeded, he
would have had no need of fighting or an army. The words of Jesus: If my kingdom did
belong to this world my ministers would strive are of an admirable depth, and they
accurately characterize the kingdoms of this earth: they represent a more or less
continuous struggle and constant hidden motives.
The kingdom of Jesus Christ is a true kingdom; it is the only true kingdom,
regardless what the spineless adorers of the state say, they who are scandalized every time
they believe that people fail to have a servile respect for authorities of earth. The
kingdoms of the world are either administrative, and more or less comforted and affected
by pathological state-worshippers, or are dominions of a single reigning house, or of a
single group that controls everything, absolutely and exclusively for its own interests.
Some truths are bitter, but they are truths to which nobody can disagree, because they bear
the characteristics of axioms. It is enough to look at history - contemporary or past history
- either there is a king ruling in his own interests, or a party ruling in the interest of its
members.*
However, human commands never reach the soul and the heart; they are continuous
impositions applied with the sounds of arms and of the military, and almost always end in
rebellion and the passing of one bully to another. The more a state is authoritarian, thereby
having the appearance of a true dominion, the less the subjects are subject to it in their
souls and hearts.

* Don Dolindo wrote his Commentary during the Fascist era in Italy when there was only one political
party that was allied to Nazi Germany; for this reason his observations reflected the reality of that time
period, and he wrote with Christian courage.

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(The footnotes denoted with an asterisk (“*”) are observations by the Bishop Vittorio M. Costantini who
presented the Italian edition in December 1978.)

All kingdoms in history, in general, can be understood in the following way: a ruler
imposes himself by force, at least on part of a nation; the laws imposed are proportional to
the motives of the ruler and in reality, are always a source of hateful oppression and
imposition for a part of the people. Law after law is created on whim or through
arrogance, taxes upon taxes and restrictions of all kinds, gagging liberty, thought, and
even our religion, against which they usually rage because, even helpless, our religion
defends the divine right and human dignity.
It will never be forgotten in the history of human arrogance the self-described
‘legality’ with which the despicable tyrant, Adolph Hitler, is said to have assumed the
supreme power in Germany. Here is the text of the law that nominated him as head of the
Reich: Article 1: The Chancellor of the Reich Adolph Hitler is nominated in perpetuity as
head of the German state. Article 2: This law is effective immediately. Signed: Adolph
Hitler. Later he said to the four winds that he had been instituted head of the Reich not
with violence but through legal means. This is insolence pushed to folly.
It is not useless for us to ponder on these considerations; actually we should it more
deeply in order to understand what a heavenly gift for us is the regality of Jesus Christ for
the Church and in the Church. If man does not open his eyes and does not see the loving
magnificence of this regality, he will always remain shackled to the block of earthly
slavery, desperate and with no hope of light. If he does not understand the value - human,
social and civic - of redemption and the beneficial repercussions of it in his life, he shall
believe it always to be a way of participating in a form of cult, suitable to address a certain
need for the divine, but outside the reality of life. We are too accustomed, maybe
unconsciously, to regard the kingdom of Jesus Christ in the Church and for the Church in
the same way in which we regard wretched religious sects, fragments of faith, generated
by Satan, or childish philosophies hatched by the brains of madmen.
We are too used to putting at the same level of the celestial ecliptic, a candle stub
and the sun, and to gaze upon with the same attention and appreciation, a putrescent sewer
and the splendid mantle of the firmament.
It is necessary to come out from these insidious snares that shackle our thoughts and
our lives, remnants of our miserable fallen nature; it is necessary to look at you, Redeemer
Jesus, immortal King of the centuries, and to throw ourselves in the arms of your bleeding
love that reigns, regenerating us continuously in the cry of the spasm and the immolation
of the Blood.
The cross has been the regal bed on which you, Jesus, regenerated your subjects, and
your Blood has run like a river of love to give us life.
You are the priestly victim; you ignore the conquest of vengeful blood, knowing
only the conquest of the merciful Blood that gives life.
You do not know the impetuosity imposed by terror, but the mercy that is attracted
with love.
You do not ask, you give.
You do not subdue, you free.
You do not impose yourself on upon reason, you ennoble it.
You do not have an army, but apostles.
You do not have generals, but bishops; you do not have a custodian of the fortress,

13
but the shepherd of the flock, free on the free fields of grace and love.
This is Your kingdom, and it is logical that it is not of this world, because it does not
have any similarity with the dissonant kingdoms of our poor earth.

II. The Gospel of mercy

The Gospel of the kingdom, that we meditate in St.Mark’s Gospel is followed by the
Gospel of immolation and of mercy, that determines the characteristics and the ways of
the kingdom of Jesus Christ. The lion that leaps upon the bastions of the world, roaring
with love to prey upon love, is followed by the ox that ploughs fertile fields, and
represents the victim of the altar. The configuration of the four evangelists as the four
animals seen by Ezekiel is now in the classic tradition of the Church and cannot be put
aside; its meaning is wider than we believe; its transcendent poetry is more beautiful than
it is appreciated because in truth the four Gospels are the four aspects of Christ the Savior:
the man, the King, the Victim and God; the pilgrim on our earth, the ruler of the centuries,
the Priest and Victim, and the divine conqueror that carries away on his eagle’s wings the
miserable human creatures up to eternal heights.
The Gospel of Luke is called by the Fathers “The Gospel of Mercy” and mercy
supposes a victim and an immolation. Everything is harmonious in this plan. The inspired
author is a converted pagan, as it is usually believed, indicated by his very name Luke,
which comes from the Roman name Lucius. He was from Antioch, he was an excellent
medical doctor and fluent in the Greek language, as is seen from the classic and elegant
way in which he writes. As a physician, he was used to having compassion and curing
human sicknesses and had a natural attitude toward mercy; as man of letters he had
sensitivity toward feelings. He remained a virgin, did not marry, and once converted to the
faith, he kept his purity blameless. True purity, the fruit of virtue and love, generates in
the soul sensitivity and a compassion for the failings of the poor human heart.
The harshest judges of the poor fragility of sinners are not found among souls who
are pure, but among those who know the slavery of the flesh.
It is very possible that the human reason that motivated St. Luke to write his Gospel
was indeed a feeling of compassion toward sinners. He heard the preaching of so many
events on the goodness of Jesus and not having found them in any book, he thought to
record them, almost as prescriptions of mercy to cure souls. The apostles, from fishermen
became fishers of souls and he, from physician of bodies became physician of souls. He
knew the pathology of sin in the sicknesses he cured, and he wanted to give to the sinners
the relief of the divine mercy. God is marvelous in every disposition of His goodness; He
made use of the compassion of St. Luke toward the sinners oppressed by sicknesses
resulting from their sins, to leave to us a most precious memory of the mercy of our
Savior.
St. Luke, who was a virgin, dealt more closely with the Immaculate Virgin, and he
knew from Her the details of Jesus’ infancy; a virgin evangelist, St. John, pushed his gaze
all the way to the eternal generation of the Word; an evangelist virgin and doctor could
talk to Mary, Mother of Mercy and gather from her most pure lips the stories of the
fulfillment of the divine mercy upon earth with the Incarnation of the Word.
Being a physician, he could appreciate, more than others, the miracle of the virginal

14
conception, and he could affirm it with the authority of a person who could not believe
such an incredible miracle, if he had not perceived in the story of Mary, and we could say,
in her somatic traits, the splendor of that virginity which was beyond any comparison. Our
minds remain in admiration of the marvelous ways of divine providence, that does
everything with infinite wisdom, leaving nonetheless untouched human free will.
From the Blessed Mother he learned the beauty of virginity and mercy, and maybe
for this reason he remained a virgin; his heart, in contact with the most pure lily, became
spotless and perfumed, succumbing to the divine love. Fascinated with the divine mercy,
he wrote his Gospel, to prove that Jesus Christ is the Savior of all people, be they Jews or
pagans.
He was a disciple of Paul, the apostle of the gentiles, whom he met at Troas, and he
was familiar with those who were eyewitnesses of the Redeemer, when He was walking
on earth to evangelize it; because St. Luke was originally a pagan, he wanted to show that
the kingdom of God was open to everybody for His infinite mercy, to the Jews, to
Samaritans, to pagans, to publicans or sinners, to rich or poor, to all men of good will. He
kept for us the account of the most beautiful pieces of the mercy of Jesus Christ: Mary
Magdalene, Zacchaeus, the conversion of the thief on the cross on Calvary, the apparition
to the disciples at Emmaus, and also the parables of the Pharisee and the publican, the lost
sheep, the lost coin, the prodigal son, Lazarus, the rich glutton and so on.
He was not a eyewitness of the accounts he wrote, however, as he himself states at
the beginning of his book, he recorded with care and precision the testimony of those who
had been with Jesus Christ. He not only recorded the preaching of Paul, of whom he was a
disciple, but he also did an accurate historical inquiry, perhaps also in opposition to
those apocryphal gospels that already were beginning to appear among Christians.
His Gospel, then, has an enormous historical value because it is the synthesis and the
accounts of the eyewitnesses that were the contemporaries of Jesus Christ.

To whom the book is dedicated.

As St. Luke states in the prologue, he dedicated his book to a certain Theophilus,
believed to be one of his friends, who also converted from paganism to Christianity as he
did. However he did not write only for him but for all the faithful, and especially for the
pagans, because of the great pain he felt for them for their blindness. In fact he avoids in
his Gospel that which could alienate them. For example, instead of putting in opposition
to the children of God, the nations or the pagans, as St. Matthew (Mt 5:47) he opposes the
sinners, a general term that could apply to Jews as well as to pagans; instead of saying, as
St. Matthew (Mt 6:32) all these things the pagans seek, he softens the sentence saying
after these things go men of the world. He is careful to speak of public officials of the
Empire, avoiding to blame the pagans for the fault of the death of Jesus (Lk 23:25) and
does not mention the episode of the Canaanite woman (Mt 15:22) to whom Jesus had
addressed in a not flattering way from the point of a view of a pagan.**
-----------------------------------
** The choice to recount some episodes in the life of the Lord, to select some and not other events, does not
alter at all the historic truth of those narrated. What the evangelist wrote is the truth, guaranteed by divine
inspiration. St. Luke wrote that he did not write everything that could be said about Jesus, what the Teacher
had said or had done. For this reason the words of the apostle and evangelist St. John also apply equally to
the narrative of St. Luke. St. John said, in relation to the Gospel he had written (Jn 21:25): “There are many

15
things that Jesus did, that if they could be written one by one, I believe that the world would not be big
enough to contain all the books that should be written.”
All these nuances, and many others, in addition to demonstrating the historic truth of the
book and its author, give it an eternal freshness that marvels us. For the same motives, he
is silent on the woman having an issue of blood that in vain had paid doctors and
medicine to be healed, for a sensitivity and respect toward his fellow physicians.

When it was written.

It is contested when the Gospel of St. Luke was written. The view that to us seems
most credible is based on an affirmation by St. Paul. The apostle, in his second letter to
the Corinthians, written in the year 58, states that of St. Luke is praised for his Gospel;
thus in 58 the book must have already been written; since he had met St Paul in 51, the
book had to be written after the year 51 and before 58.
His book can be regarded as consisting of a prologue and five parts; in the prologue
there is the dedication and the reason why he writes the book; the infancy of Jesus Christ
and his hidden life (Lk 1- 4:13); in the second part, Jesus’ ministry in Galilee (Lk 4:14 –
9:50); in the third, the last journey of Jesus from Galilee to Jerusalem (Lk 9:51 – 19:27);
in the fourth the Passion and Death (Lk 19:28 - 23:56) and in the fifth, the Resurrection of
the Lord, subsequent apparitions and of Jesus’ ascension into Heaven (Lk 24).
He wrote, as we mentioned before, in a very elegant Greek, that in those times was
the most widely understood language of the known world. Some attribute to him the
ability of a skilled painter, besides being a physician, and in fact there are several images
of the Blessed Virgin that the popular tradition ascribes to his brush. We do not deny this;
as a learned person it is possible that also he knew how to paint; however the most
beautiful paintings he left to us are his accounts of the Gospel, that are colored with the
most brilliant truth.
He lived to the old age of 84 years, and after having accompanied St. Paul to Rome,
he traveled, as it is reported by St. Epiphanius, to Dalmatia, Gaul, Italy and Macedonia.
He died as a martyr in Patras, a city of Achaea.

III. The Gospel of Mary

Let us collect ourselves to meditate on this precious book that can be called the
Gospel of Mary. What our Blessed Mother kept in her immaculate heart and did not say to
anyone, she told to St. Luke and we must be grateful to this evangelist who kept for us the
memory of a story so tender and admirable. Had he kept for us only the Magnificat, he
would already deserve all our devotion and gratitude.
He was a very good doctor, as can be seen from the very way in which he describes
the various ailments, for which he uses technical terms in the same way as they are found
in the works of his contemporaries and especially in Dioscorides; we can, therefore, go to
him with our sicknesses and beg him to intercede for us with the Most Blessed Virgin, to
obtain for us especially the health of our souls and the gift of eternal life.
It is very soothing for us to meditate on this Gospel of mercy, because we are poor
sinners, and it is most wonderful to meet along on our way the Queen of Mercy. What a
marvel it is to read such beautiful poetry and know that the way of truth brings us to

16
Heaven! The story fascinates us but does not satisfy our curiosity, it nourishes the heart
and pushes us to become wholly of God.
O Mary it is enough to see you, perfumed flower of our exile, to become revived in
our painful pilgrimage; it is enough to see the divine fruit of your breast, to feel immersed
in the divine mercy!
Where can we find more reassuring words in which to trust? Where can the heart
find more wonderful forgiveness?
We are sinners, but the Blood of your Son is our trust, and you are the loving mother
that brings us to Him, taking us into the arms of His love. Give us, o Mary, the grace to
follow Jesus like little sheep to His sheepfold. And with your merciful love take us to the
pastures of eternal life.

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 Chapter 1

1. The conception of John the Baptist, and of Christ. The visitation and canticle of the
Blessed Virgin. The birth of the Baptist.

1 Since, indeed, many have attempted to set in order a narrative of the things that have
been completed among us, 2 just as they have been handed on to those of us who from the
beginning saw the same and were ministers of the word, 3 so it seemed good to me also,
having diligently followed everything from the beginning, to write to you, in an orderly
manner, most excellent Theophilus, 4 so that you might know the truthfulness of those
words by which you have been instructed. 5 There was, in the days of Herod, king of
Judea, a certain priest named Zechariah, of the section of Abijah, and his wife was of the
daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elizabeth. 6 Now they were both just before God,
progressing in all of the commandments and the justifications of the Lord without blame.
7 And they had no child, because Elizabeth was barren, and they both had become
advanced in years. 8 Then it happened that, when he was exercising the priesthood before
God, in the order of his section. 9 according to the custom of the priesthood, the lot fell so
that he would offer incense, entering into the temple of the Lord. 10 And the entire
multitude of the people was praying outside, at the hour of incense. 11 Then there
appeared to him an Angel of the Lord, standing at the right of the altar of incense. 12 And
upon seeing him, Zechariah was disturbed, and fear fell over him. 13 But the Angel said
to him: “Do not be afraid, Zechariah, for your prayer has been heard, and your wife
Elizabeth shall bear a son to you. And you shall call his name John. 14 And there will be
joy and exultation for you, and many will rejoice in his nativity. 15 For he will be great in
the sight of the Lord, and he will not drink wine or strong drink, and he will be filled with
the Holy Spirit, even from his mother’s womb. 16 And he will convert many of the sons of
Israel to the Lord their God. 17 And he will go before him with the spirit and power of
Elijah, so that he may turn the hearts of the fathers to the sons, and the incredulous to the
prudence of the just, so as to prepare for the Lord a completed people.” 18 And Zechariah
said to the Angel: “How may I know this? For I am elderly, and my wife is advanced in
years.” 19 And in response, the Angel said to him: “I am Gabriel, who stands before God,
and I have been sent to speak to you, and to proclaim these things to you. 20 And behold,
you will be silent and unable to speak, until the day on which these things shall be,
because you have not believed my words, which will be fulfilled in their time.” 21 And the
people were waiting for Zechariah. And they wondered why he was being delayed in the
temple. 22 Then, when he came out, he was unable to speak to them. And they realized
that he had seen a vision in the temple. And he was making signs to them, but he remained
mute. 23 And it happened that, after the days of his office were completed, he went away
to his house. 24 Then, after those days, his wife Elizabeth conceived, and she hid herself
for five months, saying: 25 “For the Lord did this for me, at the time when he decided to
take away my reproach among men.” 26 Then, in the sixth month, the Angel Gabriel was
sent by God, to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, 27 to a virgin betrothed to a man whose
name was Joseph, of the house of David; and the name of the virgin was Mary. 28 And
upon entering, the Angel said to her: “Hail, full of grace. The Lord is with you. Blessed

18
are you among women.” 29 And when she had heard this, she was disturbed by his words,
and she considered what kind of greeting this might be. 30 And the Angel said to her: “Do
not be afraid, Mary, for you have found grace with God. 31 Behold, you shall conceive in
your womb, and you shall bear a son, and you shall call his name: Jesus. 32 He will be
great, and he will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give him the
throne of David his father. And he will reign in the house of Jacob for eternity. 33 And his
kingdom shall have no end.” 34 Then Mary said to the Angel, “How shall this be done,
since I do not know man?” 35 And in response, the Angel said to her: “The Holy Spirit
will pass over you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. And because of
this also, the Holy One who will be born of you shall be called the Son of God. 36 And
behold, your cousin Elizabeth has herself also conceived a son, in her old age. And this is
the sixth month for her who is called barren. 37 For no word will be impossible with
God.” 38 Then Mary said: “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. Let it be done to me
according to your word.” And the Angel departed from her. 39 And in those days, Mary,
rising up, traveled quickly into the hill country, to a city of Judah. 40 And she entered into
the house of Zechariah, and she greeted Elizabeth. 41 And it happened that, as Elizabeth
heard the greeting of Mary, the infant leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth was filled with
the Holy Spirit. 42 And she cried out with a loud voice and said: “Blessed are you among
women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. 43 And how does this concern me, so that
the mother of my Lord would come to me? 44 For behold, as the voice of your greeting
came to my ears, the infant in my womb leaped for joy. 45 And blessed are you who
believed, for the things that were spoken to you by the Lord shall be accomplished.” 46
And Mary said: “My soul magnifies the Lord. 47 And my spirit leaps for joy in God my
Savior. 48 For he has looked with favor on the humility of his handmaid. For behold, from
this time, all generations shall call me blessed. 49 For he who is great has done great
things for me, and holy is his name 50 And his mercy is from generation to generations for
those who fear him. 51 He has accomplished powerful deeds with his arm. He has
scattered the arrogant in the intentions of their heart. 52 He has deposed the powerful
from their seat, and he has exalted the humble. 53 He has filled the hungry with good
things, and the rich he has sent away empty. 54 He has taken up his servant Israel,
mindful of his mercy, 55 just as he spoke to our fathers: to Abraham and to his offspring
forever.” 56 Then Mary stayed with her for about three months. And she returned to her
own house. 57 Now the time for Elizabeth to give birth arrived, and she brought forth a
son. 58 And her neighbors and relatives heard that the Lord had magnified his mercy with
her, and so they congratulated her. 59 And it happened that, on the eighth day, they
arrived to circumcise the boy, and they called him by his father’s name, Zechariah. 60
And in response, his mother said: “Not so. Instead, he shall be called John.” 61 And they
said to her, “But there is no one among your relatives who is called by that name.” 62
Then they made signs to his father, as to what he wanted him to be called. 63 And
requesting a writing tablet, he wrote, saying: “His name is John.” And they all wondered.
64 Then, at once, his mouth was opened, and his tongue loosened, and he spoke, blessing
God. 65 And fear fell upon all of their neighbors. And all these words were made known
throughout all the hill country of Judea 66 And all those who heard it stored it up in their
heart, saying: “What do you think this boy will be?” And indeed, the hand of the Lord
was with him 67 And his father Zechariah was filled with the Holy Spirit. And he
prophesied, saying 68 “Blessed is the Lord God of Israel. For he has visited and has

19
wrought the redemption of his people 69 And he has raised up a horn of salvation for us,
in the house of David his servant 70 just as he spoke by the mouth of his holy Prophets,
who are from ages past 71 salvation from our enemies, and from the hand of all those who
hate us, 72 to accomplish mercy with our fathers, and to call to mind his holy testament,
73 the oath, which he swore to Abraham, our father, that he would grant to us, 74 so that,
having been freed from the hand of our enemies, we may serve him without fear, 75 in
holiness and in justice before him, throughout all our days. 76 And you, child, shall be
called the prophet of the Most High. For you will go before the face of the Lord: to
prepare his ways, 77 to give knowledge of salvation to his people for the remission of
their sins, 78 through the heart of the mercy of our God, by which, descending from on
high, he has visited us, 79 to illuminate those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of
death, and to direct our feet in the way of peace.” 80 And the child grew, and he was
strengthened in spirit. And he was in the wilderness, until the day of his manifestation to
Israel.

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2.The Prologue

Saint Luke begins his Gospel with a brief prologue. He starts to explain why he
writes and the criteria that guide his work. Many people, listening to the preaching of the
Apostles, had taken notes to preserve the memory of them. They had written down some
of the events, more or less detailed, on the life of Jesus, according to the witness of those
who were present at the time, and had been commissioned to preach them. These notes
and these stories, however, related to the public life of our Redeemer. They were not
written with any plan in mind, so to speak, or for any historical purpose. They were single
episodes, and those who did not know about them, could not have a clear understanding of
these grandiose events.
The holy Evangelist—perhaps moved by his famous and most dear friend,
Theophilus, a new convert to the Faith—started to conduct diligent research on the
happenings from the very beginning, in order that his dear friend, and other pagans
converted to the faith, would have a true story, obtained directly from its historical
sources, precise and detailed, to confirm in their hearts the faith received by the apostolic
preaching. It is evident that the Holy Spirit moved St. Luke above all to write, making use
of human occurrences to confirm him in this work.
The action of God never excludes our cooperation; on the contrary, in some cases
it almost seems that God takes it into consideration with loving respect. The inspired
Author does his work, and becomes a free and active instrument in the hand of the Lord.
The work and the human cooperation are certainly guided by the Spirit of the Lord, made
easy by his grace; thus the inspired Author is as if gently moved in his search, and then
fully enlightened by the divine inspiration to accomplish the work desired by God.
The Prologue of the Gospel of St. Luke is not without value for us, because it is a
precise witness of the value of the tradition of the Church. Those words: Sicut
TRADIDERUNT nobis qui ab initio ipsi viderunt et ministri fuerunt sermonis, are final words
against those who deny the tradition, because it is evident that the Gospel has come to us

20
in fact through the tradition and the living word. This tradition cannot be entrusted to
everybody, but to those who guard it in the name of God, thus to the Catholic Church and
to those who support it, commissioned by the Holy Spirit. Many may know the traditions
of the Church, and many have attempted to draft the story of the evangelical events; but
only the one who has the authority by God can determine the authenticity and the truth. A
tradition left to one’s own fancy cannot be source of light and truth, nor could it give the
certainty of what it teaches.
St. Luke conducted his historical research from the origin of the facts, and he
certainly did not only deal with the Apostles, but with the most Blessed Virgin Mary. The
oriental tone of the canticles that he quotes, and their psychological characters, so well
proportioned to Mary, to St. Zechariah and to the old holy Simeon, as we shall see, shows
clearly that he drew them from the very lips of the most pure Virgin; he did not change a
word of it, accustomed as he was to the scientific accuracy from his own medical
profession. His memory was trained to hear from his sick patients the clinical account of
their illnesses.
Many had written on the life of Jesus Christ and his works, and yet the holy
Evangelist thought it useful that he too should write about it. The delicacy of his
personality, as it appears by all his writing, meant that he refrained from making any
judgment on what others had written. That he decided to start a work of diligent research
shows that not all who had written about it had been accurate or precise; there is an
indirect hint in those words to the apocryphal gospels, always rejected by the Church.

May our life be a living Gospel

To research, to know, and to practice the word of God: this is the main occupation
of our Christian life. To reduce all our religious culture to a few facts, poorly assimilated,
and to believe to know everything with few elements of faith means that the true program
of our Christian life, that is to know, to love, and to serve God, is not understood.
If in everyday matters of life, which are of small importance, we seem never to
learn enough, in spiritual matters the knowledge is inexhaustible, both in theory and in
practice. It is necessary for us to meditate on the works of the Saints, and ponder upon
these in depth, in order to give our soul a clear certainty of what is already known and
leads to the holy life.
The reading and the meditation of holy books nourish our love towards God, and
direct us to the practice of solid virtues. Only in this way, so to speak, we can write in our
life a living Gospel, and be for others like an open book of grace and knowledge. This is
the endless occupation of the Church, that searches in every age the history and the truth
of her marvelous treasures of wisdom, and with the works that she does with her
unceasing apostolate, gives to souls the bright light that, like a strong sunshine on plants,
makes bloom a thousand shoots of goodness.
The world poisons the souls with its polluted publications that become like an
endless flow of death. We must instead nourish the souls with celestial wisdom,
contributing ourselves to propagate it, if we have this mission or the capacity, and
promote with eagerness the good press.
This apostolate is not yet understood by all, but it must become part of the
program of a good Christian life: to give a good book or a good newspaper or magazine

21
means to enlighten, guide and save a soul. The apostolate of the word many times
becomes sterile; the apostolate of the printed matter, on the contrary, remains like a
lighted lamp and silently continues that of the word.

3. Gabriel announces the miraculous conception of John the Baptist.

At the time of Herod, king of Judea, St. Luke says, there lived two holy people,
righteous before God and irreproachable in all the commandments and the precepts of the
Lord. Herod, called “the great” for the public works he had promoted in Judea,
particularly in the restoration of the Temple, was the son of Antipater, who, under the
pontificate of Hyrcanus, was named by Julius Cesar procurator of Judea. Through plots
and schemes, Herod succeeded his father, obtained through the Roman Senate the title of
king, and reigned from 714 to 750 of the Roman calendar.
Criminally bloodthirsty to an extreme, he reigned through slaughters, massacres
and oppression of all kinds and he was the terror of his subjects. His life was an horror of
vices and on the throne he was more a wild beast than a man; he had three of his children
killed as well one of his brothers, and on the least suspicions sentenced to death many of
his best friends. In contrast to this crowned monster, the sacred text portrays the peaceful
couple of two Saints: Zechariah and Elizabeth.
David, in organizing the religious service of the Temple, divided the Priests in 24
classes, each called by the name of their leader. Each class served from one Saturday to
the next, and in this weekly function, offered the incense and immolated the victims,
staying in the living quarters of the Temple.
Zechariah was Priest of the eighth class, by the name of Abia; Elizabeth, his wife
was also of priestly birth. They lived in a holy manner, and they did not have children,
because Elizabeth was sterile. In those times to be sterile was the greatest disgrace,
because every woman hoped to be the mother of the awaited Messiah. Being both old,
notwithstanding all the prayers to God to conceive a son, now they had lost all hope.
However, all those prayers were not in vain, and had their effect, overcoming all hopes.
They were both just before God and irreproachable also before man, which makes us
understand how deep was their interior holiness and how exemplary was their life. They
did not blame God for their sterility that for them was a disability, but their life had a note
of sadness, as plants without flowers.
Their house was lonely and silent, with thoughts of the death that would extinguish
everything, and the rooms were dark with that fog of the inexorable passage of time, and
they had no happy lights of new aspirations.
But what prayer is useless before God? Even when it seems not granted, even
when it seems now an absurd to even think that it can be granted, is instead granted in a
way far above any expectations, and blooms like a blooming tree in spring. St. Zechariah
and St Elizabeth had prayed for very long time to God to have a child, but now old and
having lost all hope, they continued to pray that God may grant soon the coming of the
Messiah. Their prayer was doubly granted because they had a child and they saw the
Messiah, who in fact was even in their kinship.
To avoid arguments among the Priests on call to the service of the Temple, the
offices were assigned by lot every morning. The lot of Zechariah had been to offer the
incense. The incense burned on the Altar of the perfumes before of the Holy of Holies, in

22
the hours of public prayer, that is from nine in the morning to three in the afternoon. Only
the assigned Priest entered the Sanctuary and the people remained praying outside, that is,
in the porches or in the courtyards of the Israelites or the women areas. Probably it was
the hour of the Vespers, and Zechariah entered the Sanctuary to offer the incense. The
multitude of the people fervently prayed, asking to be freed, since they were oppressed by
the foreign domination. The glory of Israel had finished and everyday there were news of
some oppressive abuse of power by the rulers. Maybe on that day the tribulations had
been greater than usual, because usually it is during times of great afflictions that the
prayers become more fervent, and hasten the hour of God.
Zechariah, on hearing the lamentations of his people, lifted with more eagerness
his heart to the Lord, and considering his own affliction, deeply humiliated himself. He
felt unworthy to do the sacred functions; he feared that God would reproach him,
believing to be the least and the basest of the Priests. Certainly he was in one of those
moments of self-abasement, because the Lord chooses these moments to reveal Him to a
soul. The very fear, that overcame him in seeing the Angel, could be caused by this
interior humility, believing that He had come to reproach him.
He put the incense on the flame, and in the solemnity of the moment, remained
absorbed in deep prayer; the solemnity of the place, his faith in ministering the incense,
diverted him from all the surrounding, and with deep respect he turned his heart to God,
and his prayer, like the spiral of the perfumed smoke of the incense, rose highly. He was
all absorbed in God, and in his service to Him, and was praying. When all in a sudden he
startled with a mysterious fright that took hold of him: on the right side of the Altar,
unexpectedly, a human figure had appeared, most beautiful, majestic, resplendent, adoring
God with such a deep recollection as if all creation had come to a sudden standstill in that
instant.
The figure did not say a word in that moment, but all his appearance was like a
living word: it was like as he were elevated, like a shining cloud, his eyes, the color of the
sky, were sparkling bright, vividly reflecting the splendor of the eternal glory. The light
wrapped around him, and it seemed that on his shoulders a regal mantle unfolded in two
powerful wings. But they were not wings; they were the expression of his nature, swift
like a flash of lightning, and fast to the commands of God. His hands were raised high,
clasped in a gesture of immense love; but they were not hands, they were the expression
of a serene and irresistible power that embroiders and disposes, and the heavens seemed
mute to their command. His body was all light and radiance, showing his spirit, a candid
halo that wrapped a life all-active in the Divine Will.
Zechariah stayed in a daze, stopping, fearing, perturbed, while a deep peace
flooded him, the peace of God.
The Angel spoke to him; his words were peaceful and penetrating, because they
were not the articulation of syllables expressing a concept, but a shining concept, a life
that seemed words and was truth. Our word is the vibration of matter moved by the spirit;
the words of the Angel were the radiance of the spirit that manifested the light of the
Divine Will. The brilliant sight of the Messenger of God was full of goodness, a goodness
that man cannot even conceive, and its rays are the warmth of the Christian charity. He
reassured Zechariah with one word: Do not fear; he elevated him with good news; his
prayer was granted and Elizabeth would have a son for their joy and happiness. In a few
words he sketched the greatness of the son that God was giving to him, a greatness

23
unknown to the world that rejoices in miseries and believes to be heights what instead are
abysses.
He would be great before God, that is, he would have his soul filled with
supernatural gifts, and as consequence he would be in contrast with the world. He would
not drink wine nor strong drink, because the Holy Spirit would fill him, beginning from
the womb of his mother. The strong drink—the sicera—was an intoxicating liquor
obtained through the fermentation of wheat, or barley, dates, millet, and so on, to make a
kind of beer that people would drink to be more alert in their work. The strength of the
Baptist, however, would be the Holy Spirit, marvelous rapture of the soul.
It does not strengthen the body, making it instrument of the soul, but rather it
fortifies the soul, dominating the body and matter, lights a great interior fire, and instills
an immense love to the heart. It does not simply move but enriches, and gives to its
powers a spiritual vigor that transforms it, making it able to do great actions, according to
the specific plans of God.
In material or human actions when the body is fortified, it becomes more ready; in
the spiritual and the supernatural, the body is dominated by penance and temperance,
which makes the soul a more docile instrument of the Holy Spirit, because it weakens its
tension toward the material life. This is the very deep meaning of the word of the Angel
that, after saying that the Baptist would not drink wine or strong drinks, adds that the Holy
Spirit would fill him. He would do such a penance, to become a creature of pure spirit,
completely strengthened and enraptured by the grace of God.
The fullness of grace would give to him power over the souls; he would dominate
the spirits, converting many sinners to God. This is in fact the greatest manifestation of the
spiritual power, because any power or any authority is useless, before the stubbornness of
the heart; on the contrary it makes the highest power to subdue and convert without
oppression.
Filled by the Holy Spirit, the Baptist would subdue and have power over many
hearts, converting them to God; he would predispose the coming of the Messiah, “that he
may turn the hearts of the fathers toward their children, and the unbelievers to the wisdom
of the just,” making alive again, in his degenerated generation, filled with vices and
unbelief, the great desires and the great aspiration of their fathers, and faith in the divine
promises. The Patriarchs, in fact, had become very much detached from the life of their
descendants; the loosening of morals had made the people of Israel almost
unrecognizable, thus making necessary a rebirth, to have people able to accept the
imminent coming of the Redeemer.

Zechariah becomes mute

The program was marvelous, but Zechariah understood very little of it, as it
becomes clear from his answer; he was all focused on the promise of a son, and he
thought that the Angel’s promise was preposterous, because both he and his wife were
now old; thus instead of exulting and thanking God, he said with great distrust and
unbelief: “How shall I know this?” Also the B.V. Mary, at the annunciation asked a
question of the same Angel, but there is an abyss of difference between Zechariah’s
reaction and Mary’s. Zechariah’s was focused on himself: “How shall I know this? (The
meaning of this interrogation expresses a doubt, almost if he said: “How can I believe it?)

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Whereas the B.V. Mary was focused on the Divine Will: “How shall this be done?”
Zechariah rejected the annunciation as absurd, Mary asked what God wanted from Her
and in which way she would have accomplished his will.
“How shall I know this?” It was the manifestation of the “I”, the “I” that pretends
to raise himself to be the judge in the plans of God; the “I” that chokes the most delicate
germs of grace, assuming to want to evaluate everything with his own idea; it was the
word of his own mind in opposition to the word of God; it was a most wretched human
word that dared to overcome the one of God; thus, and rightly so, Zechariah was deprived
of his word and became mute. The Angel became stern, his majesty flashed like a
thunderbolt. Zechariah had not considered in answering him that he was speaking with a
superior being, and that he lacked prudence. Now the Angel called him up to reality,
telling him: “I am Gabriel (which means the strong one of God), and I stand before God.”
In pronouncing those words, it shined in him what his name meant, and a ray of
divine majesty enveloped him. He was the strong one, the expression of the true strength,
something immense, deep, large, towering, something gigantic and powerful, able to
shake the hinges of the world: “I am Gabriel,” it was a celestial word, that made its
meaning known and by saying it, it made it alive. These words hit Zechariah like a
thunderbolt of extraordinary power; they contracted his nerves and made him dumb, even
before the Angel would tell him. He did not believe, his soul had been dumb, before his
body would become dumb, and his dumbness became a sign of truth: he showed with a
visible punishment that what he had heard, was not a deception.

In an unbeliever the spirit becomes dumb

and prayer is silenced.

What a lesson for us, who are used to oppose with great ease the plan of God with
our own plans and to search with our foolishness to appreciate the ways of the Lord!
“How shall I know this?” Here our program comes before the grace that can touch and
transport us; we stop and we want to evaluate everything in terms of our own “I”; thus our
spirit faints and our prayer remains mute.
Oh if we only knew to let go of ourselves in the divine Will, and in the divine
action! “How shall I know this?” Here is the foolishness of our human word before the
mysteries of the eternal truth; here is the attitude of those who look into the abyss of their
own powerlessness, and do not know to believe in the power of God!
Zechariah looked at his old age and the sterility of his wife, and claimed to
evaluate with this dead light the promise of the Lord; for this he lost himself and remained
dumb.
The unbeliever looks at the subject and the laws of the flesh, thus he is unable to
accept the truth of Faith. He does not believe, and he remains spiritually dumb, since he
does not have in himself any word of truth. There is no one more disheartening than an
unbeliever; he does not speak with words of truth; almost, so to speak, we would say, that
he speaks with signs, as Zechariah did, and his words are only materialistic, because he
does not have the interior word of truth, and it is a true sign of the punishment of God.
We believe that is our graciousness to comply, and our condescension to believe
and pray, instead it is all a gift of God. When we are not worthy of the Lord because of
our pride, we cannot believe and speak to God. This is a truth that we must well ponder.

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 Our words of faith and the voice of our prayers are the measure of our soul; as
soon as our soul is misled, by the proud misery of our “I” or by the degradation of our
senses, we loose our word, the interior word that makes us to say “I believe” and the
exterior words that can speak to God.
A Priest could measure his life from this, to ascertain how close he is to God.
When he finds it difficult to pick up his breviary, and does not know how to speak, then it
means that his faith has become weak and his heart impoverished by the life of the world.
When a faithful person does not know how to speak to God, he needs to purify or
to renew himself, because his spiritual muteness is sign of an interior paralysis.
The people were surprised that Zechariah did not reappear from the Sanctuary,
which means that he remained in it for long time after the Angel’s annunciation. To have
become mute was indeed for him a very strong sign that the vision was not an illusion; he
became full of sorrow because of his little faith, and stayed before God in an intimate
prayer begging to be forgiven.
When finally he came out, it was clear to all that he had experienced strong
interior emotions, and from this the people understood that something supernatural had
happened. Many tried to ask him questions, because a vision in the Sanctuary could mean
an announcement of future events or warnings from God to his people; but Zechariah
could only make signs. Maybe he made gestures of repentance, striking his breast, maybe
only exhorted the people to pray for him, maybe he tried to quiet them to calm their fears;
it is not possible to know, but in fact he remained in deep recollection for the rest of his
week.

Elizabeth becomes pregnant

When Zechariah came back home, he told to his wife, maybe in writing, the vision
he had, and she, after a while, realized that she indeed had conceived. Her happiness was
immense, because she was finally free from the ignominy of her sterility, that almost cut
her off from the benediction given to Abraham by God (Gen 22:17, 30:23); the Lord
showed to her that He had not sent her away from Him, as she had feared so many times.
She remained in her house for five months, without being seen by anyone. Maybe she
wanted to make sure that she was indeed pregnant, and also to avoid indiscreet questions
on the illness of her husband. She quietly prayed in her home, and that voluntary seclusion
was as if she communicated somehow to her son that love for the desert and silence that
prepared him, later on, for his great mission. Elizabeth was a holy woman, faithful to the
Lord and faultless, and nonetheless sterility had befallen her. However, this sorrow was in
the plan of God, to make her humble and prayerful, and to prepare her later for this
greatest grace. Her motherly seclusion was thus prepared, as if in a perfumed nest of self-
sacrifice and when Jesus’ precursor was born, she clothed him in her humility.
How many spiritual souls seem to be barren when on the contrary God prepares
them for a strong fertility! Sometimes they must form a generation of souls, able to glorify
God and to announce His kingdom. These souls feel a need to yearn for the Lord with
sighs of a burning love that seeks only Him and His glory. In this kind of love that seems
dissatisfied, they are training themselves for heavenly desires, preparing for that spiritual
maternity that one day shall make their life happy.

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How to fight the spiritual sterility

Discouragement or desperation is not the way to fight spiritual sterility, but rather
fall into the same lack faith that St. Zechariah had for the words of the Angel and thus
become dumb and unable to utter any prayer.
When St. Zechariah was offering the incense, he received the great annunciation,
and the Lord consoled him during his priestly functions; this should be the path followed
by a hardened soul: to pray, to attempt to do some work of sacred zeal. This is the secret
of interior fertility. Satan, on the other hand, tempts the soul by inspiring lack of
confidence and spiritual inertia and even makes a person believe himself to be on the edge
of perdition. Satan, most treacherously, wants to make it impossible for the soul to have a
simple, sincere faith and that humble abandonment to God, which makes the soul to hope
against hope. The Angel who speaks to the soul is the Priest, and it is necessary for it to
accept his assurance, if it does not want to fall into an abyss of darkness, from which it
cannot rise and thrive again. Pessimism, looking on the dark side, is always deadly for the
life of the spirit. On the contrary hope and abandonment to the Divine Mercy is the secret
of a great life.
Is not a plant pruned to make it flourish more richly? God prunes the souls with
aridity, sinks then humility, makes them aware of their weaknesses and then, at the right
moment, enriches them with grace and accomplishes in them His great designs. A plant is
not restored uprooting it but fertilizing it; similarly the humility is the best compost for
our interior powers, and when its degree is sufficient according to the plan of God, then
these powers flourish all of a sudden, to give true fruits of holy life.

4. The Annunciation of the Angel to Mary.

In a small village, that was famous not for its greatness but for the proverbial scorn
attached to it, lived a humble, holy young virgin married to a humble carpenter. When
people wanted to give an epithet of scorn, they would say: “He is a fool like someone
from Nazareth”, and that village was so humiliated that it did not believe it could ever
give birth to something good. The Lord, who scoffs at human views and is pleased with
humility, chose that very town as the place for His incarnation. Just as he gently puts the
soft pod in the honeycomb and sends the fertilizing dew in the night, similarly he wanted
to rest in humility and descend in a place most hidden to men.

Humility

Humility fascinates God, because it is the flame in which his light can reverberate
and his greatness can be made manifest. He, who knowing himself generates the Word,
does not find any other place where to place the Word, the flower of Jesse, but in
humility, the knowing of one’s self, in littleness. The creature, knowing herself and
humbling herself before the Creator, attracts Him; in the sublime void of humility, He
shines, because in lowering herself lovingly, the creature shows appreciation for God, and
also has something of that eternal knowledge of the Eternal Word. It is a mystery of love
unknown to the word.

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 Pride, by its own nature, obstructs and blinds; it is the refusal to recognize God; it is
the appreciation of oneself and becomes the least suitable to receive the eternal light,
because of its dullness, and it is anchored to its dumbness. The humility, indeed the
humility, what a flavor of peace and fertility has this most sweet virtue! Every life, every
precious richness of our world, bursts forth from humility: plants grow from seeds, always
tiny and deep in the ground; the gem comes from the darkness of a mine; gold is deep
within the earth or in the rushing waters of the rivers; the pearl is among the halves of a
shellfish anchored to reefs in the depth of the sea. Life is not born if one creature is not
humbled by another; it does not flourish in dazzling light but in the silent mystery of the
gestation. Everything that appears conspicuously or makes too much noise is more the
sign of death than of life.
Humility, indeed humility, how high is this ineffable lowness! It bends down to
receive the embrace of God, and becomes power and wisdom and love! Humility, indeed
humility, how beautiful you are in your hidden splendor, gem of most pure water that
collects the ray of the divine Love and rejoices in silent contemplative adoration!
Humility, indeed humility, the virtue that attracts the angelic hosts just as the mother’s
tenderness is attracted to her baby sleeping in the crib. The heavenly Hosts, after the fall
of Lucifer and his group, have a horror for pride and are attracted by the humility that
made them eternally blissful!

The holy young Virgin of Nazareth

Humility attracted God to earth, because the young holy virgin chosen by Him as his
living tabernacle was the humblest of all creatures. Mary, in the lineage of David, of royal
origin, was in fact unknown to everybody and lived as a humble girl of the people in the
modesty of her work. She had consecrated herself to the Lord since her childhood in the
Temple, and offered to Him her immaculate virginity. However, those who took care of
her wanted her to marry a man of the same house of David, Joseph, and as the custom in
those times, the marriage contract had been done without her knowledge. She obeyed,
trusting to keep herself immaculate knowing that the man to whom she had been given
was of extraordinary virtue. Maybe she spoke about it with him, but it is more probable
that she trusted herself entirely to the Lord, waiting to be guided by Him in her mysterious
journey of life. In her deep intuition of the divine Will, she understood that God had a plan
in this chaste marriage and peacefully trusted in Him. This is not a holy supposition but
what we can assume by her attitude toward St. Joseph, after the Incarnation of the Word,
because she did not reveal to him, as we shall see, the mystery, but she awaited that God
would reveal it to him.
The purity of the young holy virgin is ineffable. Nobody has ever delved into the
depth of this mystery because she was completely pure.
Conceived immaculate, she was the only creature who bypassed original sin; her
soul had descended from the highest Heaven, where God had created her, as a blossom
full of grace. Her name, Mary, mirrored her greatness; she was noble as a great lady, in
her virtue there was something immense; beauty was in her soul for the marvelous order
of her powers and in her body for the perfection of the most pure lines, through which
shined her holiness. She did not have any sign of pretence in her great virtues, and her
most beautiful veil was her humility and simplicity.

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 Nobody would have ever suspected that this humble silent girl, radiating goodness
and peace, who everyday went to draw the water at the public fountain, and worked with
the spindle and weaved, was greater than the Angels; she was the enclosed garden, the
dwelling-place of the Most Holy Trinity, a fountain sealed, a sanctuary of divine love,
where the prayers and offerings of her heart rose like the purest hosts.

Saint Joseph

St. Joseph was also a virgin like her. He was a simple man; he had married her and
was her loving custodian, looking silently after her, and full of respect that this
immaculate purity awoke in him. From the regal status of his ancestors he had become
poor and worked as a humble carpenter. His place of work was not the one of a skilled
cabinet-maker, because he made ploughs, doorjambs and so on, to take care of their daily
needs. No home was ever more peaceful and greater than theirs, even though materially it
was modest and poor. Even today, it is impossible to enter their little home that is still
kept in Loreto, Italy, as it was transported there by the Angels, without the feeling of a
deep emotion; after two thousands years still is perceived the perfume of the virtues of
Mary and Joseph; here sings with immense gratitude: “Here the Word became flesh by the
power of the Holy Spirit.”
Mary was alone in her little house and prayed. She was alone, because St. Joseph
had not yet legally brought her into his home, even though he was already married to her.
God, in his infinite wisdom, had chosen him as custodian of the virginal and divine
maternity of Mary - that before the world would remain hidden - and safeguarded the
great mystery. God had chosen Joseph in order to give Jesus the legal paternity that made
him descendant of David, however He did not want anyone to be present at the moment of
the Incarnation of the Word, because Jesus had to be and appear completely apart.
It is possible, however, that at the moment of the Incarnation also St. Joseph was
praying, because the Angel, as for St. Zechariah, chose the hour of prayer to accomplish
the mission received by God. They were two hearts, far apart from each other, who were
praying with ardent desire, united in the union of the love of God, filled with holy desires
and fervid sighs, for the coming of the Redeemer. God, who is infinitely delicate in all His
works, wanted that the two souls were united in Him and together be part of the
accomplishment of the mystery. It was the highest union that was possible between two
pure virginities.

The prayer of Mary

Mary prayed. We do not know the mystery of those prayers that attracted on earth
the Word of God, but we can believe it by the context of the Gospel: the Angel greeted her
full of grace, this was a surprise for him, so to speak, in seeing Her, because grace was
very refulgent in Her; she was rapt in her deep humility, because it is written that God
gives his grace to the humble. The Angel said: “The Lord is with you,” thus we can see
that she was so deep in contemplation to be in intimate familiarity with the Lord, and to
host Him completely in the sanctuary of her heart. The Angel called her with a Hebrew
superlative: blessed among women, that is blessed above all women. She was beseeching
the Lord for the great blessing for all mankind, and was yearning for the blessed woman

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who would give birth to the Messiah, not knowing that in that moment she herself was the
blessed, resplendent among all women for the virginal fertility that was going to make her
become the Mother of God. According to the Jews, “woman” was almost a synonym of
maternity and Mary had elevated herself among all creatures, with the wonderful miracle
of a virgin fertility.
Mary prayed in an ecstasy of love, completely enriched by the Eternal love by the
plentitude of his gifts, his fruits and his graces; therefore she was in a moment of
extraordinary fervor, and also in a moment of extraordinary interior abasement, because
the fervor, enlightened by the Holy Spirit, has always the flavor of a most profound
humility. She was with the Lord, contemplating Him; she knew Him in a beatific vision,
and consequently she could mirror her littleness. What was Mary before God? She was
not only contemplating God as an elevation of faith, but God as He is, the Holy Trinity,
and that is obvious, since He would reveal Himself in dazzling splendor to her, in this
very moment, in which the greatest work of the Holy Trinity was going to be fulfilled: the
Father was sending his Son, the Son was descending from his regal eternal seat, the Holy
Spirit accomplished the mystery, giving Him, into Mary, a human body and a soul,
shining of mysterious holiness. The heavens lowered upon the earth, and Mary saw Them
in Their splendor, because They were lowering themselves to Her. Who ever can probe
into the depth of this mysterious moment?
Mary prayed, contemplated, and meditated in silence. As she did, the earth
disappeared for her, the walls of her little home became as if transparent; they no longer
enclosed her within their confines. She flew through the Heavens. What a mysterious
light! The Holy Trinity! The Eternal Origin of everything, infinite and all in Himself, the
Father, the fire of eternal knowledge who eternally generates the Son and the fire of the
eternal Love bursting forth from the Father and the Son, uniting the Father and the Son in
personal Love, subsisting and eternal. What a spectacular sight!
Mary contemplated most of all His infinite Paternity. She saw His splendor most
pure, most simple that defied all composition. She saw bursting forth, so to speak, from
the Paternity, the Eternal Word and from the Word and for the Word, the splendor of the
creation. It was the miracle of miracles, and with her immaculate soul she lowered herself
adoring Him, motionless, in an incomparable happiness. She could see how far distant
man was from God, and how faint his image was and his similitude with his Creator! She
saw in the faraway distance the rotation of the stars; She saw the earth and on earth she
saw man, a shoot rotting at his root, its branches withering and wasted, and filled, in fact,
with the germs of death. She saw the miserable development of that life that had been
created to glorify the Creator; She saw the passing of the human centuries, full of
foolishness and crimes, in which the eternal ray of grace did not reach the creatures
anymore, who instead were born as if on an icy summit, where the sun never rose
anymore and emptiness and frost were endless. What sorrow for the immaculate heart of
Mary to see that immense desolation with no hope for humanity!
She indeed saw the efforts of poor mankind to procure for themselves the light of
wisdom and life, but this was even more sorrowful: here and there she could see small
rays of wisdom. The creatures, with great effort, were trying to have more light by
gathering the runners of their dried plants, but the result was only flashes of light and
smoke. Everywhere She could see shameful creations made by human hands, put high on
precious pedestals, the idols, abhorrent caricatures of the divine, suggested by satan. The

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life, that was meant to rise up to the heights to the conquest of happiness in God, was
instead plunged into the mire of the senses, moaning in its great unhappiness; consuming
itself relentlessly in useless pursuits. She saw the great human powers as haughty puffs of
air that opened up ostentatiously, and were dispelled by storms. The empires, the armies,
the wars, the miserable efforts to conquer the Heavens were reduced, by their own fault, to
be collectors of rubbish, destined for the fire.
The blessed soul of Mary paused before this display of death, and remembering the
sighs of the Patriarchs, cried to God with all her love: Come, save us, do not delay any
longer, send the One that has to come, to come down as dew on our parched land, flood us
with the rain of your mercy, give us the Just One.
Mary prayed. Her people, the chosen ones of God, still had the promise of this
immense blessing, and this promise had come down from generation to generation to the
house of David. Mary looked toward her people and moaned. The faith was languishing
and her people were not waiting for the Redeemer but for a ruler. The words of the
Prophets had been crushed by the violent persecution of wicked people, they were
forgotten; the desolation had reached also the holy place, and the sacrifices and the
oblations were only poor ceremonies without life.
Mary prayed that all those images that she saw would come soon to an end, and she
offered herself as a perennial holocaust, renewing the consecration of her virginity to
hasten the miraculous maternity that would bring the Messiah.
It was the most pure oblation attracting the fire of Heaven, the Eternal Flame, right on her,
and accomplished the mystery.
It is the opinion of the Fathers, an opinion concurred upon and that mirrors the truth,
that Mary hastened the moment of the descent of the Word of God among us; it was her
prayer that opened the Heavens, and it is reasonable to suppose that this prayer reached its
climax in the moment of the Annunciation. Therefore we do not make only pious guesses,
but we reconstruct psychologically, even if faintly, the mysterious moments in which
Mary became the Mother of God by the power and virtue of the Holy Spirit. The Eternal
Love made her fruitful when She longed the most for the glory of God and the salvation of
mankind.
She was absorbed in God, tending to Him in prayer. How beautiful She was! No
painter ever had the possibility to paint this beauty, because nobody could ever paint the
light of the spirit emanating from her body, purified by divine love. Mary was kneeling, in
an attitude of deep humility; her hands were folded, her head veiled, her heart to God, and
her eyes were half closed in most sweet modesty. Her large eyes filled with the light of
God, were as if veiled by her eyelids, and were lowered, like the veil of the Temple, on
the mystery of truth and love. Her purest forehead was serene and resplendent reflecting
her great thoughts. Her pale cheeks, a light shade of rose, made her countenance like an
open flower in mid-winter, waiting for the vivifying ray of sun. Her lips had a peaceful
smile, a reflection of the interior happiness that enveloped her. *
She was a monument of purity, and the clothes she wore emanated the perfume of the
most fragrant lavender. She had not the faintest idea that she could be the elect of God.
She prayed.

------------------------------------------
*Don Dolindo’s poetic descriptions evince his enthusiasm.

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And behold an Angel of God appeared.

And in that moment a great light engulfed the little room that startled her, and in that
light shined even more brilliantly an Angel of God.
Mary was not troubled or afraid, because she was used to be in the company of the
Angels; but she saw that the heavenly messenger at that moment was not like the others.
He did not have a majestic appearance, but looked like he was prostrated in reverent
respect. He was refulgent of a stronger light because he was carrying the greatest message
ever brought down from Heaven to earth; however his greatness was veiled by humility.
He paused for a moment, he bowed, admiring the masterpiece of God and
exclaimed: “Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with you, blessed are you among women.”
And he stopped, adoring God who had created her so beautiful, because he saw in her the
brightest reflections of his infinite sanctity.
Mary, the most humble Mary, heard these great words of greeting and she did not
comprehend the meaning of them; thus she became troubled because those words had no
resonance in her heart, that was accustomed to becoming smaller; they were for her words
of an unknown language, and wondered what was their meaning. She did not suspect them
to be praise, so she feared that they were a reproach, a sign of disappointment from God.
This appears clear from the words that the Angel added: “Fear not, for you have found
grace with God.”
It seems it is the psychology of souls who are truly humble; they fear praise, because
words of praise are absurd to them and lie heavily on their hearts, because they seem like
they diminish in a way the glory of God.
Mary was not troubled by the vision of the Angel, as some people believe, but in his
words, as it is clearly written in the Sacred Text, and since she did not understand their
meaning, like someone hearing an unknown language, showed the extent of her humility.
It was in that moment of interior abasement that the Angel foretold her to be Mother of
God: “Behold you shall conceive in your womb, and shall bring forth a son; and you shall
call him Jesus. He shall be great, and shall be called Son of the most High; and the Lord
God shall give to Him the throne of David His father; and He shall reign in the house of
Jacob for eternity.” The Angel said: “you shall conceive in your womb and shall give
birth; thus she would truly become a mother; she would give her son the name Jesus,
Savior; thus would be fulfilled the prophesies that announced the salvation of Israel and of
the world; the Son would be called Son of the Most High and she would become the
Mother of God. He would have the kingdom of David forever, the true kingdom promised
to the holy king, the kingdom of grace and love that would last eternally.
Mary remained pensive. She was married to Joseph, she had promised to God her
virginity and she knew that she had made the same promise to Joseph; what should she do
now? She only wished to do the Divine Will, and she wanted to know how to do it. Mary
in that moment performed an act of virtue greater than that of Abraham, so instead of
showing herself ready to immolate her son, she showed herself ready to renounce her
virginal integrity, if it pleased God. It would not be correct to say that Mary would have
renounced her divine Maternity in order to not renounce her virginity; this would not be
fitting to the full submission of Mary to the will of God. The Virgin only expressed her
particular condition, and implicitly Joseph’s: She did not know man and because of her
vow, she could not know him; if God wanted her to have a virgin spouse, who for his

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consecration belonged only to God, how would the conception occur? She could not break
the vow that St. Joseph had entered with God, and she was asking how the conception
could happen. But the Angel immediately reassured her; She would conceive by the
power of the Holy Spirit, she would remain intact.
The words of the Angel were not a simple affirmation; they were a great light,
because he spoke in the name of God. Nobody can ever understand with what loving
respect an Angel pronounces the name of God, from whom he receives everything and in
whom he delights.
Gabriel, in pronouncing the name of the Holy Spirit, shined with a love benefiting
from the Eternal Love; and in referring to the virtues of the Most High, he evinced his
reverent awe of the Almighty. He was refulgent of love and prostrated in so deep an
adoration as to make one appreciate the infinite distance that exists between the power of
the creature and that of the Creator. Mary in that moment gazed on the power of God and
she abandoned herself in an act of unbounded faith. She did not need to know anything
else, she did not need to investigate; she did not want to think of the external
consequences of a miraculous conception; she prostrated her intellect and believed, bent
her will and offered herself, opened her heart and loved God with intense love.
The Angel added that also Elizabeth, even though she was sterile, miraculously *
had conceived a son, and she was already in her sixth month, because nothing is
impossible to God. This was the human proof that he gave for Mary’s human reasoning,
because God, in his great works and revelations, always has a delicate respect for human
reason. Therefore faith in Him is in this way sustained, and it makes this leap much easier.
The light of reason is like the boost of a catapult to an airplane that flies without motor,
and thrusting it all at once into the blue sky.

Faith and reason

We believe first, and then we have the light of reason itself, because from the
heights it is possible to contemplate the valleys and measure the height; but from the
valley it is not possible to contemplate the horizon of the heights. This is something of
great importance: one cannot arrive at faith through investigation; but it is possible to
investigate, if one believes, to love all the more, to contemplate and to believe.
The efforts of the human reason before having faith are useful only if they push us
towards God, to ask to Him for Faith; and this is a transcendent and vivifying light that
cannot be found in the poor caves of reason, just barely illuminated. It is much more
beautiful to illuminate reason with the sun of faith, than to claim to shed light with the
feeble light of reason. We do not ponder how narrow-minded our reason is before the
sublime light of God; therefore we give it so much importance. The Saints simply
abandoned themselves to the light of God, and always had their reason exceedingly lit, far
more than those of the great thinkers of our poor earth.

------------------------------------------
* “Miraculously” in the sense that at her age was unconceivable to have the son she always desired but was
unable to have until then; St. John Baptist was born as all children are born.

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Mary believed: “Here is the handmaid of the Lord...”

Mary believed the great mystery that was announced to her and believed in the
outpouring of the Holy Spirit in Her. She lowered her forehead with immense humility,
she opened her heart with full dedication, and she pronounced the admirable words that
would accomplish the great mystery of the Incarnation of the Word: Behold the handmaid
of the Lord. Let be done to me according to your word. It was a solemn moment that my
poor pen does not know how to express; it was the moment of the wedding of a creature
with the Eternal Love, and the descent of the Word in her immaculate breast. It seems that
this descent of love was like a huge weight that overwhelmed the scales of mercy and
raised Mary up to where the Word had descended, up to eternal heights. Mary was
absorbed in silence, rapt in God, offering herself entirely to Him, bowing down into the
dust of her nothingness. In this act of most profound humility she almost disappeared, and
she prayed ardently. She felt the deepest peace and perceived in her life a current of
boundless purity.
Her body seemed to have become spirit, such was its brilliance, and ethereal in
that great light overshadowing her. She was as a living canticle of love: her powers were
singing in harmony with the gifts of the Holy Spirit, her intellect was refulgent of divine
wisdom, her will was refulgent in complete union with God, an immense light of celestial
knowledge inundated her making her able to converse in the Heavens, or better in the
loving peace of the Most Holy Trinity, because from that moment God called her almost
in the divine union: she was, in fact, the daughter, the spouse and the mother of God,
having in herself the greatest image of the Most Holy Trinity, she was the generating
principle of the Incarnate Word, she had him in her breast, united to her for the Eternal
Love and she could echo the eternal words of the Eternal Father: Ex utero ante luciferum
genui te (“From the womb, before the day star, I begot you”-- Ps 109:3) with the words
of her maternal love: From my breast, in God’s light, I begot you. How marvelous! God
speaking of the eternal generation of the Son makes a comparison between his eternal
bosom to the virginal womb so that it would not seem strange that from a virgin one day
could be conceived the Incarnate Word and Mary could compare her womb to the bosom
of God the Father!*

---------------------------------------
* The sacred author of the Psalm 109 uses the human expression to point out the profound mystery of the
eternal generation of the Word.

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 And the Word became Flesh

The Angel was witness to the nuptials of Mary with the Holy Spirit and of the
Incarnation of the Word; that was a moment of immense joy for his ardent spirit, and he
stopped in adoration. The Eternal Love that unites the Son with the Father, united the Son
to the divine Mother. He kindled in Her an immense love and wrapped her in his flame; he
overshadowed her, and almost made her disappear in that flame, making her almost
incandescent in Himself. That love was He becoming a flame in the Heart of Mary, in a
way that Mary lived all through Him, and for Him in that moment. He burned like the
flame of Sinai, and did not consume her, but gave her new life. Mary was as taken up in
Him, although keeping her own being. A vital germ of her breast was penetrated by the
life that the Holy Spirit made active, and the development was initiated. The germ was not
contaminated, virginal, penetrated without a lesion not by a human germ but created by
the virtue of God, and the life that made it active was the Eternal Love. Mary could tell
him in all truth more than a creature says to the other: “Spouse of love you are for me.”
The grace of the Holy Spirit radiates in creatures and enriches them with gifts so
that they may be able to give praise to God; in Mary the Holy Spirit did not radiate but
gave new life to her, rendering her fertile with the Incarnate Word, to the substantial
praise of God; Mary felt twice divinized, and the gratefulness she had for God made her
able to feel the sublime tenderness of the divine Paternity. She closed her eyes, glorified
the Lord in exultation, and in the silence of her heart, remained prostrated in adoration,
more beautiful than all the Angels in Heaven. Gabriel looked at her astounded; he saw
transpiring from her the very light of God, because in that moment the grandiose miracle
became real: The woman enclosed and wrapped the man-God in her own life, she made
him live of herself, and she lived of Him, so that her life for Him had something of the
divine. The blood that flowed in the Son was hers, and in Him became divine Blood by
the hypostatic union; this then flowed from the Son in Her as divine Blood,
communicating Himself to her. The great and the small circulation flowed through the
immaculate Heart of the Mother, but flowed back in the Heart of the Divine Son, and
came back to the one of the Mother. It became saturated naturally of oxygen in the lungs
of the Mother and of divine life in the Son, so that the divine Son unceasingly rejuvenated
her maternal life.*
This is the most significant marvel of the Incarnation of the Word in Mary, and it
is the Communion that elevated her to the highest sanctity in each of those 20 or 30
seconds in which the blood completed the whole circuit of the arterial and venous system.
The whole body of Mary was sanctified, and even into the smallest fibers where the
capillary reach a diameter of five thousands of a millimeter, even into the organs furthest
from the rational life, flowed the divine life, and sanctified all her activities, rendering
them praises to God.
It was obvious that where the embodiment of Praise to God was living, everything
would have to be praise, and the body that had given the temporal life to the Incarnate
Word would be a Body with voices of loving praise to God.

------------------------------------------
*A brilliant and real observation that the blood of Mary that flowed nourishing the Heart of Jesus Christ
afterwards flowed again in the heart of Mary… almost bringing a perfume of divinity.

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 Even the physical beauty of Mary became mysterious, because all her features
radiated something divine. Her muscles were sanctified; the shade of her complexion was
as if shining of the divine palette; she was brilliant like the sun, in fact more than the sun
in a placid morning azure sky; she had the radiance of the dawn, in her pigments the
glittering of the stars, in her eyebrows the majesty of the arch of the firmament, on her
mouth the serenity of a silent midday sky.
She was a marvel of supernatural beauty, because all her immaculate body was
expression of a new art of love that no sculptor can give to his sculptures. The admirable
proportions of her figure were more simple because of her purity, more spontaneous for
her abandonment in God; exhaled a perfume of life, even though halted in one gesture and
prone in an enraptured adoration. Hers was not a body; it was a living canticle, a diffuse
soft melody that was like the sublime whisper of the closed garden and the fountain sealed
by God.
Her folded hands were as if singing in their abandonment to humility, her arms
inclined to the Divine Will and her Body now Temple of God: like the archways soaring
to the heights, raised high in empty space and triumphant over their weight delicate
harmony drawn from the coarse matter; a singing gilded hidden archway, shining in the
rays of the sun, like orbs of light in the tranquil depth of the nave; singing solid pillars of
the apse, standing there like adoring cherubim and refined in the intricacies of their
Corinthian capitals, and a singing an Altar that receives the divine Victim among the
spirals of the most sublime incense. All her soul shined through her body veiled of
mysterious modesty, and the canticle of her love echoed from all her immaculate being:
Magnificat anima mea Dominum (My soul magnifies the Lord).

The Heart of Mary, tabernacle of the Everlasting

The Angel, accustomed to the canticles of Heaven, had a start of joy; accustomed
to take the prayers of the Saints, he held out his adoring hands to receive those of Mary,
because in her prayers were already the sighs of the Incarnate Word; accustomed to watch
over the hearts of men like a strong prince, he lowered himself before the Heart of Mary,
tabernacle of the Almighty. He did not dare to speak any other word; he did not greet her,
but bowed before her, like a flower before the sun, adoring Jesus, the divine dew that had
descended most placidly on this immaculate earth in the night of the world.
Then he flew back to the Heavens, rich with the first offerings of the Altar of the
holocaust and those of the divine timiama (incense), to present them to the throne of the
Everlasting One: Discessit ab illa Angelus (the Angel departed from her).
Mary remained alone; she did not move, all absorbed in prayer; she was wholly
one with the Word of the Father, who had made himself smaller, silent, and prisoner of
love. In that moment she was his word, and had to gather the Word from the depth of her
heart and gushed it from her mouth, as a spring of water gushes forth from an abyss of the
earth.
She prayed. In her most intimate possession was the divine life, far more so than of
any other soul who, after Holy Communion, prays, thanks and adores his Redeemer.
She prayed, and her fervor was like a threefold flame lit in her by the Holy Spirit,
it was a flame that wanted to envelop everything in charity, because Love of God brings

36
with it unfailingly love of others.
She prayed.
The little house was an abode of peaceful silence; it seemed like a little woods in
full bloom, shining in the sunshine with the gurgling of cool fountains. Even the walls of
the room seemed happy and rejoicing, tinged with mystical incense, like the walls of a
sanctuary after a solemn Mass. The sun entered from the open window, and traced out on
the floor a golden band, almost to form a carpet of honor for the Queen of Heaven, rich of
God. There was in these humble rooms a freshness of life, like a golden field of ripe corn,
because it was there, in that blessed soil that had matured the wheat of the elect. And
although poor, it was extraordinarily rich, because it was the fertile ground that contained
the most beautiful jewel of the centuries and the most splendid diamond of the eternal
mine.
Mary prayed for all men. She felt all of them in her heart, and their miseries and
their sufferings moved her. Her heart had expanded, and she felt Queen of graces. Her
new charity gave to her a desire to donate: to donate graces first of all to the one who had
to prepare the way of the divine mercy; this was her most profound desire. Inside her was
Jesus himself who urged her, because he wanted to start the sanctification of men
sanctifying his Precursor, since in that moment there was no one else who could start the
accomplishment of his designs. This zeal inflamed her, and Mary left her house and set off
in a hurry toward the Hebron mountains to reach one of the priestly cities were Zachariah
and Elizabeth lived.

5. Mary meets with St. Elizabeth

Mary started her way toward the mountains and walked fast on the desert
mountain roads. She sought solitude, because she had a great need to love in silence, and
she ran because she was almost like spirit and did not feel the weight of her body.
Whoever has felt a moment of intimate union with God, knows how much life is
imbued in the whole body, making it more subjugated to the soul and a more docile
instrument of the spirit. This life must have been immense in Mary, so enveloped in the
Flame of the Eternal Love. She almost did not touch the ground and, like a dove soaring
through the air, raced along the way. She ran without effort, as if moved by the wind,
since all creation bowed before her, and the air opened up before her, so as not to be a
cause of the slightest opposition to her feet. She ran rejoicing in the spirit, with sure step
and with no fear, because pure joy in the soul gives also to the body a new vigor and a
stronger motivation to its movements. Her feelings can be deduced from those expressed
to St. Elizabeth, sublime expressions of her blessed soul: she magnified God, rejoicing in
Him her Savior who was living in her breast; she regarded herself as the lowliest and
considering her great mission through the centuries attributed to the Lord all her greatness,
pondering on the consequences of the mercy of God on earth, the scattering of the proud,
the abasing of the mighty and the lowly who would be exalted. Full of God, she conversed
with Him, loving Him with an intense love, full of gratitude for the accomplishment of the
promises given to Abraham and to his posterity; she sang in the exultation of her spirit and
she poured forth the fullness of her love before her holy cousin.

37
The greeting of Mary.

Soon she arrived at the house of Zachariah and greeted Elizabeth, as it is written in
the Sacred Text. She greeted her with the words that were in use at the time, Peace be
with you, or with similar words, and at the sound of her voice the babe in the womb of
Elizabeth leapt for joy, and she was filled with the Holy Spirit.
The blessed voice of Mary was the voice of the Redeeming Word in her, since he
possessed her and exalted her whole life; it was a saintly and sanctifying voice that
performed what it said in the greeting of peace, and at the same time sanctified the Baptist
in the maternal womb and sanctified his mother filling her with the Holy Spirit.
Elizabeth saw Mary in the splendor of her superhuman beauty, and she was
profoundly impressed. From walking at a fast pace, the face of Mary had brightened: she
was like a most brilliant work of art, a mix of simplicity and great majesty, humility and
glory, a harmony of profound joy and dignified unspoiled calm; she was far more
beautiful than any creature that has ever existed and was most charming, because she
radiated sanctity and peace from each movement and word.
Mary was still a young girl; she was about fifteen years old, and all her being had
that chaste and fascinating candor proper to youth. She was a flower open to life and,
because opened by the virtue of the Holy Spirit, in her was kept intact that candid
wholeness that is proper to virgins. She seemed an Angel of Paradise, more than an Angel,
in the splendid ray of the Divinity that rested in her, and radiated around her a most
sublime anointing of grace that satisfied the spirit, and lovingly roused her to God. Her
voice was not that of a human creature: it was something mysterious, penetrating grace
into the heart, and very softly, giving a feeling of calmness; it was like a melody full of
expressions drawn by a most sweet instrument.

The greeting of St. Elizabeth

St. Elizabeth, then, seeing her so great and so beautiful, moved by an interior
inspiration of the Holy Spirit exclaimed: Blessed are you among women, and blessed is
the fruit of your womb. She hugged her, she embraced her to her heart with a motherly
effusion, since she was already advanced in age; but in hugging her she felt something of
the divine, she understood by grace the mystery of her divine Maternity, she felt she was
hugging the Queen of Heaven and she added: And how have I deserved that the mother of
my Lord, that is of my God made man for the salvation of all, should come to me?
With these inspired words the testimony of the divine Maternity of Mary and her
indescribable greatness was as if engraved for the centuries. Mary is not indifferent to
those saved by the Redeemer, she brings Him to them, she offers Him to them, she
radiates her grace and her mercy, she offers joy, she is sanctified in his name and she is
inseparable from Him in the work of salvation.
If she were only a channel through which the Redeemer passed, as the Protestants
maintain, Elizabeth, filled with the Holy Spirit, would not have turned to Her but to the
Divine Son who was in her womb; but on the contrary she exalted her, blessed her among
all women, and she called the Redeemer her fruit, fruit of the most pure plant that, truly,
only She could give. A plant is a channel of the fruit, it begets it, nourishes it and matures

38
it; it is necessary to go to the plant to have it, and without the plant it is impossible to
pluck the fruit.
Elizabeth saw in her all that splendor of life and subconsciously contrasted it to the
humiliating dejection in which her spouse, dumb and deaf, had come to her after the
vision of the Angel, and she understood that faith in the word of the Angel had
accomplished in her the great mystery, and the unbelief of her husband resulted in his
muteness and the deafness.
Psychologically, that infirmity of her husband had given not a few troubles in the
governing of her household and thus she exclaimed: And blessed are you who believed
that what was spoken to you by the Lord shall be accomplished.

The sublime canticle of Mary

Mary at those words of praise felt her soul all drawn into God; her humility gave
to her a feeling of her nothingness before Him: her gratitude made her ascribe everything
to his infinite mercy; the divine light that radiated in her made her consider his designs
upon men and the triumph of His mercy in all ages until the end of the world; thus she
raised her eyes to heaven and exclaimed: My soul magnifies the Lord.
Never before had a more sublime canticle of joy come out from human lips; never
before had the most profound humility been so sublimely harmonized with the truth, in
such a way as to form a melody of annihilation and greatness, of a littleness and an
immensity, and of a goodness and strength that delight the soul uniting it to the joy and
feeling of Mary.
The scriptural allusions to the canticle of Anna, the Psalms and the Prophets that
are found in the most sublime Canticle show not only the familiarity of Mary with the
Sacred Scriptures, but they are like the light of prophecies and of the figures that become
reality and the accomplishment of the promises of God; far from diminishing the
originality of the Canticle, they make it in its concise simplicity more beautiful and
sublime.
It is as the stem of the old covenant and the fruitful flowering gem of the new one;
it is the accomplishment of past hopes and the hope of the new mercies; it is the synthesis
of the accomplished aspiration of the past and a rapid view into the history of the future,
until the end of time; the program of the life redeemed and the synthesis of her elevations
of love; finally it is the shining flash on the life of the Redeemer and his Mother who had
him in her breast. In the whole history of the Kingdom of God this canticle is a voice
always alive. In all the development of the Church it is always the current program. In the
ascension of all the Saints it is always the harmonious voice that can gather in one sound
of love the marvelous harmonies of the grace in them; it is a fruitful and virginal canticle
as the heart from which it welled up, rich of meaning and simple in its expression, that the
Church sings and sings again everyday, without exhausting her joyful and bright source; it
is the canticle of the pilgrims going toward the Eternal Home; of the Apostles that walked
the earth spreading the good news; the Martyrs who bear witness to the truth with their
own blood; the Confessors who disseminate it; the Virgins who live it; the contemplatives
who relish it; the Angels who exult for it; all creatures in their echoes of love; and it is the
high note of the eternal canticle in the eternal glory.
When it is recited it is a sublime prayer; when it is sung, it is a triumphant hymn

39
that raises the spirit exulting in God; when it is meditated, it is as an orchard in bloom,
rich of celestial perfumes. It has always new flavors, that the centuries have never been
able to age because it is a canticle of life. What a joy, oh Holy Virgin, to receive the grace,
to receive Jesus and to be able to sing with you: Magnificat anima mea Dominum! (My
soul magnifies the Lord)! What a peace to be on the Calvary of our test of life and to be
able to repeat, weeping, with the heart fully resigned, Magnificat anima mea Dominum!
(My soul magnifies the Lord)! What an interior sweetness to rise above the joy of the
world, to repeat to the Eternal Goodness in the flight of the soul: Magnificat anima mea
Dominum! What a poem of love to recite with the whole Church the great liturgical
prayers, to feel satiated of interior uplifting, and to turn the whole soul to God in this
canticle of your heart, oh Mary, Magnificat anima mea Dominum! What a comfort for the
aridity of the spirit, when our poor fountain is dried up and does not give a drop anymore,
to revive the spring of the heart with this canticle and give life to the poor dried earth:
Magnificat anima mea Dominum!
Even at the expense of being lengthy, we cannot move on without at least giving a
quick glance to these shining facets of the canticle of Mary and to rejoice in the multiple
reflections of this most precious gem of the New Covenant.
We must comment on the deep meaning of this canticle of love, that was given to
us so that we might sing to God the gratitude of our love, that in union with the virginal
voice of our Mother, we may be less ungrateful towards the Love that came down from
Heaven and for the love that redeemed us with His most precious Blood. St. Zechariah did
not believe the Angel, and he remained mute and deaf until the accomplishment of the
promise; Mary believed and spoke, in fact she sang with a melody that embraced all the
centuries. We, her children, sing with her, live of her great faith, partake of the beatitudes
of her heart: Beata quae credidisti (Blessed are you who believed), and so we become
more able to embrace the accomplishment of the plans of God in us.

6. The Flower of the Old Covenant

The Magnificat

After the fall of man, for four thousand years, mankind yearned for the Redeemer,
and yearning for him were his chosen people, put here by God as the brain and the heart of
the human family. All nations may glory as much as they want in their great philosophers,
poets, men of letters, artists and the ascension of their civilizations; however, it is
undeniable that no one had the truth and the true love with the exception of Israel. God
gave to it the truth; those people had in Him the thinker, He gave to them the Law and in
Him it had the legislator; He gave to it the songs of the soul making them flow from the
Eternal Love and for Him it had the true poetry that transcended all human forms. The
Jewish people did not remain theocratic for weakness or for infancy of their civilization; it
remained thus because it had reached the summit of true civilization. To reject its
admirable fruits, that are divine, would be far more senseless and sacrilegious than those
who would rip apart the masterpieces of the human civilizations, and demolish the most
exquisite pieces of art.

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The Jewish people

The Jewish people without doubt strayed and, rejecting the Christ, dreamed of a
human kingdom, to the conquest of which, they resorted to any methods to be able to
succeed. We do not dwell, however, on its decadence, but rather in the admirable
constitutions that the Lord gave to them, and to whom they shall return, uniting
themselves in the one sheepfold of the Catholic, Apostolic, Roman Church. Their very
aberration and decline is a sign of the divine civilization of its past, because the fulfillment
of the authentic prophecies of its inspired Prophets, and its unimpaired survival as a
people, in the midst of so many ups and downs through the centuries, shows that the seed,
that originated such a vigorous and hardy fruit, is a seed blessed by God. Instead of
persecuting them so cruelly *, the nations should have and must call them back through
charity and for the Church, they should give back to them the Scriptures which they
replaced with the Talmud. In truth their falling into decline started precisely when they
wanted to shape a human civilization, rejecting their divine constitution. They ran after
and were attracted by the phantasmagorias of a global political kingdom, when instead it
would have been sufficient for them to live of the Christ in the Church, thus finding
themselves triumphantly at the head of all peoples, just as a patriarch is at the head of his
descendants, who are enriched by him.

Mary announces the Savior

The sighs of the Jewish people that spread throughout the peoples of the world,
should have culminated in the Christ, like the plant in the flower, and for this reason the
awaited Redeemer was compared by the Prophet as a flower from the root of Jesse. So
here is Mary, virginal plant of this flower, who has Him in her breast like a tiny bulb and
gathering the sighs of the centuries announces the fulfillment exclaiming: My soul
magnifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior. It is the answer to all the
prophetic voices; the fulfillment of all types and all figures; it is the annunciation of the
Savior from his own Mother; it is an annunciation of the truth confirmed by the virginal
splendor of this Mother. It is enough in the illumination that she received from the Word
that is in her breast, to say with absolute certainty: He has come and then to repeat with
her: Magnificat anima mea Domini et exultavit spiritus meus in Deo salutari meo. My soul
magnifies the Lord and my spirit leaps for joy in God my Savior.

-----------------------------------------
* Don Dolindo was writing during sorrowful times for the Jewish people, because the racism of the Nazis
caused them to be placed in a bad light. Don Dolindo feels love for the Jewish people, as the vigorous seed
blessed by God.

41
 He had to be born by a Virgin and She is the unblemished virgin; He had to
descend as dew on the fleece (Jgs 6:36-38), and here he came in the deepest darkness in
her most pure breast; he had to be enveloped by the woman, mulier circundabit virum, and
she gave to him the mortal body and enveloped him with her own life; he had to come as
utmost condescension in human lowness, and She is the most humble of the creatures, a
lowliness all bejeweled with graces: He has looked with favor on the humility of his
handmaid… hath done great things to me…and his mercy is from generation unto
generation for those who fear him.
Fulfilling his promises, God has shown the might of his arm; He has put down the
proud by antonomasia, the demons in their designs of perdition; He has scattered the pride
of the peoples in the tyranny of their short-lived civilizations; destroyed the thrones
of the human wickedness, one after the other, and established the kingdom of love among
the humble and those that hunger for eternal goodness. Here is scattered the pagan
civilization, based on the proud tyranny, and here is the kingdom of the humble, filled
with the peace of divine grace and divine mercy.
Nothing anymore has value with the exception of the Christ and his Church;
darkness is defeated, the shadows have disappeared, the prophecies of the centuries have
been fulfilled, the flower of Jesse is risen: My soul magnifies the Lord.

7. The fertile gem of the New Covenant.

What is this life that our Redeemer brings to us? He himself says it with a divine
synthesis: I glorify the Father. This glorification that he gives eternally as Word of God,
He gives to the Father as Redeemer, he gives it to the men that he unites to himself as his
mystical body. Magnificat, here is the splendid light of the Word; Magnificat, here is the
illuminating adoration of the Redeemer; Magnificat, here are the acclaiming voices of the
Catholic Church in all her life glorifying God. The Word exults in the Eternal Love loving
the Father; the Man-God exults in his humiliated filiation out of love; the Church exults in
the exuberant richness of its adoring life.
The fulfillment of the divine promises that develops in this immense redemptive
work, is therefore the glory of God, the exultation of love, the condescension of mercy,
the elevation of man, the destruction of sin, the fulfillment of the poor, the defeat of pride,
the life that goes on from age to age until the end of time, the fullness of glory and the
eternal happiness in Heaven. Mary could not sing with more noble words.

8. Synthesis and program of the Church.

Mary conceiving the Redeemer started the life of the Church in the greatest way,
for the intimate union that existed between Her and the Redeemer. The cornerstone of the
new building was in her full possession, and her soul rose upon it like the gable wall of a
living temple. The pilgrim Church in the centuries, suffers tribulations and continues in
Herself the Passion of the Redeemer; it permeates it in the hearts of the faithful and
applies it with immense love; however notwithstanding the trial of her tribulations she is a
canticle of life.
Persecuted, she does not bend; knocked down, she does not fall; despised, she does
not disappear; deprived of everything and bloodstained, she does not become poor, but the

42
blood of her martyrs become for Her a waterfall of gems. Nothing can silence her, because
she is like the crystal sound of an organ that resounds even through her old pipes, and it is
always resonant among the walls that contain it. Magnificat anima mea Domini, My soul
magnifies the Lord, here is the melodic sound of all her life, until the end of time,
exultation of love in her Redeemer, here is the reflection of all her tears; the gaze of God
upon Her, here is the certainty of all her life; her spiritual greatness, fruit of the power of
God; her sanctity, fruit of the Holy Spirit, here are her riches; the steadfast victory over all
the proud that persecute her, who fall one after the other from their heights into the mud;
here is her triumph that no one ever could rival; the reality of her goods that appease the
spirit, this is her full happiness that raises human littleness to the eternal heights. Her
glorious history is all in the canticle of Mary, which the Church repeats everyday at the
Vespers, when the day is setting, because her light never dims and her sun is always
eternal is in her. Her martyrdom is praise to God, who is infinite truth: My soul magnifies
the Lord; in her sanctity she exults in God her Savior; in humiliation she grows and
rejoices with her impassioned King and in exultation she shows the power of God that
conquers and reveals his sanctity that forgives.

The Church wants to save, must save.

In her activities the Church does not seek a kingdom in the world, but rather goes
through the nations to spread the mercy of God and to save souls. The world does not
understand and never shall understand the anxious desire of the Church to save, and for
this reason it mistakes her apostolate as politics. The Church wants to save, must save,
because it has been given this mission by her Redeemer; she does not want to dominate
but to save, and when clashes with human powers occur, it is when they have become
perdition for souls. It is then that she rises, fights, agonizes; she does not compromise, she
becomes like an unshakable rock and she wins and she shall always win. The world has
not yet learned, it shall never learn it, because it flatters itself to prevail over her, but it is
always overcome, it is scattered in its proud thoughts, it sees its mighty thrones
overthrown, it is sent away empty and hungry and in misery comes back begging from the
Church a bit of life. It is the history of the centuries, and it is the future of those that shall
follow until the end of the world.
The Church rises in the world magnifying the Lord, and in this way indicates to
the poor the eternal fountain of all goodness that truly satiates and of every treasure that is
true richness. It is such a shame to see those who hunger for worldly things believing to be
satiated, as well as the miserable rich people of the world who have empty hands,
believing to have them full.
The Church does not weep over the poverty of the poor, but over the poverty of the
wealthy; she does not weep over starving people but over the greed of those who satiate
themselves with trifles!

An example from history.

We report here a couple of examples from history to make it clearer for us to

43
appreciate the truth. When Jonker found in the field the famous diamond that was to bear
his name, he really believed to have found a treasure. He put it in a sock and tied it around
his wife’s neck and all night long he stayed awake with loaded pistols in his hands. He
sold the diamond for $350.000. When it was time for the diamond to be cut, as diamonds
have grains like wood, the best cutter, Lazarre Kaplan, was chosen, because any error in
the grain would have ruined it. Kaplan studied the stone for one year before the dropping
hammer that would split it. Another great cutter, I.J.Asscher, who cut the famous Cullinan
diamond, feared he would have a stroke because of the stress, and he asked to be assisted
by a doctor and two nurses. Splitting successfully the stone, he fell on a chair and had to
be assisted by the doctor because of the great tension he had suffered. Afterwards he was
in a clinic for three months for a nervous breakdown.
All this is frightening, and is even more frightening to think that for the ownership
of these most vile stones often blood was shed, and many dreadful crimes have been
committed.
Who is more ravenous and miserable than those who cling to such mere nothings?
Magnificat anima mea Dominum, My soul magnifies the Lord, shout out the Church with
her Magisterium of love, Exultavit spiritus meus in Deo salutari meo, my spirit rejoices in
God my Savior, pointing out the way to the true fulfillment of the heart, and she raises life
as a lighthouse that never goes dark. If the world persecutes her, she raises her shout of
praise; if it makes her bleed, she increases the exultation of her spirit; if it humiliates her,
she multiplies the light of her glory; if it tears her children from her breast, making them
Martyrs, she is rendered blessed in her glorious Saints; if the world exudes evil to pollute
her, she hastens her merciful attention toward souls; if it conjures up storms to shatter her,
they only break upon the tetragonal rock, so experiencing the power of God; if it enslaves
her in the idolatry of state-worshippers, it finds its crown broken by social catastrophes; if
steals her possessions to suffocate her, it sees her riches in her poverty without stopping
her song of love, the eternal praise to God One and Triune, Magnificat anima mea
Dominum. My soul magnifies the Lord.

9. The canticle of the loving soul.

Mary sang in the fullness of her love, and with her song she traced the path of love
for all the souls who live of God and search for Him above all else. The true life of the
spirit, in fact, is in the search for the glory of God, because the creature is an effusion of
the divine goodness, it is the work of the hands of the Lord, and cannot truly live without
glorifying Him in everything and above everything.
The words of St. Paul: Do everything for the glory of God, find the most brilliant
expression in our life when we bless the Lord, exalting his power, his wisdom and his
love: Magnificat anima mea Dominum. My soul magnifies the Lord.
In contemplation, through which the soul raises itself in the divine greatness, is
the exultation of spirit in the divine light, it is the joy of relishing the fruits of
Redemption, a dash of love for God for his infinite beauty and goodness. The soul grows
in the ways of love when it humiliates itself, recognizing its lowliness; it is then that God
lowers himself to the soul and is pleased in it, working miracles of grace. To see God and
to be seen by God, this is the synthesis of the highest elevation of love: Respexit. He has
looked upon it. The Faith regards it, Hope and Charity regard it, and He turns to us,

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illuminating us, raising and embracing us; the tormented soul regards Him, wandering and
crying in this vale of tears, and He radiates His mercy. Love can only grow in the sphere
of the divine mercies, because all spiritual and mystical life is a mercy of God. It is mercy
that forgives us, mercy has pity on us that enriches, raises, and transforms us. If we could
only realize that all our spiritual life is an effusion of mercy, we would aspire only to that,
never desiring any high glory, but we would abase ourselves in the last place. The life of
love is a banquet to which God invites us, and those who put themselves at the last place,
are the ones who will rise the highest. If, instead of invoking love, we would invoke
mercy, we would plant in our heart true love, in the depth of our heart, and we would see
it blooming from our own very miseries, like a plant is fertilized by the manure that feeds
and enriches the soil.
The complex work of grace in a heart that wants to love comes down to only these
words: Misericordia ejus, His mercy. Our relation to this work comes down to just this
expression: To recognize our own lowliness and have a reverent fear of the Lord. The
victory of the grace in us is in the scattering away of our thoughts of pride, in devaluing
our poor strength, and in the appreciation of humility. The power of our dashes of love is
in proportion to the firm belief in our own foolishness and poverty. The one who believes
to be already at the height of sanctity will fall down: He has put down the mighty from
their seats; those who are satisfied with their own virtues and do not thirst and hunger for
justice, remain with empty hands: He has filled the hungry with good things and the rich
he has sent away empty.
Oh love, oh love, how much you grow in the soil of humility, and in the rays of
God’s mercy! Those people lamenting not to possess You must realize that they have in
themselves such a dose of pride as to render parched the roots of their soul, and vomit
such vanity to darken the rays of mercy. If the soul does not sing the Magnificat of
humbleness, it does not sing Love. The great and highest contemplatives were all very
humble people, because it is with humble people that God reasons and converses.

10. The Magnificat of humility.

Rise, then, my soul, lower yourself and descend into the depths of your
nothingness, that you may be filled with the goodness of divine mercy. Humility that does
not abandon itself to mercy is not humility, it is spite of its own misery. Humility that
does not turn its glance to God in trust, is not a true realization of its own incapacity but is
an agitation of the spirit, in the disliking of ugliness that diminishes its own soul before its
own eyes of pride. It is not desiring of God, but a yearning of its spiritual vanity. He who
falls into the waves and tosses, drowns; who abandons himself shouting and begging for
help, floats and is rescued ashore. O my Lord, I am not surprised to be a sinner, because
my soul is only capable of this. It is not a surprise for me to be powerless to do good,
because without You I am nothing. Yet I rejoice to be nothing, so that my soul may shine
more in the light of your greatness: Magnificat anima mea Dominum. My soul magnifies
the Lord! My sin makes me sorrowful, and you know how much I cried to have offended
You, but You redeemed me with your Blood, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior. I
would be happy right now to expose all my lowliness and contemplate You, singing in all
the modes: I am nothing and full of sins, and You are everything and infinite sanctity.
Everything in which my soul rejoiced that is outside your Law is for me a disgrace;

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instead my repentance turned this satisfaction into loving regret, attracted Your glance,
and filled me with peace.
O what a great beatitude to recognize myself a sinner and to cry for having
offended You! But why am I so glad? Because You look at me with mercy. Many small
flowers bloom in my soul from the mud of my filth, because the Eternal Sun shined on me
and in the stench of my iniquities, opened perfumed buds, because You are mercy:
Magnificat anima mea Dominum. My soul magnifies the Lord! O how the power of your
grace shines so much before my nothingness, and how my sinful soul rejoices in the
splendid sanctity of your Name! You did a great thing inside me; You purified,
strengthened me, nourished me, forgave me and You sanctified my life in your Name, O
Most Holy Trinity: He has done great things for me and holy is his Name. You gave me
an ardent desire to make amends for my faults and have aroused in me a strong zeal to be
good; in this way your mercy goes from You to my heart and from my repentant heart to
those who fear You. I am a sinner, and you conquered me with the power of your grace,
shattering the useless plans of my pride; I was rebelling against your love, losing my
temper, and you humiliated me, but in my humiliation you raised me up again by your
grace.
I thirst for you, o my God quench my thirst; I am ashamed of all those miseries
that I used to consider as riches of life; oh empty me of these. Take me into the arms of
your merciful love, remembering your goodness, and let me rest in your love, according to
your promises, now and forever. Amen.

11. A shining picture of the life of the Redeemer and of Mary.

Mary Most Holy, filled with the Holy Spirit and Mother of the Redeemer,
expressed, so to speak, with the light of her love, the mysterious beauty of the Divine Son
in her womb. He was the Son of God, the living praise of the Father, the voice that exalted
his perfections: My soul magnifies the Lord. Clothed in human flesh he was the Savior,
the exultation of the world; humiliated in the maternal womb, he was like the seed that
was going to donate to us the flower and the fruit of eternal beatitude. He had assumed
human flesh to save us, and God would look at his willing abasement in order to
raise us and to spread his mercy on every generation. That abasement was the secret of
greatness, and that cloth of sin, wrapped around him, had to rout out human pride and
build our sanctity in us. He had to conquer Satan and put him down from his ephemeral
seat; he had to break those pestiferous illusions, and He had to be the bread of life, the
fulfillment of all his faithful.
No one could ever describe the Redeemer in a more brilliant way: praise to God,
exaltation of redemption, abased and therefore the delight of the Father, wrapped in
greatness in his humiliation and sanctity in his immolation, mercy that embraces all those
who fear the Lord, power that breaks the pride of Satan, victory that destroys his throne,
light that overcomes darkness, bread of life for the hungry of God, accomplishment of the
divine promises.
This is not a spiritual application of the canticle of Mary; it is the truth, because
Mary, in speaking, reflected the Son living in her as King, like children reflect in their
words and gestures the personality of their parents; actually even more, because the life of
the Redeemer, as we said beforehand, raised, vivified and sanctified all her life.

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 Mary in her canticle expressed also, I would say, the character of her spirit; but
first of all she manifested the character of her Son, living in her, who in those blessed
moments was predominant in her life. She was, in fact, praise to God for Him, and her
spirit rejoiced in the magnificence of the grace, because He had redeemed her beforehand.
She was the delight of God because of Him, who elevated her to the dignity of being the
Mother of God, and the Redeemer performed great things in Her, done by the power and
the sanctity of God. It was He who dispersed pride, Satan, and kept her immaculate; He
did not allow her to be dominated by him one single instant, and exalted her from an
humble handmaid of God to Queen of Heaven; He filled her with graces, filling her with
sanctity and elevating her as the greatest of all creatures and blessed among all women.
This was therefore the character of the Mother of God: She was a praise of glory,
an exultation of love, an abasement of humiliation and immense greatness of graces; she
was a miracle of the magnificent and glorious synthesis of the greatest works of God, the
channel of his mercy; she was the victorious woman over Satan of whom she crushed the
head, and the conquers of human pride because she showed in herself the apex that could
be reached with humility; she was the celestial giver of the Bread of Life and the
perfumed flower of all the promises given to Abraham and his descendants by God. The
heresy that attempts to distort Mary Most Holy giving to her other attributes, and
pretending to remove from Her the crown that God put on her head, did not succeed,
because She remains the eternal canticle of all ages, and nobody is able to change the
harmonies that burst from her great soul.

12. A perpetual voice in the Kingdom of God.

The kingdom of God covers two moments: its development on earth and its
crowning in Heaven. Every kingdom has a triumphant march, as well as a flag. The flag
unfurls in the wind, symbol of the nation, and the march raises its notes as a paean of
victory and life. We dare say that, in the kingdom of God the Cross is the banner and the
Magnificat is the triumphant song.
It was sung, in fact, at the entry of the immortal King on earth, hailing his first
victory in the sanctification of the Precursor. Brought by Mary, He went forth and, with
the sound of Her voice, he enveloped, so to speak, the babe of Elizabeth; He freed him
from original sin and made him exult in her maternal womb. Grace magnified God in a
soul, and the soul exulted in its Savior.
From that time on, all souls became glorification to God because of the Redeemer
who called them to Himself, through Mary. There is no spreading of grace without the
mediation of Mary, and there is no exultation of supernatural life without the voice of her
maternal love that brings Jesus to us and brings us to Jesus.
On earth, the Kingdom of God is above all in the heart, as Jesus said, because it is
love that glorifies God, it is exultation in his mercy that raises the human lowness to
supernatural life, it is his manifestation of power and sanctity, because it is his victory
over human frailties, it is his sanctification of all human powers, adoration of God in the
filial humiliation of the spirit, and it is fullness of love, in seeking Him as our last end.
In Heaven, the Kingdom of God is the contemplation of his glory that brings our
souls to issue forth perpetual hymns of praise; it is exultation in the eternal happiness
acquired by the merits of our Savior; it is an intimate familiarity of love with God and

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hymns of everlasting beatitude in the eternal nuptials with Him; it is the full revelation of
his greatness and his sanctity that became richness and beauty of the elected souls; it is the
kingdom of glorified humility and represents the eternal victory over pride wiped out by
the eternal justice; it is the full accomplishment of all the aspirations of the spirit and a
fullness transcending all goodness. While singing, Mary led the new song of the pilgrims
of the Kingdom and brought to earth the echo of the song of Heaven: Magnificat anima
mea Dominum! My soul magnifies the Lord!

13. Dazzling light in the darkness of exile.

The militant Church is, like her Redeemer, eternally immolated. It cannot change
herself for if she did she would not be anymore the mystical Body of the Savior, as are not
the churches of the heretics. To dream for her a political or human triumph would be to
diminish her, and would be a fall into the error of Israel, which was expecting a political
Messiah.
The Church is the kingdom of truth and love and cannot become a kingdom of
selfishness and egoism, like kingdoms are in every political reality. She triumphs in the
light of the Most Holy Trinity, not in our vale of tears: she exists, redeems and loves. Her
glory is in never ending, and in raising souls to love only God above all else. The Church
suffers in her members, without doubt, and her life is the Passion, but her suffering is full
of peace and she advances in the world like a crystal-clear, warm current flowing through
frozen slush. She has the joy of maternity in bearing labor-pangs, the exultation of true
glory in humiliating persecutions, the transcendent greatness in the simplicity of her life,
the splendor of sanctity in the face of contemptuous impiety, the irresistible expansion of
the apostolate in the face of the obstacles aroused by the world, the spiritual dominion in
the face of opposition that is heavily marked against her by human pride; the riches of
Providence amidst the plundering of the thieves of the world and her immolated life is all
resplendent of light.
Mary, His most precious gem, reflects all of this in her most sublime canticle.
Let’s look at it in a brief summary: The people are converted, and like harmonious waves,
sing in their primitive desolation the song of the new life that glorifies God: Magnificat
anima mea Dominum! My soul magnifies the Lord! Conversion becomes sanctification
because of grace, and elevation for the gifts of the Holy Spirit, shining in the Church the
marvels of the miracles, the prophecies, the heroism, the joyful exultation of her life:
Exultavit spiritus meus in Deo salutari meo, my spirit rejoices in God my Savior. The
Saints of the Church are such a glory and a marvel that a soul remains ecstatic
contemplating such greatness. They are human nothingness raised to the splendor of the
divine; they are the glorious expression of the full beatitude and even the admiration of
evildoers cannot undervalue this greatness: Respectit humilitatem ancillae suae, ecce enim
ex hoc beatam me dicent omnes generationes.(Because he has regarded the humility of his
handmaid; for behold from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed.) The Saints
are not idle during their life, they do great things in the name of God, and they only
represent the true and complete civilization of the spirit. They are the true heroes: the
blood shed by the Martyrs, the luminaries of truth in the Doctors of the Church and the
Apostles, custodians of the true science, the propagators of justice in the Confessors, the
delicate purity in the pure virgins, the glorification of life also here on earth in the married

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people, great and true demographers of the world, who do not increase the population for
slaughtering them later because of wars, but just the opposite, they each increase the
family of the Blessed in the Heavens: Fecit mihi magna qui potens est, et sanctum nomen
ejus. (Because he who is mighty has done great things to me and holy is his name).
The Church is attacked, but she does not know any other way to react except with
mercy, which she spreads with full hands, glorifying God who mercifully gives, and
exulting in the Savior who merits it. Her initiation is complete forgiveness, a wash that
restores the soul whiter than snow. Her arms bring gifts of love from the Eternal Love.
Her courts of justice are peaceful oases of reconciliation and peace. Her table has food in
exultation that overflows the soul with happiness; her nuptials are sanctified by the Love
of the Redeemer; her power is the paternity, or better the maternity of immense goodness,
and death itself is illuminated by mercy and peace: Misericordia ejus a progenies
timentibus eum (His mercy is from generation to generation, to those that fear him.)
She has power, which does not come from violence but from her solidity, because
it is a rock erected on rock. The Lord looks after her; He sustains her with his
omnipotence, and whoever bumps against her, shatters.
How great it is to see the infernal powers proudly advance like waves, mounting
like swarms only to crumble into a thousand pieces while the rock of God stands firm! It
is a shameful sight to see the army of evildoers, united in a single group, a single block, a
single council, an army, only to start new faiths, new religions, new uncivilized states,
disguising them as civilizations, and yet they die under the hammer of the power of God:
Fecit potentiam in brachio suo, dispersit superbos mente cordis sui. (He has showed
might with his arm: he has scattered the proud in the conceit of their heart.) Here they
are, the powerful people who make the earth tremble, and for the Church they are only
mere stick figures. She knows where they shall go, she knows where they shall fall:
Deposuit potentes de sede et exaltavit humiles (He has put down the mighty from their
seat and has exalted the humble.) The abyss is awaiting them, already it swallowed them
and shall swallow also those still living and those that shall come till the end of time. A
wave of hunger shall pass over the earth, and all the riches of the world shall be of no use
because they do not nourish. The world will hunger for wisdom but it cannot be satisfied
because its gaudy thoughts are like the bubbles of bragging children. It hungers for truth,
but its store of knowledge is full of errors, none of it explaining the reality of life. It
swallows errors, and its hunger increases, because it is a hunger that leaves one empty in
the trials of reality.
It hungers for justice and fills itself with torments and crimes; it hungers for love
and fills itself with hate; it hungers for peace and fills itself with wars, remaining always
empty, awfully empty. Only the Church satiates with true goodness, and walks in her exile
with her heart and mind filled with peace and love: Esurientes implevit bonis, et divites,
dimisit inanes.(He has filled the hungry with good things; and the rich he has sent empty
away.)
It is true that souls living in the Church are subject to tests, and even the most
devoted souls fall in the aridity which gives them anguish, sometimes even believing
themselves to be lost; however, they know that these tests are a mean to receive a much
richer gain, and uniting themselves to the divine Will, they sing with the heroism of
complete faith in the promises of God: Magnificat anima mea Dominum! My soul
magnifies the Lord! They already know the ways of immolation and the agony of death

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because the Redeemer in the Garden of Gethsemane traced the path for them, and with
Him they know to find again the ways of peace in only one leap: Not mine, but your will
be done, Magnificat anima mea Dominum!
O Mary, o Mary! Your song is inexhaustible, because it is the song of a heart rich
in the Word of God! The soul is astounded before this immense fecundity of thought, and
does not know better than to repeat the words of the Angel and St. Elizabeth: Hail, full of
grace, the Lord is with Thee, blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of
your womb.

14. The birth of John the Baptist.

Mary remained with St. Elizabeth about three months, that is, through the
remaining time of St. Elizabeth’s pregnancy. During this time she helped her saintly
cousin with house chores and especially continued to sanctify and prepare the Precursor of
Jesus in the mission that he had to accomplish. Her immaculate voice made him exult in
the womb of his mother and sanctified him for Jesus Christ from his original sin; her voice
of continuous prayer transfused in him the gift of interior solitude and of highest prayer.
They were three months of graces for the house of Zechariah, because Mary was
like a fire lit by God, that shed the warmth of her interior life. Her presence was
enchanting; it was not possible to converse with Her without feeling to be beautifully
anointed with graces.
When the Most Holy Virgin saw that the time of her cousin’s delivery was
approaching, she left, because of her virginal discretion and also because she did not want
to be in the midst of a multitude of people, that she foresaw would be at the birth of a baby
born to woman who had reached an advanced age. Her help would become unnecessary
among such a large number of people.
Shortly after Mary left, the time of delivery for St. Elizabeth arrived and she
happily gave birth to a baby boy.
The neighborhood heard of it and in great numbers people ran to congratulate her,
not only for the birth of her son, but especially because that miraculous fruit was a sure
sign of the distinctive benevolence of God toward her.
The neighborhood, in fact, had believed until then that God had rejected Elizabeth.
The number of people increased when, after eight days, in accordance with the
prescription of the Law, the baby was circumcised. The circumcision occurred in the
house, as is evident by the fact that Elizabeth was present at the event, since she could not
leave her house for forty days. Being in a city and in a priestly home, many important
people came around her, believing that they should take the initiative and impose a name
to the newborn. They wanted to call him Zechariah, which was the name of his father.
From a psychological point of view, perhaps they chose this name because Zechariah was
old, and it seemed right to them to perpetuate his memory, since he was close to death.

His name is John.

St. Elizabeth, however, on hearing what they were saying, intervened and said that
his name would be John. It was customary with the Jews to give the name of a close or
distant relative to the newborn, and it seemed odd to everyone to choose a name unrelated

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to the family; therefore they made signs to Zechariah for him to make the decision. He
asked for a small board coated with wax, as was in use at the time to write on, and he
wrote: His name is John. Everyone was surprised and moreover remained surprised and
even shocked when he, all of a sudden, reacquired his speech and hearing, and he started
blessing God.
He had become unable to speak for lack of faith, and he regained it when, with an
act of faith, imposed on his son the name that the Angel had announced to him.
That name was not an indifferent name, and in the plans of God it meant the
present accomplishment of the promises of God in the Messiah. John, in fact, means grace
that we have, and the Precursor, in his very name, had to announce the grace that the
world would receive; in this way was completed in this little family the announcement of
the benediction expressed in their very names: Elizabeth: God that vows, Zechariah, God
who remembers, John, Grace that we have. God vowed his promise to the Patriarchs; he
remembered in the fullness of time, and in the miraculous birth of John announced the
grace that already was given to the world in the Redeemer. It was one of those delicate
channels of the divine goodness thorough which the Lord manifests his mercy; John, son
of Elizabeth and Zechariah was, thus, in his name the remembrance of the mystery that
was accomplished; it was like a shining announcement in his great sanctity, and he said in
his name: The grace is given to the world in accordance to the vow made to our fathers,
because He remembered his mercy. To give another name to John would have altered the
delicate harmony of those three names.
The occurrence of the birth of John clearly disclosed for those people present that
a design of God had been accomplished; therefore, they were taken by a reverential fear
toward the Lord, that is, a feeling of adoration and waiting. As the news spread by word of
mouth throughout the region, all the people thought that the little baby was destined to
great things, even though they could not understand them. In fact, according to the Sacred
Scriptures the hand of the Lord was upon him, that is, John was truly informed and
sustained by a singular grace; even before the age of reason, he announced with his birth
the accomplishment of something extraordinary, and prepared hearts for the imminent
coming of the Messiah.

The canticle of Zechariah.

St. Zechariah, his father, welcomed this announcement and being filled by the
Holy Spirit, for a particular prophetic inspiration developed a canticle of gratitude
exclaiming: Blessed be the Lord God of Israel; because he has visited and brought
redemption to his people. The redemption was not yet accomplished, but the promise of
God was accomplished, passing from generation to generation and came to rest upon the
house of David; the Eternal Word already had descended upon the earth, in the
Immaculate womb of Mary, of David’s family, and therefore, the power that would
redeem the world was set on its throne, according to what the prophets had announced.
This regal power had come to save us men from our enemies, the demons, and from all
who hate us, that is, those who sow evil and who are the fiercest snares of our well-being.
St. Zechariah said his canticle without interruption and without stopping,
intertwining one concept after another, because he was inflamed with love, and because
after a long stretch of dumbness his tongue almost could not restrain itself for the joy to be

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loosened.
God had kept the promise received from the Angel, and He had accomplished the
mercy announced since the long past times of Abraham. St. Zechariah, enlightened by
God, defined immediately the real nature of these mercies and the fruit that they would a
bring to his people renewed; it was not a temporal benefit nor a political deliverance, but a
spiritual benefit and above all a freedom from the enemies of the soul in order to serve
God in holiness and justice, that is with a perfect life, holiness, and with a regime of order
and honesty, justice. St. Zechariah had a glimpse of the Catholic Church, true kingdom of
holiness and justice, and considered its triumph on earth, when, having overcome the
attacks against her by evildoers, She would finally obtain victory and peace.
In the second part of the canticle of St. Zechariah, he turned to his little son and
foretold his mission, according to what the Angel had announced to him: he would be
called Prophet of the Most High because he would prepare the way of the Redeemer,
teaching people penance, and disposing them to receive the great promise of mercy, that
like the sun from above, would radiate on everybody, guiding them on the way to the
eternal peace.

John the Baptist withdraws in the desert.

After this solemn declaration of the accomplishment of the divine promises,

silence fell on the house of Zachariah. The little boy, fortified by grace, withdrew into the
desert, where he lived praying and doing penance until the day he started his public
mission. It is possible that the real motive that convinced his parents to bring him to the
desert was the persecution of Herod against firstborns; because, when they heard of it they
must have feared that their child also could be killed by the hatred of this tyrant against
the Redeemer; however, whatever the reason was, it was a particular inspiration that the
boy could come to lead a life completely devoted to God, and under the most severe
austerity and penance.
The grace of God is not received without an appropriate preparation, because God
does not grant a grace to those who lead a dissolute life in the world. The holy thoughts
that God sends us are the precursors of grace, and we must receive them with sincere
faith, that they may produce abundant fruit in us. Those people who receive these
inspirations and believe them to be fruits of their fantasy remain deaf to the voices of God
and dumb to the expressions of love. The grace, then, does not make them fertile and does
not renew them.
The sufferings of life, borne with patience in union with the divine will are
precursors of the divine mercy; they are the way that prepares us for the great effusions of
the divine Goodness. Let us answer God’s calls, and not remain deaf to His voice, that we
too, together with the apostolate of Catholic Action *, become the workmen preparing the
Kingdom of Jesus Christ.
The world lies in the darkness and shadow of death; it needs the light of the
Savior, and this light must reach the souls who are already predisposed, so that their life
will not be useless. Let us come first of all to the desert of our interior life, and then in the
activity of the apostolate, announcing the kingdom of Jesus Christ and cooperating with
the salvation that He comes to bring to souls; without deep introspection our religious
activity would be only apparent and our mission would be fruitless. To walk before the

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Lord, then, and to prepare His ways, teaching the people to recognize salvation for the
remission of their sins: this is the program of Catholic Action in this time of spiritual
confusion. O that soon might arrive the day of the great triumph of God, when we too may
sing with St. Zechariah the accomplishment of the divine mercies: Blessed be the
confusion. O that soon might arrive the day of the great triumph of God, when we too may
sing with St. Zechariah the accomplishment of the divine mercies: Blessed be the Lord
God of Israel because he has visited and brought redemption to his people, raising in the
Church the power of salvation and giving to Her the triumph over all the kingdoms of the
earth. Amen.

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* In the years in which Don Dolindo was writing, Catholic Action carried on an intense and large apostolic
activity. In our times there are many movements and lay groups engaged in the apostolate, directed to every
social levels.

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 Chapter 2
1. The Birth of Jesus. Circumcision and Presentation in the Temple. Jesus among the
doctors.
1 And it happened in those days that a decree went out from Caesar Augustus, so that the
whole world would be enrolled. 2 This was the first enrollment; it was made by the ruler
of Syria, Quirinius. 3 And all went to be declared, each one to his own city. 4 Then Joseph
also ascended from Galilee, from the city of Nazareth, into Judea, to the city of David,
which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and family of David, 5 in order to
be declared, with Mary his espoused wife, who was with child. 6 Then it happened that,
while they were there, the days were completed, so that she would give birth. 7 And she
brought forth her firstborn son. And she wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him
in a manger, because there was no room for them at the inn. 8 And there were shepherds
in the same region, being vigilant and keeping watch in the night over their flock. 9 And
behold, an Angel of the Lord stood near them, and the brightness of God shone around
them, and they were struck with a great fear. 10 And the Angel said to them: “Do not be
afraid. For, behold, I proclaim to you a great joy, which will be for all the people. 11 For
today a Savior has been born for you in the city of David: he is Christ the Lord. 12 And
this will be a sign for you: you will find the infant wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying
in a manger.”13 And suddenly there was with the Angel a multitude of the celestial army,
praising God and saying, 14 “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men of
good will.” 15 And it happened that, when the Angels had departed from them into
heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let us cross over to Bethlehem and see this
word, which has happened, which the Lord has revealed to us.” 16 And they went quickly.
And they found Mary and Joseph; and the infant was lying in a manger. 17 Then, upon
seeing this, they understood the word that had been spoken to them about this boy. 18 And
all who heard it were amazed by this, and by those things which were told to them by the
shepherds. 19 But Mary kept all these words, pondering them in her heart. 20 And the
shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things that they had heard and
seen, just as it was told to them. 21 And after eight days were ended, so that the boy would
be circumcised, his name was called Jesus, just as he was called by the Angel before he
was conceived in the womb. 22 And after the days of her purification were fulfilled,
according to the law of Moses, they brought him to Jerusalem, in order to present him to
the Lord, 23 just as it is written in the law of the Lord, “For every male opening the womb
shall be called holy to the Lord,” 24 and in order to offer a sacrifice, according to what is
said in the law of the Lord, “a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons.” 25 And behold,
there was a man in Jerusalem, whose name was Simeon, and this man was just and God-
fearing, awaiting the consolation of Israel. And the Holy Spirit was with him. 26 And he
had received an answer from the Holy Spirit: that he would not see his own death before
he had seen the Christ of the Lord. 27 And he went with the Spirit to the temple. And when
the child Jesus was brought in by his parents, in order to act on his behalf according to
the custom of the law, 28 he also took him up, into his arms, and he blessed God and said:
29 “Now you may dismiss your servant in peace, O Lord, according to your word. 30 For
my eyes have seen your salvation, 31 which you have prepared before the face of all
peoples: 32 the light of revelation to the nations and the glory of your people Israel.” 33

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And his father and mother were wondering over these things, which were spoken about
him. 34 And Simeon blessed them, and he said to his mother Mary: “Behold, this one has
been set for the ruin and for the resurrection of many in Israel, and as a sign which will
be contradicted. 35 And a sword will pass through your own soul, so that the thoughts of
many hearts may be revealed.” 36 And there was a prophetess, Anna, a daughter of
Phanuel, from the tribe of Asher. She was very advanced in years, and she had lived with
her husband for seven years from her virginity. 37 And then she was a widow, even to her
eighty-fourth year. And without departing from the temple, she was a servant to fasting
and prayer, night and day. 38 And entering at the same hour, she confessed to the Lord.
And she spoke about him to all who were awaiting the redemption of Israel. 39 And after
they had performed all things according to the law of the Lord, they returned to Galilee,
to their city, Nazareth. 40 Now the child grew, and he was strengthened with the fullness
of wisdom. And the grace of God was in him. 41 And his parents went every year to
Jerusalem, at the time of the solemnity of Passover. 42 And when he had become twelve
years old, they ascended to Jerusalem, according to the custom of the feast day. 43 And
having completed the days, when they returned, the boy Jesus remained in Jerusalem. And
his parents did not realize this. 44 But, supposing that he was in the company, they went a
day’s journey, seeking him among their relatives and acquaintances. 45 And not finding
him, they returned to Jerusalem, seeking him. 46 And it happened that, after three days,
they found him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the doctors, listening to them and
questioning them. 47 But all who listened to him were astonished over his prudence and
his responses. 48 And upon seeing him, they wondered. And his mother said to him: “Son,
why have you acted this way toward us? Behold, your father and I were seeking you in
sorrow.” 49 And he said to them: “How is it that you were seeking me? For did you not
know that it is necessary for me to be in these things which are of my Father?” 50 And
they did not understand the word that he spoke to them. 51 And he descended with them
and went to Nazareth. And he was subordinate to them. And his mother kept all these
words in her heart. 52 And Jesus advanced in wisdom, and in age, and in grace, with God
and men.
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2. The solemn and peaceful moment of the birth of Jesus Christ.

The prophets foretold that the Redeemer would be born in Bethlehem, and the
Lord, who does everything through human events, made use of an occurrence in the civic
life to make it possible for Mary to be in Bethlehem.
Nazareth was about 70 miles from this city; thus, without being subject to legal
pressures, Mary Most Holy, a young mother close to giving birth would not have believed
it prudent to embark on such a long journey. It is true that the Lord could have revealed
this to St. Joseph, and the result would have been the same, but God wanted to leave out
from the birth of Jesus what could seem done deliberately in order to fulfill the prophecy;
the events, independent of the will, really against the human will, would better show the
divine dispositions on the birth of the Redeemer.
Caesar Augustus, the first Roman emperor, in the pomp of his glory, ordered
several censuses to ascertain the population of his empire and to obligate all his subjects to
pay the tribute. The first of these censuses, that included Palestine, was done under
Publius Sulpicius Quirinius, who in the Greek text of the Sacred Scripture is called
Cyrenius. This census was not done according to the Roman custom, under which

55
everyone had to be inscribed in the record books of the place where they were living, but
rather in accordance to the Jewish custom, in which everyone had to be inscribed in one’s
city of origin. This was logical, however, because the Jews were firm guardians of their
tribes and their families, and a census of a simple dwelling would not give a true
demographic perspective of the nation.
Human laws are inexorable and do not accept excuses; it is necessary to submit to
them at all costs, whether one likes it or not. St. Joseph, however, and Mary, accustomed
to obeying the divine will, accepted this order not as a bothersome obligation for them to
endure fearfully, but rather as an indirect request of the Lord. They immediately embarked
on the tiresome journey to go to Bethlehem, their city of origin as descendants of David.
It is moving to think about this journey taken when the weather was already cold,
as the tradition in the Church that Jesus was born in winter. Two creatures, unknown to
the world, but immensely privileged before God, walked carrying with them, hidden in the
womb of the mother, the Word of God! They walked in peace, in poverty, praising and
blessing the Lord.
According to tradition and indeed it seems reasonable to think, they made use of a
donkey to carry their little luggage. Joseph lead it and Mary sat on it; they were a living
picture of purity, of love and peace. The little donkey must have unconsciously felt the
goodness of having two peaceful masters, and lead by an Angel of God, as we could
suppose, followed the right path. The donkey had that bearing of assurance and accuracy
of animals that are led by charitable masters, and thus proceeded without opposition or
kicking, and went on docilely. Mary was recollected and in constant prayer. She had
become more beautiful in her advanced pregnancy; she had a gentle face, full of peace, the
true Ark of God, because she was carrying in her womb her divine Son. St. Joseph also
went on, recollected, with his handsome face full of virginal splendor, frank and simple; a
faithful servant of the divine Will; but he was also very distressed for the lack of comfort
that his Immaculate Bride was experiencing.
In the silence of the deserted road, alone through the trees already bare, resounded
the clopping of the little donkey and the last soft songs of the birds. Nature around them
seemed to reflect man and the sadness due to his sins, and the divine Word, coming as a
pilgrim on earth, out of love, approached Bethlehem in the womb of his mother, to
accomplish the promises of his mercy and to save him. Nobody imagined that in those
moments the prophecies of the Prophets were coming to pass and the Sun of Justice was
beginning to rise upon the darkness of the miserable and foggy earth, heavy with sins and
anxieties.
Finally they came to Bethlehem where, because of the census, they found great
crowds of visitors in public inns and in the houses of people they knew. Therefore St.
Joseph could not find anyone who would give hospitality to his Virgin Immaculate Bride.
He had to find refuge in a grotto that was used for keeping animals during the cold nights
or during storms. In this very poor lodging he did his best to prepare a place, since Mary
was now very close to giving birth. It is not possible to say that they were highly
distressed by this humble dwelling, as they both were immersed in the divine will, and
they both loved humility and poverty; however, Joseph, as Mary’s custodian, was afflicted
by her lack of comfort and Mary, with immense tenderness and pain was thinking about
her little Son that would be born lacking everything. Two branches blossoming with

56
charity and love were, so to speak, intertwined and the two of them formed like a single
sweet smelling ornament in that desolate grotto *.

The Birth of Jesus

Night fell. It was a frigid but serene starry night. A deep silence surrounded the
place and a deeper profound solemnity reigned, as the invisible celestial court was already
coming down to earth to adore the divine King and shined in the spiritual placid light,
made of knowledge and love. Everything was still, and men were asleep; in the distance
the glowing light of fires lit by the shepherds watching over their sheep could be made
out. The planets traversed the sky, according to the orderly laws given to them by God,
and the laws of procreation were being followed with the same precision in the
immaculate womb of Mary. The stars were shining, as did the divine Sun toward the
horizon of life on earth, like a ray penetrating the immaculate womb of his Mother.
The sun is preceded by the dawn and is accompanied by the brightest star in the
night sky that disappears in its rays. Here, the beautiful dawn of the King of Love was
Mary, in the elevation of her love and the twinkling star in adoration was St. Joseph. Mary
was all resplendent in contemplation and ecstasy. Most beautiful in her most pure
innocence, surrounded by a faint rain of light that delineated her like the placid moon in
the sky, on her knees, with folded hands and her eyes toward Heaven; she was the image
of the bosom of the Father reflecting a glimpse of the eternal mystery.
She contemplated.
She was in between timeless eternity and the times replete with the centuries; she
gazed into the eternity of the Word, term of the eternal generation of the Father, and gazed
upon the centuries of the promises through the course of time that were accomplished in
Her with the temporal procreation of the Word in human flesh.
She was surrounded by the light of eternal harmony and She herself was a
whole harmony of love. Grace was overflowing from Her, so to speak, and in such
abundance that she was immersed in a most placid rest.
She was looking up to the Heavens and a sweet smile lit up her lips in her
immense joy. She was gazing in her womb at the Eternal Word, whom she saw in the
Father, and her mortal life was sparkling with sublime radiance, because she was the
Mother of God. The Eternal Love had inseminated her, gave her radiance, and she little by
little was spiritualized. She seemed to be of light, and like an incandescent iron in the fire,
sparkling because from Her was emerging the Word made flesh.
Her immaculate body was like pure spirit, it seemed transparent, or better,
evanescent in the light of the Word. The eternal life surfaced from this little human
creature and passed through her like a ray passes through a crystal.
Oh prodigy of God! Mothers have incredible pains during childbirth, and they
almost feel as if life tears them apart for the little life that bursts into the world; Mary
instead was feeling an immense joy that increased as the moment of giving birth was
approaching. Love almost melted her and her Body seemed fluid like a delicate cascade of
brilliance.
------------------------------------------------
* Don Dolindo, with a soul pure like a child and full of divine love, unites mystic and poetic considerations,
it is almost like viewing the nativity scene, where poetic light shines on the divine mystery.

57
 It was a sublime moment: rapt to God she felt immersed in the knowledge of His
infinite greatness, she contemplated it lovingly, and wanted to applaud it with a
proportionate praise that she would take from the whole holocaust of her own self.
On her lips came back the canticle Magnificat anima mea Dominum! My soul
magnifies the Lord! She elevated it to God with all the transport of her love, but nothing
burst from her heart but the Word, the Eternal Praise of the Father, who came down to
earth like a ray of sunlight, praised the Father in human flesh.
He was humiliated for love, and he wailed.
The Eternal Word had the voice of immolation and he was in pain. He was not
wrapped in the Eternal Flame that united him to the Father, instead it was the frigid air of
the night that enveloped him, and he was trembling. He found nothing else on the earth.
Maternal love drew Mary back from her celestial ecstasy, and shaken by the wailing of
her Divine Son, she looked at him: he was perfect, rosy as a bud coming out in winter,
tinged in goodness, divine, sanctifying, exuding joy. She adored him, picked him up,
kissed him, pressed him to her breast, wrapped him up in swaddling clothes; then she put
him in the manger, because she did not have a cradle for the King of Heaven.
She adored him, clasping again her hands, she raised her eyes to Heaven and
offered him to the Father; it was a flower worthy of Him, he was His Son, and she offered
him in the name of all mankind, because he was also the Son of her immaculate womb.
The little baby went to sleep. Alas, the earth was too sorrowful without the light of
God, and He was the victim of the sins of all. There started the loving throbbing of his
immolation. He went to sleep offering himself, as if he died being born, because his sleep
was a loving offering of himself, like his life.
St. Joseph, nearby, was completely immersed in deep humility. No person on earth
ever felt his own nothingness as he did in those moments. He did not dare to come near
him. The greatness of the Mother and the divinity of the Son were too much for him.
Mary gestured him to come closer, and she took him near Jesus, mediatrix of love
and mercy for the first time between Jesus and a creature.
Joseph looked at him and the shining shadow of the Father enveloped him; he
represented Him and the poor carpenter was raised to the highest dignity, to a height of
sanctity that no one ever had on earth, because no one was regarded as the father of the
Word of God made Flesh. He took him in his arms and kissing him he communicated with
him, because in that kiss he felt his heart burning with a tenderness of love never felt
before; it was like the consecration of his great office of love. He lowered him in the
manger, and kneeling down remained in adoration near Mary...
The stars went by as if looking down on the earth; the infinite power that kept
them suspended in perennial harmony was in that humble long-lost place… It seemed like
a feast day for the celestial bodies to mark the first moment of the temporal life of the
Eternal… They marked for the first time a moment that could not be fleeting but would
stay in the splendor of the eternal reality. The Lord raised them to a more sublime power,
because they marked one by one the pulsation of a mortal life of infinite value. Likewise
also the earth was raised, because it had become the throne of God. Nature became more
alive, and in fact the holy tradition that makes us see it teem with flowers is not a legend;
many times nature has had a florid rebirth in the presence of a Saint, for example, as a
privileged member of the mystical body of the Redeemer.

58
 Men were asleep, truly submerged in a deadly torpor, because they were
ungrateful; but the Patriarchs and the Prophets in the accomplishment of the divine
promise exalted in joy, and over them went a breath of immortal hope for the liberation at
hand. The choir of the whole creation was like a subdued accompanying note to the more
beautiful canticle of love bursting from the Hearts of Mary and St. Joseph: My soul
magnifies the Lord!

3. The announcement to the shepherds and their visit.

Mary remained in contemplation and certainly implored God that her Son would
be made known among men. The Sacred Text calls him firstborn, because this is the way
the Jews would call a new baby, including an only child. In truth, Mary, having Jesus, was
also expecting at the same time to have him for mankind so already she was feeling the
universality of her maternity.
The sinner, therefore, would be her second son, born again by the virtue of the
Holy Spirit. Jesus told this one day to Nicodemus, that it was necessary to be born again in
water and in the Holy Spirit; thus in one’s rebirth no one can be a stranger to Mary,
Mother of sinners and Queen of mercy. *
Mary also was praying that all men would soon start to know their Redeemer. Did
she not go in haste to the house of St. Elisabeth to announce to her the beautiful news and
to give her the grace? Her heart was completely enlightened by zeal, and her prayer
opened the Heavens again to mercy quickly bringing the good news of the birth of the
Redeemer to the souls who were the most ready to receive this grace.
The Angels took the prayer of the Virgin and, because they surrounded her to
praise the Word become Flesh, immediately went around in the vicinity to accomplish
their mission of love. This is not written in the Sacred Text explicitly, but can be
understood, because God wanted Mary to be the mediatrix of all graces.
Not far from the grotto there were a few shepherds who were awake, guarding
their flock; the night was clear and so they were outside and probably attracted by the
beauty of the starry night, they were praying.
The readiness of their faith suggests to us that they had their souls predisposed to
grace and that, as good and simple Jewish people, they longed for the accomplishment of
the divine promises. These were now a reality and that blessed land was as if enveloped in
a spiritual splendor that unconsciously renewed in them the desire of the Patriarchs and
the Prophets. The Sacred Text says in fact that the glory of God shone round about them,
not only for the apparition of the Angels, but also for the interior splendor that shone in
them, renewing in them the faith in the coming of the Redeemer.

---------------------------------------------
** Very beautiful and most significant this philological explanation of the “firstborn” and the second-born.
Also, St. Paul calls Christ the firstborn of every creature.

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 An angel appeared to the shepherds.

All of a sudden, in the darkness of the night appeared a figure of light that, at first,
brought them great fear. It was an Angel of the Lord, of human form, majestic, a most
sweet figure, enveloped in light and was himself of light. He shone more than the sun, yet
did not blind, and there was a sleekness and swiftness to his splendid form which gave the
idea of a most tranquil power to which nothing could resist. His height gave the idea of
spiritual greatness, and his mysterious look reflected his eternal contemplation; there was
a composed and collected joy in him and charity was resplendent in him.
Turning to the frightened shepherds he said: “Fear not: for, behold I bring you
good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the
city of David the Savior, who is Christ the Lord.”
The Angel spoke of a great joy for the people, while everybody was sleeping and
few later knew of the great grace received. Clearly he was looking into the future, to the
happiness of the centuries, to the joy of the future Church, to the people of God, made
happy by Redemption. How much solemnity was in those words: For unto you is born
this day the Savior, who is Christ the Lord!”
The heart still rejoices remembering them, and yet it is such a miserable heart! On
the mouth of the Angel were luminous words, enlarged, so to speak, in the centuries, past
and future, linking the promises, the figures and the prophecies to reality and pointing out
in a flash the admirable unity of the plan of God.
From that moment on, the sighs of expectation came to an end, and joy began; all
people from that time on started a new life, and little by little this would develop until
forming completely, in the unity of faith and love, the kingdom of God.
The sign that the Angel gives to the shepherds is admirable in recognizing the
Savior, because at a first glance it would seem to be more proper not recognizing him
instead of confessing his true regal greatness: You shall find the babe wrapped in
swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.
Three contexts appear so much in opposition to the greatness of our One and
Triune God; weakness, a babe; constriction, wrapped in swaddling clothes; humiliation
and poverty, lying in a manger. He appeared weak, unable to think and operate, in a
throne of extreme poverty, in the frosty night.
And these would be the signs of a God made Flesh? This is something astonishing.
Yet these were the unmistakable signs, because another newborn baby in such condition
of abasement and misery could not be found nor the grace that he shed with his innocent
charm of a babe could be overlooked.
He was God, and any sign of human greatness would have diminished him, not
enlightened him; gold, jewels, precious clothes, and a sumptuous home would have shown
him to be at best a prince, not God **.
He was light and ornament to himself and his true and splendid courts were Mary
and Joseph.
------------------------------------------
** This consideration of Don Dolindo is realistic in addition to being very beautiful. Clothes and the
external splendors do not give dignity to a person; but it is the spiritual nobility of the person makes him
great… Thus these are very useful observations inviting to look for the values of the spirit, and to give little
importance to exterior things.

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 The shepherds had not to look at him in a human light, but rather through the great
light of faith, and it was logical that He would have no human signs that would proclaim
his greatness. On the other hand, if the Word made Flesh had to become, as it was
predicted, the victim of love, what better sign of love than his complete humility, his
poverty, his charm? He had to embrace a new covenant with his people, and he was born
in a stable with animals, put in a manger, a little babe yet immense in the fire of his love,
that went, so to speak, between two animals not killed but alive, just as a divine fire went
through the slaughtered animals sacrificed by Abraham (Gn 15:17).
Tradition always presents to us a manger with an ox and a little donkey that with
their breath mitigated the freezing cold; they were a reminder of the Covenant with
Abraham, renewed not in death but in life. One was an animal for sacrifice, the other was
not, but both were united near Jesus, with fire of love in his heart, because he was coming
to call the sacred people and the Gentiles. It was predicted that he would descend as dew
on the fleece (Jgs 6:36-38), and he came in the night in a place of animals. He was the
Lamb of God, and he was born in a stable, used to keep little lambs, and he rested there
waiting to be sacrificed.
It was predicted that he had to be the son of a Virgin mother, and it was enough to
see Mary after giving birth, kneeling, adoring, in the splendor of her virginal purity, to
understand that she had remained intact and still a Virgin; it was enough to see Joseph in
his profound humility, to understand that he had no part in that marvelous fruit. A real
father, in fact, is the first one to pour out his tenderness to his son and shows his paternity
with loud joy.
The shepherds perhaps were not able to reason this way, but a heart that is simple
is most synthetic and knows by intuition the truth that others need from proof; for them,
therefore, the condition of the newborn was a sign of truth. To be a shepherd, in those
days, did not mean to be ignorant of sacred things, in fact also the well off would take care
of their flock…the main wealth of a family. The truth of the future Messiah was familiar
to all Jewish people, especially in those times of subjugation and oppression that
sharpened their desire of liberation.
However, if all signs of truth would have been missed in order to recognize the
newborn Messiah, the presence of the Angel sufficed and the grandiose concert from a
multitude of celestial spirits praised joyfully: Glory to God in the highest, and peace on
earth, to men of good will.
It was a most solemn moment: an invisible multitude of celestial beings became
visible; it was a choir of light resplendent in the night extending to all horizons. They were
figures as radiant as a flash of lighting and as delicate as the dawn; their eyes were turned
toward the Heavens, and their bodies were cloaks of glory. They moved like a sky full of
the brightest stars, in perfect order, and were singing. Who can ever imagine what that
singing was? These were not notes merely reverberating in the matter, those would have
been too miserable; they were notes of power, wisdom, and of love that formed a
magnificent harmony; they were a deep appreciation of God, a praise to Him, a love
enlightened like a magnificent holocaust, and then shed down like a river of graces on the
poor humanity. Those words were alive, resounding in their meaning the eternal
harmonies and came back in waves of love to the Lord One and Triune.
The Church perhaps has something of those angelic notes in her songs of praise,
but here they are composed by vocal cords and instead there were trills of a spirit blessed

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that expands, adores, dashes itself, bends, launches itself again on the wings of love; it
contemplates in silence, enjoys, uses, satiates itself and lives of God. We would be
tempted to translate these harmonies of the blessed spirit into the notes of Gregorian
chants; but as much as these may be graceful, they could never express the sweetness and
the power of an angelic choir. Besides, which voice can reproduce the voice of a spirit?
Our poor notes are like heavy drops of a waterfall that plummet down into a vortex of
death, while the angelic notes are like the fragrance of incense rising on high, in the
eternal azure; our love is like the sparking of smoking wood, while the love of the Angels
is the purest flame, all spirit.
O Holy Angels, let us sing your notes with the blaring voices of the Church, our
voices are voices brightened by the divine Blood, that vivifies them, so that we may not be
separated for a moment from your joy! That song has not stopped: the Church repeats it
everyday, in the darkness of her pilgrimage, in order that everyday the glory of God shines
in her life and peace reigns in the hearts of her sons.
These sweetest voices vanished, and the Angels disappeared in the high heavens.
The night, that for a moment had seemed to disappear, returned with her mantle of
shadows. The sky was shining, yet now the stars did not seem like stars anymore; they
were like peaceful eyes looking down at the earth enraptured. They went by, shining over
the blessed grotto as if in a dance of love; it could be said that they recognized from their
far distance the powerful voice that created them, and sang in tune a canticle of order to
the Eternal Wisdom become Flesh that had harmonized them.

The shepherds adore Jesus.

The shepherds were ecstatic, full of joy and love; all together they decided to go to
adore the Babe born in the surroundings of Bethlehem. They went fast, running, pushed
by love and the desire to see the Messiah. They went looking in grottos, because only
there would be a manger. When they arrived at the entrance they were hesitant; Mary
already knew it, because she had called them with her prayer. They paused for a moment,
kneeling down; they were exulting, their hearts beating hard, almost as if these would
come out from their breasts. The divine Infant enraptured them.
Mary made a gesture, and they entered. Without Mary they would have never
dared to enter, and it is always Mary who offers Christ to souls. They knelt by the manger,
believed, adored. They did not need any proof, the proof is all in those few words of the
Sacred Text: And they found Mary, and Joseph, and the babe and when they had seen him,
they believed what was told them concerning this Child. It was logical they would be
persuaded because he was the Truth, Mary was the seat of Wisdom and Joseph was the
faithful keeper.
They saw the Child: he was a little rosy-hued baby, most beautiful. He had a little
golden lock on his head, like a nimbus cloud; his forehead like the light of mysterious
wisdom, his eyes shining with goodness and sweetness, his lips smiling with love.**

---------------------------------------------
**This is all a poetic effusion of the soul of Don Dolindo. Yet it is not just poetry, because the divinity of
Jesus, son of God, through his assumed humanity, always emanates a mysterious aura as mentioned
frequently in the Gospels e.g. “If only I can touch his cloak”…(Mt 9: 21)

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 One died of love being in His presence, He aroused tenderness in the soul that
moved one to tears. What peace in that manger! He was born in Bethlehem, the house of
bread, and like the Bread of life, He was in a manger. He was enticing. One would have
liked to “eat Him with kisses”. What a beautiful babe, delicate and powerful, most sweet
and majestic, very little and yet bigger than the heavens. He spoke softly to their souls.
What a talk of love! They felt it into the depth of their hearts, and they felt reborn. They
breathed in grace, their souls were enlarged. What love! They could not depart from the
grotto. No royal palace was more beautiful than this.
They raised their eyes to Mama Mary: she was sweetest mercy; and St. Joseph, he was
goodness personified. Did they talk to them? Happiness made them speechless.
They cried and their tears were like a pearly gems on the Baby’s face; they were
like the fusion of the sinner with the Redeemer. They remained silent. The hours went by,
fast as instants; their joy made them go fast, because their joy, almost at the steps of
eternity, was immense. Heaven does not have hours, because not even the centuries can
measure its instants.
The day was beginning to break, and they had to leave. They went back to their
flocks that were bleating, but not in pain, but because they too were at peace. Their
instinct seemed like reasoning, so much were they at peace as never before.
The shepherds went around everywhere bringing the good news; they were already
apostles and from shepherds of a flock they had become shepherds of souls. God always
chooses the humble for the great announcements of his love. They proclaimed the marvel
they had heard and seen, and Mary kept all in her heart and meditated upon it.
How great is this meditation of the Most Holy Virgin! She meditated on the
mysteries that were evolving, the fulfillment of the prophecies, the graces for souls and
she blessed the Lord with all her Heart. She meditated on the words that the Angel had
spoken to her, and she would compare them with what she was seeing, and she would
renew her faith and her abandonment to God. It was for her a great joy that at least
someone recognized her divine Son, and paid homage to him; this alleviated the grief of
her soul for the ingratitude of mankind.
She meditated in silence, in her Heart, and with these few words the Evangelist
illustrates for us the personality of the Mother of God: tranquil, thoughtful, recollected;
she spoke little, and her great life of love was all in her interior. She was silent and spoke
with God, because her first desire was to be hidden, in contrast to us who speak and
squander so many gifts of God in a whirlpool of spiritual vanity.
The Sacred Text adds that the shepherds left glorifying and praising God; in them
remained an exultance full of the spirit; their faith was renewed in their hearts, and they
repeated to themselves what they had heard and seen, as it was told to them. Thus the
Divine Infant had conquered them in his deep humiliation and those swaddling clothes
that enveloped him in the humble manger were for them the true light to see Him, the
Savior of the world.

The way God operates.

It is most important to consider the ways in which God operates, as they are so
different from our habits and thoughts. God operates with what appears to human eyes to
be most meek and insignificant. It almost would seem that his omnipotence, creating

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everything from nothing, looks for what is closest to nothing in order to manifest himself
in greater splendor. Through the extreme humiliation of a manger in a grotto, the glory of
the Word made Flesh shined upon the soul of the shepherds, and those swathing bands
wrapped tightly around him, made manifest his power; the enormous disproportion
between the way used by God, and the effect produced, was in itself a true proof for the
shepherds and it is still for us today.
How many times we believe to succeed in holy works, and yet we fail miserably,
because we use human means! Sometimes we can even see the evidence that ordinary
works of apostolate fail even if we believe to be them very efficacious, and instead, a
mere word said with humbleness and with blind faith in the Lord succeeds. Sometimes
only a single act of our nature or of our pride can ruin a design of grace in a soul or can
make useless the best work of love.
The shepherds were awake looking after their flocks and the Angel of God appears
to them, announcing the good news of the birth of the Savior; the same happens to the
shepherds of the soul: their vigilant prayers and their zeal make them worthy of the divine
mercies and they, in the night of the word, see God born in souls, to free them from their
sins and to fill them with peace.
Let us imitate the shepherds and quickly respond to God, as soon as he calls us
with his interior inspirations and let us not put delays to his mercy. By quickly responding
to his voice we are made to find the way to heaven and are made able to reach the place
that He assigns for us on our pilgrimage on earth. O Jesus call us, that we may follow you
and save us in your infinite mercy!
The Angels sang: Glory to God in the highest and peace to people of good will; in
those few words they summarized the effects of the Redemption; they infinitely glorified
God and reconciled Him with the creatures who enveloped and raised by his divine
benevolence, would have the peace of God and peace within themselves.
In the Greek text, people of good will are those that are the object of his
benevolence that is in the grace of God. * That means that it is useless to expect peace
without grace. The world cannot find peace even after the Redemption, because it is not
the object of the divine benevolence, and it continues to run away with its cursed sin. It is
necessary to yield to peace in one’s heart and in the world, embracing divine grace and
fleeing from sin.
The more the world burdens itself with sins the more it becomes troubled; if today
it has become a theater of wars, it is a consequence of being mired in a pit of awful
sins **
We could say, with no exaggeration that each sin corresponds to a new weapon
that destroys peace, and the modern inventions of war, all together, are like the total sum
of our iniquities. As our pride rises, so also rise destructive airplanes; as the soul without
God becomes asphyxiated, so does our body with bombs.

---------------------------------------
*In fact, in the Bible of the Italian Episcopal Conference (C.E.I.) the sentence is translated…”and peace on
earth to the men whom He loves”….
** Don Dolindo was just writing during the terrible time of WWII.

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When scandal ruins hearts with the promulgation of false science and false literature,
radiating death, there rises the ray of death, the new discovery that paralyzes, destroys and
kills at a distance *.
To have peace, neither negotiations nor the use of force are of use; what is
necessary is a true conversion to God of the people and of the nations. This is an
undeniable truth. Men go marching toward death when they march against perdition; and
since also young people often today fall in the sins of adults, here they are, just immature
beardless children, with rifles on their shoulders **. People can say what pleases them,
using pretentious words of heroism, and boasting of the strength of the weapons of their
nation; the real truth is that this is a sign of the nations’ sins and of their moral
degradation.
Never have people talked about peace as they do today, and never has the world
been a theater of war as it is today. If mankind does not give glory to God, how can it
have peace? These are two words that cannot be divided and that the Angels on purpose
sang together: Glory to God in the highest, and peace on earth to men of good will.

4. The circumcision.

On the eighth day after the birth of the baby the rite of the circumcision was
accomplished, sign of the covenant made with God by the Jewish people. It consisted in a
painful cut on a delicate part of the body, that was to be the way, blessed by this suffering,
for the propagation of the chosen people. Symbol and figure of the immolation of the
Redeemer, from whose most precious Blood we would be thus born true sons of God
when he would forgive the original sin and unite the souls to God.
Women did not receive any particular sign in the covenant with God, because the
woman was an integral part of the man, and in this way she would partake of the union
with the Lord. As Mary was immaculate intuita meritorum Christi (in consideration of the
merits of Christ), in the same way the woman, of whom Mary was the representative,
participated in the justice of man with the sign of the circumcision. Pain had to redeem us
and as result the covenant, representing the Redemption was a sign of pain; the Blood had
to purify us and rightly so in the blood shed was renewed the hope of salvation and the
announcement of its accomplishment.
Man had become proud and he found death; therefore, it was right then that the
reproduction of the human race, that had to overcome death and to continue in others an
extinguished life, would be marked by a sign of humiliation, until the time when the
humiliation of the Redeemer and his wounded nakedness would make this reproduction a
Sacrament, in his Blood.

---------------------------------------------
*At the time of Don Dolindo there was a great deal of talk about the invention of a death ray… but it was
never confirmed to have been built.
** Don Dolindo here speaks of the “Balilla e Avanguardisti”, members of an obligatory youth organization.
Children would be introduced to using weapons. The propagandist phrase at the time was:” Book and rifle
make the perfect fascist.” However Don Dolindo was against the war and he was very courageous to write it
so openly during those times.

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 On the Cross He was entirely circumcised, and he generated the Church from His
Heart with the last shedding of Blood and He espoused her. This was also logical because
souls who marry become united in the heart and because of the heart, before their bodies
become united. Jesus consecrated the human heart through the wound of his Heart and
consecrated the flesh in the wounds of his infinite love.
The woman had her expiating consecration through her very maternal function,
accomplished in pain, and taking it from life, she took her own purifying immolation. To
give birth, therefore, was for her a confession of the original sin, and the Lord submitted
her to the purification in the Temple to envelope her in his mercy, until when, regenerated
by the Blood of Jesus Christ, she would not anymore represent the prevaricator, but
instead the Church, full of grace and mother of the children of God. Everything is
marvelous in God’s dispositions, also when man with his little intellect does not see and
does not understand Him.
The circumcision, as we said before, was done on the eighth day from birth, in the
presence of at least ten witnesses, almost to represent the people by this great number. It
was done either in the house of the newborn or in the Synagogue, and it was done either
by the father or by a Priest. While he did the cutting the minister said: “Blessed be the
Lord our God, who sanctified us with his precepts and has given us the circumcision”; the
father of the newborn who had to be present, would answer: “That has allowed us to
introduce our son in the alliance of our father Abraham.” Then all the others would say:
“Health to the one you chose for your son.” After this ceremony a name was imposed on
the newborn in memory of the new name that God had imposed on Abraham in the
institution of the circumcision.
Jesus Christ, innocence itself, had no need to be circumcised; nevertheless he
wanted to be like his brothers (Heb 2: 17) to redeem those who were under the Law
(Gal 4:5), to humiliate himself deeply by receiving the sign of sin and to spread the first
drops of his most precious Blood.
We cannot identify exactly the place where he was circumcised; most likely it
occurred in the grotto where he was born, because with the uninterrupted flow of people
for the census, it would not have been easy for Joseph to find a house. We also cannot say
who performed the painful cut; perhaps it was St. Joseph himself, to consecrate better his
legal paternity. Certainly he was present, as it was prescribed and took the Baby as his
own, imposing on him the name of Jesus.
Satan did not yet understand what the goodness of God was accomplishing in the
world because, as St. Ignatius the martyr says, the Lord did not allow him to know. Satan
could never get close to Mary, who made him feel crushed and beaten; he was unsettled
by her immaculate purity and angered by that very deep humility.
When the Angel announced the great mystery, Satan was thrust again into hell by
the celestial hosts, and he was not aware of the wonderful operation of the Holy Spirit.
But when the name of Jesus was pronounced for the first time on earth, the entirety of hell
shook and, according to the words of St. Paul, a strong dominating power compelled all
the demons to adore Him. A cloud of dazzling splendor enveloped them and humiliated
them and, as when a strong electrical charges and lightening in the atmosphere cause the
flickering of electric light bulbs or power failures, in the same way, at the mentioning of
the divine name, the infernal arrogance of those spirits, who believed to be in command,
was suddenly dimmed, and they were humiliated.

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 It was then, possibly, that Satan full of anger decided to declare war against the
Redeemer, everywhere He would appear and later, recognizing Him because of the visit of
the three kings, he incited Herod against Him and tried to have Him perish in the
Slaughter of the Innocents. Satan remembered his defeat that he had had in Heaven and
foresaw what he would have on earth; he had fallen because he refused to adore the Word
made Flesh, when the eternal splendors were shown to him, and the name of Jesus
renewed in him the stupid pride that had made him to refuse to glorify Him in order to
keep glory for himself; his most gloomy spirit was perturbed and his unhappiness became
even more terrifying.

The Presentation in the temple.

Mary Most Holy, most pure Virgin and Mother of God, was not subject to the law
of purification, nor to the presentation in the Temple nor the ransom for her divine Son. A
woman in fact that gave birth to a son was considered unclean for forty days for all the
stain and sensuality accompanying the birth; the first born was considered by law as
belonging to God, and he could not belong to his mother if she had not redeemed him.
Now Mary had begotten Jesus by the Holy Spirit, and his birth did not violate in
any way her immaculate virginity; besides, Jesus, being the true Son of God, did not need
either to be consecrated to him nor, even less, to be redeemed. However, He and His
Mother submitted to this legal custom to humble themselves and to give us the example of
virtue, and they also wanted to appear before the world as ordinary people.
On the other hand it was logical that it was so, because the moment had not yet
come to make it known that the great mystery was accomplished. If Mary had not gone to
the Temple and had not offered Jesus, she would have appeared to the ignorant as a
profaner of the Law, and God did not allow this. Truly, she was not going there to be
purified but to purify, perfuming with immaculate purity the world and the Temple of its
figures and promises; more than to offer to God the son who already belonged to Him, she
offered him to the world as the Savior and the King of love; she humbled herself legally
but she was Queen in accomplishing the Law and fulfilling the words of the Prophets.
For this reason the Church sings on the Feast of Purification beautifully: “Adorn
your bridal chamber, o Sion, and receive Christ the King; greet Mary, the Gate of Heaven,
for She brings the King of glory, the new light. The Virgin bore the Son generated before
the dawn, and Simeon on receiving him in his arms proclaimed to the people that He was
the Lord of life and death and the Savior of the world.” This is the true meaning and the
true light of the mystery of Mary’s Purification and the presentation of Jesus.
The sacred Family, then, arrived at the Temple, crossed the atrium of the Gentiles
and the atrium of the women and went up the fifteen steps that brought one to the entrance
between the atrium of the women and the one of the Israelites. The Priest on duty at the
Temple sprinkled Mary with the blood of a victim and prayed over her. Mary was
kneeling, all suffused of sublime purity, all holy, a most pure flower, humbly sprinkled by
blood. Right after they gave the prescribed offering, which for the less poor was a one
year old lamb given in holocaust with a dove or a turtle-dove, and for the poor two doves
or two little turtle doves.

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 Mary chose the offering of the poor because she was poor; but in reality she could
not offer a lamb because in her hands she had the real Lamb of God, she could not give a
symbol when she was presenting the accomplishment. She went to the Temple under the
appearance of a legal humiliation, but in truth she accomplished in that moment the
fulfillment and the prophecies of the past and offered to the Throne of God the true victim
for the sins of the world.
For the ransom of the firstborn five shekels were given, equivalent to about 70
cents; those five coins gave back the son to his father and mother, who thus recognized the
right of God over His creatures. Mary presented the divine Son to the Father and offered
five shekels to have him back; it was the last symbol that shone in the Temple, because
those five shekels represented the five wounds that the Redeemer would give to God for
ransoming man. Jesus Christ, covered by our sins, represented in that moment all of
humanity and, ransomed with five shekels, expressed through himself the ransom that
man would have to have. He was the Redeemer, and he wanted to ransom man, and
offering himself to God covered by our sins, represented before Him the sinner marked
symbolically with the price of the ransom that He would give with his wounds and his
death.

The holy old Simeon

This great mystery would have been unknown to all if the holy old man, Simeon, had not
revealed it by divine inspiration. He was a very old man, just and devout to God, that is,
according to the Greek text, a holy and conscientious observer of everything that was
related to religion. He went through life, awaiting the consolation of Israel, that is, the
Redeemer, and he had prayed intensely that the time of his arrival would be shortened.
Because of his prayers, he received by the Holy Spirit, with an interior inspiration, the
reassurance that he would not die without seeing the Messiah. Since he was very old, this
reassurance was equivalent to the imminent announcement of the accomplishment of the
divine promises.
On the day that Jesus was presented to the Temple, Simeon felt one of those
interior inspirations that are very difficult to resist, that is he felt a deep joy in his soul, a
feeling of recollection, and at the same time an expansion of heart that turns one’s
thoughts to God, making it very easy to pray, with an impetus of love and an assurance of
being satisfied and heard. These are in fact the feelings of a soul filled with a special light
by the Holy Spirit. He felt attracted to go to the Temple; he felt in his body a vigor that
pushed him as if he were supported. He left in a hurry, went to the House of God where he
found Mary, Joseph and the divine Baby.
For him it was a vision: the humility and the purity of the Immaculate Mother was
like halo of light around the Baby she had in her arms; the recollection and the simplicity
of St. Joseph were like an aroma of fragrant flowers adorning him; he understood
immediately the mystery of the Divine Infant, and asked for the grace to hold him in his
arms. He picked him up and he felt himself wholly vivified by grace, his heart was on fire
and the Holy Spirit effused in his mind a great light of truth. He raised his eyes to
Heaven, and holding up the Baby exclaimed: Now, Master, let your servant go in peace,
according to Your word: for my eyes have seen your salvation which you have prepared in
sight of all the peoples; a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and the glory of your people,

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Israel. He spoke all in one breath, without interruption and without stopping, as St.
Zachary did in his canticle; the ideas in him were not a reflection but a great light, flowing
from him like a splendid ray that nothing could stop.
Now his soul no longer had any attraction for things of the earth, and he
considered death as liberation from his exile; his eyes had seen the salvation of the Lord,
that is the Savior, and his soul had seen him as well because he had believed. In fact he
confessed what it truly was: the accomplishment of the divine promises, a light of truth for
all the nations, and unutterable glory of his people Israel.
Simeon’s inspired intonation was so solemn that Mary and Joseph marveled at
those things which were spoken of Jesus. They were not marveling at what Simeon said,
as some have interpreted, but rather this phrase mean that they were surprised he said this
of the Baby, as the Sacred Text clearly states. Their faith was far above Simeon’s, and
their knowledge of it much deeper than what he said; but it is precisely about this faith
that made them rejoice at the light that gives confirmation to the truth, and to marvel even
more over the harmony in the reflexes that it spreads around. Mary and Joseph lived more
ardently than what they themselves thought, because the confirmation that Simeon gave
them was for their mind like a bright light and for their hearts flames of love.
They were marveling because they were in full admiration, not because they
doubted, and their faith expanded in their mind like illuminating reason and like flames in
their heart. They marveled because they humbled themselves interiorly, thinking they did
not suitably appreciate the gift they had received from God. They marveled in the
transport of their interior joy, because deep joy is always united to wonder for that which
pervades it in the soul.
Mary and Joseph had not spoken with anybody of the mystery of the Incarnation, yet
Simeon knew of it by the light of the Holy Spirit; thus this spreading of the truth was a
marvel that also foreshadowed the diffusion it would have over all the world because of
the Holy Spirit.
Simeon was old, and he had a paternal feeling toward these two persons younger
than he, and he felt love toward them. Looking at Mary and Joseph in their deep loving
recollection, he felt very touched, and he blessed them with that loving way that a good
old man does. After he had another inspiration, he turned to Mary and in a solemn way,
speaking of Jesus, he added: Behold this child is set for the fall and the rising again of
many in Israel; and to be a sign that will be contradicted and you yourself a sword will
pierce so that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.
In a few words he traced the sorrowful walk of the Savior and that of his Mother:
In Israel many would believe in him and would be saved, but many would reject him and
would be lost. He would be a sign of contradiction for the legal authority and for those
souls who were not upright; the soul of Mary would be pierced by the sword of most bitter
sorrow, because of the contradiction against her Son and his sorrowful death.
The words opposing the Redeemer would be the result of bad feelings, and thus
would reveal the evil of those who would oppose Him.
That was what happened to Jesus, and this still happens any time in the history of
the Church, His mystical Body, in which He continues the salvific work and his Passion:
those who do not follow the truth are lost, and take the cause of their damnation from the
very reason that would save them.

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 The Church is a perennial sign of contradiction on behalf of the evildoers of all the
centuries, and the sword of moral suffering in the midst of violent and bloody persecutions
pierces her soul. In this way the thoughts of many are manifested, and their intentions
revealed.
There are many, in fact, throughout history; and today we have a large number of
them who present themselves as saviors and even seem like great doers of good; but they
do not reveal, especially at first, their malice. However, their attitude toward the Catholic
Church exposes them for what they are: if they persecute her, or if they simply put
obstacles in her way, they show themselves to be evildoers, enemies of the truth and the
genuine well being of the people. Whoever is honest and good is in harmony with the
Church, because he knows not of reproaches or disapprovals; on the contrary, he receives
spiritual help; but whoever is dishonest and evil works against the Church because he
knows that he finds a formidable obstacle to his own evilness.
With this measure it is possible to evaluate the true nature of some governments
and some nations; hypocrisies do not deceive, and deceptions do not mislead when one
considers the attitude of a government toward the Church. Whoever sees a government
persecuting the Church must not believe in it, even more he must consider it a great
calamity for the nation, because all of that regime’s bragging and empty words, sooner or
later will bring it to certain collapse.

Exultation of Anna, a holy woman of the Temple.

While Simeon was ecstatic with joy, holding the Baby Jesus in his arms, there
came a holy woman by the name of Anna. She was 84 years old and she was in the
Temple day and night, that is, she had living quarter in one of the rooms attached to the
Temple and rendered her services for the Temple, keeping herself in prayer and fasting,
imploring for the accomplishment of the divine promises. This woman became a widow
after seven years of marriage and had never remarried. She was now 84 years old, and as
it can be understood from the context, was dedicated to the holy apostolate of the souls
who attended the Temple, keeping awake in them their desire for the coming of the
Messiah. In the Sacred Text, in fact, it is written that after she had seen the Baby, she
spoke about Him to all who were awaiting the redemption of Israel; thus through her
apostolate she related with the more just souls and spoke to them of the designs of God.
This is the reason why she was called prophetess and received the trust of those who felt
most oppressed in their lives by the difficulties they experienced and encouraged them
with the hope of the imminent redemption.
Just as Simeon did, Anna, too, felt compelled to go to the Temple by an interior
inspiration and since she was accustomed to the mysterious ways of God, she felt instantly
in her heart that she was being transported with a joy that prompted her to bless and praise
the Lord because He had sent the Redeemer.
It was very moving and mysterious that these two people, very advanced in age,
would give witness to the newborn Messiah; they represented the old covenant that
confirmed the truth of what was accomplished. In that moment the royal court of the
Divine King was formed by the Old Testament and the Old Law, represented by the two
old people; it was glorified by Simeon, a name which means who grants and who obeys,

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and by Anna, whose name means grace, mercy that gives, daughter of Phanuel, vision of
God, of the tribe of Asher, beatitude and happiness. The very names of the two old people
radiated a reflex of the mystery that had been accomplished; God had granted the sighs of
humanity, He had made himself obedient, and He radiated mercy and grace.
The little Infant was a divine vision, because he was God, and the work He came to
accomplish was directly aimed at the eternal beatitude and happiness for those who would
believe and would be saved. Through this delicate way in which God awaits everything
with his wisdom, it was as if in that tender scene of the Presentation in the Temple, there
was affixed above it an inscription of what was occurring: The Word of God is descended
from Heaven becoming obedient to his creatures. God heard the sighs of the peoples and
spread his mercy and his grace. See in the little Infant the Lord himself, who comes to give
again to men peace and eternal beatitude. – Here is the Savior, Jesus – here is the Queen
of the world, Mary – who brings souls to life – here is the new people that grows, Joseph,
and like a thriving offspring sprouts and expands. – the old promises are accomplished –
the Prophets and the Law – give praise to God!
All this is not an appropriately clever fantasy, because God, through the events of
our little earth, always writes sculpted pages of his marvels and his glory, and the little
creatures that go by, through the fleeting centuries following one another swiftly, are like
grains of sand which, one way or another reflect like droplets of sunshine, the design of
God. Once in Heaven, we shall be surprised to see a marvelous harmony in all the tangled
mass of human events, and a marvelous assertion of the glory of God even in those events
that appear to us as disastrous. Let us bow our heads and adore, pray, and instead of
becoming upset with the events in the world, let us wait with faith the revelation of the
glory of God.
The Church recites the three canticles of the descent of the Word upon the earth,
Benedictus, Magnificat and Nunc dimittis, at dawn, at the Vespers, and at the end of the
day and in doing so blesses God who visits us, exalts him in his glory, and rests in his
arms. This is the synthesis of her life and of our day on earth. The Church, the
accomplishment of the old promises, blesses God and announces his kingdom among the
peoples; rich in her Redeemer, she exalts in him and for him, the Lord: my soul magnifies
the Lord; she is a pilgrim and waits for her homeland and she sighs: Nunc dimittis..Now
let your servant go in peace…according to your word. We get up blessing the Lord, we
work glorifying him in the accomplishing of his will, and at the end of the day we rest in
the hope of the eternal reward.
This is a synthesis of a truly Christian day. Let us go day after day to the temple of
God, let us offer Jesus to the Father through the hands of the Church, let us present him as
our own gift, let him circumcise us in our hearts by his love, let him purify us in his mercy
and let us live in the expectation of the kingdom of God. Let us not make our lives a
mindless aimless pursuit steeped in evil desperation: life is a preparation for eternal life, it
is the accomplishment of the divine and most loving will of God in us and a reposing in
his love while awaiting the resurrection. It is a Benedictus, a Magnificat and a Nunc
dimittis; however when instead it is warped by sin and transgression from the divine Law
it is a malediction, a desperation and an eternal death. Oh my Lord, free us from the spirit
of the world and allow us to possess, in love, the treasures of your mercy, which we
received with the redemption.

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5. The infancy of Jesus. The losing of Jesus and his hidden life.

Mary and Joseph, after accomplishing all what the law prescribed, went back to
Galilee and to the humble town of Nazareth with their divine Son. Since St. Joseph, when
they returned from their flight into Egypt, wanted to make Bethlehem their home, it is
possible to contemplate that after the purification, the holy family went to Nazareth for a
while, before returning to Bethlehem, where afterward the adoration of the Magi occurred,
followed by the flight into Egypt and the definitive return to Nazareth where they finally
settled.
In this forgotten village Mary raised her Child and St. Joseph took care of his little
family working as a carpenter. The idea he later had to return to Bethlehem lets us
suppose that in Nazareth there was not much work for him to do, and the holy Family
knew the distress of poverty; however amid this poverty radiated Jesus, the divine
treasure, and he was the joy of the house. The holy text says that the child grew, and
became strong in spirit, filled with wisdom and the grace of God was upon Him. From
these few words, which St. Luke received from Mary’s mouth, it is possible to understand
the life she had with her divine Son. Every mother is tenderly drawn to speak of her son as
growing and becoming strong and she is delighted at the first manifestations of his
intelligence and his heart.
Any woman who raises a son knows the joy that she feels to see him in good
health, intelligent and good, that is to notice his moral and physical development. This
loving satisfaction was great in Mary, because she felt from the life of the Redeemer a
continued communion of graces; she was as if immersed in the rays of his divinity. Jesus
was growing and also the love of Mary grew; the little body was becoming strong and her
maternal tenderness also increased. He did not babble but he spoke to her in her heart
about God and revealed to her the treasures of his charity.
Therefore Mary was in a constant contemplation. No maternity was more joyful
than hers. Jesus grew and became strong, thus beginning to walk and ready to do little
tasks in the house and in the workshop of St. Joseph. What a tender and loving example of
intimacy was the house of Nazareth! Peace reign unsurpassed, the recollection, the most
intimate and pure joy that the divine light changed into a temple. What was Jesus on the
maternal breast of his mother! With what most humble love She continued to give her life
to him though her milk and with what tenderness she felt nursing life! One of the most
tender maternal functions is nursing; for Mary it was almost an opening of her heart,
offering herself, feeling herself lightly bitten, seeing the satisfaction of the little infant, his
eyes, and his very eagerness that moved her deeply. She felt lightened by her little one,
because she emptied herself of that fullness that her love wanted to give and when she saw
him moving away from her breast, asleep, she remained looking at him and kissed him
tenderly, and caressed his cheeks tenderly.
The Church sums up this maternal function of Mary with one admirable sentence:
Sola virgo lactaba, ubere de cœlo pleno (Only the Virgin nursed him having the fullness of
the Heavens); she had her virginal breasts filled of the heavens because they were made
fertile by the Holy Spirit. Therefore she not only gave to him her virginal milk, but she
also effused her life of love and enveloped him in the essence of her purity and her
humility. That immaculate breast was truly a field of lilies where her beloved descended
to feed of love, and She gave to him her immaculate Heart, drawing from him, on the

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other hand, the grace of which he was filled. She knew very well, moreover, that at her
breast she had the Son of God, and her humility at that contact had to be immense,
sublime. She touched him like a consecrated Host; she enveloped him in her arms more
than the angel enveloped the Ark; she was radiant with love, she was the Mother of God,
the only Mother in which this name is truly divine!
Jesus was growing and was becoming strong, he began to walk and, as we said
before, he was beginning to do small tasks. The sweetest little toddler walked in the rooms
like a heavenly vision; his form was perfect, he had blond curls, and he was radiant in his
divinity; he was amiable, gentle and his eyes shined with an intelligence that compelled
adoration. There was sorrowfulness about him because he was the Victim of love, and
Mary, looking at him, penetrated the mysteries of that infinite Heart and kept them in her
own heart, moaning in deep sorrow. The prophesy of Simeon was always before her, and
the passing of the years brought her closer to Calvary. She knew it, but she united herself
completely to the divine will and prayed for mankind.
And the child grew up and became strong, filled with wisdom: and the grace of God was
in him. He, in fact, as man, possessed the blessed science and the infused science a
thousand times more perfect than the angels and the saints had; he also understood the
experimental or acquired science in proportion to his age and based on the admirable
perfection of his natural faculties. His human soul was filled with sanctified grace and he
possessed to the utmost the gifts of the Holy Spirit, the graces gratis datœ, freely given,
and all the virtues innate or acquired. He was most perfect even in his tender age, and shed
such a gentle majesty that conquered all. Each of his acts was divine and in the little
things that he did here and there was something solemn, because He did everything
adoring, making reparations, thanking and praying to the Father for the men he had come
to redeem. The little house of Nazareth, therefore, echoed of mysterious praise more than
a temple did, and to those divine praises responded the hearts of Mary and Joseph, two
hearts that beat in unison with the Incarnate Word.

Jesus lost and then found in the Temple.

Every year Mary went with Joseph to Jerusalem for the solemnity of the Passover,
even though she was not obliged since she was a woman; men had the duty to go to the
Temple three times a year, at Passover, Pentecost and for Feast of the Tabernacles; the
women were excused and only the most pious would go at Passover; children assumed
this legal obligation when they were twelve years old. When Mary went to Jerusalem she
would take Jesus with her, but when he became of legal age, she had to let him go with the
party of the men, according to the custom. It was for this reason that she did not realize,
returning home, that He had remained behind in Jerusalem. She believed, and so did St.
Joseph, that he was among other men and so they went on for a day. At the first stop,
however, they saw that he was missing and in vain they searched among their relatives
and acquaintances. Extremely troubled and in anguish, they then went back to Jerusalem
which took one more day; they still did not know how to find him and so they searched
another day without success.
Passersby were of no help because they did not know him. Finally on the third day
they went to the Temple, maybe to beg God to help them to find him, and going through

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the rooms connected to the holy place, where the Rabbis would go to teach the Law, they
heard the voice of their most beloved Son. He was sitting down among the doctors of the
law, like a disciple, listening to them and posing them various questions.
It is not possible to grasp the magnitude of the sorrow felt by Mary and Joseph for
the loss of Jesus; to do so would require measuring first of all the love they felt for him.
They were in anguish; they were agonizing, fearing to have brought on themselves his
departure for their unworthiness; they were anxious for his safety and their feelings of loss
were excruciating.
Jesus was their life and their souls were in anguish without him. How those two
days of searching must have been! They did not lose their inner peace, because they were
most holy; although they did lose their hearts, feeling an excruciating pain for the loss.
Jesus knew their deep pain, but he allowed that terrible trial to occur in order to sanctify
them more and to be an example for all peoples. His divine Heart suffered more than
theirs did, but in the moment in which he was starting his legal life, to accomplish his
work for mankind, a great immolation of love was necessary to enable man able to receive
his love.
The frightening indifference created men have for all that belongs to God, and the
restlessness of the world in its miserable trivial activities, always oriented toward things of
the earth, required the agony of those two souls that were only inclined to God and living
only for Him. The terrible resistance that so many hearts have to the call of God,
preferring their choices to his will, required the sacrifice of Jesus of his love toward Mary
and Joseph, as preparation and reparation to welcome the plan of the divine will. He had
to affirm the right of God over the young people who are the future and hope of the
nations; he had to destroy in one stroke the tyrannical claims on hearts that belonged only
to God; he had to give a light that would never be extinguished, on the education of
children and their vocation; thus he needed great suffering to plunge this seed of life into
the hardened heart of mankind. If he had warned Mary and Joseph beforehand of his
intention, he would not have achieved the highest purpose that he wanted to achieve;
therefore, he set aside the feelings of his heart, withdrew, and came back to the temple,
opening his mind to the teaching of the Law in order to teach to the young to open their
lives to God and to follow, without human hesitation, the individual inspiration of the
divine will upon them.
At the age of twelve, Jesus was well developed, judging from the height that he
reached when he was a grown man. He had a perfect form, he was very handsome,
splendid, and fascinating. His hair, as it was the custom of the Nazarenes, went down to
his shoulders, and adorned his face like a glorious halo. His most beautiful eyes revealed
the divine mystery that was hidden within Him; they were mysteriously expressive and
shown with an indescribable light, penetrating, so to speak, the hearts.
He entered the room where the doctors of the Law were gathered and sat down to
listen to them. His Heart was filled with joy with the divine Word and burned for the glory
of the Father. Immediately he attracted the attention of all who were present, because
when they questioned him he gave most profound answers and asked questions that
bewildered them all. What did he talk about? The Sacred Text does not tell us, but it is
possible that he spoke about the fullness of the time and of the Messiah and about his
celestial Father, as could be assumed by the answer he gave to Mary. He spoke about God

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and for the first time there resounded on earth divinely luminous words on the darkness
that weighed down mankind.
When Mary and Joseph entered the sacred area they were surprised to see that
Jesus had manifested himself to the people in this way. His love to remain hidden was so
deep that they would never have thought it possible. Maybe they were surprised that he
had shown himself insensitive to their deep sorrow, knowing how much he was loving
and affectionate. Mary could not restrain her maternal heart: she ran to her Son,
interrupting him while he was talking and exclaimed: “Son, why have you done this to us?
Your father and I have been looking for you with great anxiety.” All her deep pain was
expressed in these few words: she called him Son, and with this word she said that she
was looking for him as mother, and as divine Mother; she asked him why he had done
this, and with these words she manifested all the anguished trepidations of her heart and
St. Joseph’s; she expressed their pain in looking for him, and the love that had brought
agony to her maternal fears and to those of St. Joseph.
Jesus Christ did not answer with harshness, as it may appear from the Sacred Text;
we are accustomed to become upset when we are opposed, and on reading this episode
with passion, we can easily come to attribute a sense of bitterness to the answer of Jesus;
Jesus instead answered with great sweetness and infinite compassion for their sorrow:
“Why were you looking for Me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?”
If they had reflected on the love that He had for them and the mission that He had, they
would not have doubted his affection, and would have understood the reason why he
stayed in the temple. What He was saying was: how could you think that I would have
neglected you, how could I have not considered your pain? But you know that I am the
Son of God, and thus you could suppose that I would be attracted by the House of my
Father and in the interests of his glory.
The Sacred Text adds that “they did not understand what He said to them”, not
because they were not able to understand his words, but because they concentrated their
emotions and love only on Him. How beautiful was that sacred place, the brilliance of
love in his words, and the depth of his answers, that they remained enchanted and did not
reflect on his words. There was only the longing to have him back and for this reason the
Text adds: He went down with them, and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them.
They did not pay attention to his words, then, because they invited him never to leave
them alone; and in fact He immediately obeyed.
If he had answered to reproach them he would not have followed them and he
would have continued to speak; instead he stopped talking immediately; Mary’s maternal
voice was a command for him and always would be; for this reason Mary, with the
impetus of her love and with a feeling of deepest humility, meditated in her Heart on what
had happened and the mystery of the love that He felt for her. He obeyed her. He, the true
Son of the Father! His divine Majesty bent before her word! Far from showing
carelessness or treating her badly, as the Protestants say, He left doing the work of his
divine Father to take care of his Mother, and showed that he loved her with the same love,
and for him to agree to what She wanted was the same as glorifying God his Father.
When he went back to Nazareth, Jesus remained hidden until he started his public
life. What did he do during this hidden period? Certainly he was occupied with the things
of his Father, that is, his glory, and he was doing this while humbling himself, with
obedience and work.

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 The Sacred Text says that Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favor
with God and men. From these few words it is possible to know intuitively something of
the mystery of that divine life: increased in wisdom not because he was studying, but
because he increasingly made manifest the mysteries of his blessed and infused science,
and meditated with acquired science, that is with the energy of his human soul, the divine
marvels, through speaking with his Mother, St. Joseph and with other people in his family.
And it was logical that he would do so, because he wanted to elevate and ennoble in
himself human nature, and there is nothing nobler than to meditate upon the celestial
marvels.
Increased in stature because he was growing up, and He, being also truly man,
showed it in all aspects of his life. However, he had in his stature, that is, in his
appearance, a marvelous attractiveness that struck whoever saw him, and thus he grew in
this attractiveness as the sun rises on the horizon. Increased in grace, not as a habit that in
Him was perfect and unswerving, but in accordance to the effect of his efforts, doing
works more and more magnificent which showed his greatness. Toward God his life was a
perpetual and ever greater offering, toward men it was a manifestation
increasingly more beautiful; to God he offered the acts of the life progressing and,
according to the natural development, he grew in these gifts of love; to men he
increasingly manifested the greatness and the wonder of his goodness and gentleness.

6. For our spiritual life

Those few words that the Sacred Text says on the infancy and the childhood of
Jesus are a model of life for the education of our children, the only model that can truly
foster an increase of goodness and liveliness to the souls of the youths. The Baby was
born in a grotto, and he was subject to all the prescriptions of the law with all the complete
attention that Mary and Joseph had in everything concerning the Lord. He was
circumcised, and He was given a name not on a whim, but according to the one that was
revealed by the angel before he was conceived in the womb of Mary. The angels sang
around the grotto, giving praise to God, and this was the celebration given to the divine
Baby, a celebration of heaven; he was put in a manger, poor from an earthly perspective
but extraordinarily rich in celestial treasures, lovingly looked after by Mary and Joseph.
In the same way the life of every newborn must begin: he is born on earth and,
notwithstanding how rich the parents may be, he is always born in a grotto, because earth
is a place of exile. It is necessary then, to surround him with spiritual gifts and praises to
God; to give to him the first spiritual impression in his opening up to life. That little
human being receives the form we give to him, almost like a soft wax, and those first few
days that he spends on earth can have an enormous influence on him.
Let the angels sing around his crib, not music-hall singers or poor actors of
theaters loaded with worldly trifles; instead let there be voices singing praises to God and
voices of peace, so much so that the little soul, without realizing it, is immediately
oriented toward the Lord and breathes an air of peace. As soon as possible he must be
given the grace of the Baptism, in accordance with the prescription of the Church, and
also let him be given a name suggested by the angel, that is, in agreement with the usage
of the Church, enabling the expression of at least a special devotion or an act of faith.

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An outlandish or profane name will leave on the soul of the newborn a mark of frivolity
that can damage him all his life. The baby should be brought to the Church and he must
become incorporated into the mystical body of Jesus Christ in this sacred place, which can
almost be seen as a new altar raised by the hand of the Priest. It is necessary to present
him to God, praying that in this new life the will of God be done; and offering to the Lord
the mystic lamb by receiving the Holy Communion; and offering the little turtle doves, by
keeping marital purity and chastity, in order to give to the little infant a mark of purity.
All newborns have the old Simeon who almost prophesies for them because all
newborns are surrounded by votive offerings or by special prayers of the people who
receive them. It is necessary to include in a model of upbringing not things that are great
on earth, but rather the Law of God, because the little one can become the ruin or
salvation of many, depending on the development of the divine will in him and he can also
be a sword of sorrow for his parents.
We are convinced, through experience, that the lives of many newborns start on
the wrong path; they are led astray by those who promote earthly trifles and fail to orient
the infant in the divine will. The children announced, so to speak, by prayer, born blessed
and offered to God so that in them His will be done, are sheltered by the harmonious holy
life of the parents, and always grow up well; and especially, if they are entrusted to Mary
and St. Joseph, they will be protected by marvelous heavenly help.
Baby Jesus grew and became strong, filled with wisdom and the grace of God was
upon Him. Parents cannot only be concerned with the physical development of their
children, they must take care that they grow with grace. It is true wisdom to steer them
toward God and everything that is holy from their tender years, and teach them to love
Jesus and Mary; it is true wisdom to form in them in their first notions of the virtues and
give them an attraction to charity and peace.
All their toys must have a virtuous intent; they should not merely amuse the child
educating him to trifles. In this is way wisdom will grow in him and, by the grace of God,
will form in him the first ideas of goodness. The little one must grow in grace as his body
grows; he should learn his first prayers with childlike acts of love, with kisses impressed
on sacred images, with rudimental considerations on Jesus’ passion pointing to the crown
of thorns, for example, or the wounds on his Body. The child must grow in grace,
bringing him to the temple, asking a Priest to bless him and giving him the first attraction
for all that is holy.
Removing little ones from God, dressing them in the rags of the politicians*,
desecrating them with badges of apostasy, not putting in their hearts signs of the name of
Mary or Jesus, and giving them weapons as threatening toys that inspire violence, is a
terrifying crime, is to give them to Satan to form them into precocious criminals. The lazy
or the wicked, who devise such expediencies, shall realize too late that they have formed a
generation of violent people and have driven mankind back into the primitive state from
which Jesus Christ had drawn it out by his own Blood.**
When he was about twelve years old, Jesus went to the temple. There he sat to
listen to the doctors of the Law, and to attend to the things of his Father. He lived of work
and obedience, and he remained hidden until he was thirty years old. Young people must
open up to the supernatural life, not to the political or military life; they must attend to the
things of God being instructed in the faith, and they must work daily in obedience and
submission to their parents, especially to their parents. The impetuosity and the generosity

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of young persons must turn to God, and their lives must be calm and untroubled, not
agitated by premature passions, that stir imprudently in their souls. To give young people
excessive importance means disorienting them, and teaching them very sorrowfully, as it
can be seen, not respect their elders, and to become unruly and rebellious. For this reason
it is the Church that must educate youth; only this delicate and most learned mother has
the secret of the formation of souls, because only she has the richness of the truth and
supernatural treasures.
Mary and Joseph lost Jesus when he was in the group; they lost him because he
remained in the temple, but if they had looked after him, they would have avoided that
great suffering. This is a lesson also for parents and for those who educate young people;
without careful supervision, they become lost in their group or in their meeting-places,
and differently from Jesus who went to the temple, they often go on the way of evil.
Mary and Joseph sought in vain Jesus in the group and in the city; they only found
him when they went to the temple. How many times we lose sight of Jesus during our
lives that then becomes empty and sorrowful! It is necessary to look for him in the temple,
at the feet of God, going to his ministers in the Sacraments. Let us convince ourselves that
there is not greater sorrow in our life than to lose Jesus, and we should not rest even one
night in this immense misfortune. When we are at a loss in our spirit, let us go to Him, let
us find refuge in the shadow of his tabernacle, let us seek him with immense love, and He
will show himself to us; He will come back to us and will give us peace. How many souls
lose Jesus because they send him away, only to carry on a very sorrowful life away from
Him! O my Lord, born on this earth for my love, do not allow that I ever lose you; give
me death instead!

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* It was the time of the “fascists”, in which the children, almost as toddler, were given to wear the uniform
of ‘the children of the wolf, emblem of Rome.
** Observations and warnings that today have become a reality.

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 Chapter 3
1. Mission, preaching and imprisonment of St. John the Baptist. Baptism and genealogy
of Jesus.
1 Then, in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being
procurator of Judea, and Herod tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip tetrarch of
Ituraea and of the region of Trachonitis, and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene, 2 under the
high priests Annas and Caiaphas: the word of the Lord came to John, the son of
Zechariah, in the wilderness. 3 And he went into the entire region of the Jordan,
preaching a baptism of repentance for the remission of sins ,4 just as it has been written
in the book of the sermons of the prophet Isaiah: “The voice of one crying out in the
wilderness: Prepare the way of the Lord. Make straight his paths. 5 Every valley shall be
filled, and every mountain and hill shall be brought low. And what is crooked shall be
made straight. And the rough paths shall be made into level ways. 6 And all flesh shall see
the salvation of God.” 7 Therefore, he said to the crowd that went out in order to be
baptized by him: “You progeny of vipers! Who told you to flee from the approaching
wrath? 8 So then, produce fruits worthy of repentance. And do not begin to say, ‘We have
Abraham as our father.’ For I tell you that God has the power to raise up sons to
Abraham from these stones. 9 For even now the axe has been placed at the root of the
trees. Therefore, every tree that does not produce good fruit shall be cut down and cast
into the fire.” 10 And the crowed was questioning him, saying, “What then should we
do?” 11 But in response, he said to them: “Whoever has two coats, let him give to those
who do not have. And whoever has food, let him act similarly.” 12 Now the tax collectors
also came to be baptized, and they said to him, “Teacher, what should we do?” 13 But he
said to them, “You should do nothing more than what has been appointed to you.” 14
Then the soldiers also questioned him, saying, “And what should we do?” And he said to
them: “You should strike no one, and you should not make false accusations. And be
content with your pay 15 Now all were thinking about John in their hearts, and the people
were supposing that perhaps he might be the Christ. 16 John responded by saying to
everyone: “Indeed, I baptize you with water. But there will arrive one stronger than me,
the laces of whose shoes I am not worthy to loosen. He will baptize you in the Holy Spirit,
and with fire. 17 His winnowing fan is in his hand. And he will purify his threshing floor.
And he will gather the wheat into the barn. But the chaff he will burn with unquenchable
fire.” 18 Indeed, he also proclaimed many other things, exhorting the people. 19 But
Herod the tetrarch, when he was corrected by him concerning Herodias, his brother’s
wife, and concerning all the evils that Herod had done, 20 added this also, above all else:
that he confined John to prison. 21 Now it happened that, when all the people were being
baptized, Jesus was baptized; and as he was praying, heaven was opened. 22 And the
Holy Spirit, in a corporal appearance like a dove, descended upon him. And a voice came
from heaven: “You are my beloved Son. In you, I am well pleased.” 23 And Jesus himself
was beginning to be about thirty years old, being (as it was supposed) the son of Joseph,
who was of Heli, who was of Matthat, 24 who was of Levi, who was of Melchi, who was of
Jannai, who was of Joseph, 25 who was of Mattathias, who was of Amos, who was of
Nahum, who was of Esli, who was of Naggai, 26 who was of Maath, who was of
Mattathias, who was of Semein, who was of Josech, who was of Joda, 27 who was of

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Joanan, who was of Rhesa, who was of Zerubbabel, who was of Shealtiel, who was of
Neri, 28 who was of Melchi, who was of Addi, who was of Cosam, who was of Elmadam,
who was of Er, 29 who was of Joshua, who was of Eliezer, who was of Jorim, who was of
Matthat, who was of Levi, 30 who was of Simeon, who was of Judah, who was of Joseph,
who was of Jonam, who was of Eliakim, 31 who was of Melea, who was of Menna, who
was of Mattatha, who was of Nathan, who was of David, 32 who was of Jesse, who was of
Obed, who was of Boaz, who was of Salmon, who was of Nahshon, 33 who was of
Amminadab, who was of Aram, who was of Hezron, who was of Perez, who was of Judah,
34 who was of Jacob, who was of Isaac, who was of Abraham, who was of Terah, who
was of Nahor, 35 who was of Serug, who was of Reu, who was of Peleg, who was of Eber,
who was of Shelah, 36 who was of Cainan, who was of Arphaxad, who was of Shem, who
was of Noah, who was of Lamech, 37 who was of Methuselah, who was of Enoch, who
was of Jared, who was of Mahalalel, who was of Cainan, 38 who was of Enos, who was of
Seth, who was of Adam, who was of God.
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2. The political status of Palestine at the time of John the Baptist.

St. Luke, as the accurate historian that he was, before writing on the apostolate of
St. John the Baptist, sketches the political situation in Palestine, the people who ruled at
the time, and the High Priests who oversaw the religious part. It is not by chance that the
Holy Spirit made him do this, because it was the foreigners who ruled the region and the
High Priesthood that was subjected to their political whims and deprived of power at their
discretion, and further impoverished to the point of being dominated by pagan principles
who gave evidence of the fullness of the time predicted for the advent of the Messiah,
which was the complete ruin of the kingdom of Judah.
Tiberius Cesar, son of Livia Drusilla and Tiberius Claudius Nero, adopted as son
by the Emperor Augustus after he married Livia, his mother, was first associated with the
government of the empire and installed as administrator of the provinces, and later, after
the death of Augustus, became his successor and was the emperor of Rome from 767 to
791. [St. Luke refers to the years of the Roman calendar beginning with the foundation of
Rome] St. Luke counts the years of the empire of Tiberius not from the death of Augustus
but from his first ascent to the government of Rome in 764 -765; since Jesus was born
during the years 748-749, he was about 30 years old during the 15th year of Tiberius’ reign
as St. Luke says in verse 23.
The government of Palestine was formed in this way: Judea, annexed to the
province of Syria after the deposition and exile of Archelaus, had governors who
depended on the chief of the province. The first governor was Coponius; the fifth was
Pontius Pilate, who governed from 26 A.D until A.D. 36-37. At the death of Herod, called
the Great, his kingdom was divided into four parts, each called a tetrarchy, that is, four
persons ruled it. Judea, Samaria and Indumea went to Archelaus, who later was removed,
as we said before, and Galilee and Perea went to Herod Antipas, who ruled from 4 B.C. to
A.D. 39-40. Philip, the tetrarch, son of Herod the Great, inherited from his father Iturea,
that included Butanea, Trachonitis, Auranitis and others; he married his niece Salomé,
daughter of Herodias, who was the wife of another brother on his father’s side, also called
Philip Herod. Herod Antipas would ultimately take away Herodias from him. Philip
Herod was disinherited by his father and lived privately. His wife Herodias, an extremely

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ambitious woman, let herself be seduced by Herod Antipas and followed him in the
kingdom, becoming his adulterous and incestuous wife; Philip the tetrarch governed rather
fairly, and he was the one who built Caesarea Philippi at the foot of Mount Hermon and
Bethsaida Julias on the north shore of the Lake Tiberias.
A certain Lysanias, of whom little is known, governed Abilene, the region between
Lebanon and Mount Hermon, northwest of Damascus. An inscription recently found at
Abila, capital of the region, confirms the words of St. Luke, referring clearly to a tetrarch
Lysanias at the time of Tiberius.
With regard to religion, the Sacred Text notes that at the apex of Judaism were the
High Priests Annas and Caiaphas. The Jews had only one High Priest who ruled for life;
but the Romans did not tolerate this and wanted a pontiff that would answer to their own
authorities, both in being nominated as well for the length of their pontificate. Annas had
obtained supreme religious power from the legate governor of Syria, Quirinius, in the year
A.D. 7 but was removed in the year A.D. 14 by Valerius Gratus. However Annas
nevertheless continued to be prominent and he was considered High Priest together with
Caiaphas, his son in law, who was named High Priest in the year 18 and remained as such
until A. D 36.

The preaching of St. John the Baptist

This hence was the religious and political climate in Palestine when the voice of
God was heard with a particular revelation to St. John, son of Zechariah, who lived in the
desert of Judea, following a life of penance and prayer.
The Lord spoke to him in his heart, and motivated him by His grace to confront
boldly the people, and gave force to his words so that they would conquer hearts. For
about 400 years no Prophet had ever been in Israel, and so the sudden appearance of John,
raggedly dressed in a coarse camel hair cloak and a leather belt, made a profound impact.
His voice seemed like a cry from beyond the grave, his life seemed to recall the
old glory and the sanctity of the patriarchs, his zeal and his courage emulated that of
Elijah against the evildoers and the perverse princes of the people; he seemed a man who
transcended human nature, and his mere presence was imposing. The grace of God, and
especially the grace of God, gave him a sharp tone of authority that conquered hearts and
paralyzed, so to speak, the evildoers and the powerful that could have stopped his
apostolate. Nobody opposed him: even those who endured him reluctantly but would have
liked to eliminate him.
This is the defining characteristic of the great divine manifestations on earth,
because when God wants, He makes Himself heard through those He selects and act
according to His will.
John went through the entire region of the Jordan River, wherever he could find
abundant waters, and he preached penance, starting with those who believed in him, with
baptism, that is a washing; a symbol of internal purification and the only act that could
prepare one for coming of the Redeemer. To receive water from John’s hands was the
same as confessing that one was a sinner, and one received it with interior remorse; the
water, thus poured, was a beneficial humiliation and, its pouring announcing the Savior,
renewed the hope in his coming and was beneficial for the remission of sins.

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 The souls John found were like wretched impenetrable deserts precluding the
salvific passage of the Redeemer to go through them, triumphantly, over their sins.
As in a desert there are valleys that block the way, mountains and hills that
obstruct, and barren and crooked roads that hold back, so too in the souls there were
abysses of moral misery, obstacles of pride and arrogance, a complete lack of
righteousness of heart, the first condition for receiving the Lord.
St. John with his baptism of penance and his austere, harsh life was like a voice
crying in this moral desert, eliminating miseries, humiliating pride, renewing the hope of
salvation and rectifying the intentions and the aspirations of the heart; thus he
accomplished in the soul, deprived of graces and virtues, the prediction of Isaiah (40:4-5)
that the Sacred Text cites freely from the version of the 70.
The crowds ran in great numbers to the banks of the river Jordan, moved by a
desire of renewal and redemption. They came from all social classes, and they looked for
direction as to what they should do to hasten the ways of God. In their subconscious, they
felt that something great was going to happen; they hoped to escape the foreign
domination that oppressed them, hoping in a new time of glory for the nation, and they ran
to John as to a new light of hope.
The proud Pharisees were also among those who went, but with the worst
disposition; they only desired their own glory, their intentions were evil, their criticism
poisonous; they only went because they did not want to be perceived as being less
righteous than the others, and to watch over the works of the Baptist.
They were proud, believing to have no need of penance, they watched how things
progressed, but they did not participate in them, because they believed to be the true
children of Abraham and believed that this glory was enough for them.
United with the Pharisees were also the Sadducees (Mt 3:7); they were people
frozen in their unbelief and indifference. John spoke to them sternly in order to shake
them, and they dared not react; he called them a brood of vipers for their sly and
poisonous malice; he asked them: Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? That
meant: “Who assured you that your false justice and your errors will justify you before
God, thus to escape the punishment you deserve? On what solid facts do you base your
belief of being righteous and to not be included in my threats to the people? It is not
enough to come; it is necessary to do worthy acts of penance! What does it avail you to be
children of Abraham? What does it avail to you to be his descendants and be part of the
chosen people, almost if this simple descendants could give you the right to grace? God
does not need to shed his mercy on you, to have a faithful people, because He can arouse
even from the stones, that is from the gentiles, the true children of Abraham, his spiritual
descendants, able to receive and make fruitful their redemption. This is not anymore a
privilege of race, but a gift of mercy; the Lord will cut off completely from his new people
those who, like barren trees, do not bear fruit.”
The speech of John, as we see, was extraordinarily severe; it cut off with a single
blow any illusion of a false justice. The expression brood of vipers could seem harsh and
even uncharitable, but the Pharisees and the Sadducees, arriving on the esplanade where
God was performing miracles of grace, with the sly and subtle ways that characterized
them, truly gave the impression of poisonous vipers, trying to stop the rush of the people
to conversion with their cutting words of derision or diffidence.

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 John surely did not speak to them in this way out of animosity but out of zeal, and
so in front of the people that could have been influenced by them, he humiliated them, that
they may finally open their eyes. As the Pharisees and the Sadducees were trying to push
the people into ruin and away from the ways of God, John was justified in using such
harsh language. His sternness was like a last bolt of light of the Old Covenant because
John was at the boundary between the two Testaments, and it was also an act of mercy for
the proud and hardened hearts not able to hear gentle words because of their arrogance
and contemptuousness.
St. Luke gives us some brief examples of the preaching of St. John to various
categories of people, to show the awe that he inspired in all classes. The multitudes,
hearing his menacing words to the Pharisees and the Sadducees, were terrified by the
judgment of God, and anxiously asked what they had to do to avoid it. The words of the
Precursor, in fact, vivified by the grace, had a power that deeply penetrated hearts. He
answered them, exhorting them to do charity through the two works of bodily mercy:
dressing the naked and feeding the hungry.
It was like an anticipation of the great law of charity that, for divine clemency,
covers a multitude of sins. The Pharisees drained the people by oppressing them, and in
doing so distanced from them the mercy of God; now the way to merit His mercy was just
the opposite: to dress and not strip the poor; to feed and not starve them.
The appeal to charity made the publicans concerned, because they, being tax
collectors, could not stop collecting taxes; they asked therefore how they should go about
it, and John told them not to ask more than what was required by law. The tax collectors,
in fact, were used to the most exorbitant abuse of power, they cleverly stole as much as
they could and thus were not worthy of the kingdom of God.
The publicans were aided in their work by the forces of public order and in talking
with the soldiers, awakened in them the desire to better themselves; they too went to John
and asked him how they should deal in their work; he answered that they should be
careful not to do any unjust violence to anyone, not to slander and also to be satisfied with
their pay. Most likely among the multitude there were also law enforcers sent by Herod to
spy on the Baptist or to keep public order, considering the throngs of people.

3. The insignificance of human greatness. The true greatness that is humility.

When St. Luke talks of the preaching of the Precursor, he paints two pictures that
are in striking contrast: the greats of the world who ruled Palestine and the humble
penitent sent by God, who prepared the people for the coming of the Redeemer; the first is
a picture of short-lived greatness, of which there are not even minimal traces anymore,
and the second, a picture of humility that remains immortal in the centuries and in
eternity.
The pompous names of these great figures have vanished in a whirlwind of empty
vanity that surrounds all it touches with nothingness; instead the humble name of the great
saint has remained as light shining on all people. Gone is the imperial and tyrannical
Rome, gone are even the names of the countries over which she ruled. Who can remember
anything about Tiberius Cesar? And even if those enamored with ancient history could
remember something about him, what would be the reason to remember him? Not even

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his ashes are kept, and if his body had been kept like those of the Egyptian rulers, it would
be merely a lurid mummy.
The names of the great Romans, in the Sacred Text that is always full of fresh
images of life, are less than decaying bones strewn on fertile soil. In contrast to those holy
names in the Sacred Text, these either have no meaning or have a useless and evil
meaning. Even in this simple context the material world is truly empty and its temporal
greatness is nothing. The name Tiberius means son of the (river) Tiber, a name without
any reference to true greatness; the etymology of Cesar is from slaughter, wound, and so
has a very sorrowful meaning because the power of the conquerors, in fact is only to
slaughter and bring death; it signifies murder and not life. Pontius Pilate means man of
the sea, armed with javelin: a hollow name, just as hollow as his power; Herod, fire-
dragon, Lysanias, destruction, sorrow, all names that are stamped with the empty seal of
the world, servants of Satan, belligerents, lovers of foolishness, destroyers of good and
sowers of sorrow.
Opposite to these pompous names, remembrance of deadly miseries, are the names
of John, grace, the mercy of God, son of Zachary, which means the Lord who remembers.
Tiberius Cesar had the power of the army but ultimately this gave him nothing and
he died; John had in himself the grace of God and spread the first seeds of an eternal
kingdom that shall never end.
Pilate was at the service of Cesar; John was at the service of the Savior.
Herod was cruel like a “dragon”, John was full of goodness, sanctified in his
mother’s womb as the precursor of the Eternal Truth.
Lysanias did not leave traces of himself; John is a blessed memory in the Church.
How many laws were issued by the greats in Palestine? They are numberless,
because it is characteristic of the miserable power of the world to feed its impotence with
laws, decrees, instructions, threats and sanctions that are always oppressive in nature.
John with few precepts, inspired by the divine law that never changes, led souls
who were sincere and who had good will, to the ways of Heaven. The powerful of every
age create deep abysses of misery and John filled them; the powerful created obstacles to
the spreading of goodness, and John demolished them; the powerful make rough the ways
to freedom, and he made them smooth.
O why do we let ourselves to be more fascinated by the things of the world than of
God’s? Why does what is miserable seem great, what perishes immortal, and what makes
us sad seem to be a source of goodness? We marvel at tall buildings, for instance, and we
admire those who build them and yet if we were to rise to one thousand meters (3000 ft)
how impressive would they seem? And if a tremor, a simple seismic wave shook the earth
to what would that greatness be reduced? O if we only knew to appreciate what comes
from God, if we could truly value the Church, how little the things of the world and the
kingdoms of the world would appear to us!

4. John bears witness to Jesus.

The life of John the Baptist was viewed prodigiously by the Hebrew people, and
even though he did not perform any miracle, many thought that he was the Christ, the
awaited Savior.
This suggestion, instead of being an honor for John, was sorrowful to him and he

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immediately rushed to dispel this misunderstanding with all his might, telling the truth in
clear terms. He was baptizing with water, that is, with a simple symbol of penance and
humiliation. The Savior, infinitely more powerful than he because He was God, and of
whom John declared himself to be unworthy even to unloosen the strap of His sandals,
would baptize pouring forth the graces of the Holy Spirit and the fire of love. Hence His
Baptism would be a true rebirth. John could threaten the punishments of God, but he had
no power over souls. The Savior, instead, would have the ‘candelabra’ in His Hand, that
is, He would be the Judge of souls, He would purify his people, saving the righteous and
condemning reprobates as useless chaff for the eternal fire of hell. Thus it was important
that the symbol was not mistaken for the reality, nor that the servant be confused with the
Master.

The witness of the Father and the Holy Spirit

God Himself took care to confirm John’s witness. Therefore, Jesus Christ also, went
to be baptized, and in the moment when, he received the water, covering himself in all our
sins, the sky opened, and there appeared an intense brilliance, almost as if the sky were
rent asunder, projecting eternal light. In that splendor the Holy Spirit descended upon
Jesus like a halo of light, almost like a shining dove, and the voice of the Father could be
heard, saying: “Thou are my beloved Son, in You I am well pleased.” The white shining
dove and the voice of the Father revealed the sanctity of Jesus Christ and His Divinity.
The Holy Spirit consecrated His Humanity in the fullness of grace touching the infinite,
and the voice of the Father declared him clearly His Eternal Son, object of His
satisfaction. In this way the testimony of John was confirmed and his mission could be
said to have come to an end with the beginning of the public ministry of Jesus. For this
reason St. Luke mentions the imprisonment of St. John before the solemn testimony of the
Father and of the Holy Spirit. Chronologically it happened later on, but St. Luke mentions
this before in order to bring to a closure to the public ministry of the Baptist.
It is possible that the precursor himself, very much loved by the people, desired and
asked God to disappear in prison in order not to hamper the ministry of the Redeemer.
What a great example he is for us, when Providence calls us to make the Redeemer
known in the lay or in the priestly apostolate! We must not find our reward in our glory,
but rather all our attention must turn to the glory of God. What is the value of our personal
effort in this regard? Less than pouring a drop of water on hearts to make them less hard.
What is needed, instead, is the grace of the Holy Spirit and the fire of divine love to instill
zeal for the glory of God. The Holy Spirit cannot live in souls who impede His action with
our arrogance and our pride.
When we confess our nothingness, the Heavens open; declaring our unworthiness,
we call for Divine graces to be poured on souls and which now hear the voice of God and
therefore are changed into objects of divine delight. To suppress what is ours, this is the
true secret of the apostolate; humbling ourselves and confessing to be unable, unworthy,
incapable, this is the secret to making it fruitful.

Genealogy of Jesus and the ascending genealogy of the soul.

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 St. Luke reports the genealogy of Jesus Christ ascending from Him to God; we
have already commented on this genealogy in our book on the Gospel of St. Matthew, and
we refer the reader to it; here we only remind the reader that from Jesus Christ we all must
ascend to God, and He is the marvelous ladder that brings us from our poor exile into the
arms of our Celestial Father.
To rise, to rise, this is our life; ascending breathlessly as we breathlessly read this
genealogy. We cannot remain stagnant as in a ditch in the earth, never even in the most
common things of life, but rather we must ascend from one activity to another until we
reach God, and His infinite glory must dominate each of our actions.
Here, for instance, is the “ascending genealogy” of the food required for our life
on earth, our daily bread. The land belongs to an owner. His steward is told to cultivate
the land by sowing the wheat. The wheat grows, and the steward harvests it and stores it in
the barn; later on the wheat is sent to the mill, sieved, kneaded, cooked, sold; having
become bread it goes to the table and sustains life so it may grow, become active, and
become the instrument of the soul that works to gain the eternal recompense of belonging
entirely to God.
Here is another example: the “genealogy” of the studying. A young child is the son
of his father and mother; he grows up and develops reason; he has his first ideas in
kindergarten, begins to draw lines, then writes small letters, then syllables, then words,
then numbers; he reads, learns the first truths and makes sense of them in his next class;
he studies first grade, second, third, forth, fifth, sixth; he leaves for middle school and then
for secondary school; he then perfects himself in college, he learn a profession, deepens
his knowledge of the truths to know more still; the more he rises the more he finds
darkness, like someone who rises into the stratosphere; he holds on to faith and because of
his good studies, he can arrive better prepared to the heights; he rises to ponder the divine
science from which all sciences come, he reaches the eternal light, and finally knows God,
the eternal Truth, Wisdom and Love.
Man works to live, but he lives to give room to the spirit; he cultivates his spirit for
a more beautiful life; he passes from play to virtue, from virtue to heroism, to the love that
gives of itself, to God. Nothing should stop or remain mired, nothing should descend;
rather it is necessary to rise, to rise from one intention to the next, from matter to the
spirit, from the spirit to sanctity, from sanctity to God. This is what St. Paul says: To do
everything for the glory of God, nothing excluded, and to work for the glory of God, in
order to save oneself and reach God. The intentions of life, then, must all be like many
ascending genealogies; one nobler than the other until at last one reaches God, crown and
prize of all our intentions and our activities.
In order to ascend it is necessary to start with Christ and end with God, because
Jesus Christ gives us life and then He changes our life in a constant ascension to the
Father. If we remove Jesus from our life, our life does not rise, it becomes ruined, and if
we remove God, our life does not rest and becomes lost. This is the marvelous secret of
the entire spiritual life, the true life: to become united with the Redeemer, to rise from
Him to the Father, and for the merit of his death and passion, to repose in eternal
happiness, in the full possession of God.

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 Chapter 4
1. Fasting and temptation of Jesus. Preaching in Galilee and in Nazareth. Healing of a
possessed person. Healing of the mother-in-law of St. Peter and other sick people.

1 And Jesus, filled with the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan. And he was urged by
the Spirit into the wilderness 2 for forty days, and he was tested by the devil. And he ate
nothing in those days. And when they were completed, he was hungry. 3 Then the devil
said to him, “If you are the Son of God, speak to this stone, so that it may be made into
bread.” 4 And Jesus answered him, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but
by every word of God.” 5 And the devil led him onto a high mountain, and he showed him
all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time, 6 and he said to him: “To you, I will
give all this power, and its glory. For they have been handed over to me, and I give them
to whomever I wish. 7 Therefore, if you will worship before me, all will be yours.” 8 And
in response, Jesus said to him: “It is written: ‘You shall worship the Lord your God, and
you shall serve him alone.’ ” 9 And he brought him to Jerusalem, and he set him on the
parapet of the temple, and he said to him: “If you are the Son of God, cast yourself down
from here. 10 For it is written that he has given his Angels charge over you, so that they
may guard you, 11 and so that they may take you into their hands, lest perhaps you may
hurt your foot against a stone.” 12 And in response, Jesus said to him, “It is said: ‘You
shall not tempt the Lord your God.’ ” 13 And when all the temptation was completed, the
devil withdrew from him, until a time. 14 And Jesus returned, in the power of the Spirit,
into Galilee. And his fame spread throughout the entire region. 15 And he taught in their
synagogues, and he was magnified by everyone. 16 And he went to Nazareth, where he
had been raised. And he entered into the synagogue, according to his custom, on the
Sabbath day. And he rose up to read. 17 And the book of the prophet Isaiah was handed to
him. And as he unrolled the book, he found the place where it was written: 18 “The Spirit
of the Lord is upon me; because of this, he has anointed me. He has sent me to evangelize
the poor, to heal the contrite of heart, 19 to preach forgiveness to captives and sight to the
blind, to release the broken into forgiveness, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord
and the day of retribution.” 20 And when he had rolled up the book, he returned it to the
minister, and he sat down. And the eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fixed on him.
21 Then he began to say to them, “On this day, this scripture has been fulfilled in your
hearing.” 22 And everyone gave testimony to him. And they wondered at the words of
grace that proceeded from his mouth. And they said, “Is this not the son of Joseph?” 23
And he said to them: “Certainly, you will recite to me this saying, ‘Physician, heal
yourself.’ The many great things that we have heard were done in Capernaum, do here
also in your own country.” 24 Then he said: “Amen I say to you, that no prophet is
accepted in his own country. 25 In truth, I say to you, there were many widows in the days
of Elijah in Israel, when the heavens were closed for three years and six months, when a
great famine had occurred throughout the entire land. 26 And to none of these was Elijah
sent, except to Zarephath of Sidon, to a woman who was a widow. 27 And there were
many lepers in Israel under the prophet Elisha. And none of these was cleansed, except
Naaman the Syrian.” 28 And all those in the synagogue, upon hearing these things, were
filled with anger. 29 And they rose up and drove him beyond the city. And they brought

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him all the way to the edge of the mount, upon which their city had been built, so that they
might throw him down violently. 30 But passing through their midst, he went away. 31
And he descended to Capernaum, a city of Galilee. And there he taught them on the
Sabbaths. 32 And they were astonished at his doctrine, for his word was spoken with
authority. 33 And in the synagogue, there was a man who had an unclean demon, and he
cried out with a loud voice, 34 saying: “Let us alone. What are we to you, Jesus of
Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know you who you are: the Holy One of God.”
35 And Jesus rebuked him, saying, “Be silent and depart from him.” And when the demon
had thrown him into their midst, he departed from him, and he no longer harmed him. 36
And fear fell over them all. And they discussed this among themselves, saying: “What is
this word? For with authority and power he commands the unclean spirits, and they
depart.” 37 And his fame spread to every place in the region. 38 Then Jesus, rising up
from the synagogue, entered into the house of Simon. Now Simon’s mother-in-law was in
the grip of a severe fever. And they petitioned him on her behalf. 39 And standing over
her, he commanded the fever, and it left her. And promptly rising up, she ministered to
them. 40 Then, when the sun had set, all those who had anyone afflicted with various
diseases brought them to him. Then, laying his hands on each one of them, he cured them.
41 Now demons departed from many of them, crying out and saying, “You are the son of
God.” And rebuking them, he would not permit them to speak. For they knew him to be
the Christ. 42 Then, when it was daytime, going out, he went to a deserted place. And the
crowds sought him, and they went all the way to him. And they detained him, so that he
would not depart from them. 43 And he said to them, “I must also preach the kingdom of
God to other cities, because it was for this reason that I was sent.” 44 And he was
preaching in the synagogues of Galilee.
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2. The mystery of the temptation of Jesus in the desert.

Jesus Christ, true God and true man, having subjected himself to all our sufferings,
wanted also to be subjected to the temptations of Satan. St. Luke states in
Lk 4:1-13 that Satan, after he had tempted Him in the desert, departed from him for a
time, or as the Greek text says: Till a more suitable time. This means that Jesus not only
was subjected to temptations in the desert, but that Satan, even though he was defeated,
came back to assail him again at other times. Certainly he attacked Jesus in the Garden of
Gethsemane and during his Passion, not only in the interior of his soul, but also making
use of perverted people who tormented him, as it appears clearly from the Gospels, in the
suffering that he endured in the Garden of Olives and the cruelty of his enemies, for which
there is no explanation except for the presence of a very strong diabolical suggestion.
It is an impressive fact that He, full of the Holy Spirit after his Baptism in the
Jordan River, was later attacked by Satan. Certainly it was the Spirit, the Holy Spirit, that
brought him to the desert to prepare him for his approaching public ministry; but when
Jesus was filled with spiritual graces in his Most Holy Humanity, he was subjected to
temptation.
Satan had been watching him since his birth, because he had a suspicion that He
was the Messiah; he tried to have him killed by the wicked Herod, and he probably
influenced in a sinister manner many people of Bethlehem before He was born, to make
them hostile and hardhearted towards the Holy Family. When Satan understood from His

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life and from the fullness of the Holy Spirit that He was not a man like others, he tried to
lead Him astray by the same malignant envy for which he led astray Adam. It is logical
that the second Adam would not be free from temptation, since He had to make
reparations for the tragic consequences of the first temptation.
This fact is of great comfort to those pious souls, who often become lost in
temptation, failing to understand how Satan can bring them the most awful suggestions,
since they are filled with the special graces they receive from trying to be good. It is
repeated in them, more fervent members of the Body of Christ, what happened to Him, as
an instruction and comfort to us. Does not heat immediately attract cold currents? The
hot strata rise and the gelid currents precipitate on the flames. Now Satan, like a deathly
frost, comes down where he sees a stronger flame burning, not to absorb the heat but to
extinguish it, because in his pride, he believes that his deathly ways are better than life; in
his evil wrath, he is envious of the happiness that brings true life to us. Therefore, as soon
a soul becomes, so to speak, enflamed in the Holy Spirit, Satan rushes over to upset that
soul.
Temptations therefore are not a sign of failing, but rather are a sign of a more
intense action of the Holy Spirit within us. It is important not to take temptations lightly,
nor see these logical or rational choices; we should also not remain alone in the sad
thoughts that temptations provoke thus and refusing and the light that we receive from
those who guide our soul. Those who refuse direction become entangled in temptations, in
fact to them these become acceptable in their minds; they believe these to be right beyond
any doubt and in so doing expose themselves to the danger of being deceived by Satan.
Just as Jesus drove out temptations with the word of God, so too must a person drive
temptations away with the word of the minister who represents God for him; he must react
to the evil suggestion that may appear positive, not through reasoning, but by hurling
away Satan with the words that the Lord gives him through his minister.

3. The fasting of Jesus

The fullness of the Holy Spirit gave to the soul of Jesus such life and, we would
say, interior nourishment that He fasted for forty days and forty nights. St. Luke in his
Gospel has special words for this fast, saying that Jesus did not eat anything in those days.
Thus it was a complete fast. He fasted in order to be able to extract the flame of love from
his own soul, to reduce his corporal activities, to give priority to those of the spirit,
mortifying his divine body with the immolation of the lack of food, in order to make it
food for our souls later. He almost sowed, in his fasting and penance, the Eucharistic grain
that later on he had to grind in the Passion and make his love food for our souls. Our
limited human minds feel very, very insignificant before the mysteries of God!
Fasting is an immolation of one’s life, partial but real; it is a sacrifice that is
consummated in the presence of God.
When in the past a victim was immolated it was killed; however, it remained a
lifeless body, a present and real witness that only God is life and outside of Him
everything dies. When an animal holocaust was immolated, the victim was killed and
burned, almost substituting its life with the flames, symbols of the love that consumes
everything in us that is not of God. Fasting is a decrease of the bodily life; it is a holocaust
of its material tendencies, done for the love of God. As when one reduces the electrical

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current, the light from a light bulb emanates a lower volume of light, almost “dying”, so
too fasting lowers the volume of one’s physical life, and in this way one becomes
immolated before God.
For this reason fasting is a powerful source of supplication before God, and for
this reason Satan tries to reduce it to a minimum in the spiritual life. We add, though, right
away that fasting is tied to obedience, because if the decrease of physical life is
immolation, it is useless without the immolation of the soul. The body decreases its
physical life with sacrifices, and the soul almost comes out from its physical boundaries
with obedience. This is why it is clearly said that Jesus was taken by the Spirit into the
desert. He did not go of his own will, and he added to the immolation of the body that of
the spirit. We also add that the fasting commanded by the Church, even if it is so light, is
the best that we can do, because it is the Holy Spirit who guides the soul to do penance for
the Church.

4. The first temptation.

Jesus Christ went to the desert obeying the Will of the Father: He fasted to
immolate himself, and fasted for forty days, completely, because this was in obedience to
the Holy Spirit. After these days of very intense spiritual life “he was hungry”; this makes
us believe either that Jesus did not feel hungry before this point or, after, he felt it
enormously. He was truly a man, and it was natural that his physical body would signal its
needs.
Satan was waiting, and he made his move on Jesus in this moment of physical
weakness to tempt Him. This is always his modus operandi: he takes advantage of a
deficiency in the physical body or exuberance, which are miseries, to attract a soul to do
evil or to subject the body as a slave or a prisoner.
Jesus Christ was perfectly ordered in all His powers and in all His most sacred
body; therefore it was impossible to tempt Him in attempting to bring disorder to his
temperament, and this is a fact. Satan attacked the weakness of His body after the fasting,
and attempted to bring his spiritual power to a lower level. Pointing to one of the stones,
of which that arid desert was full, he said: “If you are the Son of God command this stone
to become bread.” It is possible that Satan first pointed to the stones collectively to move
Him to change them into bread, and then he showed Him a single one that He could
transform miraculously. This explains why St. Matthew speaks of stones and St. Luke of
one stone.

Man does not lives of bread alone.

At first glance there does not seem to be anything wrong with miraculously
changing a stone into bread, since Jesus was omnipotent. But in fact, it was a very subtle
temptation, worthy of Satan’s diabolic perversion. Satan, in fact, attempts to substitute
himself for God; this was the origin of his ruin, this was the origin of the temptation he
did to our first forefathers, and this is why he tempted Jesus in that way. Jesus Christ, in
fact, often repeated that: “He did the work given to Him by His Father”; Satan would have
liked that He would do something suggested by him; Jesus Christ stated that he wanted
only to glorify His Father, and Satan wanted Him to operate for his own good, glorifying

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Himself; Jesus Christ fasted in order to enlarge his activity on souls, and Satan instead
wanted to narrow it to a purely corporal need. He wanted to destroy in a moment the very
effect of the fasting, and concentrate it all in corporal desires.
It is, after all, what the majority of Christians do hundreds of times during the great
solemnities of the spirit, changing the Feast day into an orgy or steeped in corporal
preoccupations.
For this reason Jesus responded in the most profound way: “It is written, Man
does not live by bread alone, but by every word of God.” Jesus’ life in the desert can be
deduced from this answer: the Holy Spirit became his teacher and had him concentrate as
a man, on the Sacred Scriptures. He had to teach the truth, and he was kept in meditation
on the Word of God; he made it his food in order to feed others, and he was hungry to
promulgate it. The hunger that he felt in his body was a manifestation of the hunger he
had to make known the divine Word, just as the thirst that He suffered on the Cross, was
an expression of the thirst that He had for souls. Every act of his material life showed his
marvelous spiritual life, because He, as God and as man, was a glorification of the Father.
Satan, on the other hand, mistakenly believed that He was hungry only for bread, while
instead he yearned for the glory of God. The answer of Jesus nailed him, and thwarted the
centuries-old trap that Satan would lay upon men so that they would concentrate their
efforts on the search for material goods to satisfy their physical desires.

… but by every word of God.

All human life, in fact, is constantly under the allure of this temptation: “to change
the stone into bread”. We work, we find it hard to go on, and miracles, so to speak, are
done with technology and chemistry, to extract bread from stones, that is, from gold and
riches that are being piled up to safeguard the material life. Wars, be they individual,
social or national, are always waged for this reason: to be guaranteed one’s daily ‘bread’,
and to have it, be prepared to undergo even the most degrading injustices.* The apostasy
of the French and even more horrible Russian revolutions, vacuous words given to the
peoples by rulers and social meddlers, who thirst for their own glory, have at the bottom
this temptation, to “change the stones into bread”, to identify life with food and whatever
is connected with one’s physical conditions.
Jesus Christ takes life back to the right equilibrium between soul and body, and
with that loudly proclaims that man does not live “only of bread”, but nourishes himself
with “every word of God”. He says that spiritual nourishment is the “word of God”, and
with this He clearly refers to Himself, the Eternal Word of God. In his clear vision of all
mankind’s future, He sees the bread that He shall give to man, transubstantiated in His
Body, true food of the soul, just as the physical bread is food for the body.

---------------------------------------------
* The teachings of the Gospel do not condemn progress or the search for personal well being in fact man
must use the talents he received from God. However his first search must be for justice, because riches must
not be fruit of oppression or violence. When we first search for the word of God , since God calls all of us to
love as He has loved us, through His words all progress is good because it would exclude selfishness and
greed.

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 Satan wanted him to change the stone into bread, and Jesus, moved not by him but
by love, would change bread into his divine Body, and to change the stone of the
human heart into love. The divine answer of Jesus is concise, admirable, and in only one
flash of wisdom it confuses the aberrations of man, unmasking the insinuations of Satan
and announcing in a disguised way that infinite mystery of love that would change our
exile on earth into the threshold of fulfillment in God of the eternal possession of God.
How ungrateful is man in concentrating all his life in material bread and forgetting
the Eucharistic treasure! Bread is the concise representation of the material
life, the Eucharist is the food of the soul; the bread for the body, without that of the soul,
reduces man into a beast; it makes him concerned only about the passing physical life,
while he goes onward to reach his eternal destination. What an immense sorrow it is, to
observe men discussing only material affairs, and to see them toiling away to acquire
wealth, while completely forgetting or almost putting aside, their own soul!

5. The second and third temptations of Satan.

The answer of Jesus Christ confused Satan but did not disarm him, because the
perverted spirit is resolute in his temptations. It can be said that stubbornness is precisely
the character of Satan, eternally unmovable in his malice and eternally concentrated in his
false judgments, even when confronted with his own faults.
Satan never surrenders, always attempts revenge, looks for setback, in order to
prove himself and convince others that he is right. He attempts to instill into man his spirit
of stubborn illogicality even before solid evidence, and to the contrary for this reason
there is no better evidence of the deceitfulness of a spirit, or a spiritual attitude, as being
stubborn in our own judgment, in a state of rebellion and disobedience. A soul who does
not listen to counsel, persists in its own ideas, is firm in its own viewpoints, who sees
itself to be the source of all reason and logic, while all others, and even worse those who
speak to this soul in the name of God, are dismissed as being in a darkness of illogicality
and lack of understanding, this is certainly a soul on a false path, a soul certainly tempted
by Satan, and in great risk of eternal perdition, unless it denies itself entirely and
completely.
The devil, then, came back on the attack, and since he realized that he could not
overcome Jesus in his physical appetite, attempted to overcome him on a spiritual level by
focusing Him on the desire of glory and power. This is the essence of the other two
temptations that he did. In the account of St. Matthew and of St. Luke these two
temptations are reported in a different order. St. Matthew put first the temptation on the
pinnacle of the temple first, and St. Luke puts the one on the mountain first; however, the
difference is incidental, because both temptations were attempts to win over Jesus,
dragging him into the cupidity of glory and power.
God let the Evangelists write their accounts freely, as they believed would best
serve the reasons they intended, even though they wrote under divine inspiration.
They drew their information from different sources, naturally, and God allowed
some slight differences in their accounts, to leave the happening indisputable in its
historicity. If, in fact, they had created a fictitious story, working together, they would
both have come to an agreement with each other. The differences, even though purely
accidental, show that each Gospel is an historic source of inestimable value and that each

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Evangelist wrote independently from the others, each reporting the facts as an eye-witness
or as an advocate of facts received by eye-witnesses.
However, comparing the accounts of St. Matthew and of St. Luke, the justification
of the incidental differences can be found. St. Luke, in fact, in confessing to have
collected diligently the witnesses of the facts that he reports, had to be more precise and
detailed in the circumstances and can be considered, so to speak, more accurate. It is
possible to believe that Satan tempted Jesus two times to adore him; the first time after the
temptation to change the stone into bread, and the second time after the temptation to
throw himself from the pinnacle of the Temple. Of this second temptation St. Luke does
not say anything, because it was identical to the first, but it seems that he hints to it when
he says that the devil, after the third temptation, departed from him for a time, till a more
suitable time. Then Satan came back on the attack, and he must have come back with the
plan that for him was the most important: to substitute his own kingdom for the kingdom
of God, thereby enslaving the Word become man.
This second time Satan was even more arrogant than before, and for this reason St.
Matthew, in recounting this temptation, says that Jesus Christ chased away Satan
“Begone, Satan” and St. Luke, who accounts for the first temptation of the devil, does not
say that He chased him away, because in fact the first time He only confused him. This
explanation is however, only speculation.

The diabolical psychology of temptation.

Satan, even though he still possesses the gifts of natural science as consequence of
his angelic nature, has a great deal of folly in his reasoning, because his intellect is not
properly oriented, which is only done by the light of God. This is typical of some non-
believer scientists, who may know so many scientific notions but lack sound judgment,
and fall into the most trivial contradictions and the most childish suppositions.
Satan, then, did not understand that Jesus, saying that man did not live by bread
alone, was speaking of the supernatural life that comes from the nourishment of the soul;
he supposed instead that Jesus only desired to have great powers.
This is the psychology of Satan, we would say, which is worthy to investigate, in
order to understand the reasoning behind his temptations.
A man fixated on an idea, does not see anything but that single idea, and
everything whether related directly to it or not reminds him of it. Similarly a hungry
animal is completely focused on a piece of meat, or a child fascinated by a game who does
not notice anything besides it. Now, Satan is fixated by a single idea: to rule and be
glorified on earth; to maintain his most wretched and miserable isolation in order to build
a kingdom not only of rebellious angels but also of men occupying his seats of glory.
In order to build this kingdom of souls, he has to subtract them from God; thus he
tries in every way to draw them to do evil, putting before them sin as object of happiness.
Satan also seeks to have ministers and cooperators of perdition among the great people of
the world, whom he helps to prosper; he makes their earthly way easy, he makes them into
cruel tyrants, unjust, violent sinners, and into accomplices for the perdition of souls. This
comprises sorrowful, behind-the-scenes activity of so many rulers of the world.
Satan is used to live in contact with these human beings, who are arrogant,
thirsting for success who will stop at nothing, to secure their own glory. He follows them

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so that they do not escape him, he sees them pensive, frowning, worried and he recognizes
well, so to speak, the somatic traits of a dictator.
Psychologically, whoever is taken with the idea of ruling, thinks little about his
daily needs, he is able to do any sacrifice, he never sleeps, appears lost in thought about
his distant vision, he shuns human society, his eyebrows are raised, he has a knitted
forehead, clenched teeth, an authoritarian look, because he keeps ruminating on his plans
of conquest and glory.
Satan saw Jesus all pensive and collected, he saw his fasting, and since He indeed
was thinking about the kingdom of His Father and he was concentrating on it, since He
was preparing himself to establish it, Satan thought he perceived in the Savior the
characteristic thirst that a ruthless ruler has for glory.
He first tempted Him with food, to see if Jesus believed himself to be powerful
and to have a will aimed toward the marvelous and grandiose; he wanted to see if He was
a strong-willed person, as we usually characterize those wretched rulers of the world;
Satan was ready to offer himself to change a stone into bread, in case Jesus could not have
done it.
It is usually believed that Satan tempted Jesus with gluttony, proposing to change
the stone into bread; but this is not the case, because it would not have been gluttonous to
eat a piece of bread after forty days of fasting; he tempted Jesus to focus his attention on
the material, and he wanted to see if He was willing to want to do extraordinary things.
From the answer of Jesus and from the expression on his face, he believed to
perceive that He was prey to the allure of power, and even if he felt that Jesus was not
aspiring to a kingdom like other rulers, he thought that in facilitating his glory on earth, he
could enslave Him. He was a fool, beyond any doubt, but he believed that he was on the
right track. The refusal to change the stone into bread seemed to him a confession of
impotence, and the reference to the word of God, a justification so as to not diminish
Himself in the light of His inability. Satan was making a judgment based on his own
pride, and he believed that Jesus was prey to thoughts of pride; thus he offered to help
Him by showing Him a view of prideful power and glory in order to enslave Him.
He brought Him on a high mountain, that is, to a height from where he could see
in an instant all the kingdoms on earth in a phantasmagoric sight. He showed Him a kind
of geographical map, a kind of scale of human power, and he told Him that he would give
it all to Him, all of it, if He only prostrated Himself before Him in adoration. To show to
Jesus that he could give all this to Him, he told Him that he owned all of it and could give
whatever he wanted to whomever he wanted.
Certainly Satan at that time still had dominion over the earth, and in a certain sense
it belonged to him as it was within his sphere of activities; but certainly he could not claim
to be the owner of the earth. Hence he lied, as he usually does, in order to deceive Him.
He did not realize, the wretched being, that he was talking to the very One who would
defeat and dethrone him, and right in the midst of his kingdoms of evil, He would put His
Church.
Jesus Christ answered: “It is written: “You shall worship the Lord, your God, and
him alone shall you serve,” that is, you will desire that God alone will rule the earth, and
only to Him shall you give honor and glory.

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 The answer of the Savior was an announcement of the Kingdom of God, a solemn
proclamation of His right over all creatures. Jesus had to rule and had to subjugate all the
powers of earth, but only for establishing the glory of God.
How sad it is to think about those words of Satan: “The kingdoms of earth have
been given to me, and I give them to whomever I want!” This is a lie; however, it is not a
lie in the sense that kingdoms give themselves to him and apostatize, and that he lords
over them with his demonic influences.
Which are the powers over which Satan does not lord? Are they not diabolical
activities the wretched influences of sectarians and the hypocritical imposition of control
prevalent in totalitarian states most hurtful for the Church? With the exception of those
kingdoms governed by saints, are not all the others whether dominated by kings or
presidents reduced to a mix of oppression and miseries with continued harassment both
open and effective toward the Church? The history of the kingdoms and of the kings of
the earth is almost always full of disgrace, and it is a marvel that the Church, in the midst
of these dreadful deserts, goes on prospering and flourishing.

The human ambition.

It can be said that there is not one soul that does not undergo this temptation by
Satan, who is not brought up high to the height of pride and does not dream of greatness in
a way that is lethal for the life of the spirit.
In whatever place one finds himself, even ordinary or low, man imagines himself
to be able to dominate, and is drawn to leadership. It is rare to find someone who does not
desire to be at the top in his field, or does not think that he could be above everyone else.
Satan encourages our pride in being adored through the cult of the vilest passions,
and he hopes to deter us from the true love of God, centering us on things of the world*
Jesus Christ teaches us the true way of the eternal kingdom, and he shields us from
diabolical illusions saying: “You shall worship the Lord, your God, and him alone shall
you serve.” To serve God is the same as to rule, because it means to dominate our own
nature, to rise above the miserable things of the earth, and to fly freely through the
Heavens.
To serve God is the most complete independence that the soul can attain from the bonds
of earth and is the kingdom of love to which nothing can compare. He who rules in the
world is its slave; he who serves God, rules.
To have all the kingdoms of the earth, therefore, means to submit to all the slavery
of the spirit; instead to adore God and to serve Him means to rule and to dominate over all
the miseries of our life.

------------------------------------------------
* This recalls the “cult of personality” that was in recent times first an object of power (Stalin) and later one
of disapproval.

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 Satan felt defeated, but he tried a new way to induce Jesus to come down from the
height of the supernatural life to the natural and human level. This time he attempted to
compromise His entire mission with a colossal failure or with a boost of notoriety that
would compromise his path of humility. Thus, he took Him to the pinnacle of the Temple,
that is, the highest part of the sacred building and, distorting the meaning of a scriptural
text, incited him to throw himself before the crowd of people already gathering there,
promising that He would not be hurt. God protects us if we are in danger and sends
His angels to guard us, but He does not favor presumption and vanity. To throw oneself
from that height for a vain reason, is not begging God for help, but rather will result in
receiving punishment from God. This is the reason why Jesus answered: “You shall not
put the Lord, your God, to the test.”
These words were for Satan like a thunderbolt; they had on him an extraordinary
power of humiliating reproach, because in that moment he indeed was tempting the Lord
his God.
Psychologically, one who is fixated on a thought, or is unwavering in his own
belief of an idea and speaks up, has a powerful impact on those who hear him and his
thought makes an impression.
When Jesus told Satan: “You shall not put the Lord, your God, to the test”, He
was God. Satan, in hearing Him, had to become aware of an unusual majesty, because
Jesus could not help but to convey through his words at least a reflection of his divine
nature. Satan was crushed by those words, almost like a wild beast struck by the look or
the powerful whip of the tamer, and he stopped tempting Him; he did not dare insist, and
feeling ravaged, left to recuperate.
This psychological, subtle distinction confirms the explanation that we gave on the
differences between the accounts of St. Matthew and St. Luke: Satan, struck by the words
of the Lord, suspected very strongly that He was God, and he wanted to try again with a
daring temptation, transporting him to the top of the highest mountain and promising all
the kingdoms of the earth, as St. Matthew says. It was then that Jesus drove him away,
repeating to him with His divine power those words that alluded to Himself as God: “You
shall worship the Lord, your God, and Him alone shall you serve”.
Satan felt the divine in the Redeemer, more than he had ever felt it before; he felt
that He was the master of the kingdoms, and feeling overpowered by His glory, and
refusing to adore Him, he ran away.

Satan and the powerful of the world.

Satan, the damned, knows that man does not live of bread alone, and so he is not
satisfied to tempt him only with greed for material things, but tries to convince him of
false ideals in order to take him away from the Lord. His purpose is always the same: to
substitute his kingdom for that of God, and he lures man into the abyss of his rebellion.
He tempts everyone with the ambition and pride; he tempts in proportion to each man’s
condition, but he attacks with special force and cunning the so-called “greats of the
world”, whose ambition and pride is beyond measure. He tempts them by giving them an
unquenchable thirst for power and glory at all costs, including the complete disregard for
justice and truth, and proposes that they trade their conscience and their eternal salvation

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for these; in practical terms he induces them to reject God and what is of God, and to
adore the principles of evil as the unavoidable laws of greatness.
Those men that have the misfortune of keeping away from the Catholic Church
become unaware of the deception of Satan, and be dragged down into the abyss.
How many philosophers with their crazy theories, and how many politicians with
their pretences, are the servants and accomplices of Satan; and he tells those who lust for
power and glory to adore him and to refuse to adore God! It is impossible, in fact, to
violate laws, natural and divine, without adoring the false principles and the vile ideas that
Satan proposes. There does not exist a corrupt person who does not try to justify himself
and his crimes by creating laws to protect him.
It is a most sorrowful experience that we have experienced and we still experience,
in seeing the arrogant rising in the world: they rise up high adoring Satan in his errors and
in his aberrations; they reach the heights of power like first-rate criminals and evildoers,
adoring Satan, rebelling against the Church or persecuting her; in order to succeed, they
resort to all sorts of wickedness and falsehoods; they do not put limits on their crimes,
even though they try to disguise them under the cover of laws; and they are the scourge of
the people. The criminal seizes, abuses and kills those who do not submit to his arrogant
demands, and he serves Satan.
The ruler first conceives of a crime and then codifies it into law; for this reason he
is an adorer of Satan.
Thus, the Temple, the House of God, and the Church become the stool of his
arrogant acrobatics; he rises up to the pinnacle of the Temple, that is to the highest
authority of the Church; he has the pretence to dominate it, and he proudly believes he
will subjugate it. He hurls himself down and calls his fall great, believing that his glory on
earth is intact, and is completely uninterested in his eternal ruin.
It is historically true, now well demonstrated, that the rulers of the world, when
they have a falling out with the Pope and with the Church, are ultimately put down and
destroyed. In their arrogant tyrannical acts, they are not aware of being tempted by Satan,
but support him miserably. It is necessary that they come back to their senses, lest they
become victims of their arrogance and their impudence.
Oh, if one would only remember that everything has an end, how could one lust
for power and glory on earth? Is it to become immortalized in history? But true history
only brands the arrogant and the unjust, and on the last day before the Eternal Judge, it
will only bring the highest ignominy for the evildoers. Besides, who is interested in
history? Often is not the monument erected in a square just a measure of human silliness?
Are they not often objects that are cursed by the people?

Ambition also tempts in spiritual matters…

Let us also be vigilant against the snares of Satan, because, sorrowfully, ambition
is not only a temptation for the so-called great of the world; it can also devastate our
humble lives, causing us to desire useless things and harming our conscience. Let us be
vigilant, because even in piety and in the spiritual life we could desire spectacular
demonstrations that encourage our pride. We should have a single goal in life: To adore
and to serve only God.

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6. Jesus preaching of in Galilee.

Jesus Christ, after overcoming the temptation of Satan, started His ministry in
Judea, as is reported by St. John (Chapters 2, 3, and 4), and there he did many miracles,
which were witnessed also by some Galileans. After that Jesus, moved by the Holy Spirit,
went to Galilee, where the fame of His miracles and of His words had already spread; thus
around Him there started to be a great number of people who followed Him to listen to
Him in the synagogues where He would teach, and they acclaimed Him.
The acclamation of the people makes us understand that the divine Word
penetrated the hearts of all who heard him with extraordinary awe.
Traveling through the cities of Galilee, Jesus went also to Nazareth, were he had
grown up, and which he loved as His homeland. He went on a Sabbath to read the
Scriptures and to teach. It was customary, in fact, to read some passages from the Law or
from the Prophets in the Synagogues on the Sabbath, and afterward to explain them to the
people. When in the gathering there was also a person with authority, he would request to
read, and the book was given to him -- that is, a scroll of parchment rolled around a
wooden spindle on which was written on one side only the Word of God -- that he may
choose the text. The person who read stood up out of respect, and after, rolling the scroll
back up, he would start his talk.
In the Synagogue of Nazareth Jesus was given the book of the Prophet Isaiah;
Jesus opened it, and found the passage that was in reference to his own mission. The
Prophet was speaking in the name of the future Messiah saying: The Spirit of the Lord
God is upon me, because He has anointed me; to bring good tidings to the poor; He has
sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the
oppressed go free, to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord and the day of reward.”
It was the description of his work until the end of time; it was the summary of his
spiritual mission and the marvelous miracles that would go with it. He, the anointed of the
Holy Spirit, had to evangelize the eternal truth to the poor, that is to the people, the
sinners, the ignorant, all those poor in the light and supernatural grace; he had to heal the
brokenhearted, that is the people who were suffering, and the timid and those who,
disheartened by their sins desired to rise again. He would announce liberation to these and
to the souls in Limbo that were waiting their salvation.
With His words of truth He would give sight to the blind; with the propagation of
the Gospel, all over the world, He would give freedom to the oppressed, filling hearts with
happiness for the grace of God; with the propagation of the divine mercies He would
preach a year of favor, that is the time of great grace for all souls and finally would
announce the day of reward, that is the final judgment.
In the words of the Prophet Isaiah there was the prophetic announcement of the
work of the Redeemer and the development of His immense mercy for all future centuries
until the end of time. He would actually benefit the people, console the sorrowful, heal the
sick, give sight to the blind and so on; but these benefits were symbols of the greater
benefits that He would provide for His Church in the centuries.
Seven great pronouncements can be regarded as prophecies of the seven periods of
the history of the Church: 1. The evangelization of the poor. 2. The renewal of all men,
debased by paganism, through the sacrifices of the martyrs, the great contrition for human
wickedness. 3. The triumph of the Church, which had been previously reduced to bloody

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servitude by the Caesars. 4. The illumination of the truth to the entire world, through the
Doctors of the Church. 5. The freedom from new persecutions during the apostasy of the
nations, and the triumph of the Church, which had been oppressed by. Tyrannies. 6. The
acceptable time, that is a time of great graces, and a great triumph of the Church in the
kingdom of God and 7. The last prevarication and the final judgment.
Jesus Christ, rolling up the scroll handed it back to the minister of the Synagogue
and sat down.
His face was shining with truth, looking to the entire future, and the eyes of all the
present were upon Him, attracted by His grandeur. His appearance captivated, and his
words were fascinating and for this reason everyone was looking at Him, not to miss one
word of what He would say. Looking at them to capture all of them into his Heart, He
exclaimed: Today this scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing.
Most likely, these words were only the introduction to a sermon that He gave, or
the final summary of it. The evangelist does not specify it, but it is evident that Jesus
demonstrated the way in which those words had been fulfilled and how this fulfillment
would unfold, because the Sacred Text adds that all spoke highly of him and were amazed
at the gracious words that came from his mouth. All spoke highly of him, that is, they were
convinced of what He said. They were enthusiastic and spoke with each other to share
their impressions and their amazement.
Others, however, casting doubt among the people, just when the Word of God
could have sprouted in their hearts and made them ready to follow the truth, exclaimed:
“Isn’t this the son of Joseph?” They said these words with contempt, as it is clear from the
account, thus preventing the others to open their hearts to the truth.
Many had gone to the Synagogue with the hope of witnessing a miracle, and felt
deep disappointment in seeing that Jesus did not perform any, and for this they
remembered that Jesus was the son of Joseph, as they believed He was, unaware of the
mystery of the Virginity of Mary and that of her divine Maternity. Jesus exposed their
concealed thoughts, showing that he could not operate miracles because of their little
faith; He attested to this with stern words, indirectly but clearly, that more mercy would be
shown toward the gentiles, just as mercy was shown to the widow of Zarephath by Elijah,
and to Naaman the Syrian by Elisha, because a Prophet is never accepted in his own
country.
The stern words of Jesus reveal all the hidden evil intention within the hearts of
those that were listening to Him, but were directed at their conversion; but they, refusing
the divine mercy, became as if possessed by Satan, and getting up in fury threw Him out
of the Synagogue and the city, pushing Him to the summit of a mountain, where on the
southwest side was a deep precipice of about ten or twelve meters (30-40ft), with the
intention of hurling Him off to kill Him. Jesus, however, showing His divine power, went
through them calmly and left, without anyone daring to put their hands on Him. He
demonstrated in this way that He was a complete master of the situation, and without his
permission no one could do anything to Him.
The ungrateful people of Nazareth.

It is sorrowful but highly instructive to see how those Nazarenes received Jesus: in
the beginning they were very enthused by His words, calling them sublime; afterward,
however, upon the insinuations of some evil-minded individuals, they were surprised that

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He, the son of a carpenter, could talk in that way. They were taken by a spiteful envy, and
devalued all His wisdom. They were expecting miracles, but Jesus could not do any
except for some of little note because of their lack of faith as St. Matthew and St. Mark
report, and this made them dismiss reports of His great powers that they heard from other
cities.
The stern reprimand of Jesus angered them even more and, engulfed in a great
rage, they thought to kill Him. The lack of responsiveness to grace made them first to
become more evil and then left them in the power of Satan, who pushed them to throw
him down from the mountain’s edge, maybe in the hope of vindicating his defeat in the
desert. But Jesus, just as he did not want to throw himself down from the temple’s
pinnacle to show His power uselessly, in the same way He did not allow the Nazarenes to
throw Him down, showing in this way that He was the master of the situation and the
dominator also of the wretched human will.

This is the way men are!

Men become easily enthused by beautiful words, but as soon as they are moved by
a temptation or a disordered feeling, they go the opposite direction, and are even moved to
criminality. It is painful to see how many souls start their spiritual life with fervor and
enthusiasm and later not only become lukewarm, but fall into indifference and even lose
their faith.
They lament of not receiving graces and not ever being granted anything from
God, while they do not humble themselves and understand that it is because of their little
trust in Him. They begin to look to the ways of God with a spirit of hyper-criticism, and
then end up becoming completely disheartened; in their thoughts they are miserably
wrong and the judgments they form are so faulty for their spiritual life, that they become
completely disoriented.
All souls are the object of the Redeemer Jesus’ special care, and for each soul He
accomplishes what He does for all mankind: He revives the soul in the Holy Spirit,
enlightens it with the light of truth, heals its interior sickness, frees it from the chains of
the passion, gives it back the vision of Heaven and raises the soul to flights of love in the
midst of the oppressions of life; He has for the soul an acceptable time of special graces
and exceptional mercies; He becomes the prize and retribution of the soul in the interior
sweetness that He enriches it, and its eternal award.
The soul must respond to this.
This is the essential condition for its perfection; if the soul does not respond, it
puts itself in opposition to the grace, and thereby arrives even to its complete ruin. Jesus
knocks and leaves; He cannot stay in an ungrateful heart, and He cannot do anything for it
with His infinite love. If we only could understand this great lesson, how quickly we
would become saints!

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7. Jesus at Capernaum.

From Nazareth in the Galilee heights, Jesus descended to Capernaum on the lake
of Genasaret, and continued his ministry teaching in the Synagogue on the Sabbath. The
Nazarenes had driven Him away threatening to kill Him, and so He went to a more
faithful town where the good seed could bear fruit. He taught, but not as those who relate
a doctrine of others, but with authority, like those who speak the truth, and His dignity
was so great in his manner of teaching that everyone was amazed.
His words contained the theme of the truth that He spread, because He was God;
with his authority he gave the true reason for belief, spreading in the hearts the faith, that
is the consent to the authority of God who makes it known. No reasoning and no argument
can have the strength of the Authority of God, because only this can bring the full consent
of human reason; all darkness is dispersed by this light: God speaks, the Church teaches
me, I believe.

The possessed.

Satan, as he did in Eden, attempts to substitute for the truth, human reason or his
negation of the Authority of God who reveals, and in this way attempts to destroy the faith
in the soul, even when it seems that he wants to support it. In the Synagogue of
Capernaum there was a current of true faith; their marveling at the doctrine of Jesus was a
marvel to them because of faith, because He convinced with divine authority. Satan
attempted to disturb this spirit of faith, shouting through the mouth of a possessed man
and affirming that Jesus was the Holy One of God.
It is possible that the man possessed was taken to Jesus to be freed of his
possession, but it is also possible that the devil had moved him to come to upset the
assembly. He was possessed by an unclean spirit, says the Sacred Text, and he pretended
to substitute the testimony of the Infinite Purity with his own, and thereby the people
would believe in Jesus not by His own authority, but for the testimony that he was giving.
It was a subtle and dangerous deceit, and for this reason the Redeemer rebuked it,
ordered it to be silent, and commanded it to leave the man that it was possessing. This
miracle was performed to return to or strengthen within those hearts the supernatural faith,
because it was a miracle of divine authority; Satan felt that command like a blow and for
the hate he feels for man, he did not want to leave without showing his spite for this
creature of God, and threw the poor man on the ground because he possessed him, but he
could not hurt him, because God did not allow it.
The assembly was dismayed at that sight, scared and at the same time in awe,
asking themselves what powerful words were these of Jesus, to whom even the demons
obeyed.

The mother in law of St. Peter.

From the Synagogue Jesus went to the house of St. Peter, where he used to stay.
The mother-in-law of the Apostle was sick with a dangerously high fever, and they

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begged for her to be cured. St. Luke, as a physician, characterizes the fever with the
technical terminology used by the famous physician Galen, also to make clear that the
fever could not have disappeared in an instant. Jesus Christ bent over the sick woman,
ordered the fever to leave, and it immediately left her without even leaving her with the
natural weakness that follows a recovery. The woman, in fact, got up from the bed and
started to serve them.
At sunset, after the period of rest taken on the Sabbath, all who had people
afflicted with different ailments brought them to Jesus, and He, with great gentleness, put
his hands on each of them and cured them, driving away their demons and enjoining them
to be silent and not to say that He was the Christ. He could have cured all the sick
presented to Him with only one word but He wanted to lay His hands on them as a sign of
mercy and love, and so he spent the night engaged in this work of mercy.
As the next day was underway, he went to a secluded place to pray; but the crowds
went looking for him and wanted Him to stay, anxious to hear more and to receive new
benefits. He said that he had to also go to other cities to evangelize for the Kingdom of
God and so he left to go to preach in other Synagogues of Galilee.

Some people drive Jesus away and some welcome Him.

One city drives Jesus away and threatens to kill him, and another welcomes him
with enthusiasm and wants Him to stay. Nazareth, a name which means the city that
flourishes drives him away, and Capernaum, signifying the beautiful city, field of penance,
welcomes him. The meaning of the name of these two cities mirrors what actually
happens in the world. The cities who flourish in a material sense, cannot bear to have the
presence of Jesus, and those who are spiritually beautiful because of their penance and for
their good deeds welcome Him and do not want him to leave.
Nazareth was famous for its little intelligence, to the point that it had become
notorious in its stupidity; its only glory was to have hosted the Savior, but unbelievably
they refused Him.
When the world rejects the Redeemer it, too, becomes the emblem of stupidity.
Today we are witnessing the sad display of apostasy of many nations from God and from
the Church; it is the most revolting phenomenon of stupidity that can be imagined,
because it is the rejection of Life for the embrace of death.
Stay with us, Jesus, do not abandon us! So many times we ourselves are the ones
who remove you from our hearts and become part of the apostasy of the people. Stay with
us, Jesus, do not abandon us, and forgive us! Bend over our sorrowful hearts, order the
fever of our passions to leave us alone, bring us back to the activities of the holy divine
services, give us the fullness of your life, that living for You and in You, we may live
glorifying God. Amen.

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 Chapter 5

1 The miraculous catch of fish. The healing of the leper. Jesus prays. The healing of a
paralytic. The vocation of Levi. The fast.

1 Now it happened that, when the crowds pressed toward him, so that they might hear the
word of God, he was standing beside the lake of Genesaret. 2 And he saw two boats
standing beside the lake. But the fishermen had climbed down, and they were washing
their nets. 3 And so, climbing into one of the boats, which belonged to Simon, he asked
him to draw back a little from the land. And sitting down, he taught the crowds from the
boat. 4 Then, when he had ceased speaking, he said to Simon, “Lead us into deep water,
and release your nets for a catch.” 5 And in response, Simon said to him: “Teacher,
working throughout the night, we caught nothing. But on your word, I will release the
net.”6 And when they had done this, they enclosed such a copious multitude of fish that
their net was rupturing. 7 And they signaled to their associates, who were in the other
boat, so that they would come and help them. And they came and filled both boats, so that
they were nearly submerged. 8 But when Simon Peter had seen this, he fell down at the
knees of Jesus, saying, “Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man.” 9 For
astonishment had enveloped him, and all who were with him, at the catch of fish that they
had taken. 10 Now the same was true of James and John, the sons of Zebedee, who were
associates of Simon. And Jesus said to Simon: “Do not be afraid. From now on, you will
be catching men.” 11 And having led their boats to land, leaving behind everything, they
followed him. 12 And it happened that, while he was in a certain city, behold, there was a
man full of leprosy who, upon seeing Jesus and falling to his face, petitioned him, saying:
“Lord, if you are willing, you are able to cleanse me.” 13 And extending his hand, he
touched him, saying: “I am willing. Be cleansed.” And at once, the leprosy departed from
him. 14 And he instructed him that he should tell no one, “But go, show yourself to the
priest, and make the offering for your cleansing, just as Moses has commanded, as a
testimony for them.” 15 Yet word of him traveled around all the more. And great crowds
came together, so that they might listen and be cured by him from their infirmities. 16 And
he withdrew into the desert and prayed. 17 And it happened, on a certain day, that he
again sat down, teaching. And there were Pharisees and doctors of the law sitting nearby,
who had come from every town of Galilee and Judea and Jerusalem. And the power of the
Lord was present, to heal them. 18 And behold, some men were carrying in the bed of a
man who was paralyzed. And they sought a way to bring him in, and to place him before
him. 19 And not finding a way by which they might bring him in, because of the crowd,
they climbed up to the roof, and they let him down through the roof tiles with his bed, into
their midst, in front of Jesus. 20 And when he saw his faith, he said, “Man, your sins are
forgiven you.” 21 And the scribes and Pharisees began to think, saying: “Who is this, who
is speaking blasphemies? Who is able to forgive sins, except God alone?” 22 But when
Jesus realized their thoughts, responding, he said to them: “What are you thinking in your
hearts? 23 Which is easier to say: ‘Your sins are forgiven you,’ or to say, ‘Rise up and
walk?’ 24 But so that you may know that the Son of man has authority on earth to forgive
sins,” he said to the paralytic, “I say to you to: Rise up, take up your bed, and go into

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your house.” 25 And at once, rising up in their sight, he took up the bed on which he was
lying, and he went away to his own house, magnifying God. 26 And astonishment took
hold of everyone, and they were magnifying God. And they were filled with fear, saying:
“For we have seen miracles today.” 27 And after these things, he went out, and he saw a
tax collector named Levi, sitting at the customs office. And he said to him, “Follow me.”
28 And leaving behind everything, rising up, he followed him. 29 And Levi made a great
feast for him in his own house. And there was a large crowd of tax collectors and others,
who were sitting at table with them. 30 But the Pharisees and scribes were murmuring,
saying to his disciples, “Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?” 31
And responding, Jesus said to them: “It is not those who are well who need a doctor, but
those who have maladies. 32 I have not come to call the just, but sinners to repentance.”
33 But they said to him, “Why do the disciples of John fast frequently, and make
supplications, and those of the Pharisees act similarly, while yours eat and drink?” 34
And he said to them: “How can you cause the sons of the groom to fast, while the groom
is still with them? 35 But the days will come when the groom will be taken away from
them, and then they will fast, in those days.” 36 Then he also made a comparison for
them: “For no one sews a patch from a new garment onto an old garment. Otherwise, he
both disrupts the new one, and the patch from the new one does not join together with the
old one. 37 And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the new wine
ruptures the wineskins, and it will be poured out, and the wineskins will be lost. 38
Instead, the new wine is put into new wineskins, and both are preserved. 39 And no one
who is drinking the old, soon wishes for the new. For he says, ‘The old is better.’ ”
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
2. The boat of Peter and the teaching Church.

God is marvelous in his language, and with humble things He expresses very
grandiose plans full of wisdom and love. Who would not say that the scenes of the
Pentateuch appear to be more solemn and marvelous than the parables and the stories of
the Gospel? Yet those scenes were only a prelude, while the Gospel is the reality and not
only the reality but also the announcement of greater things; the Gospel is the depiction of
the marvelous development of Redemption. For this reason it is called “Gospel”: the Good
News.
In the Old Testament God lent his words a more human character; thus it seems
more accessible to us and consequently more grandiose; in the New Testament His words
have a more divine character, and we understand the New Testament less and it seems to
us less grandiose. We are very far from the divine; our thoughts are not those of God, and
for this reason we value more a mountain of marble than a small gem extracted from a
mine.
For instance, the scene of Jesus teaching the populace from the boat of Peter seems
more simple and mundane than the crossing of the Red Sea on foot or the canticle of
Moses; it seems to be of little importance compared to these, and yet it is the expression of
the immense greatness of the divine Magisterium entrusted to the Church and to the Pope,
as we shall soon see. It is not the passage of a people from one side of the sea to the other,
it is the passage of the divine light of truth from the infinite sea to our littleness; it is not
the figure of the liberation from sins through the Baptism, as happened in the crossing of

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the Red Sea, but it is the synthesis, it is the fruitful seed of the greatest mercy ever given
to a free and intelligent man, the infallible Magisterium of the Church and the Pope.
The critics and the overly critical, so miserable compared to the thought of God,
busy themselves in analyzing each letter and word, and believe to have discovered the
sun, when they discover an old text or a temporal interpretation of a Sacred Text; they
strive to fill, so they say, gaps within the Sacred Text and claim to find here errors, and
there missing and mismatched parts in it. They dig with all their strength in the dead depth
of history, obstructed by ruins, and believe to have discovered it all, when they cobble
together a dubious bit of information to put alongside the Sacred Text, without thinking
that they are placing a fake gem next to a real one, and they go to great lengths to bring
out what God wanted to keep obscure and remain hidden*, because of its uselessness or
harmfulness to His purpose in communicating to us.
These critics and overly critical people do not realize that they thwart with their
tiny or false claims the reason why God wanted to leave some shadows in the Text and
omit some information. These are very important considerations that must deeply humble
us before God, and teach us to deal with his Word with a true spirit of faith.
When Jesus Christ went for the first time to preach in Galilee, He called initially
Simon, Andrew, James and John to follow him, as is written in St. Matthew (4:18 and
following) and in St. Mark (1:16 and following). He met them by Lake Gennesaret when
they were dipping the nets into the sea, and He called them to be fishers of men. At the
sound of his voice they left their nets immediately and followed him, but it is clear from
the context that they did not follow him once and for all; actually after a while they went
back to their nets and their boats thinking that it was necessary for them to return to use
their talents and professions to make a living. They followed Jesus, and when they saw
that he lived poorly and from alms, they believed that it would not be reasonable to leave
their livelihoods and so went back to fishing. This is revealed by the psychological
reconstruction of the attitude of St. Peter during the miraculous catch of fish, as we soon
shall see.
In calling the four fishermen, Jesus would have liked to have them all for his work,
and at first they accepted to do so, but later they decided, maybe even with good
intentions, that they should not be dependent upon him; they felt that the alms that Jesus
received were not enough to sustain them, and they went back to the lake to fish during
the night, hoping to earn at least something. Jesus went to see them on a night that they
had been fishing, -- with no results -- while they were washing their nets. There were two
boats moored there, one belonging to Simon and the other to John, or more accurately to
his father, Zebedee.
The throng of people that followed Jesus crowded the bank of the lake and He, in
order to make it possible for everyone to hear him, went on Simon’s boat and asked him
to move a little bit from the shore; then, sitting on the deck of the boat, he taught to the
people. This was not a vain gesture, nor a fortuitous move. He was looking far, to the
accomplishment of his work, to future centuries in which He would teach to the world
from St. Peter’s chair, instructing the people from his boat, which is the Church.

--------------------------------------------------------------
*A thought that even today should be considered by those who put all their efforts in just analyzing and
dissecting the word of God, without obtaining any spiritual benefit from it.

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His gesture was a divine gesture, and as such was most simple, underscoring for all times
the right of the Catholic Church and the Pope to instruct all peoples.
All the sophisms of the heresies and the violence of the tyrants could not and never
can take away this right. The boat of Peter became in that moment as immovable as a
granite block; it became a seat of bronze, an immortal monument. The gesture of Jesus
was like consecrating the boat, changing its nature, and making it a conqueror of souls, in
His adorable Name.
The Church has passed through the fleeting centuries and still endures the
strongest storms, but it is never submerged and continues to catch souls in her net, even
when they seem to elude her or that nothing more can be obtained because of the universal
apostasy.
The miraculous catch.

Jesus wanted to show to Simon and the other three Apostles, whom he had called
on the shore of the lake, that His providence was enough to support them and also tell
them ahead of time of the miraculous catch of souls that the Church would accomplish in
the great triumph of his Kingdom; thus he told Simon to go out to sea and dip the nets.
Experienced as he was, Peter knew that there was no hope to catch fish anymore because
they had spent all night, the best hours for fishing, and had caught nothing; however his
faith felt revived being close to Jesus and in light of His teaching, without hesitation, in
his Name, he cast the nets.
Immediately fish filled the nets and in such a large quantity that they were almost at their
breaking point; in his boat perhaps was his brother Andrew, and with him he waved to the
other boat where John and James were, to come to their help; and they, rowing hard came
alongside and catching all the fish, they filled both boats to the point that they were almost
sinking.
The faith of Peter, at that point, reawakened; he had come back to the boat and the
nets because he thought it imprudent to be without a sure source of income, yet now he
became sure that Jesus not only could provide to his needs, but that He could do it
abundantly; he felt his ingratitude and his misery and he fell at the knees of Jesus, who
was sitting on the edge of the boat, and he cried out to Him: “Depart from me, Lord, for I
am a sinful man.” He wanted to say: You called me, promising me to feed me also bodily,
and I doubted You, and believed that my work as a fisherman had more value than your
Providence; I had left everything for You but because of my inconstancy I returned not so
much to my boat as to my trade, practically refusing your call; I am not worthy that You
accept me in your group, depart from me, you are in bad company with me, I am a sinner.
Also the other three fishermen who were with Peter were taken by the same feeling,
because also they had not trusted in divine Providence. But Jesus, full of love, speaking
directly to Peter, because to him especially he wanted to give the lesson and because he
was the most sorrowful, said: “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching men.”
Then all of them, brought back their boats to shore, left everything and followed him once
and for all.

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 After the night of apostasy, the boat of Peter
will be full of a miraculous catch.

Jesus Christ renewed the faith of his first four Apostles, and he had also announced
the miraculous fishing for souls that the Church would do in the last times. The difficult
times for the Church, without any doubt, have been the centuries where it has collected
souls, but the souls acquired, compared to those that escaped the loving net, could be said
to be almost none. Most of mankind is not even nominally part of his flock; moreover, in
the apostasy of the nations, to which we are witnesses in the present time, the catch is
even less.
But the Church does not die, and her apostolate cannot be in vain.
Jesus shall come with particular graces, shall instruct from the boat of Peter,
shedding an even greater light on its eternal truths; the Pope shall go out a short distance
from the shore, which means he shall open hearts to a greater trust and shall go toward the
nations in Jesus’ divine Name, and the Pope shall cast the nets.
The catch shall be great…
But it is not only the boat of Peter that shall catch souls; there is also the boat of
John, the apostle of love, because, if the Pope catches peoples in the nets, love assembles
them in a single flock and love comes to help the marvelous apostolate of the Pope.
Then we shall have a kingdom of great humility, and like Peter confessed to be a
sinner, likewise nobody shall hesitate, for the glory of God, to recognize his/her own sins,
wiping out sad memories of past failures, and to unite the world again in a most tender
embrace.
This is not a dream or a fantasy; it is the great hope of the Church, especially in
this time of apostasies and bitter trials.* Too much trust has been put in men; too much
hope has been placed in their loyalty, and the nets have been cast in the night, without
Jesus, in the hope of a more human rather than supernatural success, with the belief of
adding, through human ingenuity, their own capabilities and influences. However, no fish
were caught in the night, and the night passed without success.
It shall be necessary to cast the nets in high seas, even when there is no hope to
catch anything, but with great trust in Jesus, the universal king of all the centuries; then
the nets will fill up and the Church shall have in her true triumph, which is love.

Two boats were at sea.

Two boats were at sea, but the one that caught the greatest quantity of fish was
Peter’s boat. The boat of John was in the open sea, far away, and probably helped to
spread the net. It is always and only the Church that catches souls in the net of love,
because only the Church has the great mission of saving souls. Jesus Christ leaves private
initiatives fruitless, even when they are inspired by the best intentions; the supervision and
the blessing of the Church is always necessary for any holy work.

---------------------------------------------
* These prophetic predictions of Fr. Dolindo have been fulfilled literally in our time, when Pope Paul VI
embraced the Patriarch of the Eastern Churches out of love, so that the unity of the Church may be
reconstituted.

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 Peter’s boat could not get the fish without the help and the participation of John’s
boat, because of the great quantity of fish that was almost breaking the nets and sinking
the boat; this is also symbolic and calls to mind a great truth: the conversion of peoples
will create such a pressure for the centrality of the Church, that it could appear as a threat
for the stability of her discipline.
But charity and the love of God will make harmony possible and instead of
increasing the bureaucracy of the ecclesiastic ministries, they shall be diminished because
of charity; the boat of John shall join in this way that of Peter, and the single crowded fold
shall be in perfect harmony.
The souls’ only preoccupation shall be: to follow and love Jesus, and for a period
of time temporal things will matter little, as it is proper and logical, and will take
secondary place in life’s activities. At the present time, first we look for material gain
which is seen as having paramount importance and the kingdom of God and his justice are
considered secondary; but later, instead, the kingdom of God shall be the aspiration of the
souls, and in addition will also bring about temporal prosperity. This is not a prophecy,
but it is the aspiration of the Church, the true hope of souls who put God above all things.

3. The healing of the leper.

Those poor people who had become sick with leprosy could have no contact with
the general public and since the sickness was incurable in most cases, lepers lived in
squalid desolation. Christian charity may still isolate lepers to avoid contagion but in
doing so does not abandon them, on the contrary, it surrounds them lovingly with
treatment; however, in those times they were abandoned without any hope to be cured. A
leper, who had heard Jesus, ran to Him full of hope and then, becoming bold, prostrated
himself at His feet and begged Him in a new way: “Lord, if you wish, you can make me
clean.” He recognized in Him a divine power, because he appealed to the divine will of
Jesus; he did not explicitly asked to be healed, but he abandoned himself to His mercy,
and waited to see if He would take this opportunity to grant his request or not.
It was a prayer, then, made with living faith, and to this faith was united a deep
humility, because he was begging with his face on the ground.
At the approach of the leper, the crowd spontaneously moved away, fearing some
infectious contact. Jesus instead extended his hands to him, touched him and said: “I do
will it. Be made clean.” In an instant leprosy disappeared, and the poor man found himself
entirely healed.
It was a great moment compared to moment of the creation of the world, when
God, with his Word - with the one word that was the expression of his Will - created
everything.
Infinitely good, He deigned to touch human infirmity and, in order to renew the
health of this man, suspended with His creative will the pathogenic germs that infested his
body and eliminated them. He called back to life the tissues that had become atrophied,
and they were regenerated instantaneously; in the short time in which He pronounced His
omnipotent words, He reduced the sickness to nothing and recomposed the rotten flesh.
Where did the divine hand of Jesus rest when He touched his head, to gesture to
him to get up. He touched him because he wanted to show that His infinite charity did not
disdain human misery, and by touching him projected His healing power. The poor sick

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man, free in an instant of his terrible sickness, got up and instinctively ran toward the
crowd that had moved away, to praise the greatness of God; but Jesus did not allow it,
because to reenter into civil society he needed the declaration of a Priest, according to the
Law. He commanded him to show himself to the Minister of God, and to make the
prescribed offering (Lv:10-21) to give witness to the miracle received. Certainly, Jesus
could have allowed the leper to reenter society; but God never excludes Authority, and
requires that there always be one of His Ministers to be the mediator between Him and us.

The leprosy of sin.

That sick leper was not simply a sick man but a representation of human sickness,
and especially the awful leprosy of sin.
The poor sinner stains and disfigures himself because he is in opposition to the
Divine Will; to be healed he must go to God, and go back to His Will. God outstretches
his merciful hand towards him, welcomes him and forgives him as soon he has repented
with sincere and perfect contrition, but does not allow him to consider himself justified
and healed unless he first presents himself to the Priest, telling him his faults and his
sorrow in confession. The offering of the repentant is not a lamb or a couple of doves; it is
the offering of his love towards God, and this gift must go through priestly hands.
We cannot see the awful leprosy of sins that covers us, and for this reason we carry
our spiritual stains with indifference. We do not see the leprosy that mars us when we
disagree with the Divine Will, and for this reason we find it hard to conform to His Will,
placing more value on our miserable desires.
Let us then trust in Jesus and let us tell Him with all our heart, in union with His Will: “
Cleanse me from what is mine, touch me with your divine hand and heal me, and allow
me to want only what you want.”

Jesus withdraws to solitary places to pray.

The Sacred Text adds that the fame of Jesus spread more than ever, surrounding
Him constantly by enormous crowds of people who would go to hear him and be healed
of their infirmities.
However the Savior, though being constantly and tirelessly at the disposal of all,
would find time to withdraw to solitary places to pray. He was teaching us that works of
goodwill and charity should not take us from prayer, without which we would miserably
wither and become completely parched.
Jesus prayed, and in which way? If He was God in which way could He pray? He
was God but also true man, and he prayed as the Eternal Priest, as a victim and a
Mediator; as Priest, he offered himself to the Father in an eternal sacrifice, and gave
himself as a victim of love. His heart was a holocaust, his body a perpetual sacrifice,
because it was continuously oppressed by our iniquities; He was a lighted candelabra, for
the splendor of his thoughts, he was a fragrant altar for the loving expressions of his love,
he was like an altar of “the loaves of proposition” (Ex 35:13; Mt 12:4) because he already
thought of himself as living Bread with which to feed mankind.
He was the Temple of God, that is the true Temple, and being true God by the

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hypostatic union, he had in Himself the Sanctum Sanctorum (Holy of the Holies), and
being true man, he was, so to speak, the atrium of the chosen people and the vestibule of
the peoples. His prayer was the equivalent of the union of all the holy services of the
Temple, to their fullest extent, and in this way He reconciled man and God.
He would go to solitary places in order not to be seen, but also as an example for
us; he dominated the inevitable necessities and wants of his body, rising in ecstasy and
contemplating the Divine glory, and loving with the same divine Eternal Love.
He was the mediator between man and God.
Jesus would always consider human frailty, he knew all of them and his prayer
was also an agony of love and reparation. In praying he would incorporate all men into
himself, presenting them to the Father in Himself, as his own descendants and offspring;
his heart was roused to compassion and spread great warmth of mercy. We, too, when we
pray for others, we feel as if they belong to us, and we present them to God in the activity
of our spiritual life; but Jesus, praying for men, assimilated them in himself, presenting
them to the Father, enveloping them in his divine merits, accumulating for them
reassurances of grace.

Jesus praying: the eternal lamp

before the Father.

Alone, prostrated before the Father, with open arms and his eyes turned to Heaven,
Jesus prayed.
It was a sight worthy of God, as the Eternal Word, knowledge of the Father, light
from infinite light.
He was like an eternal lamp before Him.
As light reveals the beauty of things, Jesus Christ revealed the beauty of God.
The Church preserves an eternal memory of this characteristic prayer of Jesus, in
the lamp that burns before the Most Blessed Sacrament. That little lamp enhances the
beauty of the Altar, and speaks of the indescribable love that silently burns in the holy
Ciborium; it expresses in a delicate symbol the infinite reality of the Eternal Word, light
of the Father, and the reality of the Word made Flesh, the shining victim who endlessly
consumes himself. He gathers our souls in the faith, that is the knowledge of God, and
lights them with tender love; this is not a simple lamp, but rather a union of shining hearts
burning before love, which gives of itself.
Each flicker of that light expresses a flicker of a soul, every trickle of oil towards
the little flame expresses the pouring back of life towards God, burning of love and
consumed by charity; every peaceful twinkle of that quiet light expresses the trepidation
of interior charity.
The lamp, put in place by the Church, is not silent; but is the representation of the
Church, generated by the Redeemer and his eternal glorification.
The lamp! The prayerful little flame, all enclosed in its small vase, enveloped in
peace in the simple humility of oil, a quiet liquid expression of the compression of the
olive in the oil press. The lamp! Little heart that beats; it expresses the cycle of a life that
is a flame, and a flame that is holocaust. It is sweet symbol of the blood of our life of
prayer that runs peacefully, anointed by grace, pours again into our intellect to enlighten

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it, into our hearts to ignite it, into our lives to immolate it, diffusing interior warmth of
charity and tender love.
The lamp! Little solitary pilgrim in the Temple of the Lord, that never takes
anything from anyone, but only needs the love of one person that would supply it again; it
is suspended, left alone, very poor, very little, defended from the wind that would
extinguish it with a breath, all for God, only for Him, as well for all those who pray and
offer themselves to Jesus.
This was the way that Jesus prayed: an eternal light before the Father, a light for
our earthly pilgrimage to show to us the way to Heaven, an effusion of charity from his
Heart, a pouring of graces and blessings and a continuous immolation of love.
He prayed for us, he prayed for his work, and accomplished in silence what his
very charity would not allow Him to accomplish in the hearts of men.
He healed people, consoled them, assisted all those who went to Him, yet he had
to feel a great pain in seeing the throng of people begging for corporal benefits but
indifferent to those of the spirit. He granted his charity, but He felt the need to pour into
the hearts of the people and so he prayed.
The prayer that He taught us, after all, was his prayer: he turned to his Father,
glorified Him, prepared his kingdom among men, united his Will to His Father’s by
offering of himself, and asked for mercy for men in their temporal lives and for
forgiveness for their eternal life, as well the grace to be able to reach Jesus in the
adversities and the tests of the pilgrimage. His Heart, as true Son of Jesus, also, felt the
need to flow into the Father, and he prayed with immense tenderness of love. All the
mystical ecstasies of the saints are nothing in comparison to those of the most holy soul of
Jesus in his prayer: it contemplated, loved, united itself to the Father and there was a
continuous intimacy with Him, giving Him glory with sublime canticles of his substantial
praises.

The Eucharist, the great school

of our prayer.

What an example for us who are pilgrims on earth, who have an extreme and
continuous need for grace, and yet we pray so little!
What a vivid example: that is renewed for us every moment in the most holy Eucharist! It
can be said, without exaggeration that as Bread of life Jesus Christ nourishes us, and as
prisoner of love in the holy Tabernacle, He prays and teaches us to pray.
The Eucharist is the great school of our prayer, and for this reason souls who are
deeply Eucharistic are souls of deep prayer. It is enough to concentrate in the sacramental
Jesus in faith and with steadfastness, to learn how to pray from Him. He vivifies us and
imperceptibly steers us to God; little by little he enlightens us, warms us and enables us to
speak to God. The silence that surrounds him is a school of interior silence for us, and the
peace that He diffuses everywhere makes us become used to the peace of putting
ourselves in the hands of God, which is indispensable for praying.
The soul before Jesus becomes convinced that it cannot do anything by itself, but
this does not discourage it; instead it fills the soul with trust in Him. If it becomes
distracted with the thoughts of this world, if it is focused on its own crosses, if it worries

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about its own future, if it becomes agitated and anxious and cannot collect itself in prayer,
then it cannot concentrate.
Before Jesus, only renewing its faith in Him, the soul feels itself to rise from earth,
and confident in God’ s help, prays peacefully awaiting His mercies.
O my Jesus, praying in this Host of love, teach us to collect ourselves and to pray;
do not ever allow, having you truly alive with us, that we live anxiously and that we fail to
give witness by faith in you, our filial trust and the true abandonment of love.
We suffer, it is true, but is not suffering a treasure for us? Aren’t You the perennial
victim for us on the Altar, and don’t you teach us to immolate ourselves continuously for
love? If for instance one of our eyes is aching, isn’t this a secret calling to look more often
at you Crucified? And if a foot hurts, isn’t this a secret calling to be nailed with You on
the Cross?
O how a life full of suffering can become a life of prayer before Jesus in the
Blessed Sacrament, and can become a perennial sacrifice of love!
Someone offends me, and what does it matter? Are my injuries more than the ones
of my hidden King who receives only ingratitude and offenses in the Most Blessed
Sacrament?
People look at me as if I am nobody, and what does it matter? Jesus is completely
hidden and prostrated, and my humiliations unite me to Him, and to his life.
O my Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament, truly alone in your prayer on the mystical
mountain on the Altar, teach us to live your life and to change all our lives in an eternal
prayer and eternal holocaust!

4. The healing of the paralytic and the remission of sins.

Jesus Christ that day was teaching in Capernaum in the house of Peter, were he
usually was staying, and a great multitude of people was assembled around him and more
crowded the entrance door. He was teaching in the upstairs living room or the cenacle of
the house, that is, the place where the family assembled; around Him there were Scribes,
Pharisees and Doctors of the Law who came from nearby villages of Galilee, Judea and
also from Jerusalem.
Maybe not everyone was there for the right reason, especially those who came
from Jerusalem; they were there to spy on him and scrutinize him by order of the religious
Authorities. Jesus wanted to give a precise sign of his divine mission, that they might
recognize him as the true Messiah. The Sacred Text says that the power of the Lord was
with him for healing, that is, Jesus Christ manifested in that moment his power and the
Father was with him to accomplish these wonderful works to be shown. The power of the
Lord was with him, and in that room there had to be a feeling of something hidden and
mysterious, that gave to the words of Jesus the character of enlightened truth.
Many sick people had come to be cured, as is evinced by the extraordinary crowd
of people that usually come to those places where there is a hope to receive a physical
benefit. Soon some men arrived, carrying a paralytic on a stretcher; they tried to enter by
the door, but they could not, because of the stretcher and the crowd. St. Luke uses medical
terminology to characterize the sickness of the poor man brought to Jesus
(paralclumènos), a paralysis that made it impossible for him to move by himself, and even

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if they removed him from the stretcher, it would have been impossible to move him
through the crowd by holding him.
Then they had an idea suggested by their strong faith: the Jewish houses had an
external ladder, and they, seeing it empty, went up to the roof on top of the living room.
They removed the tiles, enlarging probably the skylight that gave light to the interior, and
with great care, and with ropes, lowered the invalid before Jesus, laying him together with
the stretcher in the open space that was still free in front of Him. The room did not have a
high ceiling so the move was not dangerous, but it was certainly an unusual manifestation
of great faith that surprised everyone and resulted in much whispering among those
present.
Those caring men did not even need to say what they were asking for the invalid
himself was the expression of a vivid supplication, his lost look, his limp limbs spoke very
clearly that he needed a miracle to recover from his condition. From the words that Jesus
spoke, it can be understood that his sickness was the consequence of sins committed and
the invalid, contrite before the divine majesty of Jesus, and in bad shape from the
uncomfortable journey, suffered in pain and implored forgiveness for his sins.
He must have surely had an interior feeling of repentance, because the remission of sins
can only be given to those who abhor them.
The faith of the men themselves who brought the paralytic before Jesus and their
act of charity had to move that poor man to repentance because the Sacred Text says that
Jesus seeing their faith exclaimed: Man, your sins are forgiven you.”
O man, said the Redeemer, and he looked not only to the poor man but to all
mankind that He had come to redeem; o man, he said reminding the poor sinner of his
dignity, as sin debases one to a level below animals; o man and He turned to him with
greatest charity calling his soul to a new life with the remission of sins.
What happened in that moment is a secret of God, because we cannot understand
clearly what happens in a soul when its sins are remitted; but let us try to understand this
profound mystery of mercy that marvels the Angels of Heaven.

The forgiveness of sins.

Sin is a detachment from God and a giving in to temporal beings: Aversio a Deo et
conversio ad creaturas; the soul created for God who is all Good is attracted to a false
goodness; it lets itself be seduced by a mirage of transient happiness, and prefer creation
over the Creator, including its most wretched aspects. Freely by of its own will the soul
distances itself from God, and remains without His help and His grace, left on its own and
slave of Satan.
Repentance destroys in the soul the allure of sin, restores the soul’s appreciation of
God, and with that, the desire for his love becomes stronger, and God most merciful
approaches this soul. The deadened powers atrophied for a lack of supernatural life, are
reenergized by the current of grace, the heart opens itself up again to God and loves Him;
the conscience enlightened by an internal splendor, balances again and finds the way to
goodness, aware of its duty and responsibilities; the interior light, blinded by sin, reopens
to the eternal reality, and the soul, in loving God, is forgiven by Him and becomes free
from its slavery.

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 The forgiveness of God is immensely more beautiful and great than any human
forgiveness, because it is not simply compassion or a simple indulgence, instead it is an
interior renewal, given by divine grace in union with the effort of the sinner, that
eliminates the sin at its roots so that it does not exist anymore, remits the eternal
punishment and also the temporal one in proportion to the love of the soul.
The sinner is not simply someone who collects words of forgiveness; he is the
rebuilder of himself who, by the grace of God demolishes his evil, and making use of this
rubble contributes to rising the new building, uprooting weeds and brambles, collecting
the rubbish of his corrupted life, and using it as mulch together with his repentance,
digging into the soil of the Divine Mercy, picking up the new seeds of grace and letting
them flourish again.
If his soil still retains remnants of his misery, and these are not able with loving
mortification to be part of the new life he is building, then they must be eliminated little
by little with penance.
Penance is like the refining of a building still coarse but solid; it is like the
watering of a plant, still weak and half withered, because it has not taken its life
completely from the soil; it is the last satisfaction that repentant love gives to the offended
love; it is the outpouring of the soul that before the goodness of God does not have the
courage to call itself just, and still keeps its sinful garments to hide the horror of its sin.
The remission of sins is the masterpiece of the goodness of God, it is the glory of
his omnipotence that manifests itself, as the Church says, forgiving with compassion; it is
the harmonious fusion of justice and mercy, that has the wonderful secret of not
humiliating but rather elevating human dignity and human freedom.
Just the consideration of the elements of the remission of sins and therefore the
Sacrament of Penance itself, which is the “Court of Forgiveness”, is enough to make us
understand the divine origin of Confession and how it exposes the lies of sin.
Man is not capable of this kind of loving invention; man creates jails,
penitentiaries, life sentences, death sentences and atrocious tortures and punishment; even
if amnesty is sometimes granted, this does not remove the brand of infamy and the
permanent police records are there to show the inexorability of human injustice and the
wretchedness of human mercy*.

Jesus forgives sins, therefore He is God

The Scribes and the Pharisees, equally in their moral misery, can be given credit
for confessing this truth, and listening to Jesus who said: “Your sins are forgiven”, they
thought to themselves: “Who is this who speaks blasphemies? Who but God alone can
forgive sins?”

-----------------------------------------
* This most beautiful page on penance and confession shows their value and fruits.

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 Accidentally, and in fact against their evil will, they added to the foundation of a
great discussion on the Divinity of Jesus; if in fact it could be proved that He truly
remitted sins, it followed that indeed He was God.
Jesus Christ accepted the terms of the question, and he came to its demonstration
first by giving another sign of his Divinity: he read the hearts and minds of his opponents
and without them having said a word, he read their intentions and malicious thoughts, and
exclaimed: “What are you thinking in your hearts? Which is easier to say ‘your sins are
forgiven’ or to say, ‘rise and walk’? It was an “ad hominem”(to the man) argument; it
revealed the hidden agenda and subconscious malice of the Scribes and Pharisees; what
they thought was that the Redeemer, realizing that he could not heal an invalid, who was
incapacitated from his sickness, had to fall back on inventing a spurious spiritual healing
as an expedient to get out of an embarrassing situation. According to their thinking, it
would be easy to say: “Your sins are forgiven” because the true effect of these words
could not be checked; instead it would be difficult, actually humanly impossible, to say to
an invalid: get up and walk, because these words alone would not even be sufficient to
fake an healing, thus showing the inability to produce the desired result.
Jesus Christ, with infinite mercy, gripped them in the vice of their own reasoning
and giving a palpable confirmation of the truth of his divine mission, he produced
incontrovertible proof with a miracle to show that he had indeed remitted the sins of that
man, and so with divine majesty and power, he exclaimed: “I tell you, get up, take your
stretcher and go home.”
The moment was of an unequalled solemnity: in one instant the elements of his
sickness disappeared, his body felt reborn as his soul had felt reborn; before he felt an
interior joy, now he felt a refreshing stirring of young life; the numbness disappeared, the
head cleared, the nerves relaxed, his breathing extended, he felt engulfed by a joyful ,
vigor, his lifeless eyes brightened; he folded the clothes that covered him with his free
hands and with the strength in his feet, leaped out from the stretcher, the grabàto, a kind
of cot with a rope webbing, immediately put it on his shoulders, self-confident, like the
most vigorous of young men, and went home glorifying God.
He did not stay where he was, because the omnipotent word that had healed him
hastened him, so to speak, to go; the sickness could not resist, and he could not resist it
either - not even for an instant; the divine Will thrust him like a wind, the joy at being
cured gave wings to his feet, he had spiritual and corporal joy; he made his way through
the crowd, descended, reached the door magnifying God, and disappeared in the street,
anxious to go home.
What a marvelous scene! Jesus had told him: Go home, and maybe with these
words He had ordered him to become again the support of his family, because it is
probable that his paralysis was caused by his vices, and he had abandoned his family for
filthy pleasures; he felt the strength of that command and he did not hesitate; once he
decided to go back home, he could not hesitate and went to his dear family as an example
of a renewed man with the joy of being the support of the family he had been able to
reacquire.
The joy of feeling free from sin

The Scribes and the Pharisees on seeing this scene were confused and remained
silent, as it appears from the context; everyone was greatly surprised and glorified God,

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because the matter of the divinity of Jesus Christ was clearly confirmed. They were also
taken by fear and were telling each other: "We have seen incredible things today." We can
repeat these same words every time we receive the Sacrament of Reconciliation; it is
enough to enter a Church in which this Sacrament is administered to become aware that
hundreds upon hundreds of souls, paralyzed by sin, rise from their misery and go happily
home, that is to the house of their heavenly Father. How many times we have been
resurrected to new life by Jesus and experienced his unutterable peace in our hearts!
If only men understood the benefit of a good Confession, they would come in
droves to the House of God to obtain mercy, and if all souls understood the unhappiness
of not living in God’s favor, they would revive the work of mercy like those who carried
the weight of the paralytic, pushing and accompanying the poor sinners to Repentance.
The poor sinners are somehow frozen; they do not know how to move, they need help and
need to be pushed and this is why we must be ready to do this loving apostolate. If we
wait for a sinner to move by himself to go to a Priest, we shall wait in vain, because he is
paralyzed in all his powers; we must push him and almost lift him up. And if he resists
even to our zeal, we must take him to the feet of Jesus with our insistent prayers, and beg
in His mercy to have pity on him. If sick people move us to compassion, would not
sinners move us even more, they who are the unhappiest of all?

5. The vocation of Levi, the issue of fasting and the prudent consideration of the
ways of the spirit.

After healing the paralyzed man, Jesus left the house and went toward Lake
Genaseret. He went to a custom post for tax collection where a publican by the name of
Levi or Matthew was sitting. He looked at him and his grace conquered his heart, so much
so, that upon being given a simple invitation, he immediately left everything and followed
Him.
In those times there was more freedom and greater respect for the individual as
well a stronger sense of one’s duty, and as consequence there was less need for too many
formalities. Today a public officer, even a high ranking officer, is reduced more or less to
the level of a college graduate; he wears a uniform and has to abide by thousands of rules
and regulations that in practical terms do not enhance the public good of expanding and
nurturing one’s sense of duty, giving a sense of initiative to one’s actions, but reduce
everything to heavy and demoralizing formalities, for appearance’s sake. *
Our famous supermen and reformers very soon will realize how simple minded
their views on life are and they shall see, as they already see, the failure of their initiatives.
They wanted to imitate the Church in her admirable organization, but they forgot that the
Church has Jesus Christ who gives her life while they only have violence and their
bombastic words, that do not penetrate souls but provoke dangerous reactions. The very
different way of life at the time of Jesus makes us understand many things that for our
modern mentality would seem absurd.
Levi might have had a subordinate to whom he left his office and this man
assumed automatically his responsibilities; Levi did not care about anything else, left
everything and followed Jesus Christ.
--------------------------------------------------------
* Don Dolindo writes during the Fascist regime, when the choreography of uniforms for all ages and for all
levels had become mandatory and Nazism was spreading at the same time, making matters even worse.

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 He was certainly a righteous man because grace seeks an open heart to be able to
work on it; he must have been bored with the work that impelled him to harass his
neighbors, and instead by temperament he must have been inclined to generosity, as he
showed as an apostle. Maybe he was very irritated to be considered a slave-driver and a
sinner, and thus the invitation of Jesus, like a seed in well prepared soil, immediately took
root in his heart, and he decided to follow him.
These are no suppositions, but psychological inferences of great importance,
because Matthew was not enchanted by the look of Jesus, as it could be possible to
believe; instead he was conquered by the divine grace that Jesus poured into his soul. The
grace, as it always happens, came to him at the most favorable psychological moment, and
made use of his natural disposition to win him over easily.

The Pharisees are scandalized.

The banquet that Levi gave in honor of Jesus, to make solemn his apostolate and to
which a huge number of publicans was invited, underscores for us that he was not
fascinated but rather thoroughly changed. Levi went to Jesus with all his soul; he
considered the call as a special, unique grace and he wanted to share his joy with others,
starting an apostolate of belief among his very companions. He felt understood and
conquered by the Redeemer and in talking to Him face-to-face he felt that He was Truth
and he wanted to make it known to his colleagues as well, and thus he organized the
banquet. That this was his intention is also made clear from the answer of Jesus to the
Pharisees and the scribes.
They were in fact scandalized by the great participation of publicans and sinners
and, since they could not complain directly to Jesus, as he must have been sitting at the
center of the banquet, they protested with the disciples closest to the door, from where
they were watching. On the other hand, they were among people who could make life
difficult for them, as they were public tax collectors, individuals who were always feared,
and seeing them so devout toward Jesus, did not dare to talk to Him directly for fear of
upsetting them. Jesus, however, heard their reproaches, and full of gentleness and mercy,
in a way that could not be offensive for the persons sitting at his same table, and with a
love so strong that conquered all, answered that people in good health did not need a
doctor but the sick did, and that he had not come to seek the righteous but sinners.
That banquet, therefore, was not just any banquet, but a gathering of an apostolate;
He was not there to eat but to cure souls and save those who were around him; they
considered themselves healthy and righteous, but if they had thought about their own
responsibilities, they would not have believed themselves to be better than the publicans
and sinners.
In the words of Jesus there was also an indirect invitation to the scribes and the
Pharisees who were sick and sinful like the others and even more so; but they did not
understand because they were full of pride. They must have feared that the publicans were
offended by their comments because they understood, by some stern glances, that their
remarks were inappropriate, and so changed the subject, pretending to be scandalized only
because of the unrepentant lifestyle of his disciples. It is typical of the evil minded and the
hypocrites to attack with a bite but then immediately change the subject and claim to have

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a different intention and mislead when they realize they had chosen the wrong expression
or to have been exposed in a humiliating way.

The answer of Jesus to the Pharisees.

Jesus gave them two answers, one to justify his disciples and the other to establish
a very important rule of balance and wisdom in bringing souls to perfection. For the
disciples it was a moment of interior joy, because he was still with them, it was like a
wedding feast, in which they could not think of fasting; but when he would be removed
from them with the violence of the Passion, then, surely they would be fasting. They
would fast both through a voluntary penance and also by being persecuted and enduring
suffering.
The Pharisees and the Scribes were satisfied with a justice made of appearances,
and when they recruited a disciple, they would impose on him a severe external, physical
discipline, that did not correspond to true interior virtue.
It was a method that formed hypocrites, not righteous people.
Jesus, using an analogy, told them how wrong that method was: to demand the
practice of virtue of one without first addressing his current natural internal state; it was
like to put a new piece of cloth on an old cloth. To give the precepts of perfection to a soul
that was not disposed to accept them, would just debase them, just as it would be pointless
to cut out a piece of fabric from a new garment, thereby ruining it, and sewing this cloth
onto an old garment, which would only tear further and not adhere to the new piece of
fabric. An appearance of virtue in a heart not yet well formed is incongruous, because it is
an hypocrisy; a very high precept taught to one who is still struggling with elementary
matters is a profanation, because the high precept can be misdirected due to insufficient
understanding and can do more evil than good.
Jesus Christ insisted on this important point with another comparison, showing
how imprudent it was to force to extreme human frailty and how difficult it was to make
someone understand the holy news of the work of God; putting new wine in old wineskins
breaks them and wastes the wine; it is necessary to put the new wine in new wineskins and
wait until the wine becomes somehow seasoned in order for it to be accepted by those
who are used to the old one.
Jesus wanted also to admonish the scribes and the Pharisees, attached to their old
traditions and incapable of understanding the new mercy of God, and wanted to tell them
that they had to renew themselves interiorly in order to be able to accept it. If he did not
ask for a stronger exercise of virtue of his disciples it was just because he did not want to
discourage them, making them inadequate for the kingdom of God; the hour of trials and
suffering would come later and in their afflictions they would be perfected and ready to
fast and practice the highest perfection.

For those who guide the direction of souls…

Unfortunately the mistake of the scribes and the Pharisees is common to many
who have in their care the spiritual formation of souls to sanctity, and as a result they
cause an immense damage. The principal reason why there is so little sanctity in souls that

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are consecrated to the Lord is just for this lack of prudent care in their formation.
Prescriptions, rules and the norms in a community are all like new pieces of fabric sewn
on old cloth, and the high teachings of mystical love are like new and fermenting wine,
put in old wineskins, which break and do not resist the pressure of a love that is alive and
bursting.
It is necessary to study the souls, to reform them little by little in their thoughts,
their appreciations, their tastes, leading them step by step in the way of God and to make
sure that everything that is discipline comes from the interior, and not just a pharisaical
obligation. It is indispensable to educate the heart, illuminate the mind, guide the soul’s
reason so that all souls, renewed in grace, can rise to God and be capable of those
expansions of love that bring one to the highest perfection.
At the beginning of the spiritual life, a great compassion and great charity toward
human weakness is needed, and it is necessary to fight character flaws more with prayer
and charity than with severity and sternness. Sternness can only discipline the souls like
soldiers in formation in a field, but cannot bring them to the way of sanctity; it can
frighten but not inspire them, and it can make them as ineffective as buds that in storms do
not open and remain forever buds without fruit.

In the ways of the Lord, the holy newness.

A too methodical and mechanical approach to the way of sanctity can be harmful,
as it would be harmful to grow plants following rigorously an agricultural book, without
accounting for the particular conditions that surround the young plant.
To take as infallible only that which is tried and true and not to consider the accidental
elements that surround one is a mistake because the Church prays on every Holy Tuesday
that her faithful be open to the holy news of the Lord, and the ways of God are truly full of
graces that would be foolish to ignore.
There is the old wine and the new wine, there are the foundations and the roots that
do not change, and there are the decorative elements of buildings and young plants that
can have a new branch or a new bud. For this reason souls are formed in a most sure way
when they are directed according to the way of the Church, in her doctrine and her liturgy;
souls can grow in sanctity when they are first educated in the interior life, and when they
are disciplined more by love that by the external laws of the world.
Sometimes some difficult personalities that cast doubt as to their potential for
sanctification can be modified little by little, keeping in mind their weaknesses; sometimes
some of the character flaws are the results of physical problems that needed to be cured by
charity; sometimes it is time that changes completely some false conceptions of life, and
the solution is to wait a while, and with patience and charity, an unbearable character can
become a saint.
Jesus Christ did not want to teach us to ignore flaws, but he wanted them
eliminated little by little; he did not want to justify intemperance, but rather He wanted to
teach us to have compassion for spiritual infancy; he did not want to condemn what is
good in old habits, but He wanted to tell us that grace, in order to operate freely, needs a
heart without prejudices. In the Church there come times of exceptional graces; there
come gifts of a new manifestation of love, and we should not categorically refuse to drink
this new wine in order to drink the old one at all costs; the soul must welcome all that is

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true love, under the guide and the illumination of the Church, and must desire to contrive
to grow more and more in the way of God.

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 Chapter 6
1. The ears of wheat and the Sabbath. The withered hand. Election of the Apostles.
The Beatitudes and the woes. Love for one’s enemies. Warning to the Pharisees and
Christian charity.

1 Now it happened that, on the second first Sabbath, as he passed through the grain field,
his disciples were separating the ears of grain and eating them, by rubbing them in their
hands. 2 Then certain Pharisees said to them, “Why are you doing what is not lawful on
the Sabbaths?” 3 And responding to them, Jesus said: “Have you not read this, what
David did when he was hungry, and those who were with him? 4 How he entered into the
house of God, and took the bread of the Presence, and ate it, and gave it to those who
were with him, though it is not lawful for anyone to eat it, except the priests alone?” 5
And he said to them, “For the Son of man is Lord, even of the Sabbath.” 6 And it
happened that, on another Sabbath, he entered into the synagogue, and he taught. And
there was a man there, and his right hand was withered. 7 And the scribes and Pharisees
observed whether he would heal on the Sabbath, so that they might thereby find an
accusation against him. 8 Yet truly, he knew their thoughts, and so he said to the man who
had the withered hand, “Rise up and stand in the middle.” And rising up, he stood still. 9
Then Jesus said to them: “I ask you if it is lawful on the Sabbaths to do good, or to do
evil? To give health to a life, or to destroy it?” 10 And looking around at everyone, he
said to the man, “Extend your hand.” And he extended it. And his hand was restored. 11
Then they were filled with madness, and they discussed with one another, what, in
particular, they might do about Jesus. 12 And it happened that, in those days, he went out
to a mountain to pray. And he was in the prayer of God throughout the night. 13 And
when daylight had arrived, he called his disciples. And he chose twelve out of them (whom
he also named Apostles): 14 Simon, whom he surnamed Peter, and Andrew his brother,
James and John, Philip and Bartholomew, 15 Matthew and Thomas, James of Alpheus,
and Simon who is called the Zealot, 16 and Jude of James, and Judas Iscariot, who was a
traitor. 17 And descending with them, he stood in a level place with a multitude of his
disciples, and a copious multitude of people from all of Judea and Jerusalem and the
seacoast, and Tyro and Sidon, 18 who had come so that they might listen to him and be
healed of their diseases. And those who were troubled by unclean spirits were cured. 19
And the entire crowd was trying to touch him, because power went out from him and
healed all. 20 And lifting up his eyes to his disciples, he said: “Blessed are you poor, for
yours is the kingdom of God. 21 Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you shall be
satisfied. Blessed are you who are weeping now, for you shall laugh. 22 Blessed shall you
be when men will have hated you, and when they will have separated you and reproached
you, and thrown out your name as if evil, because of the Son of man. 23 Be glad in that
day and exult. For behold, your reward is great in heaven. For these same things their
fathers did to the prophets. 24 Yet truly, woe to you who are wealthy, for you have your
consolation. 25 Woe to you who are satisfied, for you will be hungry. Woe to you who
laugh now, for you will mourn and weep. 26 Woe to you when men will have blessed you.
For these same things their fathers did to the false prophets. 27 But I say to you who are
listening: Love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you. 28 Bless those who curse

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you, and pray for those who slander you. 29 And to him who strikes you on the cheek,
offer the other also. And from him who takes away your coat, do not withhold even your
tunic. 30 But distribute to all who ask of you. And do not ask again of him who takes away
what is yours. 31 And exactly as you would want people to treat you, treat them also the
same. 32 And if you love those who love you, what credit is due to you? For even sinners
love those who love them. 33 And if you will do good to those who do good to you, what
credit is due to you? Indeed, even sinners behave this way. 34 And if you will loan to those
from whom you hope to receive, what credit is due to you? For even sinners lend to
sinners, in order to receive the same in return. 35 So truly, love your enemies. Do good,
and lend, hoping for nothing in return. And then your reward will be great, and you will
be sons of the Most High, for he himself is kind to the ungrateful and to the wicked. 36
Therefore, be merciful, just as your Father is also merciful. 37 Do not judge, and you will
not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be
forgiven. 38 Give, and it will be given to you: a good measure, pressed down and shaken
together and overflowing, they will place upon your lap. Certainly, the same measure that
you use to measure out, will be used to measure back to you again.” 39 Now he told them
another comparison: “How can the blind lead the blind? Would they not both fall into a
pit? 40 The disciple is not above his teacher. But each one will be perfected, if he is like
his teacher. 41 And why do you see the straw that is in your brother’s eye, while the log
that is in your own eye, you do not consider? 42 Or how can you say to your brother,
‘Brother, allow me to remove the straw from your eye,’ while you yourself do not see the
log in your own eye? Hypocrite, first remove the log from your own eye, and then will you
see clearly, so that you may lead out the straw from your brother’s eye. 43 For there is no
good tree which produces bad fruit, nor does an evil tree produce good fruit. 44 For each
and every tree is known by its fruit. For they do not gather figs from thorns, nor do they
gather the grape from the bramble bush. 45 A good man, from the good storehouse of his
heart, offers what is good. And an evil man, from the evil storehouse, offers what is evil.
For out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. 46 But why do you call me,
‘Lord, Lord,’ and not do what I say? 47 Anyone who comes to me, and listens to my
words, and does them: I will reveal to you what he is like. 48 He is like a man building a
house, who has dug deep and has laid the foundation upon the rock. Then, when the
floodwaters came, the river was rushing against that house, and it was not able to move it.
For it was founded upon the rock. 49 But whoever hears and does not do: he is like a man
building his house upon the soil, without a foundation. The river rushed against it, and it
soon fell down, and the ruin of that house was great.”
------------------------------------------------------

2. Divine dominion over times and mankind.

On a Sabbath, that the Sacred Text calls the second first, perhaps because it was
the second of the seven Sabbaths which separated the first solemnity of the sacred year,
Easter from Pentecost, Jesus was walking together with the Apostles through rich fields of
ripened grain. Amidst this glorious spectacle on another occasion, Jesus had spoken about
the harvest of souls. It is possible to suppose that this time as well his Divine Heart was
entirely filled with love for all the creatures He had come to redeem and would later bring
to Heaven through the work of the Apostles. In His life there was nothing that was not in

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harmony with the love that was burning in his Heart for the glory of God and for the
goodness of souls; thus it is logical to suppose this.
The disciples still did not comprehend their mission, even though Jesus had hinted
at it, saying to those He had called first: I shall make you fishers of men. They had not yet
entirely understood the meaning of this expression. They where just walking through the
rich fields like little children, and they were only interested in the hunger that felt.
Evidently they had already covered a long way and had still more to cover, and for this
reason they were picking up ears of wheat, and they would eat the kernels rubbing them in
their hands.
According to the Law it was perfectly acceptable for wheat to be picked by hand,
but not with the sickle, if one needed it to sustain oneself, if one did not own the fields; it
was thus a kind of charity, I would call it hospitality, but however nobody was permitted
to abuse this possibility, limiting oneself to situations of pure need and not capricious
reason or theft.
God, the owner of everything, had allowed it.
The day the Apostles were taking the wheat, however, was a Sabbath, and what
was even more important, it was a solemn Sabbath, and for this reason the Pharisees were
scandalized. For them to pick the ears of wheat constituted work, and to rub them in one’s
hand was the same as harvesting them; they were being pedantic, as usual, but believing to
be right, they rebuked the Apostles saying: “Why are you doing what is unlawful on the
Sabbath?” According to St. Matthew (12:2) and St. Mark (2:24) they rebuked Jesus; but
comparing the texts it is evident that they spoke first to the disciples walking among them,
and then to the Rabbi, seeing that the Apostles ignored their rebuke.
Jesus Christ could have answered that this act was not a violation of the Sabbath,
by comparing it simply to eating. However His heart was filled with His high thoughts of
the fight against hell and the success of his kingdom, and so He gave a deeper reason, to
declare the power that He, the universal King, had over all creation and over all time. The
argument also was marvelously proportioned to the souls of his opponents, compelling
them to take into consideration the foolishness of their exaggerations.
It was an argument from more to less, so to speak, and at a level ad hominem (to
the man). If David, being in dire need, did not believe it to be a sin for either He or his
men to eat of the sacred breads, nor the Priest who gave them the bread believed it to be a
sin, how much more His men, also moved by great hunger, could pick and eat the ears of
wheat. If they would contest that David had the permission of the Priest, He, the Son of
Man, owner of all time and the Sabbath itself, gave them permission.
As a loving father, Jesus defended his dear Apostles from the accusation of
violating the Sabbath; but what depth there was in His words! The Sabbath, the wheat, and
the bread of offering are respectively: the Easter Sabbath, remembrance of the immolation
of the Lamb; the wheat becoming the food of his disciples and the sacred breads of the
table of the Temple; these three images of great sanctification were those that He wanted
to give to the souls through His sacrifice, becoming food for them.
He would first immolate himself in blood at Easter, then the Apostles would take
the wheat as food of life and renewing his sacrifice, in an unbloody way they would put
before God the true bread of the offering, to feed their own and strengthen them for the
war for the conquest of His Kingdom.
Jesus’ thoughts transcended the poor quarrels of the Pharisees; He looked far into

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the times of mercy and love, and in an indirect way announced the Sabbath of the souls,
intent to eat the Eucharistic bread. He was the true David, He went forth to conquer his
kingdom of love, and His divine mission was far more sacred than the services of the
Temple, which only resembled His; He could also let his Apostles eat on a Sabbath, even
if it were to be considered a “work” to pick and rub together the ears of wheat, because
only He was the owner of this Sabbath of true joy and true mercy.
Did not the Priests work in the Temple during Sabbath? Did they not immolate
victims? Did they not offer incense? And yet nobody ever said that they were violating the
Sabbath; now Jesus, the Eternal Priest, did an act notably of high priest in His divine
mission and He was to rule and let the people, who were helping him, to eat the ears of
wheat, to sustain lives that had to serve only for the glory of God. Besides, they were not
eating out of avidity but because they did not have any other way to get food, and also
they were eating while walking, thus indirectly giving to God even the time needed to eat
a regular meal.
The scribes and the Pharisees could not object to Jesus any further, nor did they
understand the whole meaning of His words, because they did not dare to be in opposition
with an event written in the Scriptures. They continued to follow him in order to judge his
actions and soon they found themselves before another event which also proved
embarrassing for them.

Jesus heals the man with a withered hand.

On another Sabbath Jesus entered in a synagogue and started teaching. As usual

his presence brought around Him many poor, sick people who were hoping to be healed,
and among them there was a man with a withered hand. The scribes and the Pharisees
were intently looking at Him, to see if He would heal someone on that day, they were
hoping to find ways to accuse, and get rid of, and kill Him. Their intentions were
murderous and were observing Him not out of zeal for the Law but for the evil intention
of causing Him harm.
Jesus knew their thoughts, and called the man with the withered hand to come up
to the middle of the assembly, so that his condition might be better observed. Afterward,
speaking to the Scribes and the Pharisees, aware of their evil and murderous intentions,
asked them on purpose, "I ask you, is it lawful to do good on the Sabbath rather than to do
evil, to save a life rather than to destroy it?" After saying these words, looked around to
all the people present, a look that by itself made the people understand that He knew the
scheming of their heart, a look of a judge that left them speechless.
They were thinking, during a Sabbath, how to harm and kill him, and instead on a
Sabbath He wanted to do good to a man, and save him. Therefore they did not dare to
rebuke him in the name of the Law, since they themselves so openly violated the law
under the eyes of God.
A deep silence fell over the assembly, and Jesus speaking to the sick man, with an
omnipotent commanding voice, said: “Stretch out your hand” and immediately his hand
extended and was perfectly healed. The Scribes and the Pharisees, on seeing this, were
filled with a raving rage and discussed with each other what they should do with Jesus,

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and how to kill him. How incredible! Such an extraordinary miracle should have opened
their eyes to recognize the full command that Jesus had over all! They should have adored
Him and instead they were conspiring against Him; they should have repented, but they
became more arrogant!

The persecutors of the Church.

The persecutors of Jesus Christ in His Church blind themselves in the same way.
They keep watching over the Church as it was an assembly of criminals, and they seek to
destroy her, when the Church only does good and save men for their eternal life.
What aspect of her can they oppose? Even though its members sometimes individually
make mistakes at fault, nobody ever can say that the Church is a danger to the State. Its
history is a history of wisdom and goodness, because She is the light of truth and true
dispenser of goodness for all people.
The hypocrite evildoers of the nations see the Church as a thorn in their eyes, they
know that she raises her voice against injustices and abuses of power; they know that she
relentlessly eradicates all errors and mistakes, and for this they try to destroy her. This
happened in the past and, most sorrowfully, happens also in the present time. People seek
pretext and frivolous reasons to hurt the Church, with pharisaical excuses of needing to
provide for national security and even to honor God.
They say that Faith is the opiate of the masses, not because they are convinced of
it, but to use their criminal opiates, with which they numb the peoples to their evil and
wicked deeds, and prevent the activities of the people to be done in a right way.
The Church, on the other hand, revives the people and is the safeguard of the truth;
she is the guardian of freedom, the defender of the weak, the avenger of injustice; further
it is historically certain that without her today, the world would be a barbaric place, as
indeed it is wherever the Church does not have any influence.
It is not without a deep reason that the Sacred Text notes that those who plotted
against Jesus “were filled with raving rage”. This is a characteristic of the persecutors, in
fact, a trait that beyond any doubt characterizes them. They are taken by a rage that is true
folly; they do not reason; they are violent, cruel and ruin themselves with their own hands
and are the ruin of people. Often, and we could even say, most of the times, madness is
diabolical, or at least is exploited by Satan for his wretched reasons. It is not unusual that
madmen are marked with the typical signs of Satan: pride, malice, anger, violence and
impure acts.
The persecutors of the Church have pride, and they pretend to impose their most
foolish ideologies upon others; they are evil, because they make use of all kinds of ways
to seduce; they are wrathful, because interiorly they burst with an unquenchable hate
against all that is good; they are violent, because they make of force use in a barbaric way.
Their life, above all, are a heap of miseries, and this is why they fight against the
Church, which boldly condemns that which causes the degradation of people. Like Satan,
they seek to destroy all goodness and promote evil; they hate virtue and exalt vices; they
are lovers of blood and wretched homicides under the veil of the laws, that they
themselves create to give a juridical appearance to their evildoings.
God, however, confuses these people and often He makes use of the smallest and

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humblest strength of forces to topple them from their pedestals, which were seemingly
unshakable. Only a mere glance of His justice is enough to rout them out, and so sooner or
later they pay for their crimes and end in disgrace.
Today the persecutors of the Church, unfortunately, are many and often more
violent than those of old. However we must not become discouraged, we must continue to
pray, because prayer will either convert them or eliminate them. God shows very clearly,
especially in persecutions, that He is the owner of time and men; at the appropriate time
he eliminates the evildoers, He effects His plans and shatter their perfidious designs like
vessels of clay.

The election of the Apostles and the profile of

the Church through the centuries.

Jesus Christ knew that he would sacrifice his life for the salvation of mankind and,
in order to continue His great plan of salvation on earth, He began to choose the first
elements of his Mystical Body, the Church, electing twelve Apostles. He looked to the
humblest men of the world, those who were not attracted to culture and wealth, mostly
fishermen and workmen, so that the world would understand Who truly is the author of
this marvelous work of salvation.
Nevertheless, though He wanted them of humble station, humanly speaking, He
did not want them to be without supernatural graces, therefore, He spent the whole night
in prayer, and He acquired for them the help and the graces they needed for the
accomplishment of their great mission.
How sublime is this prayer of Jesus! The world prepares its ministers with human
culture and enlightens them with its feeble lights; Jesus Christ prepares his own by
attracting the lights of the Holy Spirit upon them; the world clothes its ministers with
apparent high stature and instead Jesus showers the souls of his Apostles with graces; thus
He prays and His prayer renews them and starts to form in them new men. More than a
mother can do, He took them into His heart and with prayer fed His life to them, even
though at that time they did not realize it.
From the world’s perspective the Apostles remained the poor creatures that they
were, but before God, and in all truth, they became new creatures, especially when the
Holy Spirit renewed them entirely. Looking at them we can say that they were not vile
instruments, but rather they were transformed by grace, and were marvelously formed and
suited to their office. A farmer who, studying, becomes a genius is not a farmer anymore;
he is a scholar.
Alfredo Trombetti, began as a humble cobbler before studying countless
languages, he became a famous linguist; he did not remain a cobbler.
Similarly the Apostles, taught by our Lord and the Holy Spirit, rose in the world to
be above geniuses and they represent the most noble and greatest of what the world has
conceived, even among the greatest philosophers. Their testimony and their doctrine are
not from our earth but from Heaven; in their humility they were and are great; and truly
and uniquely so.
The Lord, let us repeat, appropriately selecting the means to His ends, chooses the

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things most rejected by the world, but by his grace He makes them fitting and suitable for
the things He chooses for them to do, and his works are always marvelous; thus the
Apostles, besides being the greatest saints, are also the greatest honors of our poor earth,
and are the true scholars who gave us the light received by the Savior; and in Him, by the
grace of the Holy Spirit, they also gave, naturally speaking, a new face to our civilization
and a new perspective to the framework of the nations.
Jesus Christ ascended on a mountain and prayed the whole night before selecting
his Apostles; in this way he taught to His Church to pray before consecrating her Priests
and Ministers. He was accustomed to go to high places to pray, but it may be said that in
this occasion He did it for a special reason, because His ministers would have no other
purpose than to attain celestial heights.
He descended from the heights and selected them to accomplish His mission, they
also would need to ascend high above, through prayer, and then descend to the people to
teach them and bring them to their eternal salvation.
Jesus came down from the mountain and his countenance had a special paternal
tenderness, because in selecting His own, He generated in them a new life. He chose them
in a way so as not to awaken jealousy or animosity among them, thus he had certain
criteria regarding seniority in choosing them; only for Simon Peter did He make an
exception, naming him first, because He wanted to make him head of the Apostles and of
the Church.

The election of Judas Iscariot.

Jesus also selected Judas Iscariot, even though He knew that he would betray him,
because he did not want to do a wrong to him eliminating him and because grace does not
fail to pour over the creatures, even on those who later would abuse of it, since God is not
an acceptor of people. Certainly Jesus felt a great sorrow in calling him, knowing what he
would do, but He called him because he could have responded in kind and become a saint.
If God would deny us the grace considering our future malice, He would put our
free will in the impossibility of operating according to grace, and He would deprive us of
true freedom.
God does not do that, because He never punishes the offender before he commits
an evil action, even though He knows it, due to His infinite prescience.
Judas could not have been eliminated; the charity of Jesus could not permit it, He
called him to give him new graces, and who would criticize this act of divine charity?
Certainly the company of Jesus did not make him worse; maybe instead of being
only a traitor and confess in his desperation the innocence of the Savior, he would have
become one of his the worst crucifiers; maybe instead of taking advantage of the alms that
were under his care, he would have become a bandit and a public murderer.
Jesus called him to save him, or better to make an Apostle of him and if Judas did
not correspond to such a love, it was not certainly for the love that Jesus had for him. It is
true that his crime was most awful, because it arrived to the limit of cowardice and
wickedness, but Jesus did not elected him to make him a traitor; His mercy would have
been ready to make him a saint, more than St Peter, if only he would have responded to
his unutterable love.

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 The elected Apostles.

The list of the Apostles given by St. Luke is almost identical in order of the names
to those listed by St. Matthew (Mt 10:2-3) and it is different from the order given by St.
Mark in his list of the twelve (Mk 3:18). It has this difference, that he calls the Apostle
Jude of James, the brother of James the minor, while the other Evangelists call him
Thaddeus, and he calls Simon the Zealot the one the others call Simon the Cananaean.
Clearly these are incidental differences, due to the many nicknames by which the Apostles
were called. What all Evangelists agree upon is they all put Peter at the first place, as the
leader of all of them. It is a constant detail each time St. Peter is named with the other
Apostles, a very clear argument for the place the Lord had designated for him.
The twelve Apostles, in the very meaning of their names, give us almost the
perspective and the profile of what would be the Church throughout the centuries. Made
by Jesus at the price of His divine Blood, She gathers around Him, listen to Him as
Master, obeys Him as legislator, is put like beam of light and as sign of contradiction, in
continuous fights, oiled with the oil of the strong to win, and with the ointment of the
glory in her triumph: Simon. She is founded on the rock, on the living stone, that is on the
Redeemer, the corner stone, and on the Pope, her visible leader: Peter. She starts her way
facing the great fights and the persecutions in a manly way, stern in defending the truth:
Andrew.
With his heel crushes the head of Satan, tread underfoot the devil, and widens
more and more the kingdom of God: James. She does not conquer by violence, but
spreading the gifts and the mercy of the Lord: John. Warlike only in facing the evil:
Philip. Travels over earth and ploughs the land, spreading the water of the truth for the
fertilization of the souls, Bartholomew and because the gift of God is not wasted,
Matthew.
The continuing fights the Church endures makes her moan, and once she
establishes herself firmly in the world, her fights start all over again. Her second period is
almost twin of the first, Thomas, characterized by what was special of St. Thomas: he
wanted to touch everything by hand. After the time of the lively faith, follows the relaxed
faith of his children, first symptoms of rebellion of intelligent people against her
teachings. The Church suffers, moans, agonizes, but is not overcome; treads underfoot
again the kingdom of satan, crushing his head with her heel with her truth, and teaching
with the Doctors of the Church the truth, James of Alpheus.
After the sad times of the errors and apostasy follow a new period of faith, in
which, as in the beginning, mankind listens to the Church, obeys her, She is like oiled with
oil of new graces and with ointment of a new joy of love; she grows for the ardent zeal of
saintly people : Simon the Zealot. It is the time when the praises of God resound
throughout the earth, and the kingdom of God shines in the most vivid splendor among
men; the Church treads over the kingdom of Satan who tries his last battle hoping to
supersede the Church and attacks at her heel; Jude Thaddeus.
Afterward the praise of God ends, charity becomes cold, the Antichrist, the killer
comes; he wounds, breaks out, cuts off, wipes out the flock of the Lord, Judas Iscariot. To
this time follows immediately the day of the reward and retribution, the Day of Judgment,

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and with it ends the history of the Church on earth, and starts eternity.*
This is not a puzzle or a play of words because, just as someone, putting down the
foundation of a building has before him his entire plan, also Jesus, in electing his
Apostles, had surely before His eyes all the plan of His Church and on them He laid the
foundation, and through them the Church would expand in the centuries, until the end of
time.
Simon Peter represented the cornerstone and Judah Iscariot represented the
Antichrist, the bloodthirsty traitor, who shall try to make the Church die, first with the
betrayal and then in blood.
Andrew represented the love that manly gives and strenuously immolates itself, in his love
for the Cross and in his martyrdom.
James, surnamed the major, son of Zebedee, man of great prayer, represented the souls
dedicated to the contemplation of celestial things, fighting with prayer and take over the
kingdom of Satan.
John represented the gift and the mercy of God, in the love and charity that tinged all his
life.
Philip represented the strength of the Church that moves war to the world and
makes it come closer to Jesus; in fact he presented to Jesus the Gentiles, and was
preoccupied for the needs of the hungry crowd, as Jesus was, and together with Him
wanted to feed them.
Matthew represented the generosity of those who abandon everything and give
everything to the Lord; he was almost the symbol of the finances put at the service of the
Lord.
Thomas, with his incredulity, expressed the doubts of the souls before the
manifestations of God and, with his faith, their humble return to truth in the splendor of
the celestial light.
James of Alpheus, nicknamed the Minor, was relative of Jesus, represented the
renewal of the triumph of the Church over the apostasy, as it was represented by Simon
the Zealot and Jude Thaddeus.
In the works of the Lord that have universal character, the representations are
typical because the chosen people transcend the passing time of their mortal life,
becoming expression of the plan of God. It is shame that Christian people do not have a
tender devotion for the Apostles, since they have been part of the foundation of the
Church and surely in their hands they have particular treasures of graces to help the
various needs of the Church. Nowadays, when the Kingdom of God is getting closer at
great speed, it seems that the world almost should be divided in twelve parts of actions,
and to each should be appointed one of the Apostles, that the Church from Heaven may
continue in the souls the work of love received from Jesus.

-----------------------------------------
* It is a method very dear to Fr. Dolindo to bring teachings from the etymology of the names. He realizes
that his interpretation may seem strange, “a puzzle”, however it is a fact that he brings many and always
updated teachings from them.

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4. For the Apostles and for those who spread the kingdom of God.

It is evident from the contest that Jesus elected His Apostles when He was still on
the mountain where he had been praying. Later, He descended with them from the
mountain and they stopped in the valley below. Other disciples were there and a great
crowd of people met Him; they had come from Judea, Jerusalem and even from Tyre and
Sidon, two pagan cities.
There was, therefore, around Him a remarkable presence of the Jewish world and
that of the Gentiles, as area of work that one day the Apostles, just being elected, would
receive. Those people had come to listen to Him and were hoping to be healed of their
infirmities. Our good Jesus with great tenderness comforted them, driving off also demons
from the obsessed who tormented them.
It was just what the Apostles would have to do in the world: announce the word of
God, heal sick souls, relieve human miseries and drive off Satan. To reach this highest
level they had not to follow the principles of the world, instead they had to form the world
on the marvelous doctrine Jesus taught to all people on the mountain.
With immeasurable love Jesus then looked at his disciples, and particularly to
those he had elected, and started saying: "Blessed are you who are now hungry, for you
will be satisfied. Blessed are you who are now weeping, for you will laugh. Blessed are
you when people hate you, and when they exclude and insult you, and denounce your
name as evil on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice then and leap for joy, because, behold,
your reward will be great in Heaven. For their ancestors treated the prophets in the same
way.
It is evident from these last words that Jesus was talking to his apostles, the
Prophets of the New Testament, and He was comparing them to the Prophets of the old
covenant, who spread the Word of God and defended it at the cost of their life. Had he
spoken to all the people present there, He would not have used this expression as a
conclusion of four fundamental maxims. However He wanted that everybody would hear
on which basis He was constituting His Church and His apostolate, that may be more
evident for His Apostles and for their successors the responsibility that they would assume
before the people and the example of perfection that they were called to be.
There is no propagandist of an ideology that does not make sure first of all the
financing of his mission.
All social movements, even those who seem the most spontaneous and based on
enthusiasm, have directly or indirectly this backstage finance. Jesus instead puts poverty
as the basis for the conquest of the Kingdom. In St. Matthew, speaking to the crowd, He
said: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, because for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.” It was
the fundamental principle for the conquest of the Eternal Goodness: not to be involved in
the wretched snares of temporal goods. Shortly before electing his Apostles for the
conquest of the Kingdom of God, Jesus said to them, applying His principle: “Blessed are
you, poor, because the Kingdom of Heaven is yours.”
Thus is not money that will enrich the Church, but the hunger for the glory of God
and the salvation of souls; it is not money that will conquer peoples to the Church, but the
zeal of the apostles, thirsty for love. In St. Matthew is said: “ Blessed are they who hunger
and thirst for righteousness, that is for sanctity, for they will be satisfied. God will satisfy
those who want to be saints; those who hunger for it will become saints; a saintly person

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has hunger for the glory of God and the salvation of souls, and he will be satisfied.
The apostolate, then, moves to the conquest of the Kingdom of Heaven without
material resources and with great resources of sanctity; it moves with the same exultation
of those who conquer a position in the world, but at the same time in the painful moaning
of those who till the fields sweating and sowing it; not among the splendor of human
prestige, but among the most bitter adversities and the most violent persecutions.
It is the peculiarity of the apostolate of the Church, entirely different from
sectarian proselytism. It can be said that this is the basis that distinguishes the true from
the false apostles. For this reason Jesus, addressing the future mercenaries, that would
bring sorrow to His Church with the sound of dollars and sterling, without aspiration to
true sanctity, thirsting for adventures and pleasures, and resting on the prestige of their
banners, said: “Woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation; woe to
you who are filled now with material goods and earthly aspirations, for you will be hungry
for God in eternity; woe to you who laugh now, amid the joys and comfort of the world,
for you will grieve and weep in eternal torments, woe to you when all speak well of you,
supporting and praising you, for their ancestors treated the false prophets in this way.
It is a fact of which we ourselves are aware, that the supernatural and fruitful
works of true apostolate have always these characteristics: poverty, suffering, lack of
means, and persecutions; and for those who promote these works it is a great relief to see
the seal of God in these characteristics.
In poverty the apostolate leans on Providence, in suffering trusts in the help of
God, in persecutions becomes purified and only trusts in Him. It is in this way that grace
takes over the poor activities of men, and instead of recruiting proselytes, has a crowd of
souls for their eternal salvation.
The apostolate is not simple evangelization, but it is a fight between the world and
hell; this is the reason that supposes the violent clash of evil against goodness, not only for
the ministers of the Lord, but also for the faithful around them. And Jesus Christ,
summoning all, made known what must be attitude of His followers in these situations:
"But to you who hear I say, love your enemies, considering them creatures of God, do
good to those who hate you, trying to save their souls, conquering them with your
kindness. Bless those who curse you, that your blessing may make better people out of
them, and pray for those who mistreat you that the light of God may change their evil
mind and they may recognize their wrongdoings.
What would be the use of a violent reaction? It would only make things worse;
people would become crueler, and would push to the utmost their wretched mind to do
evil, justifying it as a reaction. This is why, instead of reacting to violence, it is necessary,
to offer the other cheek as well, almost as a blow to the cheek, which means to be ready,
heroically, to submit, to receive more blows, in order not to yield to the arrogance of those
who try to stop goodness; not to make use of force to avenge temporal goods and harming
souls, but show to be ready even to yield, like someone who is so little concerned that a
thief has taken his cloak, that gives to him also his tunic.
This is the place where the Apostles of the truth will be, together with the faithful
they have gathered: they will find themselves among the enemies of goodness, evildoers,
full of hate and ready to curse, slanderers, violent people, thieves, that with their slanders
will attempt to destroy the truth and through violence paralyze the truth and who, with
legally organized theft, will believe to take away from the Apostles the means of

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spreading their message. The followers of Jesus, instead of fearing their snares, must show
themselves to be above them, confiding only in God and entrusting to Him the protection
of the good.
We are witnesses of what takes place and also what happens in the persecution
against the Church; we are witnesses of the calumnies, the hate, the violence and the thefts
of her enemies; many times we were also victims. The remedy is only one: to submit to
the persecution and to continue unperturbed in doing good, with or without material
means, because the strength and the support of the apostolate and of the faithful is only
God.

5. The kingdom of God can only be established in charity.

After briefly describing the supernatural means to succeed in the apostolate in the
world, Jesus Christ shows the fruits that it must produce, uniting all peoples in charity.
The Church does not want to promote a kingdom of power and strength, instead it wants
to create a kingdom of love, eliminating every cause of dissention, uniting all the creatures
of God, for the Church and in the Church. The foundation of this love cannot be
intolerance and selfishness rather goodness and charity, having as measure, almost as
basis, the very selfishness and for this reason we must do to others what we would like
others do to us.
This is an excellent rule that corresponds to a personal psychological experience,
because a feeling of compassion and charity comes first from one’s own experience.
It is almost impossible to have compassion and to feel a full empathy with another
if one has not suffered personally the pain of his neighbors; it is from ourselves that we
comprehend the meaning of true charity.
If someone sees a person suffering what he himself went through, it seems to him
almost to live again that pain for the painful memories he has of it, and he does those acts
of charity in the same affectionate way he would do to himself, if he had to do them. It
would be almost a relief to give comfort for a pain suffered long ago, as it is also an
interior satisfaction to be able to show the experience of an affliction, receiving the tardy
compassion of someone who suffers it. If a pain is not experienced, it is necessary to enter
into it, picturing in the mind the suffering it causes.
This is the way to do to others what we would like would be done to us, helping to
eliminate what can be bothersome or painful to another.
The foundation however of every act of charity cannot be based on a natural
sympathy, or for hope of reciprocation; the measure of compassion must come from our
own experience to be truly sincere and effective, but the reason of charity must be God
and His love.
All other reasons have no basis and can also be motivated by a hidden selfish
motive. It is natural in fact to love those who love us, to do good to those who do good to
us and lend to those from whom we hope we shall be reciprocated; also sinners, that is
souls without supernatural life, arrive to this without any effort or merit.
For giving honor to the Lord and conquering ourselves, on the other hand, we must
love our enemies as children of the same divine Father and do good to them for the love of
Him, imitating His goodness. This is not a secret of weakness, but an immense superiority
and greatness, because it is in that moment that we truly rise above our enemies, and we

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conquer with love, showing a great superiority of soul, when we do good to them with no
other interest.
God, in is infinite greatness, is infinitely merciful and kind toward the ungrateful
people and evildoers, and while He does not need anybody, He always gives. We want to
imitate Him in His goodness and mercy, and instead of letting ourselves be entangled in
petty selfish competitions, let us rise to the highest peak of that love that conquers evil
doing good and keeps harmony and peace in charity.
Today unfortunately so many false prophets, who presume to establish the human
society on another basis, intensely advertise principles diametrically opposite and spread
in the world internal unrest and wars. To have as principle to hate and to do violence as
reaction to evil means to multiply it, and to increase indefinitely the cause of contrasts. In
this way the unrest never stops, because each violent tyrannical act begets another and
then another, more fierce than the first, because hate ends in the desire to exterminate the
opposing part, and only ends in the most dreadful ruin.
The kingdom of God is kingdom of love and in charity destroys all discords,
giving peace to man.
Roots of dissensions are the judgments done on the actions and intentions of others
and the lack of generosity toward our neighbors. For this reason Jesus Christ added: “Stop
judging and you will not be judged. Stop condemning and you will not be condemned.
Forgive and you will be forgiven. Give and gifts will be given to you; a good measure,
packed together, shaken down, and overflowing, will be poured into your lap. For the
measure with which you measure will in return be measured out to you.” This is the true
meaning of the charity established by God Himself, that is, to receive in the same measure
that it was given, in good as well as in evil.
Too bad that this law is taken very little into consideration, this is very sorrowful;
it has its root in the justice of God as well as in human nature. The one who judges
another without charity attracts upon himself unconsciously the judgment of others, and
God permits that he endures the requital of what he does; the one who condemns and who
does not forgive, is subjected to the same law and ultimately ruins himself.
The one who judges and condemns and does not forgive is always someone with a
vulgar and base soul, and aiming his arrows against others attracts the attention to himself
and is subjected to the same treatment. Daily experience shows how true are these words
of Jesus, and instead also shows how rich of goodness are generosity and charity when it
is done for the love of God.
The Saints have been always full of these virtues, and they were recompensed by
the Divine goodness and the divine Providence, because through their charitable hands
went treasures of providence.
Jesus Christ was speaking especially to the Apostles and to all who would spread
His kingdom, because if charity and generosity are a duty for everybody, for the Ministers
of God they are an indispensable requirement. A Priest who easily grumbles, who
condemns without mercy, who does not forgive and is not generous in giving, is
constantly exposed to the rejection of others; this may indeed be the ultimate reason why
the Ministers of God suffer so many adversities, easily grumbling about everything and
everybody, often mercilessly valuing the actions of their neighbors and reluctantly doing
charity.
Since the kingdom of God is founded on charity, it is logical that whoever is its

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representative and minister must give a true example and for this reason Jesus added that a
blind person cannot guide another blind person without dragging him also in a pit, and He
also said that a disciples is not superior to his teacher.
If a Priest is blind to these precepts of charity and does not observe them, he shall
bring people to ruin, and shall form souls without charity.
It is never a valid excuse to judge, in order to blame, and be stern to obtain an
improvement, because the one who transgresses the law of charity does not promote true
good, which must start at oneself; he observes the splinter in the eye of his brother, instead
of removing the wooden beam in his own eye. It cannot be a good fruit of charity the fruit
taken from the transgression of a precept of God, and it cannot be considered a fruit of
goodness what is taken from the thorns of an angered or unsettled nature. If the heart of a
Priest is truly upright and good, he will not give from the riches of his inner goodness only
a pittance of charity, because the mouth speaks from the abundance of the heart.
The Priest cannot deceive himself thinking to fail in charity for love of goodness,
because from a tree of life cannot sprout a fruit of death.
Here then is the sure foundation of the kingdom of God: charity. Any work of an
apostolate that is not grounded in charity is like a building planted on the sand that a storm
completely destroys.
The Priest must establish his apostolate on the rock of charity and plant this virtue
so deeply into his own heart that cannot be shaken by any storm moved against him by the
world. Only in charity can he recognize all men as brothers and children of God; only with
charity he can placate them and bring them like docile little lambs to the sheepfold of the
Savior.
This is the great resource of the zeal for bringing souls to salvation, because we
have been redeemed by the charity of Jesus Christ, and only in His love can we continue
to conquer hearts for Him until the end of the times.

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 Chapter 7
1. The servant of the centurion. The son of the widow of Naim. John the Baptist’s
question to Jesus. Jesus praises John the Baptist. The sinner at the feet of Jesus.

1 And when he had completed all his words in the hearing of the people, he entered
Capernaum. 2 Now the servant of a certain centurion was dying, due to an illness. And he
was very dear to him.n3 And when he had heard about Jesus, he sent elders of the Jews to
him, petitioning him, so that he would come and heal his servant.n4 And when they had
come to Jesus, they petitioned him anxiously, saying to him: “He is worthy that you
should provide this to him. 5 For he loves our nation, and he has built a synagogue for
us.” 6 Then Jesus went with them. And when he was now not far from the house, the
centurion sent friends to him, saying: “Lord, do not trouble yourself. For I am not worthy
that you should enter under my roof. 7 Because of this, I also did not consider myself
worthy to come to you. But say the word, and my servant shall be healed. 8 For I also am
a man placed under authority, having soldiers under me. And I say to one, ‘Go,’ and he
goes; and to another, ‘Come,’ and he comes; and to my servant, ‘Do this,’ and he does
it.” 9 And upon hearing this, Jesus was amazed. And turning to the multitude following
him, he said, “Amen I say to you, not even in Israel have I found such great faith.” 10 And
those who had been sent, upon returning to the house, found that the servant, who had
been sick, was now healthy. 11 And it happened afterwards that he went to a city, which is
called Nain. And his disciples, and an abundant crowd, went with him.12 Then, when he
had drawn near to the gate of the city, behold, a deceased person was being carried out,
the only son of his mother, and she was a widow. And a large crowd from the city was
with her. 13 And when the Lord had seen her, being moved by mercy over her, he said to
her, “Do not weep.” 14 And he drew near and touched the coffin. Then those who carried
it stood still. And he said, “Young man, I say to you, arise.” 15 And the dead youth sat up
and began to speak. And he gave him to his mother. 16 Then fear fell over all of them. And
they magnified God, saying: “For a great prophet has risen up among us,” and, “For
God has visited his people.” 17 And this word about him went out to all of Judea and to
the entire surrounding region. 18 And the disciples of John reported to him concerning all
these things. 19 And John called two of his disciples, and he sent them to Jesus, saying,
“Are you he who is to come, or should we wait for another?” 20 But when the men had
come to him, they said: “John the Baptist has sent us to you, saying: ‘Are you he who is to
come, or should we wait for another?’ ” 21 Now in that same hour, he cured many of
their diseases and wounds and evil spirits; and to many of the blind, he gave sight. 22 And
responding, he said to them: “Go and report to John what you have heard and seen: that
the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead rise again,
the poor are evangelized. 23 And blessed is anyone who has not taken offense at me.” 24
And when the messengers of John had withdrawn, he began to speak about John to the
crowds. “What did you go out to the desert to see? A reed shaken by the wind? 25 Then
what did you go out to see? A man clothed in soft garments? Behold, those who are in
costly apparel and finery are in the houses of kings. 26 Then what did you go out to see?
A prophet? Certainly, I tell you, and more than a prophet. 27 This is he of whom it is
written: “Behold, I send my Angel before your face, who shall prepare your way before

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you.” 28 For I say to you, among those born of women, no one is greater than the prophet
John the Baptist. But he who is least in the kingdom of God is greater than he.” 29 And
upon hearing this, all the people and the tax collectors justified God, by being baptized
with the baptism of John. 30 But the Pharisees and the experts in the law despised the
counsel of God concerning themselves, by not being baptized by him. 31 Then the Lord
said: “Therefore, to what shall I compare the men of this generation? And to what are
they similar? 32 They are like children sitting in the marketplace, talking with one
another, and saying: ‘We sang to you, and you did not dance. We lamented, and you did
not weep.’ 33 For John the Baptist came, neither eating bread nor drinking wine, and you
say, ‘He has a demon.’ 34 The Son of man came, eating and drinking, and you say,
‘Behold, a voracious man and a drinker of wine, a friend of tax collectors and of sinners.’
35 But wisdom is justified by all her children.” 36 Then certain Pharisees petitioned him,
so that they might eat with him. And he went into the house of the Pharisee, and he
reclined at table. 37 And behold, a woman who was in the city, a sinner, found out that he
was reclining at table in the house of the Pharisee, so she brought an alabaster container
of ointment. 38 And standing behind him, beside his feet, she began to wash his feet with
tears, and she wiped them with the hair of her head, and she kissed his feet, and she
anointed them with ointment. 39 Then the Pharisee, who had invited him, upon seeing
this, spoke within himself, saying, “This man, if he were a prophet, would certainly know
who and what kind of woman is this, who is touching him: that she is a sinner.” 40 And in
response, Jesus said to him, “Simon, I have something to say to you.” So he said, “Speak,
Teacher.” 41 “A certain creditor had two debtors: one owed five hundred denarii, and the
other fifty. 42 And since they did not have the ability to repay him, he forgave them both.
So then, which of them loves him more?” 43 In response, Simon said, “I suppose that it is
he to whom he forgave the most.” And he said to him, “You have judged correctly.” 44
And turning to the woman, he said to Simon: “Do you see this woman? I entered into your
house. You gave me no water for my feet. But she has washed my feet with tears, and has
wiped them with her hair. 45 You gave no kiss to me. But she, from the time that she
entered, has not ceased to kiss my feet. 46 You did not anoint my head with oil. But she
has anointed my feet with ointment. 47 Because of this, I tell you: many sins are forgiven
her, because she has loved much. But he who is forgiven less, loves less.” 48 Then he said
to her, “Your sins are forgiven you.” 49 And those who sat at table with him began to say
within themselves, “Who is this, who even forgives sins?” 50 Then he said to the woman:
“Your faith has brought you salvation. Go in peace.”
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2. The faith of the centurion, model of our faith.

A Roman centurion, stationed at Capernaum, had a servant, or better a slave, most

dear to him who was very sick and close to death. The centurion had heard about the
miracles that Jesus was doing and hoped that He would heal him. He sent some of the
Jewish elders to go and ask Him and obtain from Him the grace to heal his servant. Being
a military man, he was used to dealing within a chain of command structure and so did not
dare to talk directly to the Lord; and in particular his reservation about going directly to
Him was especially because he believed himself to be unworthy. Additionally, as he was
familiar with the uses and customs of the Jewish people, he also thought that the Lord
might reject him as he was a pagan.
The elders gladly accepted to be intermediaries between him and Jesus, because

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the centurion was one of those rare pagans who loved the Jewish people, and he was very
respectful of their Religion even to building at his own expense the synagogue of the city.
Perhaps he was a convert. Inviting Jesus, the elders pointed to the merits of the centurion,
and Jesus knowing his heart and his faith immediately started going to his house.
Someone, evidently, had gone before Him to announce His coming. The centurion,
confused by so much kindness and not being prepared to receive Him properly, sent some
friends to beg him not to disturb Himself, and afterward, as can be read from St. Matthew
Gospel, he himself went to beg Him, feeling unworthy to receive such a high honor.
From the context it is clear that the centurion sent ahead friends to keep Jesus from
going to his house, then, having been told that the Savior, notwithstanding the prayer of
his friends, did not stop coming, he went to beg Him not to inconvenience Himself,
because he knew that by only saying one word He could heal his servant.
He had great faith in the divine power of Jesus and he believed that a mortal
sickness would obey His word as well, just as a subordinate obeys his superior. Being a
soldier, he was used to obeying a command without hesitation and he had absolute faith in
the command that Jesus would give that sickness; in other words he recognized Him to be
true God, because only God can have everything that He says happen.
His faith was so sincere and perfect that even Jesus was astonished, since He had
never found such faith in Israel.
In that same instant He healed the servant from afar, commanding the sickness to
leave him with a simple act of His will.
It is for this important reason that the Church repeats to Jesus the words of the
centurion before distributing the Most Holy Eucharist to the faithful: Domine non sum
dignus (Lord I am not worthy), because she demands from them this humble and
confident faith.
The soul certainly does not pray that Jesus not come to visit it, on the contrary, a
soul desires it deeply, but recognizing not to be worthy to receive Him, asks for His
vivifying act: Dic verbo et sanabitur anima mea. (Say the word and my soul shall be
healed). Jesus Christ is our life with his divine Body, made food for love, because His
Body is hypostatically united to the Word and the soul declares itself to be unworthy to
receive the Incarnated God, and at the same time begs, like the centurion, for His
vivifying act. Dic verbo et sanabitur anima mea (Say the word and my soul shall be
healed): this is the invocation of the sick to the divine Doctor, those who suppose that also
the soul can be sick and so ask to receive Him not only as love but also as medicine. This
sickness, like the one that afflicted the servant of the centurion, is a paralysis, an interior
paralysis, a kind of impotence to move supernaturally, and the divine Eucharist heals the
repentant soul.
It is in fact this Sacrament that moves our interior powers for the glory of God and
makes of our soul a hymn of love and an offering of charity to the Lord.
The faith of the centurion was profoundly humble, and this must characterize our
faith as we approach the Eucharistic Jesus: we are not worthy of Him, and we absolutely
need His help. Realizing our unworthiness, we will have that loving and respectful
gratitude that we owe Him, and at the same time, our need of His help causes us to
abandon ourselves to His mercy. It is a shame, but our poor faith often has the character of
presumption, and for this reason we obtain little or nothing. We do not go to Jesus with a
reverent feeling of our own unworthiness, but we believe that deserve what we want, and

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we grumble at the divine goodness when He does not grant our petitions. O if we only
knew to believe and to be humble, how many times we would experience the infinite
mercy of God!

3. The widow of Naim’s son.

Continuing His mission, Jesus Christ, together with his disciples and followed by a
large crowd of people, set off from Capernaum to go to the city of Naim, which was about
a day’s journey on foot from Capernaum.
At the city gate, a very crowded place were people usually met to transact
business, passed by the coffin of a young man, the only son of a widow, which was to be
interred. The mother, left alone without her only son, was crying desolately. Jesus went
near her full of compassion and told her with a reassuring voice: Do not weep. He was
moved not only by the pain for that poor woman but also He saw in her the image of His
Mother, Mary Most Holy, that in a not too distant future would cry for Him dead on the
Cross.* Psychologically, in fact, feelings of compassion are most vivid when the sorrow
of others is reflected and echoed in our own hearts; as Jesus always had present in His
mind His own Passion and the pains that His divine Mother would suffer, seeing this
mother crying so desolately could not but bring to His mind the thought of Mary.
Saying to the woman: do not weep was the same as promising her His miraculous
intervention, and so really gave her comfort. In that very moment His omnipotence
eliminated the cause of that poor mother’s sorrow; He stepped forward and touched the
coffin, using that gesture to direct the undertakers to stop. Turning to the corpse He said in
a commanding tone: Young man, I tell you, arise. And immediately the dead boy revived
and began to speak.
It was an astounding moment.
Everyone had seen that the young man was truly dead, and because the body was
traveling in an open casket, everyone saw him revive in an instant. In the words of Jesus:
Young man, I tell you, arise the omnipotence of His voice was heard, just as the echo of
the mystery of the afterlife was heard in the words of the dead boy. Everyone was thus
taken by a great fear. What the boy said we do not know, he probably uttered fearful
exclamations at finding himself in a casket and probably shouted out to his mother. For
this reason Jesus, told him to have courage and because no one dared to come closer to the
dead boy who was alive again, He freed him from the bandages in which he was wrapped
and gave him back to his mother.
The awe that came over all who were present moved them to give glory to God
and to recognize that a great Prophet was in their midst, and that the Lord had visited his
people. They did not openly confess that Jesus was the promised Messiah but many must
have thought this because the miracle had been great and astounding.

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*Very delicate and beautiful reflection: Jesus, who sees future events, with the love of a Son
compassionately thought of the immense suffering that one day His Mother would suffer.

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 The young who are dead to grace

This young man is a vivid image of those who, carried away by their passions, die
miserably to grace and go to their eternal damnation.
Motionless, unable to operate supernaturally, corrupted by their power and their
possessions, they are mourned over by the Church like that desolate mother. She follows
them in their ruin in the hopes of reviving them with her tears and her prayers. With her
desolate tears, the Church invokes Jesus and asks for His intervention, that they may stop
their way to perdition and to give them back life. It is not possible to resuscitate oneself
from spiritual death without the intervention of Jesus, because only He, with a single
touch of the grace, can stop the march towards death and give back life.
How many funerals we see along the pathways of the world and yet we are not
aware of them!
Often the motions of others that we see around us are like the commotion that we
see at funerals, because the souls that participate in them are dead to grace and their lives
seem to take them to their eternal perdition.
We should cry bitterly and instead we remain indifferent; we should cooperate
with zeal and try to stop that race to perdition, and instead many times we are part of it!
Especially today how many snares kill the souls of the young, and how many of these
early flowers are already cut from the live plant and strewn on the ground to rot in the
mud! Let us pray for the youth, let us stop them from doing evil in the name of God with
our apostolate and help them to return to the Church, who alone has the right to guide
them, and to cry over their miseries, begging for them mercy and life from Jesus.

4. The disciples of St. John the Baptist go to Jesus to ask

questions on behalf of their teacher.

St. John the Baptist was incarcerated by Herod in the Machaerus fortress where he
lived the remainder of his life suffering and praying. He had prepared the way of the Lord
preaching and baptizing, and now prepared his followers with his prayers and suffering.
That was the richest time of his apostolate, even if it did not seem so by the people of his
days. His disciples were free to go to him because Herod, for that reverential fear that
saints inspire, permitted his disciples to go and speak to him. Perhaps St. John the Baptist
was also in spiritual darkness, because physical pains, especially when they fetter the soul
depriving it of its freedom, leaves one in an interior darkness even to the point of blocking
from view the plan of Divine Providence, and preventing the discernment of her ways.
This darkness, which with greater ease enters into those souls who are tormented
about their accomplishment of a mission received by God, is the fear of being mistaken,
because the natural tendency would be to find a way to escape from it. This darkness is
endured also by the most saintly souls, who must fight temptation and rather trust the Lord
in remaining faithful to His Will.
The Baptist was in one of those moments of interior darkness when his disciples
went to tell him what Jesus was doing, asking Him what they should believe. They did not

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speak to the Redeemer out of envy or out of jealousy of His glory, but to gain guidance for
their lives, as they felt attracted to Him. This is evident from the context.
John talked about the Messiah to them many times and in doing so, he had pointed
to the person of Jesus Christ; but in his suffering and darkness he did not trust his own
words and he called on the testimony of the Redeemer. In doing this he showed how much
he thought of Him and how much he believed that He was the one who had to come. He
also wanted that his disciples, who naturally were very fond of him, would ascertain the
infinite superiority of Jesus and become His disciples.
Thus, he chose two among the most representative of his followers, two who
would be most able to influence the others; he sent them to the Redeemer with this
message: “Are you the one who is to come, or should we look for another?” Jesus Christ
did not answer with words but with facts, and He did many more miracles, showing the
fulfillment of the prophecies of Isaiah in Him (Is 35:5), and therefore declaring that He
was the One who was to come. Speaking to the Scribes and the Pharisees who, even
seeing all these miracles still persisted in refusing to acknowledge Him as the Messiah,
Jesus added: “Blessed is he that shall not be scandalized of Me” (Mt 11:6).
“Blessed is he that shall not be scandalized of Me” is a very important admonition
for those who find themselves to be before supernatural events, because every divine
event has for us light and darkness, far above our weak understanding.
To pretend that we can understand everything and be able to delve into everything
is foolishness; once it is ascertained that in an action or situation there is truly God, it is
necessary to acquire an attitude of humility and trust, which is the only way to make us
understand its harmony.
Only the Church is able to give a judgment on supernatural happenings and it is
only the Church who gives it; whoever accepts the judgment of the Church cannot pretend
to verify it but must submit to it with great humbleness.
Sometimes we are scandalized by these very mysteries of Providence, and we see
disorder and injustice where instead all is marvelously proportioned and in equilibrium.
Let us trust in the Lord and let us be sure that as far as our faith is pure and simple, we
shall have its fruits, strengthened by the grace and the mercy of God.
The message of John was not due to a lack of faith but rather, it was a way to shed
light on his disciples and to obtain from the Redeemer the confirmation and the
endorsement of all the apostolate of preparation he had done before going to prison; for
these reasons Jesus, after the messengers of John left, endorsed the mission John had done
with marvelous words.
First of all, Jesus proclaimed his fortitude: John was not like a reed bent by gusts
of wind; he remained strong against all the opponents of goodness and even against
Herod, who had imprisoned him. His fortitude was indicative of and confirmed the
strength of spirit that was his very being and the truth that he proclaimed, because he was
incapable of lying.
To this fortitude within John, which guaranteed his truthfulness, was united a great
penance which was a sign of his union with God and the mission he had received. His
penance was extraordinary and evinced his extraordinary mission. He did not speak for
any human reasons, nor did he seek any personal gain because he didn’t feel like he
needed anything; John was a Prophet—truly, even more than a Prophet—because he did

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not prophesize about the Messiah, he actually pointed to Him as already arrived and made
Him known.
He was a Prophet because he revealed Jesus for who He was, when Jesus was still
hidden; he was more than a Prophet because he pointed to Him and prepared His way,
thus accomplishing the prophesy of Malachi (Mal 3:1). Therefore he was not just a
Prophet by announcing Jesus to the crowds, but also in the life he lived that was more
saintly than those of all the old Prophets.*

Jesus praises John the Baptist.

Jesus said that among those born of women there was no one greater than John,
and with this He wanted implicitly exclude himself, because even if He was born from
Mary Most Holy, He was born by the virtue of the Holy Spirit, and His Mother was not a
simple woman, but a divine Mother, greatest among all creatures.
After confirming the sanctity and the mission of John, He addressed with severe
words the Scribes and the Pharisees who had despised God’s plan of John’s being
Precursor, and in refusing to be baptized. They wanted to be above all people and did not
want to be associated with the Publicans; but in reality, they had fallen below them,
refusing to acknowledge the way of God.
The excuses they raised to justify their contemptuous air was their condemnation;
they in fact, seeing John’s penance, to the point where he did not eat bread or drink wine,
declared him possessed by a demon; for his way of life to them was exaggerated and a
diabolical illusion. They would have liked him to have been more normal, easygoing,
sociable, and regarded his austerity and his lifestyle as heresy. They believed this to quiet
their consciences, and thus despised him and refused his Baptism.
But the evil in their souls was revealed when the Redeemer came: His life was
simple and normal, the sort of life they would have liked John to have lived; his ways
were cordial with everyone, also with sinners, and they scoffed that he was a glutton and a
drunkard who associated with everyone. Thus they revealed themselves dim-witted, that
is, oblivious and not serious, like children who play, refusing to be either happy in times
of mercy or sorrowful in times of penance.
They did not accept the austere life nor the simple one, because in truth they only
wanted to follow their own mind and their own pursuits, but the wisdom of God was
vindicated by all her children, because everyone could see for themselves the justice of
the reprimand given to them by that the Incarnate and Uncreated Wisdom, and it was
possible in future centuries to decide their guilt by their very opposition.

The never-satisfied

The judgment of Jesus upon the Scribes and the Pharisees applies in all times and
it is levied upon all those who are evil in spirit, those in the presence of great

---------------------------------------------------
* It is well known that the Jewish people called Prophets those who consecrated their lives to God in the
religious life.

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manifestations of the mercy of God but refuse them in bad faith, and quibble in all
possible ways to justify their refusal.
Austerity seems to them an exaggeration and a folly, cordiality they brand as
thoughtlessness.
A Saint too stern is for them a maniac; a Saint with a jovial temperament seems
frivolous.
If they see a normal life, they seek the extraordinary, and if they see the
extraordinary, they despise it as a fantasy.
If they are called to God with loving words, they see these words as fawning
affectations and do not accept them; if they are exhorted with strong words, they reject
them as an oppressive and offensive.
They are cannot be satisfied, because in reality they do not want to accept any
counsel and only want to follow their personal views.
This inability to be satisfied is maybe one of the most dangerous temptations of a
soul who is obstinate in its judgment, unwavering in its pride, and desiring only to follow
its own will. For these people any reasoning is illogical and annoying, because it does not
correspond to their obstinate will; it is as if they are electrified by pride, and at the least
bump or contact with the judgment or the will of another, even of a saint, they flash sparks
of prideful reactions, discharging the maleficent currents of their nature, losing their
tempers, stirring their wrath, and refusing any guidance or counsel.

The irritable.

Also in the common interactions of social or family life the state of being never
satisfied is unhappily the cause of so many disagreements and so many quarrels. Some
short-tempered, irritable people are impossible to deal with, whether with a gentle
approach or a stern one; they are unable to agree, have a constant spirit of contradiction
and it seems they have the “gift” of being able to quarrel and argue about any small
matter.
Their unbalanced nature and their little virtue creates in their lives the need for
frivolous things and the adherence to affected methods and practices that makes them
unbearable, and makes everything unbearable to them.
For instance, if they are in a conversation, they dread it as being boring and try to
end it, and if they are alone, they complain they are lonely and oppressed.
Joyful talk bothers them; serious and calm discussions aggravate them.
They complain about everything and everyone because everything annoys them,
and their wretched pride finds problems with everything.
They are not in harmony with anyone, not even with the Lord, who seems
excessive in His goodness if He allows and forgives, and seems implacable if He punishes
in His mercy.
In whatever situation they find themselves, they are irritable and discontent;
everything goes wrong, everything is bad, everything is unjust, everything is
unbelievable… and so they have a desperate life, making it equally bad for those who live
with them.

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 They lack mercy, and believe themselves to be merciful with their natural
tendencies and capricious natures.
Thus, for example, they have pity for an animal and mistreat a human being.
They obsess over what is of little importance and neglect what is essential.
They feel compassion for outsiders and are a torment to their own family.
In all this, they deceive themselves into believing that they are the only ones who
are reasonable, balanced, just, and do not tolerate the slightest reproach, lashing out
vehemently against whoever makes any comment to the contrary.
Certainly, these are more or less internal forms of lack of personal balance, but
unfortunately they are causes of great unhappiness in life. It is necessary to correct
ourselves, seeking only the divine Will and true charity; it is necessary to humble
ourselves before God and before men, feeling our nothingness, and convincing ourselves
that we do make mistakes and need to submit to the judgment of others. Oh how blessed
humility pours so much peace in our lives!

5. The repentant sinner at the foot of Jesus.

One of the Pharisees, Simon, wanted to show Jesus what a friendly and generous
person he was, and so he invited Him to eat with him at this house. Perhaps he was hoping
to reason with Jesus and rebut so many of His ideas; he might have had also a secret
desire to talk to Him in an effort to scrutinize His thoughts. This can be gathered from that
fact that he did not extend to Jesus the normal ritual acts of kindness due to guests. If he
had invited Jesus for the honor of having him as a guest, he would have treated Him
warmly and with honor. It is also possible that he had received some favors from Jesus
and out of politeness he had invited Him to return the favor; this can be assumed from the
parable of the two creditors that later the Redeemer told him.
Jesus accepted the invitation not so much for the Pharisee, but because His mercy
was waiting for a poor sinner who was searching for Him and He wanted her to find him
easily.
The people of the Middle East used to leave the doors of a banquet open to
everyone, so that passersby could see who were the invited guests; Simon, then, followed
this habit also because he knew that many people were looking for Jesus.
And so, as soon as she came to know that Jesus was at this table, a woman
identified as Mary Magdalene by the foremost scholars, a known sinner in the city, that is
“a public sinner”—a prostitute, having a feeling a great repentance for her own sins and
filled with a great, supernatural love for the Savior, came into the room where Jesus was
and threw herself at His feet.
In ancient times people used to eat while reclining on couches, lying on one’s left
side and with one’s feet extending behind; therefore, it was easy for the woman to kneel
and hug the feet of Jesus. Jesus’ feet were bare, because sandals were left outside when
people were at table so as not to dirty the couches.
She was a poor sinner lead astray more by her heart full of ardor than by inner
degeneration; she heard Jesus speaking, perhaps she had been present at the miracle of the
young man who had come back to life, and she felt a deep sorrow for her faults. The sight
of Jesus’ countenance had overcome her with the purest love that changed and

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transfigured her; and through this love she was able to experience and review just how
deep the degradation of her life was.
Was she a seducer of the young man who had died prematurely in Naim? Did she
feel in that death the first strong sorrow for her sins, seeing his mother crying
uncontrollably? Did she see in the miracle of that resurrection the possibility for her to
resurrect herself from her own faults? It is a possibility, because it seems in fact that she
was a public sinner right in Naim.
She entered the house of the Pharisee, without paying attention to anyone, all taken
by her feelings of anxiety and repentance. She had brought with her a little vase of
precious ointment; she knelt, hugged the feet of Jesus and at that divine contact she felt a
profound repentance before such pure love and so she started sobbing and sobbing like the
women beggars at the entrance of the Temple who wet the ground with their tears and
dried it with their hair. She loosened her hair (that was tied up), feeling in that Divine
Body a mystery more ethereal than in the Temple, started to dry those divine feet with her
hair and anointed them with the ointment.
In her tears she poured out her repentance and in the ointment she showed her
love, a love that renewed her entirely, because it attracted the mercy of God. It was a most
sweet moment: she poured out her repentance and love, and the Heart of Jesus expanded
with infinite tenderness. He communicated His mercy and purity to her and in that
communion she understood Who was her Lord. She had the experience of human contact;
she knew very well the tormenting flames that the senses ignite, she knew the stench of
the flesh, and was awestruck at how marvelous and divine the Body of Jesus was.
What life was transfused in her soul, and with what faith she hoped to be forgiven
of all her sins! She understood that Jesus was the fount of mercy and she did not move
away from His feet without receiving His forgiveness. Her tears were a confession to
Him, her sobbing was public reparation, and her heart was broken with love and sorrow.
She understood that Jesus was God, that He was the One offended by her sins, and that
mercy could only come from His absolution.
She cried and cried; the tenderness of Jesus made her understand the love that He
feels for all souls, and she cried for all those that she had scandalized. Her tears were the
expression of her deep sorrow.
Like a mother, who when caressed by the soft hands of her baby, feels very loving
and tender and that sweet loving touch moves her deeply, so Jesus, at the tears of the
woman, at the touch of her hair, and at her expression of adoration and love, felt moved
and showed on His radiant divine face the mercy that He had for her.
He was most tender, most sweet, and majestic, and His cerulean eyes were shining
with grace and were radiant with charity. He was absorbed in the great mystery of the
regeneration and the great gift he wanted to give to mankind of His Body and His Blood
for their Redemption and Food for life. He communicated for the first time in that special
way to a soul, and anticipated the banquet of life.
An ethereal virtue flowed from Him, not to heal just a body but a soul, and He
gave the first fruits of the love of His adorable Heart.
The Pharisee could not at all be scandalized that Jesus allowed a woman to touch
Him, so powerful was the light of divine purity that transpired from Him; on the contrary,
he was scandalized that His sanctity would allow Him to bear that contact, and from that
fact he immediately judged that he could not be a Prophet, since Jesus had not realized

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that the woman was a “public sinner”, a prostitute. This occurrence shows us to what
degree he appreciated His immaculate purity, notwithstanding that he, as a Pharisee, was
always suspicious.
Jesus Christ, however, demonstrated to Simon that without a doubt he was a
Prophet answering his suspicions immediately with a parable, and to make it clear to him
that He knew their hearts and scrutinized them. He asked him a question, almost flattering
his wisdom, asking for his opinion. It was an act of divine delicacy, because He wanted to
rehabilitate the poor woman in his eyes, compelling him to give Him almost the basis for
it.
A creditor, He said, had two debtors; one who owed him five hundred days’ wages
and the other fifty. Since they had no money to pay him back, he forgave the debt to both.
Who, then, will love him more? And Simon answered that the one who would love him
more would be the one who had been forgiven the most, out of great gratitude. Jesus,
almost applauding, said: “You judged well.” After that He described to Simon in a
friendly manner what he had not done when he received Him in his house and made him
realize instead what the woman had done.
It was the Jewish custom to honor the arriving guest first by having his feet
washed, or even personally washing them, because they were covered with dust and dirt.
After this washing, a kiss of peace and friendship was given and then the guest’s hair and
beard were oiled with perfumed ointment. Simon had done none of these things; instead
the woman washed His feet with her tears and dried them with her hair, and repeatedly
kissed them and anointed them with ointment.
With divine delicacy, Jesus did not want to be severe with Simon, and He did not
ascribe the lack of hospitality due Him to unkindness, but only to a lesser debt of gratitude
that he had toward Him. The woman instead received an immense benefit, which is the
forgiveness of her sins, reason of her loving gratitude. Indirectly, and with His usual
divine grace, Jesus made clear to Simon that he had received little benefit from His visit to
him, and for this reason had loved Him only a little. The presence of Jesus, that could
have renewed his heart entirely, had only slightly removed some small defects and a little
“rust” from his soul. He loved little, thus he had obtained only a little.
Jesus almost ascribes to Himself the reality of this small amount that Simon had
received, in order not to mortify him before all the others. He justified him for his lack of
hospitality, He continued with extreme delicacy to explain the little benefit he had
received from His visit, and manifested to him the great fruit that the “public sinner” had
received. Of course, He did not speak to the fundamental question with which the Pharisee
concerned himself, that is, how He could allow a prostitute to touch Him, since she was
already regenerated; for this reason, looking at her he said in a loving omnipotent voice:
“Your sins are forgiven.”
This last expression of mercy makes us understand with how much humility this
woman, a sinner, received this discussion about her. Rather then justifying or excusing
herself, she agreed with her tears and moans that she was a great sinner. Since she had
exposed herself to be despised by the other guests, Jesus wanted to rehabilitate her, and
He said to her: “Your sins are forgiven.” He already had forgiven her, but with these
words gave her the assurance of His absolution.
He spoke with so much divine majesty and with such force of truth, the guests
could not doubt that He really had forgiven her, thus they asked each other amazed: “Who

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is this who even forgives sins?” Jesus then, once more assured the woman of the mercy
He had given her, saying to her: “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.” She had not
been saved by a sterile faith, nor was it only her belief that had justified her; she confessed
her sins crying and she received solemnly the absolution from Jesus. The loving acts she
did afterwards were her penance of reparation. This is a decisive reason against the claims
of the Protestants who deny the Sacrament of Penance, saying that is enough to believe to
be justified.

We who are sinners and the mercy of God.

This beautiful scene of the poor sinner must help us to open our hearts to penance
and to love. We are sinners, but we must never doubt the divine mercy and we must
implore it at the foot of the Confessor, who represents for us Jesus Christ. In Church,
where He sits at the banquet of life, let us seek out the feet of Jesus, humbling ourselves in
the forum of Penance; let us cry for our sins, using the same things in our lives that can be
symbolized by hair unloosened, to purify us with charity, and to anoint Jesus’ feet with the
precious ointment of the virtues which are opposed to the sins we committed. This is the
best penance we can do.
What would be the use of a simple prayer of penance if does not remove the
habitual vices from our souls? Rather, if pride is our vice, we must give Jesus the
fragrance of humility; if it is impatience, the fragrance of meekness; if it is avarice the
fragrance of generosity; if it is impurity it is necessary to give Him the fragrance of the
pure lilies.
To cry, to dry, to kiss, to perfume, those are the acts of true penance: to cry out of
sorrow, to cleanse in order to amend, to kiss in order to express love, and to anoint with
virtue.
We need to cry before others and not only in our own hearts, because penance is
also an external act of reparation for the faults committed; to cleanse the feet of Jesus, that
is the poor, as the Fathers explain, is to atone for the sin with alms; to kiss Jesus is to trust
in Him, because penance is never separated from love; and finally anointing Jesus with
perfume as He sits at the eternal banquet, is to open our hearts before the Blessed
Sacrament.
The world is full of “public sinners”, prostitutes, who are not only those who sell
themselves to sin, but are also those who invite others to sin by showing the impurity of
their body and soul.
What are all of the indecent fashions, displays at beaches, at dances, and in sports
wherein feminine decorum is forgotten, if not a prostitution of souls? Many prostitutes
live to attract the careless in the snares of the pleasures of the flesh, but they have a mark
of infamy that distinguishes them in the sense that their offer is evident; the sophisticated
women of the world—no less temptresses—live to attract souls into the degradation of
their elegant dresses and they are even more dangerous and deadly. The first group
demands a price for their sin, the second group does not overtly ask for money, but
multiplies their sins.

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 Are sins of thought and desire less grave than those which are consummated?
Jesus said: Everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with
her in his heart.
How many “public sinners”, prostitutes, need to go to the foot of Jesus and ask for
His mercy!
Oh, if only this great truth would be understood! It is rare to find a woman of
society who is not a prostitute, because it is rare that she does not stain her soul with her
lewdness.
How can she remain at peace knowing that she aroused in others the flame of
concupiscence? How can she show herself instead of hiding? With what heart can she
present herself in the Temple of God unworthily, when she should enter only to cry for her
sins?
It is possible to sin with the eyes: may they cry bitterly to be purified.
It is possible to sin with the ostentation of riches: may these riches work to
comfort the pain of the poor.
It is possible to sin with suggestive makeup and perfume: let women renounce to
them for the sake of Jesus.
Let us cry for our sins, because nothing is more comforting and sweet than to cry
for them, and let us implore the mercy of Jesus that He may also say to us these consoling
words: “Your sins are forgiven.”

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 Chapter 8

1. Jesus and the Galilean holy women. The parable of the sower. The Mother and the
relatives of Jesus. The calming of the storm. The possessed man of Gerasenes. The
daughter of Jairus and the woman with a hemorrhage.

1 And it happened afterwards that he was making a journey through the cities and towns,
preaching and evangelizing the kingdom of God. 2 And the twelve were with him, along
with certain women who had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities: Mary, who is
called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had departed, 3 and Joanna, the wife of
Chuza, Herod’s steward, and Susanna, and many other women, who were ministering to
him from their resources. 4 Then, when a very numerous crowd was gathering together
and hurrying from the cities to him, he spoke using a comparison: 5 “The sower went out
to sow his seed. And as he sowed, some fell beside the way; and it was trampled and the
birds of the air devoured it. 6 And some fell upon rock; and having sprung up, it withered
away, because it had no moisture. 7 And some fell among thorns; and the thorns, rising
up with it, suffocated it. 8 And some fell upon good soil; and having sprung up, it
produced fruit one hundredfold.” As he said these things, he cried out, “Whoever has ears
to hear, let him hear.” 9 Then his disciples questioned him as to what this parable might
mean. 10 And he said to them: “To you it has been given to know the mystery of the
kingdom of God. But to the rest, it is in parables, so that: seeing, they may not perceive,
and hearing, they may not understand. 11 Now the parable is this: The seed is the word of
God. 12 And those beside the way are those who hear it, but then the devil comes and
takes the word from their heart, lest by believing it they may be saved. 13 Now those upon
rock are those who, when they hear it, accept the word with joy, but these have no roots.
So they believe for a time, but in a time of testing, they fall away. 14 And those which fell
among thorns are those who have heard it, but as they go along, they are suffocated by
the concerns and riches and pleasures of this life, and so they do not yield fruit. 15 But
those which were on good soil are those who, upon hearing the word with a good and
noble heart, retain it, and they bring forth fruit in patience. 16 Now no one, lighting a
candle, covers it with a container, or sets it under a bed. Instead, he places it on a lamp
stand, so that those who enter may see the light. 17 For there is nothing secret, which will
not be made clear, nor is there anything hidden, which will not be known and be brought
into plain sight.1 8 Therefore, take care how you listen. For whoever has, it will be given
to him; and whoever does not have, even what he thinks he has will be taken away from
him.” 19 Then his mother and brothers came to him; but they were not able to go to him
because of the crowd. 20 And it was reported to him, “Your mother and your brothers are
standing outside, wanting to see you.” 21 And in response, he said to them, “My mother
and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it.” 22 Now it happened, on
a certain day, that he climbed into a little boat with his disciples. And he said to them,
“Let us make a crossing over the lake.” And they embarked. 23 And as they were sailing,
he slept. And a windstorm descended over the lake. And they were taking on water and
were in danger. 24 Then, drawing near, they awakened him, saying, “Teacher, we are
perishing.” But as he rose up, he rebuked the wind and the raging water, and they ceased.

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And a tranquility occurred. 25 Then he said to them, “Where is your faith?” And they,
being afraid, were amazed, saying to one another, “Who do you think this is, so that he
commands both wind and sea, and they obey him?” 26 And they sailed to the region of the
Gerasenes, which is opposite Galilee. 27 And when he had gone out to the land, a certain
man met him, who had now had a demon for a long time. And he did not wear clothes, nor
did he stay in a house, but among the sepulchers. 28 And when he saw Jesus, he fell down
before him. And crying out in a loud voice, he said: “What is there between me and you,
Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beg you not to torture me.” 29 For he was ordering
the unclean spirit to depart from the man. For on many occasions, it would seize him, and
he was bound with chains and held by fetters. But breaking the chains, he was driven by
the demon into deserted places. 30 Then Jesus questioned him, saying, “What is your
name?” And he said, “Legion,” because many demons had entered into him. 31 And they
petitioned him not to order them to go into the abyss. 32 And in that place, there was a
herd of many swine, pasturing on the mountain. And they petitioned him to permit them to
enter into them. And he permitted them. 33 Therefore, the demons departed from the man,
and they entered into the swine. And the herd rushed violently down a precipice into the
lake, and they were drowned. 34 And when those who were pasturing them had seen this,
they fled and reported it in the city and the villages. 35 Then they went out to see what
was happening, and they came to Jesus. And they found the man, from whom the demons
had departed, sitting at his feet, clothed as well as in a sane mind, and they were afraid.
36 Then those who had seen this also reported to them how he had been healed from the
legion. 37 And the entire multitude from the region of the Gerasenes pleaded with him to
depart from them. For they were seized by a great fear. Then, climbing into the boat, he
went back again. 38 And the man from whom the demons had departed pleaded with him,
so that he might be with him. But Jesus sent him away, saying, 39 “Return to your house
and explain to them what great things God has done for you.” And he traveled through
the entire city, preaching about the great things that Jesus had done for him. 40 Now it
happened that, when Jesus had returned, the crowd received him. For they were all
waiting for him. 41 And behold, a man came, whose name was Jairus, and he was a
leader of the synagogue. And he fell down at the feet of Jesus, asking him to enter into his
house. 42 For he had an only daughter, nearly twelve years old, and she was dying. And it
happened that, as he was going there, he was hemmed in by the crowd. 43 And there was
a certain woman, with a flow of blood for twelve years, who had paid out all her
substance on physicians, and she was unable to be cured by any of them. 44 She
approached him from behind, and she touched the hem of his garment. And at once the
flow of her blood stopped. 45 And Jesus said, “Who is it that touched me?” But as
everyone was denying it, Peter, and those who were with him, said: “Teacher, the crowd
hems you in and presses upon you, and yet you say, ‘Who touched me?’ ” 46 And Jesus
said: “Someone has touched me. For I know that power has gone out from me.” 47 Then
the woman, upon seeing that she was not hidden, came forward, trembling, and she fell
down before his feet. And she declared before all the people the reason that she had
touched him, and how she had been immediately healed. 48 But he said to her:
“Daughter, your faith has saved you. Go in peace.” 49 While he was still speaking,
someone came to the ruler of the synagogue, saying to him: “Your daughter is dead. Do
not trouble him.” 50 Then Jesus, upon hearing this word, replied to the father of the girl:
“Do not be afraid. Only believe, and she will be saved.” 51 And when he had arrived at

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the house, he would not permit anyone to enter with him, except Peter and James and
John, and the father and mother of the girl. 52 Now all were weeping and mourning for
her. But he said: “Do not weep. The girl is not dead, but only sleeping.” 53 And they
derided him, knowing that she had died. 54 But he, taking her by the hand, cried out,
saying, “Little girl, arise.” 55 And her spirit returned, and she immediately rose up. And
he ordered them to give her something to eat. 56 And her parents were stupefied. And he
instructed them not to tell anyone what had happened.
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2. Women as collaborators of the Kingdom of God.

Although not reduced to the shameful level to which the pagan world had
relegated women, the Jews nevertheless still held women in a condition of inferiority that
had little difference from the pagans, due to the abuses and tyrannies of men who were not
faithful to the Law. Jesus Christ rehabilitated women in a marvelous way; he was born
from the Virgin Mary forming in Her a masterpiece of grace and sanctity. But not satisfied
with just this marvelous elevation of a woman to being Co-Redemptrix and Mother of
mankind, He also wanted to have women as collaborators in the apostolate.
Women often assisted Rabbis, taking care of them in their needs, but they did not
dare to follow them and show themselves openly; Jesus Christ, instead, wanted some
pious women to follow him and made them the forerunners of the innumerable forces of
women who would cooperate in His Church to evangelize the world. We can truly say that
these women were the first women of Azione Cattolica. (An Italian lay group devoted to
evangelization).*

Psychology of Woman.

Woman is a marvelous creature, enriched with gifts if she does not move away
from her mission; she is imbued with a strong spirituality. Even though she is frequently
very preoccupied with the needs of her daily life, she nevertheless has a practical intuition,
superior to that of men; her mind, often less tired from useless studies, is thus more clear
and virgin, letting her be more easily open to the spiritual and supernatural world; her
heart is more tender and generous, and she knows the dedication of love, charity and
sacrifice.
She seems weak, but in truth she is made of steel; tempered and unbending; even
when she surrenders, she persists in her opinion and in her powerful will. She prays, not
because she feels weak, and she is not more religious than man for any sentimental or
imagined nature. She prays and believes because she has a stronger sense of the secrets of
the life in the spirit, and this makes her stronger than man who is very often distracted by
his material life.
This would seem paradoxical, as a woman is completely taken up with her
household responsibilities, so long as she has retained her feminine nature and not taken
on a miserable masculine one; her work, however concerns the real needs of life and these
do not distract her easily from spiritual thoughts; men instead almost always spend their
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*A clear description of the value of women and their mission as they were invited by Jesus to cooperate in
the apostolate of evangelization (as embraced by the “Azione Cattolica”, an Italian lay group devoted to
evangelization, and many other similar groups).

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time in a world of their own design—with artificial tasks and stresses, and so become
absorbed in these concern.
It could be said that the woman floats atop the waves of material needs, while man
is swept away by their current.
The woman therefore is the help of man, similar to him, adjutorium simile sibi;
she is like the other pole of a current and can be said to complete him.
When a man falls thus debasing himself, he sadly finds in a woman the help
similar to him, but in evil, and in that case this woman becomes ruinous.
It is always from his rib—that is from within his chest—from the heart of man
that a woman is formed. If he has a pure heart, the woman is pure; if he is wise, the
woman is wise; if he is passionate, she is passionate; if he is a saint, she is a saint.
This fact is very little understood, but is of immense importance: it is not the
woman who is initially perverted, but rather the heart of man is; if he is perverted he
generates perversion; his eyes are easily aroused and his lustful glances lead the woman
astray making her shameless and immodest.
In a cruel environment created by ruthless men, the woman becomes immediately
a helper of this barbarous attack on humanity, as was seen in Spain during the “Red”
regime, now a terrible, deplorable memory.*
In a spiritual environment the woman becomes angelic, and in an apostolic
environment she becomes mother of souls.
Her holiness, when it is true holiness, is more absolute, generous, and deep,
because a woman takes everything seriously and profoundly, in good as well as in evil.
Her self-esteem and pride are more hidden but stronger; how she reacts and her
wrath are more devastating, as a bottled-up explosive, that creates havoc when it goes off.
She has a keen prudence but can become sneaky and cunning if it is in her self-
interest or worse if it is for evil.
She is an excellent strategist and can manipulate situations wonderfully.
She can smile even when she is in a paroxysm of anger and wrath; she can cry
with a gelid or calculating heart; she can be very kind even when she deeply despises; she
can be false and lie with surprising aplomb.
On the other hand, if she is committed to good, these qualities, like raw materials,
change; they become diligence, endurance, supernatural prudence, wisdom and alertness
in thorny situations, a charitable smile, sweet compassion and wise silence.

Woman in the apostolate.

Divine grace transforms souls for the apostolate; however the woman brings to the
ways of the spirit her practical intuition that comes to her from her knowledge of domestic
economics; she knows how to save at the right time; she knows to patch something when
needed; she knows to soften an excess of zeal and she knows that one “cooks better with a
slow flame”, in other words, to be prudent. Her delicacy makes her rebukes gentler; her
smile softens and dulls the pain of a strong thrust of a scalpel into a malignant tumor; her
---------------------------------------------------
* This is a reference to the anticlerical Republican government in Spain defeated by the Nationalists in the
Spanish Civil War (1936-39)

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goodness makes bad reactions impossible and makes it easier for others to think things
over.
She is affable and naturally eloquent, because she knows to touch those with a
confused or upset mind. She has more patience in waiting for a sinner to change his ways,
like a cat waits, and she can make use of her charm at least to put him on the path toward
being good.
She feels like a mother of souls and follows them with the care of a mother helping
her baby at his first steps; she knows to be above someone who has lost his way in life
even in winning him over; if she realizes that there is an openness in his heart, she comes
in daringly; if she misses in her attempt, she is a master of strategic withdrawal. She is less
poisoned by the wretched errors ravaging the world, and thus her faith is simpler and she
prays with more abandon, which are great helps for her apostolate.

The pious Galilean women who were followers of Jesus.

Jesus Christ wanted women among his followers, not so much for helping in the
inevitable needs of daily life, to which He had subjected himself in his humanity, but for
forming the first group of those who would work and cooperate in the apostolate.
The pious women who followed Him, were attracted to Him because of the
spiritual or material benefits they had received, and gratefully they provided out of their
own resources; but it was really the divine grace that attracted them and the Lord gave
them the most beautiful gift, calling them to Himself.
They were not many, although the few that were there remained faithful up to
Calvary, and if their faith in the end was shaken, there remained in them the faithfulness
of compassion up to the tomb of the divine Master, and before all others they announced
the Resurrection.
The Apostles had their faith shattered and they fled, while the pious women lost
their faith but did not flee; and the compassion that remained in them was like fertile soil
from which grace could resurrect their faith.
The Sacred Text names a few of these pious women: Mary Magdalene, the sinner,
from whom seven demons had gone out when Jesus made her free from sin; Joanna, wife
of Chuza, Herod's steward and treasurer, and most likely the one whose son was healed by
Jesus resulting in his belief and that of all his family (Jn. 4:53); Susanna, of whom little is
known and many others. Mary Magdalene, redeemed by her love for the Redeemer, and
first among the others in this pious group, gave courage in all future centuries to all
women who go astray, showing them how a sincere repentance can transform and
completely renew a soul.

Woman and her mission in the Church.

This is the mission of a woman in the Church: to serve God, to cooperate with the
hierarchical apostolate, and to be, through prayers, penance, and deeds, an element of

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regeneration for the world. She cannot pass the time, like Eve, lazily seeking out
diversions and picking prohibited fruits; rather, she must tremble at just the thought of
scandalizing a soul with her cursed ostentations, and she must fear even more to be a
cause of stumbling for ministers of God in their life of sanctity and holiness.
When a woman is near a Priest she must remember that she is next to Jesus and
she must think of a Priest as if he were a monstrance with the consecrated Host.
If she becomes aware that she is becoming a cause of sin and weakness, she must
run away immediately and not steal even minimally from God that love that was
consecrated to Him. To Azione Cattolica (an Italian lay women group devoted to
evangelization - see also previous note) she must bring not a mere generic sense of
femininity but rather holiness.
To be saint, a woman must be very vigilant over her own nature that can be
terribly prone to a bias towards pride, vanity and impurity. She must let herself be guided
by a spiritual director step by step to enable her to renounce her indomitable judgment;
she must live humbly hidden and work for the love of God in the purest way, to win over
her vanity; the woman must live for the glory of God and to be before Him as a hand-
maid, entirely trusting in His Will.
Her role models cannot and must not be the women of the world; they must be
holy women; her inspiration should be the B.V. Mary imitating her in all her virtues.
What will she do? Jesus calls her to follow Him, but will she allow the world to
seduce her?
And what will the world give her but only degradation and shame?
Can she lose herself in vanities while there are souls who clamor for her maternal
help?
A carousing woman, neglecting her maternal duties, is not a woman; she only
damages her maternity, and she is a betrayer of her mission. Jesus always entrusts souls
to save and to be brought to Him Christian women by those who work in Catholic
women’s lay groups, and thus she cannot jeopardize her mission with a worldly life,
which is an immoral offense to her spiritual maternity. Follow Jesus, you good women;
minister to Jesus in his Ministers and in his poor; be the glory of the Church and aspire to
the glory of Heaven.

3. The divine Sower.

Creation, the marvelous manifestation of divine power, high above whatever we

can possibly imagine and poor human science can try to comprehend, is the fruit of one
Word of God: Ipse dixit et facta sunt (He said it and it was done). The kingdom of the
God within the soul and the renewal of all things because of the Redemption is also the
effect of the Word of God. The Eternal Word became flesh and from His assumed
humanity the divine Word resounds. The Redeemer saved us; He sent us the Holy Spirit to
teach us what the Divine Word means and to speak to us in the depths of our soul; the
Church has the infallible expression of the divine Word in the Pope while in the
priesthood it has its disseminator.
The world is like a field sown by the Word, and because of it, it sprouts, blooms
and gives its fruits. The Word rules over the creative, redemptory and sanctifying works
of God; it rules over transcendent Spirits with its intellective light, and rules over men

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with its truth; it moves the angelic wills to love and the will of earthly travelers toward
goodness; it manifests to the Angels the magnificence of God, and discloses to men who
have Faith, the hidden mysteries of its nature and its glory; for the Angels it is like a light
that shines and like eyes that enable them to see God, and for men it is like a lamp that
guides them from the darkness of exile to their homeland.
The Word of God is our companion in this vale of tears, a friendship that sustains
us, a maternal caress that gives us comfort.
It is a lighting bolt that cuts through the darkness of our lives; an infallible guide
on uncertain, anguish-filled paths; and a star to guide us on our difficult journey.

The Word of God, seed of life.

The Word of God, therefore, is of ultimate importance in the foundation and the
propagation of the kingdom of God. Jesus, with a most beautiful parable, wanted to
illustrate its action and to preannounce its splendor in harmony with human free will as it
is welcomed by those who are open to it, and to describe the disposition of the souls who
either allow it to yield good fruits or who render it useless for them by rejecting it.
A sower went out to sow his seeds; this is the very Word, which sprang forth from
the bosom of the Father and came to earth to sow his Divine Word. He did not instill it
with force, he went out to sow his seed, needing our cooperation, just as the seed needs the
earth. If the earth does not receive it, if it does not give of itself, the seed remains barren.
Jesus describes the fate or effect, so to speak, that the divine Word had or will have in a
soul, by comparing the various places where it may fall; there were places where it was
scattered in vain; places where it fell upon hardened hearts of stone and so withered;
places ensnared by thorns of passion suffocating it; and those places that received it with
the right disposition and made it fruitful.
Jesus Christ in fact, spoke to the multitudes, and many listened to His words but
they did not keep them in their heart and they let Satan take them away. He spoke to the
Scribes and the Pharisees but the hardness of their hearts made his teaching fruitless; he
spoke to those who were preoccupied with the worries of their lives and they let his words
suffocate—choked off by their many other concerns; He spoke to the Apostles and to the
disciples and the Divine Word produced in them abundant fruits.
This is the story of evangelization in the world throughout history: the pagan world
rejected the divine Word; it let Satan pull it away and then trampled on it and persecuted
it. Wise men accepted it as an interesting novelty, but their hearts of stone did not succeed
in changing it into a life-giving force. The crowds and masses received it and converted;
the society became Christian that was once pagan, but the thorns of preoccupation with
riches and pleasures slowly suffocated it and so practically speaking society went back to
paganism in spirit and in life. The souls who were good received it with sincerity,
transfused it into life, and brought forth abundant fruit, to which St. Luke adds the
multiplier, a hundredfold.

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 The journey of the Word of God in the centuries.

As we have done for the history of civilization, we could identify, with the
guidance of the Gospels, the different ages of the propagation of the Divine Word: the
Jewish people were like the public path: they heard the word of God and they wasted it.
The world was like rocky ground: it received the sacred preaching, but did not allow it to
produce fruits for it did not take root. The Christian nations welcomed it, but slowly
choked it off, overtaken by the anxieties of their daily worries. Finally, at the end of times,
in the one sheepfold and in the Kingdom of God, the divine Word shall make an
abundance of fruits.
Jesus Christ, after speaking of the way the preaching of the Gospel would be
received, spoke of the need of a full and open propagation. The Gospel could not remain
hidden; it was necessary to be the light to the world, and thus it had to be like a lamp on a
lamp stand.
The Church is the lamp stand that keeps on high the divine Word, and from the
Church, the infallible Magisterium of the Pope, it enlightens all peoples. It is a Word even
mysterious sometimes, because what is divine is awesome, and cannot be understood
easily, but Jesus announced that one day it would be manifested and propagated in the
whole splendor of its light, because the Church herself would explain it with the clarity of
her scholars and her Doctors.
Jesus then alerted his Apostles and those who would succeed them, urging them to
keep in mind how to listen to the divine Word He spoke, in order to preach it and not to
waste it in their hearts so as to not make their own mission useless. Take care how you
hear, that is, pay attention to what I say, and do not believe that you can interpret My
words according to your whims; do not pay attention to your thoughts, but make an effort
to understand My thoughts in truth. Do not render your preaching worthless by distorting
My thoughts, because you would no longer be ministers of the divine Word but of your
own ideas, and you would also lose what you believe you have achieved.
Jesus was speaking also to future heretics, who by distorting his Word that they
proudly think to have, would in fact have the Sacred Text of the Scriptures taken from
them. The heretics do not know how to listen to the divine teaching, because they adapt it
to their own mistakes and their passions, and thus they end up losing the pure Text of the
Scriptures by rejecting or distorting it.

The reason for the parables.

The parable of Jesus, as He explained it, warns us on how we must listen to the
divine Word, and on the obstacles that oppose its becoming fruitful for our souls. He did
not speak openly to the Jewish people but used parables that “they may look but not see,
and hear but not understand”, so that the evil-minded would not become more guilty by
rejecting and disowning His word after having heard it clearly. For these people the
parables were a puzzle, and therefore their lack of understanding was an excuse for them
for not putting them into practice.
However to the Apostles and to his future followers Jesus spoke clearly, because
the Word of God had to be made known to propagate His kingdom. Our soul cannot

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welcome the Word as we idle away our time in earthly, secular pursuits where it is
practically lost and snatched away by Satan; it cannot be received by a heart of stone
which would prevent its germination or in a heart filled by the thorns of material needs
and concerns that suffocate it; the Word must be received in rich soil, that is by a heart
that wants to be saved, faithful to God and ready to fight against the attractions of
temptation, in order not to lose the great gift of God.

The Mother of Jesus and his relatives.

We must agree that too often the divine Word is squandered, especially in the
times in which it should produce the most fruits—that is, during the more solemn times of
the Church’s liturgical year. The parable of Jesus then has its fullest realization, and we
must sorrowfully admit that there are only a few souls who offer the Lord rich, fertile soil.
Let us then humble ourselves and let us receive with the right disposition this great
gift of God, thinking that on the day of judgment we shall not have to make excuses but
rather we shall account for every word sown in our hearts by the infinite mercy of God.
The Evangelist Luke himself calls us to this sacred duty recalling the words spoke by
Jesus when his Mother and his brothers, that is his closest relatives, were trying
unsuccessfully to pass through the crowd and speak to him. However these “closest
relatives” had not come to him in faith, but were going to Him with hostile intentions and
to reach Him easily they had forced the B.V. Mary to accompany them.
From St. Matthew’s Gospel (Mt 12:24), the Pharisees already had spoken with
Jesus as if he had been possessed and his relatives were going to Him in their imaginary
fears to save Him or even to hold and isolate Him. Jesus therefore, even though they were
with his Mother, did not want to receive them, and He said that his mother and his
brothers were those who would listen to the word of God and put it into practice.
Jesus did not want to treat his Mother badly, who with utmost faith always listened
to Him and put into practice His divine Word; but because his relatives put her in front of
them to hide their intentions, in answer to their deceitful maneuvers He naturally refused
to receive them with his Mother used in that way, knowing that their intentions were
absolutely not shared by His Mother.
In fact, if someone uses the name of a princess to conceal a fraud and his
fraudulence is perceived by the target, the target will respond: “I do not want the princess
nor you; go away.” (This is an Italian saying.) The retort is not meant as an offense to the
princess, but to let the swindler know that his fraud attempt has been discovered.
It is important to mention that Jesus, in speaking of his Most Blessed Mother,
wanted to say indirectly that She was indeed like those that followed the Word; she had
been raised to this highly honored level because she listened to the message of God and
obeyed it.

Mary became Mother of God

because She welcomed the divine Word.

Mentioning this episode St. Luke wants us to consider how important the divine
Word is for the life of the soul; the divine Maternity, that is, the highest honor that a
creature could have, would have been useless if, with the Word becoming flesh, his Word

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had not been accepted. Mary was the Mother of God because she welcomed the divine
message and believed it; she was immensely great and holy because she practiced with
sublime accuracy what she learned from the Sacred Scriptures and what she learned from
the mouth of her Son. May this beautiful thought envelop all of us with veneration and
faith in the word of God, to let it become food for our souls and put into practice in our
lives, according to the directives of the Church.
Believing that we can save our souls by only reading Sacred Scripture is the
greatest foolishness and illusion; to think practicing it according to our own views or
whims is irresponsible; to believe to be specially inspired by God in interpreting it and in
applying it, apart from the Magisterium of the Church, is pride beyond measure, because it
is tantamount to believing oneself worthy of special insights from God and to be
independent from the Magisterium of the Church, established by Jesus Christ. In fact, if
the conclusions drawn from private interpretations were truly from the Holy Spirit, they
should be the same in all cases, which is the exact opposite of what is observed in practice
and made evident by the great number of Protestant sects. Let us go, then to the Catholic
Church and to her one and infallible Magisterium to learn how to know and put into
practice the divine Word.

4. The storm on the lake.

Jesus Christ, climbing on the boat, told his disciples to go out to sea and cross over
to the opposite bank of the lake. It is clear from the context that He wanted to land at the
town of Gerasenes, to free the town from two possessed men who were terrorizing it. St.
Matthew speaks in fact of two possessed men who lived in the cemetery (Mt. 8:28). St.
Luke though, like St. Mark, speaks only of one of them, the most raging and dangerous
because he was possessed by a legion of demons.
While they were sailing, Jesus fell asleep but soon a squall blew over the lake,
putting the boat in danger, because it was taking on water. It is possible to think that the
demons themselves aroused the storm to make it impossible for Jesus to land, sensing His
intentions; it is possible that the same demons that possessed that unhappy soul, that made
him furious, and that later on entered the swine throwing them into confusion and causing
them to fling themselves off the cliff as if taken by the squall, were the spirits of enormous
agitation and provoked storms.
The windstorm was howling and Jesus slept, but sleeping He allowed both the evil
spirits and the wind to blow on the waters; he allowed it but he was there, He slept, but his
Heart was awake.
The apostles, who were terrified, did their best to keep the boat afloat, because
they were experts of the maritime arts, but when they saw that they were not succeeding,
they woke up Jesus telling Him: Master, we are perishing. He woke up and quickly, with
great majesty, rebuked the wind and the waves, which subsided and a great calm followed.
He rebuked them, even though waves and winds have no intelligence, because being God,
He commands also inanimate objects; as He rebuked them, perhaps He addressed the
raging spirits who agitated the lake. After that, he addressed the Apostles and he said:
“Where is your faith?” Why were they panicking if Jesus was with them? And since He
was with them why had they confided in their own ability to stay afloat, instead of calling

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Him first? How could they fear being submerged knowing that they had a mission to
accomplish and knowing that their Master had to do his work? Their faith instead had
disappeared, as if swallowed by the storm; the spirits of the storm, ravaging the lake,
ravaged also their souls.

The Church and good souls in the storm.

Jesus Christ wanted to give his Church a lesson of unequalled value, because the
Church always walks amidst squalls and storms since her mission is to oppose the
kingdom of Satan.
The Church walks through storms and so do the souls that the Lord chooses for
missions of charity, because every small initiative of apostolate and every charitable
institution have the purpose to thwart Satan’s plans. Those who think of doing a good
deed without the storm of contradictions or tribulation, thinking that the storm is a sign of
bad luck instead of a sign of the presence of God in the act and a great privilege, only
deceive themselves. Those that in their thoughts believe in seeking out human successes
and accolades are not only deluded, but it is a sure sign that their plan to do good
conceived in this self-serving way is only a miserable collection of purely natural
processes that can be compared to the life of a mushroom: it is born, it grows and it dies.
This fact should be examined with great care so that we may not be scandalized by
the storms in the Church or the storms encountered by the good people active in the ways
of the Lord.
Also in the natural lifecycle of plants, the winds, atmospheric disturbances and
even storms play an important role: they circulate the air around plants, strengthen their
hold in the soil, help pollination by transporting pollen, and shake away the buds that are
not essential and borne from the exuberance of the plant, which if left on its branches
would prevent the full maturity of its fruits.
Our body lives through the circulation of blood which is pushed through the
pressure within the arteries and veins by the beating of the heart even to our smallest
organs. This circulation is a storm of blood, a beneficial storm; if it were not there the
blood could arrive to the main organs but the humblest would perish. Suffering and
contradiction not only purify the soul and strengthen its activities supernaturally, but also
allow the fruits of goodness to reach the most humble creatures. They represent the
beating of the heart and the pressure of the veins that push the blood even to the smallest
capillaries.

The value of contradictions.

Some contradictions appear to kill good initiatives, but instead they bring them
from the bottom to the surface, from the stony ground to the good soil, and force a soul to
rely not on personal strength but on the power of God, not on personal prestige but on
grace, rendering the soul more beautiful and alive in its good activities. Sometimes
contradictions seem to kill a good activity but in reality they prune it or even transplant it,
giving it the possibility of sprouting an even richer array of holy works, purifying some

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souls who started and saw their efforts fail, and making it possible for them to even arrive
to sainthood.
Those who aspire to do good do not seek the satisfaction of personal pride, nor
expect to capitalize upon it; if they did they would be doing something completely secular
and sometimes even deleterious in nature.
Goodness is done by God, and the storms compel us to go to Him and give to Him
the precious contribution of our sacrifice. We do not see how much dross covers our
hearts and our intentions, and we do not know how to humble ourselves to remove it. The
Lord allows these storms to purify us and when we respond to his loving invitation we
then become instruments in His hands.
Further, honor and prosperity often only spoil us because they awaken in us the
seeds of our disorderly nature. There are souls who are very holy, because of grace, and
they cannot be thrown into the mire of worldly honors; the Lord allows them to suffer
storms almost as if to cover these treasures of His with topsoil and algae so thieves do not
steal them. The perfection of a soul is like a fruit that must be hidden under the ground or
covered by straw, and the Lord, to Whom it is most dear, lets the storm preserve it, not
suffocate it.
We cannot determine where our faulty nature can take us, and thus some
contradictions and humiliations seem calamitous to us; but God, who controls all the
events of his creatures does not hesitate sometimes to even shut off all the lights, to reduce
us to the level of imprudent children, and to form around us a tough skin of humiliation
that we need to preserve the good fruits He gives to us.
To believe that if this or that should not have been said or done thus avoiding a
humiliation, to believe that without humiliations a good work could go forward full speed
ahead, to regret a failure that seems beyond repair, means to be unable to know to what
point we can be pushed by our own misery, and it also means not to have faith in the
successful interventions of God.
God removes the poor one from the dung and places him among the princes of his
people; He draws out life from the same mire and at the appropriate time makes what
looked dead flourish again.
To those souls who complain about contradictions and do not know to appreciate
the vivifying value of a pain can be said what Jesus said to the Apostles: “Where is your
faith?”
God is omnipotent, and when we have unshakeable faith in Him, he draws life
from what is dead. Everything depends on our putting our trust in Him. The most awful
calumnies can be transformed in His sacred hands into praises if He wants it; the
voluntary humiliations to which a soul succumbs, perhaps due to imprudence, become
drills of love to pierce hearts, when God revives them.
It is not through our own efforts that we win the battles of the spirit, but it is
through grace; it is also true that grace penetrates us more the less we rely on the world. A
humiliation is a like void in our ego, a void immediately taken over by God, who renders
our weakness alive and at His service.
During storms it is only necessary to have faith and, through prayer, awaken Jesus
who is sleeping. We must believe and abandon ourselves to God who alone can conquer.
On occasion He wants to show His omnipotence without any doubt and so He chooses
ways that for us seem to lead to disaster.

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 He chose the Cross to overcome Satan and the world, and he won. The cross, a
sign of scandal and foolishness He used nevertheless to sanctify mankind and overcome
the pagan arrogance.
This is a truth that no one can deny. God in some of his works imposes his terms
on the defeated, and He wins. This is what He does with souls whom He chooses for very
great works; he allows them to endure the most humiliating events, imposes his terms of
love in those very debased circumstances, He makes himself known, He makes Himself
be loved, and He conquers!*

Victory belongs to God.

The Church, the work of his hands, has always taken this route and she shall
continue along it until the end of the times. She lives to drive out Satan and chips away at
his dark kingdom; Satan conjures up storms to sink her. Jesus allows this to make his
Church more beautiful and active, while He sleeps; that is, He seems to be asleep; instead
with his Sacred Heart He watches over his bride. Human attempts to quiet the storm fail
and only increase it, because man does not have the secrets of grace that alone profess the
glory of God and conquer hearts. Human attempts are only seeds of new tempests, and
nothing else.
The Church prevails when she calls on Jesus with all her heart and when, like Him,
she bleeds, suffers, and is crucified. She then has an immense radiant strength and
produces marvelous fruits of love. Nations do not add anything to the prestige of the
Church because her prestige is supernatural; nations add to her glory not when they reach
a political agreement, but when they are converted and walk on the way to their eternal
salvation.
The kingdom of Jesus Christ is not of this world; that is, it does not work toward
the vainglory of the world, but to save souls and to give glory to God. When the Church’s
inner turmoil becomes more disastrous, then her cry to God must be stronger, and in so
doing she will lose her outward appearance but will grow in substance, like a tree in
winter that loses all its leaves and plunges its roots more deeply into the soil.
The triumph of the Church is only in the triumph of saving souls; a political
triumph does not mean anything to her—on the contrary, it can harm her if it becomes a
forced compromise with the world. The souls that are truly faithful to her do not help her
become friendly with the so-called great people of the world, but assist her with the
propagation of the faith and good works.
The “Azione Cattolica” (Lay Catholic Women Group) and other Catholic lay
groups, which seek to evangelize and practice the Christian virtues, are truly the army and
the prestige of the Catholic Church. To the Church, souls are her jewels, the poor are her
treasure, prayer to God is her power, Jesus Christ is her refuge, and when Jesus rises on
her storm-tossed deck everything becomes quiet and peaceful.
Jesus sleeps, apparently, in his Tabernacle, until prayer awakens Him; He wakes
when He is solemnly put in the monstrance and exposed. The Eucharist triumphs, deep in
souls, like the rising of His love and the silencing of storms and waves in us, and leaves

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* Don Dolindo, perhaps unintentionally, describes the violent storm in his life, and also the divine strength
and light that guided him through it so that he would not fall.

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perfect calm. O Jesus, awaken, rise upon your throne of love, because your Altar is like
the deck of the ship of the Church. Rebuke from this throne human ingratitude and
impose your calm by imposing your love on everyone. Amen.

5. The possessed man of Gerasenes and the loathsome legions who move amid the
souls that are dead to grace.

After the storm had been quieted, Jesus with his Apostles sailed to the town of
Gerasenes, which is across from Galilee. Suddenly a naked man, contorted and
exceedingly perturbed, emerged from some burial caves of a cemetery nearby; he threw
himself at the feet of Jesus and started shouting: “What have you to do with me, Jesus, son
of the Most High God? I beg you, do not torment me.” Jesus, in fact, before even seeing
him, with His mere presence enjoined the evil spirit to go back into the abyss.
Satan is an impure spirit, dethroned, and degraded, but always prideful and eager
to dominate; when he sees the opportunity to invade and possess a man, he knows he is
taking away from the Lord something that belongs to Him; thus he feels he is a master and
finds a certain satisfaction in his extreme unhappiness. To be thrown into the abyss is a
brutal blow to his most abhorrent ego, and for this reason he begged Jesus not to torment
him. He is a loathsome spirit, and he finds pleasure in filth and loves nakedness and
impurity. For him it is a victory to have a creature disrobe and profane his body; it
becomes for him a desecrated temple, a shattered altar to the glory of God, an idol erected
upon the earth set to receive the adoration that would have been destined to the Lord.
Satan had possessed the unhappy man of Gerasenes in a particular way, stripping
him, and compelling him to hide in the putrid detritus of the tombs; the man was like a
trophy for him, and so he did not want to be forced to leave him. For this reason he filled
him with violence, made him terrifying, uncontrollable even with iron chains, and made
him the terror of the entire village.
Jesus Christ knew very well that more than one demon had taken hold of the poor
possessed man, and questioned him in order that all the people present with him could
hear. Thus He asked him, "What is your name?" He replied, "Legion," because thousands
of demons had entered into him. Thousands of demons could possess a single man,
because a spirit does not occupy physical space.
The people with Jesus were terrorized to know that they were present before a
multitude of evil spirits, and their blood ran cold with fear. The demons then, pushed by
Jesus to go back into the abyss pleaded with Him to allow them to enter a herd of swine
feeding on the nearby hillside, and immediately, after having been given His permission,
they burst into them like lightening and with untold fury the pigs rushed down the steep
bank of the hill into the waters below where they drowned.
The demons wanted at least to inflict damage on the swineherds, and Jesus
permitted it because the Law prohibited that kind of grazing. The man who had been
possessed and who was now free and in peace, was clothed by some of the people that
were present and went to the feet of Jesus, full of gratitude.

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 Diabolical obsessions.

It is mystery to us how Satan possesses a man or an animal. Most likely he takes

hold of its nervous system and through it, takes hold of its physical activities. He cannot
enter the soul of a man unless sin opens the door for him; but even in this case, he invades
the body that he then molds.
More common than full possession is diabolical infestation, which is a more
violent temptation of Satan, which he usually sets on those he hopes to form to be his
followers or on those who may give occasion of scandal, corrupting souls in this way and
inducing them to perdition.
It is most sorrowful that in our own time Satan infests countless creatures which
propagate around them irreparable damage.
Theater actors or movie stars, shameless and provocative women, those who
spread errors and who support harmful ideologies and ways of living are, unfortunately,
the diabolical legions infesting the world today. In these poor creatures satan lurks almost
unseen; and in addition he disguises their awful misery under a glamorous, alluring
appearance and so makes them the ruin of countless souls. These creatures hide in the
tomb, that is in the putrid detritus of a corrupt and immoral life, and from their caverns,
disguised as places of joyful gatherings, they bring death, corrupting and infesting, using
the attraction of their impurity, other souls dead to grace.
It is necessary to pray insistently to Jesus that He might intervene with His power,
even with his timely scourges and dispel these awful legions of corruption. Every public
meeting place because of them has become a tomb of souls, and the lairs in which they
lurk—let us all call them as such—recall the corrupt sinful cities of the past that deserved
the fire that rained down on them from the sky. May the power of God dissolve these lairs,
where Satan triumphs and human dignity is perverted. May the mercy of God convert all
souls led astray and eliminate forever from the world these horrors of impurity.
When the swineherds told the Gerasenes what had happened, they came in great
numbers to verify what had occurred, but instead of being grateful to Jesus, they asked
him to leave.
The loss of the herd of swine instilled in them a fear of even greater punishments;
they believed that Jesus was a prophet who would call down fire from Heaven upon them,
and so they preferred that He leave them. Only the man who had been possessed and who
was now free, asked Jesus the grace to stay with Him, but Jesus did not permit him to do
so.
Sent away from the town, Jesus did not push the matter and stay there anyway, as
He could have done, but rather immediately left. In His mercy He left there that one freed
man to glorify God and spread the blessed seeds of faith among those people who would
listen to him. Contrary to what He was accustomed to doing, He told the man to go back
and proclaim what God had done for him thus announcing the great thing Jesus had done
for him, and his recognizing in Him the true God.
How often does Jesus Christ come to visit souls but is driven away! They feel
troubled by his presence, because they do not want to leave their sinful habits especially
because they fear for their herds of swine, that is, for the impure passions they cultivate in
their hearts.

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 May the merciful Lord have pity on them and call them to salvation through his
Ministers, to show the people the magnificence of infinite goodness.

6. The daughter of Jairus and the woman with a hemorrhage.

When Jesus came back from the town of the Gerasenes He was received by a
multitude of people waiting for Him to be cured from their diseases; perhaps the
extraordinary event of the curing of the possessed man had already reached them. A poor
father, by the name of Jairus, head of the Synagogue, had a daughter who was dying and
knowing that Jesus had come, ran and threw himself at His feet, begging him to come to
his house to heal her. She was his only daughter, and he loved her deeply.
Jesus without hesitation moved toward his house, jostled by the immense crowd,
when a woman, who for twelve years had suffered with an hemorrhage, ran after Him.
She was sure that if she could only touch his cloak she would be healed. Her faith was so
great especially because she had already spent all her possessions on many doctors and
medicines and had never been cured.
St. Mark (Mk. 5:26) adds that she had suffered a great deal at the hands of the
doctors but instead of being cured, she had actually gotten worse. St. Luke, who was also
a doctor, out of sensitivity to his colleagues, only notes that no one had healed her. The
woman went to Jesus full of faith in His divine power, and secretly, being behind Him,
touched the hem of His cloak, and instantly she was completely healed.
Jesus was immediately aware of what had happened, because He felt coming out
of him a power, that is a flowing out from Him of power and mercy that produced the
miracle. Being God He knew and saw the intention of the woman and as Man-God he felt
the flowing of that power from himself. How did He physically feel it? His Heart certainly
felt the tenderness of a great charity flowing toward a certain presence of human
unhappiness; He felt as if drawn toward a creature and His love wrapping itself around
her, healing her. Her blood vessels felt His omnipotence and immediately stopped the
hemorrhagic flow; His creative touch immediately restored to normal the damaged tissues,
and completely and entirely healed the woman’s body.
Jesus as man did not know her, nor did He see her because she was behind him;
that is the reason he asked like someone who is unaware: “Who touched me?” He wanted
the miracle to be known for the glory of God and wanted to make this an unequivocal sign
thereby giving an assurance also to the woman for her future; maybe He wanted to prevent
future objections regarding the miracle, for those that would try and explain it away as the
result of sudden emotional outburst that somehow could have tightened her blood vessels.
He thus wanted that the woman herself confess the miracle and thank the Lord. His
senses had become aware of the miracle for the power that had flowed out of Him, almost
like the release of current that results when opposite electromagnetic poles touch, and He
wanted to crown it with an admission and a test, showing himself in this way to be also a
man.
The poor woman had a firm faith, but her faith had still one imperfection: she
believed Jesus to be a magician having in himself a hidden power to do miracles, and she
could not imagine that He could feel the consequences of his own power; she believed
him to be almost like a powerful antidote and a source of healing. Jesus wanted to show

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her that He did not do the miracle unconsciously, but it was His will that had healed her,
and for this reason He asked: “Who touched Me?”
Everybody denied touching Him, but to St. Peter and the other Apostles that denial
seemed ridiculous, because so many people were touching the divine Master, in fact he
was pressed on all sides by the crowd. Jesus, however, was not talking about occasional
contact, but a voluntary contact done because of faith, a faith so strong that it could incline
his omnipotence to work a miracle, and he insisted: “Someone has touched me; for I know
that power has gone out from me.” The poor woman then understood that she had been
noticed, and she became afraid because she had been bold and deserving of a strong
reproach—unclean as she was under the law—to dare to touch if even just the bottom of
the cloak of the Redeemer; for this reason trembling, falling at the feet of Jesus, she
explained in front of everyone what had happened to her. Jesus did not reproach her at all,
on the contrary, reassured her and ascribed to her faith the miracle that He had done for
her and sent her on her way in peace.
Jairus had urged the Lord to come to his house to heal his daughter who was dying
and the pause for the miraculous cure of the woman with the hemorrhage must have been
excruciating for him. It could be said that Jesus, in delaying, was not giving full attention
to the affliction of that poor, desolate father; yet on the contrary Jesus knowing what
would happen to the child, wanted to encourage him and strengthen his faith with this
miracle. In fact, while he was still speaking, someone came to tell Jairus to not trouble the
Teacher any longer because his daughter was dead. Jesus encouraged Jairus and exhorted
him to have faith; and had Jairus not been present for this miracle, his pain would have
been so overwhelming that it would have shaken his faith.
When they arrived at his house, the mother of the dead child came out crying, and
there were also other neighbors all crying and shouting out in grief. Jesus exhorted all
present not to cry, because the girl was not dead but only asleep. On hearing this, they
started mocking Him, because they knew she was dead.
They were crying more for outward appearances than for actual grief, as it usually
happens in the case of people who are unrelated to the dead person; thus they could easily
go from crying to mocking. They were people without faith and so Jesus did not want
anyone to join Him in the room where the dead child was lying; however, in order for his
prohibition to not seem unilaterally harsh, He did not permit his own people to follow
Him either, with the exception of Peter, James and John and the girl’s parents. The lack of
faith of the others would have been an obstacle to the miracle.
On entering the room, the parents must have burst into heart-rending tears,
especially the father who only then saw his daughter dead. It is psychological trigger, in
fact, that at the death of a dear one, such things as a visit, a condolence or even a change
to something in the house, renew the distress bringing more grieving tears.
At the renewed pain of the parents, Jesus did not hesitate, but taking her by the
hand, with his omnipotent voice cried out: “Child, arise!”
The soul of the deceased girl was not dead, it lived independently of her body, as
an immortal spirit, and the Sacred Text gives us this testimony saying: “Her breath
returned and she immediately arose.” The soul heard the command of Jesus and Jesus
taking the corpse by the hand, healed it, and thus restoring it to normalcy, the soul
reentered the body and gave it life again, and the child got up. She was however weakened

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by the sickness, perhaps it was tuberculosis, and thus Jesus ordered them to give her some
food.
The parents were astounded and since Jairus was the head of the Synagogue he
said he wanted to speak of this extraordinary event to the Sanhedrin and to other Priests to
show them that indeed Jesus was the Messiah. This is evident from the text, since it is
written that the Redeemer instructed them to tell no one what had happened; but of
course, since there was crowd gathered in the house and surrounding it, and with the child
who just come back to life, this prohibition of Jesus would have had no practical meaning;
thus Jesus gave this instruction especially for the authorities. He knew very well their evil
dispositions, He knew how they would ill-treat Jairus and his family, as they had done in
the case the healing of the man born blind, and He did not want the poor father to have
trouble on account of Him. His prohibition was a touch of His most delicate goodness.

The mystery of sacrifice

and providence

The dead child was twelve years old and the woman who was sick with the
hemorrhage had suffered for twelve years; she was stricken by sickness as the child was
born, then she was healed and the child lay dying. Is there a providential match between
these two creatures? There might have been, since God often utilizes the suffering of one
person to provide his Divine Mercy to another. It might well be that the sickness of the
woman was changed into blessings of fertility for the barren house of Jairus, and the
illness and the death of the child contributed sacrifice and suffering like a treasure to the
healing of the woman.
The understanding of these mysteries of immolation and providence belong only to
God, and we cannot say anything more. We can believe, however, that everything is done
with infinite charity and the Lord tempers the things of this world with marvelous
harmony. Even misfortunes, even the most awful and painful temptations have a reason
in the divine Providence, and they cannot go beyond a limit that God imposes on them.
When the coffee bean is put to the flame to be rosted, it is exposed to the danger of
being destroyed, because the flame envelops it to its potential destruction. The roster’s
wise care, however, permits the flame to go to a certain limit, and when the bean is rosted
and gives off its aroma, he takes it away from the fire and leaves it to crackle by itself.
Tribulation and temptation come to destroy and ruin us, and the Lord permits them
to work on us to bring from our souls the aroma of virtue. It is necessary then to trust in
God and to abandon ourselves to His love. When we do not have this trust we either leave
ourselves open to attack by these contrarian forces or we fight against them with our
insufficient strength, and so are ultimately crushed. What can a poor coffee bean do
against fire? It can try to resist it with its weak, wood-like shell, use its oily coating as a
shield against it, but it will only crackle and cannot be saved unless a careful hand takes it
away from the flame at the right time.
The poor woman with the hemorrhage put her trust into doctors’ hands, she wasted
all her money, but she only became worse; had she gone to ask God at the same time, she
would have improved. When she went to Jesus she abandoned the doctors and trust in
human solutions, and it was enough for her to touch the hem of His cloak to be restored to
health.

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 O if we only would touch the hem of the supernatural world, if our prayer would
rise above the limits of our poor earth with a faith fully alive, how many marvelous
consequences we would have!
Jairus begged Jesus to heal his daughter, and the first result he saw from his prayer
seemed disastrous, because Jesus delayed his visit due to the hemorrhagic woman, and the
child died. However, Jesus encouraged him and exhorted him not to fear and to have faith.
Sometimes the Lord waits to answer our prayers, sometimes it seems as if our prayers are
unheard, do not have an effect or even have the opposite effect of what we ask for; let us
not fear, then, and only have faith, because to hope beyond hope is a secret to receive
from God not only a help but real and wonderful miracles.
To the crowd that was crying over the dead child, Jesus said: “Do not cry because
she is not dead but asleep.” These great and beautiful words He also says to us when our
dear ones depart from this life, because they are also asleep, waiting for the final
resurrection. What are the years or the centuries of the tomb if not time spent sleeping?
Can we keep time if we sleep? A night seems like a minute, and after the dark of night
immediately returns the light. Let us not be excessive in crying over our departed ones,
but let us trust in the glorious coming of Jesus who shall call us from our tombs and
resurrect us. The obsessive mourning for the departed is not a sign of love but rather one
of little faith in the eternal life and in the resurrection. Yes, we cry, because the heart
tenderly aches, but we must remain at peace because the soul does not die and the body
itself is waiting at rest for the resurrection.
The girl was brought back to life, and Jesus asked that some food be given to her.
The soul also resurrects when it is lifted out of the death of sin, after which the soul needs
to feed on the Bread of life to be sustained and not fall again into the darkness of death. It
is impossible without this food to live to God and persevere in being good.

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 Chapter 9

1. Mission of the Apostles. Herod the Tetrarch and Jesus. First multiplication of the
loaves. Confession of St. Peter. Christian abnegation. The Transfiguration. Healing of
a possessed epileptic. Prediction of the Passion. The true greatness. Jesus refused by the
Samaritans. Requirements to follow Jesus.

1 Then calling together the twelve Apostles, he gave them power and authority over all
demons and to cure diseases. 2 And he sent them to preach the kingdom of God and to
heal the infirm. 3 And he said to them: “You should take nothing for the journey, neither
staff, nor traveling bag, nor bread, nor money; and you should not have two tunics. 4 And
into whatever house you shall enter, lodge there, and do not move away from there. 5 And
whoever will not have received you, upon departing from that city, shake off even the dust
on your feet, as a testimony against them.” 6 And going forth, they traveled around,
through the towns, evangelizing and curing everywhere. 7 Now Herod the tetrarch heard
about all the things that were being done by him, but he doubted, because it was said 8 by
some, “For John has risen from the dead,” yet truly, by others, “For Elijah has
appeared,” and by still others, “For one of the prophets from of old has risen again.” 9
And Herod said: “I beheaded John. So then, who is this, about whom I hear such things?”
And he sought to see him. 10 And when the Apostles returned, they explained to him all
the things that they had done. And taking them with him, he withdrew to a deserted place
apart, which belongs to Bethsaida. 11 But when the crowd had realized this, they followed
him. And he received them and spoke to them about the kingdom of God. And those who
were in need of cures, he healed. 12 Then the day began to decline. And drawing near, the
twelve said to him: “Dismiss the crowds, so that, by going into the surrounding towns and
villages, they may separate and find food. For we are here in a deserted place.” 13 But he
said to them, “You give them something to eat.” And they said, “There is with us no more
than five loaves and two fish, unless perhaps we are to go and buy food for this entire
multitude.” 14 Now there were about five thousand men. So he said to his disciples,
“Have them recline to eat in groups of fifty.” 15 And they did so. And they caused them
all to recline to eat. 16 Then, taking the five loaves and the two fish, he gazed up to
heaven, and he blessed and broke and distributed them to his disciples, in order to set
them before the crowd. 17 And they all ate and were satisfied. And twelve baskets of
fragments were taken up, which were left over from them. 18 And it happened that, when
he was praying alone, his disciples also were with him, and he questioned them, saying:
“Who do the multitudes say that I am?” 19 But they answered by saying: “John the
Baptist. But some say Elijah. Yet truly, others say that one of the prophets from before has
risen again.” 20 Then he said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” In response,
Simon Peter said, “The Christ of God.” 21 But speaking sharply to them, he instructed
them not to tell this to anyone, 22 saying, “For the Son of man must suffer many things,
and be rejected by the elders and the leaders of the priests and the scribes, and be killed,
and on the third day rise again.” 23 Then he said to everyone: “If anyone is willing to
come after me: let him deny himself, and take up his cross every day, and follow me. 24
For whoever will have saved his life, will lose it. Yet whoever will have lost his life for my
sake, will save it. 25 For how does it benefit a man, if he were to gain the whole world, yet

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lose himself, or cause himself harm? 26 For whoever will be ashamed of me and of my
words: of him the Son of man will be ashamed, when he will have arrived in his majesty
and that of his Father and of the holy Angels. 27 And yet, I tell you a truth: There are
some standing here who shall not taste death, until they see the kingdom of God.” 28 And
it happened that, about eight days after these words, he took Peter and James and John,
and he ascended onto a mountain, so that he might pray. 29 And while he was praying,
the appearance of his countenance was altered, and his vestment became white and
shining. 30 And behold, two men were talking with him. And these were Moses and Elijah,
appearing in majesty. 31 And they spoke of his departure, which he would accomplish at
Jerusalem. 32 Yet truly, Peter and those who were with him were weighed down by sleep.
And becoming alert, they saw his majesty and the two men who were standing with him.
33 And it happened that, as these were departing from him, Peter said to Jesus: “Teacher,
it is good for us to be here. And so, let us make three tabernacles: one for you, and one for
Moses, and one for Elijah.” For he did not know what he was saying. 34 Then, as he was
saying these things, a cloud came and overshadowed them. And as these were entering
into the cloud, they were afraid. 35 And a voice came from the cloud, saying: “This is my
beloved Son. Listen to him.” 36 And while the voice was being uttered, Jesus was found to
be alone. And they were silent and told no one, in those days, any of these things, which
they had seen. 37 But it happened on the following day that, as they were descending from
the mountain, a great crowd met him. 38 And behold, a man from the crowd cried out,
saying, “Teacher, I beg you, look kindly on my son, for he is my only son. 39 And behold,
a spirit takes hold of him, and he suddenly cries out, and it throws him down and
convulses him, so that he foams. And though it tears him apart, it leaves him only with
difficulty. 40 And I asked your disciples to cast him out, and they were unable.” 41 And
in response, Jesus said: “O unfaithful and perverse generation! How long will I be with
you and endure you? Bring your son here.” 42 And as he was approaching him, the
demon threw him down and convulsed him. 43 And Jesus rebuked the unclean spirit, and
he healed the boy, and he restored him to his father. 44 And all were astonished at the
greatness of God. And as everyone was wondering over all that he was doing, he said to
his disciples: “You must set these words in your hearts. For it shall be that the Son of man
will be delivered into the hands of men.” 45 But they did not understand this word, and it
was concealed from them, so that they did not perceive it. And they were afraid to
question him about this word. 46 Now an idea entered into them, as to which of them was
greater. 47 But Jesus, perceiving the thoughts of their hearts, took a child and stood him
beside him. 48 And he said to them: “Whoever will receive this child in my name, receives
me; and whoever receives me, receives him who sent me. For whoever is the lesser among
you all, the same is greater.” 49 And responding, John said: “Teacher, we saw a certain
one casting out demons in your name. And we prohibited him, for he does not follow with
us.” 50 And Jesus said to him: “Do not prohibit him. For whoever is not against you, is
for you.” 51 Now it happened that, while the days of his dissipation were being
completed, he steadfastly set his face to go to Jerusalem. 52 And he sent messengers
before his face. And going on, they entered into a city of the Samaritans, to prepare for
him. 53 And they would not receive him, because his face was going toward Jerusalem. 54
And when his disciples, James and John, had seen this, they said, “Lord, do you want us
to call for fire to descend from heaven and consume them?” 55 And turning, he rebuked
them, saying: “Do you not know of whose spirit you are? 56 The Son of man came, not to

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destroy lives, but to save them.” And they went into another town. 57 And it happened
that, as they were walking along the way, someone said to him, “I will follow you,
wherever you will go.” 58 Jesus said to him: “Foxes have dens, and the birds of the air
have nests. But the Son of man has nowhere to lay his head.” 59 Then he said to another,
“Follow me.” But he said, “Lord, permit me first to go and bury my father.” 60 And Jesus
said to him: “Let the dead bury their dead. But you go and announce the kingdom of
God.” 61 And another said: “I will follow you, Lord. But permit me first to explain this to
those of my house.” 62 Jesus said to him, “No one who puts his hand to the plow, and
then looks back, is fit for the kingdom of God.”
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2. Mission of the Apostles and those of the Priests.
The crowd around Jesus was constantly increasing, forcing Him to delay His
travelling from town to town. For this reason He called all his apostles and began to send
them ahead of Him to do what He was doing.
He gave them power over the sick and over evil spirits, thus multiplying through
them, deliverance and healing. Thus the crowd of people around Him that sought to be
cured began to lessen, and it was possible for Him to announce the Kingdom of God
across a more extended area. The Apostles cooperated in this effort through their initial
preliminary preaching. In this way Jesus Christ was able to associate them closer to
Himself and to spark in the Apostles a feeling of spiritual dignity and their responsibility.
In fact the ministries of charity and the apostolate are invaluable aspects of the formation
of those called by God to the Priesthood.
When a person, after the right preparation, comes close to the physical and
spiritual misery of the populace, he feels the call to be more holy and to act; he abandons
the puerile ideas that he had in childhood, and for the same very real trials and difficulties
of the apostolate, there awakens in him the need to conquer himself and to pray. Keeping
young people isolated, always considering them not yet ready or not to give them, with the
appropriate cautions of prudence and care, the initiative to do good things, means to keep
them always children and to implant in them frequently a kind of childish mindset
concerned with games and pranks, spite, idleness, the seeking of personal comfort,
pettiness, and gossip that it is so prevalent in the lives of the young.
Taking on good initiatives, the soul feels more adult and when difficulties arise, it
ceases its childish approach to life. The very contact with kinder souls which thirst for the
divine Word, are anxious to do good and are humble in their faults or weaknesses, helps a
youth to awaken in his heart the desire to acquire virtue and to fear the possibility of
causing scandal. It is also necessary that young people be trained in the apostolate from
their earliest years, because in this way they submit easily to the directions of those who
are more expert and are ready to accept with more humility their advice or
admonishments.

A simple life, without excessive comforts.

Jesus wanted the Apostles to start under His divine eyes the apostolate, which they
later on would continue after His passion, death, resurrection and ascension into Heaven.
He gave them sound advice to facilitate their success and ability to produce good results.
He began by eliminating from their life all that could complicate it: , "Take

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nothing for the journey, neither walking stick, nor sack, nor food, nor money, and let no
one take a second tunic. Jesus did not want to prohibit them from taking precise things, so
to speak, with the literal strictness that the Pharisees put in their interpretations, but He
only meant for them to avoid all that was unnecessary and that could complicate their life
or give them a certain affectation of human prestige. This is very clear, in fact in St. Mark
(Mk 6:8) who notes that Jesus permitted them the use of a staff, if they felt they needed it
during their travels, but it would have to be an ordinary staff, not a staff of honor which
could give an aura of importance.
Jesus Christ spoke in broad terms and themes and the Evangelists, in writing down
His words, gave them the same broad, overarching meaning that they had received when
they heard them; they did not concern themselves with insignificant, trivial details that
would not change the sublime thought of Jesus. He said to not take a staff, as a sign of
majesty or to use one to suggest one was like a teacher or a Prophet, as St. Luke says, but
He also said that they could bring a cane to lean on, as St. Mark said.
If a Protestant would like seize upon this verse, taking the occasion to use the
words of Jesus to complain against Catholic Bishops, he would show that he does not
understand that the crosier (pastoral staff) is part of the sacred vestments; it signifies the
participation of the Bishops in the power that the Pope has to minister to the flock. This is
further demonstrated in the fact the Pope as the only Supreme Pontiff does not use the
pastoral staff, because he has the full mandate to minister to the flock.
Jesus Christ wanted his Apostles to be free, without temporal worries and without
useless accouterments of human prestige, because they had only to trust in God; they had
to wait for His providence for their necessities. It would be pharisaical to say that it would
go against the word of Jesus if someone carries some minimal, rudimentary supplies
during an apostolic trip; by the same token it would be wrong to carry many suitcases or
trunks and other numerous comforts, because the true apostolate is always founded on
trust in God, in poverty and in simplicity.

Poverty, simplicity and trust in God.

We all agree that travelling with all the comforts we are used to having, is always
more agreeable, but it is very necessary to get used to more simple ways; it is necessary to
educate young priests and seminarians (and all who are called to an apostolate) to get
them ready for everything and for all the disparate conditions one experiences in life. This
means to eat everything, to get used to different surroundings readily and joyfully, to
prefer discomforts instead of what we like in the spirit of penance, to always give to others
what is better and to accept everything from the hand of God, to get used to not caring
about money but to rely on Divine Providence, to not create useless health-related
regimens without the strict need for them, and not to obsess in changing shirts or clothes,
only for the sake of having a feeling of well being. To rid oneself of the inconvenience of
useless habits, fashions and whims: this is what forms an apostolic soul, and this is what
Jesus was saying when He made recommendations to the Apostles about their way of life.
If someone who is in charge of a Seminary or is a spiritual director of souls,
especially if destined to the Holy Priesthood or to Religious life, realizes that a person in
his charge has an inclination or a habit that is opposed to this free, holy life, he must

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correct this in that person nicely but firmly, directing this soul to the way of penance and
to mortification for the love of God, which is the easiest way to obtain victory, with the
help of the Lord. Certain things that are not good for certain people, and it is also
necessary to have charity when correcting these tendencies, proceeding methodically;
however someone who has the misfortune to be a slave of habits that complicate his life
must feel the desire to be freed of them and accept things contrary not to one’s health but
to one’s taste, in a spirit of penance.
The search for luxury in life is a great source of unhappiness, and the penance
done to overcome the desire for material comfort, later brings the greatest and
incomparable pleasure of having full freedom of the spirit, and reducing at the same time
considerably the actual material discomforts of the earthly pilgrimage. The insufficient,
the ill-made, the uncomfortable, are all found everywhere and he who gets used to them,
for the love of God, is happy wherever he finds himself; but those who are used to the
good things in life, to the whims and vagaries of fashion and luxurious living, becomes a
cross to himself and to others.
We insist on this fundamental point, because Jesus himself made it an essential
basis for the mission of the Apostles. It is a grace to have the opportunity to deny
ourselves and to do penance for the love of God, because this is the seasoning and the
fruitful essence of all zealous works of the soul. To have the opportunity to deny oneself
means to abandon something of ourselves and to make great strides in the way of divine
love. It is necessary to reduce to a minimum the needs of our daily lives, to minimize our
encumbrances according to our nature, to minimize resistance, and so to be able to fly up
high and take others with us. Just as is done with an airplane, that being heavier than air
must be built in a way that its frame is light, its shape slender, and it flies with the least
possible air resistance.
Jesus after instructing the Apostles on what they would have to do in their lives as
pilgrims also told them how they would have to behave with the people they were going
to meet. First of all, they were not to waste any time on unnecessary conveniences or
visits; on the contrary, having chosen an honest house they would simply stay there. To
move from one house to another could be offensive to those who would put them up. It
would be seen as either a sign of fickleness of the spirit or a desire to seek better
accommodations.
His Apostles were to be satisfied with whatever came their way; this had to be the
fundamental point in what was essential to their lives, and they had only to concern
themselves with working for the glory of God and for the salvation of souls, preaching the
word of God. Only if people they encountered would not receive them were they to show
their disapproval, but this they would do as testimony to them and not out of spite or
hatred; it would be the last effort to conquer their hearts, acting openly and publicly, as for
example, by shaking off the dust from their feet, to indicate that they were rejecting all
interaction with them, and all responsibility, and to make clear to them how awful and
dangerous it was to be against the word of God, calling down His punishment on
themselves.
Since the Apostles in this first mission did a great number of healings, popular
support certainly grew in the area in which they traveled, and thus it came to Herod’s
attention. The tetrarch was not so much concerned about the Apostles, but about this Jesus
that they were announcing. This fact makes it clear to us just how great the faith and

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enthusiasm of the Apostles was when they spoke of the divine Master. They attributed all
the miracles they worked to Jesus, and therefore entire towns echoed His name, among
great benedictions.
Herod, because of his own evil cunning and for fear of losing his kingdom,
monitored everyone, as is common in authoritarian and tyrannical regimes; he made many
inquiries to many different people and in different ways to find out who this Jesus was. The
answers were very varied, some answered saying that he was a resurrected John the Baptist,
which Herod thought absurd because he was sure he had had him beheaded. For him, an
unbelieving evildoer, impure and materialistic as he was, it was inconceivable that a
beheaded man could return to life. Therefore he was even more worried and was seeking to
see Jesus, but he wanted to do it without showing it to be of any importance. This is the
reason for which he was overjoyed when Pilate on the day of the Passion sent Him to him.
Finally, he would see Him, because it was the moment of the power of darkness and he was
all darkness full of crimes and iniquities, but he was not able to hear any word from Him
because he was incapable of doing so.
The Lord does not let himself be found by those who seek to see him out of
curiosity or with evil dispositions, nor does He go to people who are not open to receive
His word. In order to seek Jesus and to find Him, it is necessary to be repentant, penitent
and pure and to run to Him to receive life from Him. How many hearts gone astray, like
Herod’s, who hear about Jesus in various ways, want to take Him into account but only
out of an historical curiosity and draw their knowledge from falsified and biased sources,
and become even more confused!
The Apostles, coming back from their mission, reported to Jesus all they had done.
It is a psychological need of those who return from a trip to relate in great detail
everything that happened to their loved ones. When one goes far away (such as on a trip),
his soul becomes as if compressed in his affection, by being deprived of seeing his loved
ones, he comes to appreciate them all the more, and he feels the need to open up to them
as soon as he sees them again, and to tell them all that happened.
The Apostles loved Jesus immensely; and if it seemed that they were coarse and
superficial when dealing with Him on a daily basis, when they were far away from Him
their affection revived, because they had time to realize more fully what Jesus meant for
them, and what it was like to be without Jesus. Moreover, during the mission they had just
accomplished, they had the opportunity to see the many miracles that they worked in His
Name, which revived their faith and therefore also their love for Him, and so they openly
told Him everything.

Tell everything to Jesus,

visiting Him in the Sacrament.

O how beautiful it is to tell everything to Jesus, reporting to Him all things that are
deep in our hearts when visiting Him, entrusting our soul to Him at the end of the day! Is
not our daily labor a mission given to us from God? And do not those who labor
especially for His glory come back, so to speak, to Jesus every night from a segment of
their apostolate? It is so nice, after the long day, to come to the Sacramental Jesus and tell
Him everything, entrusting ourselves to Him! Jesus listened to the Apostles with great

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affection, and because He saw them tired and because people were coming and going in
great numbers, without giving them even the opportunity to eat, as it is written in St.
Mark (Mk 6:31), He took them with Him, as a most loving father, and withdrew with
them to a deserted place in the territory of Bethsaida that they might be refreshed
physically and be with Him in prayer.

3. The first multiplication of loaves.

When the people saw that Jesus was leaving, they looked in which direction He
was going, as St Mark says (Mk 6:33), and they saw the boat heading toward the deserted
region of Bethsaida. His word and His divine countenance were so fascinating and the
miracles he was doing were so great that the people did not want to be separated from
Him. According to St. Mark (Mk 6:33) they ran, arriving before Him in the place where
they supposed He would be landing. They lived days of enthusiasm and sincere faith,
because the hostile propaganda of the Scribes and Pharisees had not yet poisoned them.
It seems we can almost see this devoted crowd, inflamed by the speeches of Jesus,
running with great joy, racing each other, crossing the hilly mountain road, and finding
themselves once again with Jesus. They were oblivious to everything else, they were
attracted by the Lord and had run along a long road, without thinking that they were
getting further and further away from the town centers from where they had come. Even
the sick strove to make the long journey, in the hope of being healed.
When Jesus saw that huge multitude of people, which numbered five thousand
counting only the men, He was moved, welcoming them with infinite tenderness, and He
spoke to them of the kingdom of God, and healed all who needed to be cured.
As can be noted from this context, while Jesus was talking to the multitudes and
healing the sick, the Apostles took this opportunity to refresh themselves. They in fact
retired from the people, and going to a deserted place to pray, had brought with them
enough food for themselves. To only have five loaves of bread and two fish, when Jesus
told them to provide for the people, makes us think that they had already eaten. It is
possible that when they were eating, they noticed that dusk was approaching and it was
necessary for the crowd to leave to find food and lodging in nearby towns.
One naturally tends to take notice, in fact, of the needs of others when they
correspond to what one would want for himself, and to feel sorry for others that suffer
what one has suffered himself. The Apostles, tired by the journey and in need of food,
sitting down with enough to eat, clearly had a better appreciation for what it means to be
tired and hungry, thus they went near Jesus and urged Him to send the people away, that
they might provide for themselves, because the day was coming to an end and they were
in a deserted place.
Jesus answered their insistence by saying that they should give the people food to
eat. As they only had five loaves and a couple of fish, they thought His command was a
joke. The Redeemer, instead, was not being hypothetical: He truly wanted them to provide
for the needs of the crowd with an act of faith in Him.
Did they not already do miracles in His Name?
Had they not experienced already how fruitful had been their trust in Him in their
accomplished mission?

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 He would have liked that they would have done the miracle in His Name, since he
wanted to increase their stature among the people for the good of the apostolate. But they
were not yet at that level, and Jesus, sympathizing, wanted that at least they would renew
their faith in Him and told them to have everyone sit down on the grass in groups of about
fifty. It was for this reason that they could approximately count how many men were
present, because in arranging one hundred groups of fifty people, the Apostles noticed that
the majority were men, even though among them were also many women and children.
Jesus wanted them to witness the grandiosity of his miracle, to heal the weak faith they
had in Him, since they either wanted to send away the people or they did not believe they
could feed them in His Name.
When the people had all sat down, the Savior asked that the five loaves and the
two fish be brought to Him; He raised up his eyes to Heaven to show all that He was
praying, and then He blessed the bread and the fish. Afterward He began to break the
bread and the fish, putting them in the baskets they had with them or someone had
provided for them. This is evident from the context, because it would have taken too long
to distribute the bread and fish piece by piece, and also because the Sacred Text clearly
states that the leftovers were put in twelve baskets.
Jesus broke the bread, and the bread regenerated, and from each loaf He drew
more than a thousand servings, and from each fish more than two thousand five hundred
servings.
The bread distributed was fresh and delicious, because when Jesus changed the
water into wine at Cana of Galilee the resulting wine was of exquisite quality.
His infinitely generous nature meant that he gave excellent food, like God did in
giving the Jewish people manna in the desert, when they emigrated from Egypt. Maybe it
was Jesus himself who took a large piece of bread and put the portion of fish on top of it.
In His omnipotent Hands the bread and the fish were almost like living seeds and they
grew instantly. Each particle obeying the will of its Creator begot another one, almost, so
to speak, as cells in nature generate new ones through cell division, and at an even faster
rate than that of the giant Equatorial mushroom growing enormously in one night.
Given the huge amount of leftover bread, it can be said that Jesus made equal
portions for every one; the women and the children and whoever had less appetite, ate less
and so left aside some of it. Maybe He tore each loaf in half to make it easier and then did
the same with the fish, giving half of each with the other half regenerating in His hands.
The final halves He gave as they were.
If this is correct, it follows those ten portions of bread and four portions of fish
came from the leftovers of the Apostles, and so were natural, all the others were
miraculous. God, even though He is most generous, does not do unnecessary things, and
Jesus certainly made use of the bread and fish He had at his disposal.
The miracle was grandiose, but it was done with such quickness and in such a
natural way that the people and the Apostles themselves right then and there did not
realize what was happening. The miraculous food, moreover, had in itself the great
benediction of Jesus, producing spiritual fruits in some of the souls which were best
disposed to receive them.
Certainly in that moment in that place there was a great peace that had come over
everyone, and so Satan, keeping his distance, could in no way touch those souls.
When Jesus spent time alone in the desert, Satan thought that He would have lazily

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changed the stones into bread; in this other desert he would have liked to have changed
that bread into stones, because his jealousy rages when God is charitable toward us: the
omnipotence of Jesus, however, confused him and most likely he chose to sink back down
deep into hell.
Jesus Christ did not want to work this miracle without the cooperation of the
Apostles, so instead of having bread come down from Heaven, He multiplied what was
there. We could almost say that He gives to us a multiple of our cooperation to his grace,
which can be expressed as a ratio: one to one thousand or better one to two thousand five
hundred in this case. To expect that He acts in us without a minimum of our cooperation is
an illusion.**
Jesus multiplied the loaves of bread and the fish as food for the body, but it can be
said that before this he had multiplied also the spiritual food, by having himself heard by
this huge number of people. Naturally, His voice would have been difficult to hear in that
desert, to say nothing of the hum of the large crowd, the noise caused by children and
others that would tend to mute it as well; instead, it is evident that everyone heard Him,
otherwise they would not have followed Him with such persistence. These people went to
listen to the divine Word, putting aside their needs, and Jesus took care of them, showing
concretely with his actions that those who seek the kingdom of God and his justice are
given, in addition, temporal things by Divine Providence.

The living “Bread from Heaven”.

Jesus Christ, multiplying bread and fish, symbolized a more beautiful

multiplication, that of the Eucharistic Bread, his Body and his Blood as our food in the
desert of our lives.
During the last supper He worked a miracle like the one in the desert: He raised his
eyes to Heaven, broke the bread, gave it to his Apostles, multiplying in them his
sacramental presence, and gave them the power to give that Bread of life to endless
multitudes in all parts of the world for all time. Every day we witness this miracle in the
Holy Mass: Jesus speaks to us from the altar in the desert of our lives through the great
voice of the liturgy; after speaking to us He asks us to sit at his table, and He feeds us of
Himself.
There should never be leftovers of this food of life, and the ciboria should always become
empty. Certainly, if the people had really understood fully the miracle they received,
would they have left over twelve baskets of leftovers? Everyone would have treated the
bread as a most precious thing and taken the excess miraculous bread with themselves to
eat more of it later.
The ciborium remains full when souls are empty, and when the immense grace of
the Eucharistic Gift is not understood. O dear Jesus, do not let us be ungrateful; give us a
great hunger for the Bread of life!

4. You are the Christ of God: The solemn confession of St. Peter.

After the multiplication of the bread and fish, both St. Matthew and St. Mark say
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** A beautiful consideration on how the Lord operates.

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that Jesus went to a mountain to pray and told his Apostles to go by boat to the opposite
shore of the lake. While on their way they were surprised by a storm, and Jesus reached
them walking on the water. St. Matthew tells of the particular incident in which St. Peter,
at the command of the Teacher also walked on the water (Mt 14:22 and following; Mk 46
and following). They arrived to Genesaret, where Jesus did many miracles and from there
they went in the vicinity of Tyre and Sidon, where there took place the meeting with the
Canaanite woman (Mt 15:22 and following; Mk 7:25 and following).
When Jesus came back to Galilee, where He healed many sick people and, in
particular, a deaf-mute (Mk 7:32 and following), the crowds again surrounded Him and
Jesus fed them again with a second multiplication, starting with seven loaves of bread and
a few fish (Mt 15:22 and following; Mk 2:25 and following). This time there also
remained an overabundance of it, notwithstanding the more than four thousand people
assembled. After this multiplication of food there occurred a dispute with the Pharisees
and the Sadducees (Mk 8:11-13). Going again to Bethsaida Jesus healed a blind man (Mk
8:22-26), and then He went with His Apostles to the vicinity of Caesarea Philippi where
He asked them what people were saying about Him.
St. Luke does not record all of these events and from the first multiplication of the
loaves he goes on immediately to speak of the question that Jesus put to his Apostles
regarding the rumors about Him. To many, this gap in St. Luke seems inexplicable, and
they assume that some pages of his manuscript were lost; but it is evident that the
Evangelist, having been told these facts by others, felt that he did not have enough clear
information on these events or that his information was fragmentary, and so he thought to
not include them in his book. Besides the Evangelists do not tell everything of the life of
Jesus, and thus it is not surprising to find this gap in St. Luke. It can also be that Jesus
asked his Apostles more than once what people were saying about Him, and after the first
multiplication of the loves, alone with them in prayer on the mountain, where he had gone
for this specific purpose, he put this question to them to reinforce in them the faith of who
He really was.
To us, this second possibility seems the most likely, and also from a psychological
point of view: Jesus, in fact, gathered the Apostles after they accomplished their mission
to give them the possibility to eat and rest and especially to give to them, in their
gathering for prayer, a stronger feeling of humility and to nullify any temptation they
might have to boast of what they had done. With the crowd surrounding them on the
mountain, He could not take care of the Apostles; but after the grandiose miracle and after
sending the crowd away, He called the Apostles to prayer, and then He asked them what
the people were saying about Him.
It is evident from the context, and also from the other Evangelists, that the
Apostles had understood little or nothing of the miracle of the multiplication of the loaves,
and Jesus wanted to draw their attention to who He was. They, in fact, had not yet fully
abandoned themselves to Him or had full faith in Him. They worried excessively about
temporal things, they thought of their own exaltation and argued with each other over who
was the greatest because they did not reflect on the fact that He was the Son of God.

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 Why Jesus prohibits the Apostles
to reveal his divine identity.

The Apostles answered Jesus’ question by relating the various opinions of the
people: someone said that He was John the Baptist, others said He was Elijah, others said
that He was a prophet of old who had come back to earth. Then Jesus asked: Who do you
say that I am?”
Simon Peter immediately answered for all of them: You are the Christ of God. His
faith was complete; in the exuberance of his love he spoke in the name of the others,
anticipating, without thinking but by divine disposition, the days of his leadership in
which he would enlighten the whole Church with his infallible faith.
It was the truth, but Jesus firmly commanded his Apostles not to say this to
anyone, adding that His Passion and death were necessary, and then the resurrection.
At first glance, it would seem that Jesus wanted purposely to remain unknown by
his enemies, to ensure the occurrence of his Passion and death, and it would seem that
they would not be at fault if they did not recognize him, since He did not want to be
known for whom He was. Jesus Christ, instead, was well aware of the bad disposition of
his enemies, and He also knew that an explicit and premature confession of his Divinity,
proclaimed by the Apostles, would have incited his enemies far more greatly against them
and against Him, making his enemies more guilty. He had to suffer and to be rejected; this
was a necessity of his design of love to use the perversity of his enemies, but He did not
give them the pretext to do so; in his mercy He waited for them to be moved to repentance
by the evidence of the events that he was accomplishing and wanted to accomplish.
How great and admirable is the patience of God with sinners in making it possible
for them to understand: He knows what they will do and does not deprive them of all help
to do good; He knows that they will abuse it and so He gives them a way to minimize the
responsibility of their consciences. He hides himself, not to prevent their coming to their
senses, but to make them less guilty.
Moreover, He knows that his chosen people shall each receive a treasure of glories
at the hands of the evildoers and, in order to enrich them with eternal rewards, He does not
want to appear unjust and so allows evildoers to continue in their ways. His Divine
method however shall soon be revealed; the passing centuries of the world are less than
seconds for Him and thus His great charity, justice and mercy will soon become evident.

Let us not grumble at God

We are too little to be able to appreciate the marvelous order of the physical and
spiritual world, and we are extremely foolish to doubt and to complain against God. We
consider Him responsible for what we think is unjust in the world because we are not able
to accept our own responsibilities; for this reason we become miserably lost in the mazes
of our lives and have a very poor faith.
For instance, if a hard rain falls with hail during a spring day damaging the whole
countryside that is teeming with delicate flowers, we do not immediately think this
unfortunate circumstance to be the fruit of our spiritual misery; we blame it on God, about
whom we are always ready to grumble and thereby play Satan’s game, who lays traps for
us to demolish our weak faith.

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 How very painful and strange it is that we never blame Satan! Yet, if we think
about it, it is precisely he who is the cause of such calamities, when we give him the
freedom to act with our sins. Satan hates us, he hates all that is the splendor of life,
because he is death.
Countryside in bloom, in the wondrous harmony of its colors and its fragrances, as
a peaceful paean to the Creator and as a promise of abundance for men, irritates Satan. He
lies in wait and when our sins make us worthy of punishment, and the prayers of good
souls are not enough to counterbalance the sins, he comes out from his lair, uses his
terrible strength, conjures storms over the flowers, lays waste to the countryside, and then
he unleashes his sinister agents towards men that they may curse God.
This is something we should ponder, in order not to be always such foolish critics
of Providence; instead of grumbling and complaining we should be sorry for our sins and
we should make reparations. O if we would get used to being always in adoration before
God, and repeat with our eyes closed: Omnia in sapientia fecisti! (You did everything with
wisdom!)
O if we would ponder just how far we are from God! The Angels are so close to
Him; and yet, if we would consider only their limited nature and not the love that unites
them to God, they would appear to us immensely more distant from Him than we are from
the stars in the sky. And if the Angels are but little flames before Him, what are we? How
far we are from Him! How can we dare complain about Him?
We must oppose the complaining voices of men about God with the loving voice
of our faith to and repeat with St. Peter to Jesus, our Redeemer and King “You are the
Christ of God”.
We are among thousands of voices that rise to God from earth, and they are not
voices of wisdom and love, but of foolishness and hate.
There are those who say He is a dead man resurrected by our tales; or He is a
personification of the ego, coming alive from of our misery; others say that He is a
terrifying blind force, coming from the irrational forces of nature; others, that He is the
resurrection of old ghosts and fantasies, just as what was said about Him, that He was
John the Baptist resurrected, or the impetuous Elijah, or some other prophet arisen, like
shadows straying from their tombs.

To us God asks: and you,

who do you say that I am?

Today there are even those who believe that Jesus is a harmful evildoer (He is
terrible! He is terrible!) and fight against Him more than against an enemy; and God, with
the impetuousness of His love, asks of our faith, who do you say that I am? How do we
answer Him? Would we still dare to grumble against Him, or to remain undecided on His
infinite reality, on His wisdom and love? Do we still dare to judge Him influenced by the
suggestions of Satan or of our wretched pride?
Let us answer with the force of our love:
You in essence are Truth, Wisdom and Love. You are the Eternal One, the Infinite
One, the Omnipotent Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
You are Power, Providence and Charity, and everything You do is with power,
tenderness and love, O Most Holy Trinity!

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 What does my intellect say? “I believe!”
What does my will say? I obey You!
What does my heart say? I love You!
What do I say to You in the darkness of my life? I adore You!
What do I say in my suffering? I thank and I love you!
What do I say in my deep fears and sorrows? I trust in You.
What do I say when You call me to do Your will? Ecce Ancilla Domini fiat mihi
secundum verbum tuum. (Here is the handmaid of the Lord may it be done to me
according to your word.)
What do I say when my life becomes more troubled? I am a sinner, I deserve a
thousand times more tribulation; I offer everything as reparation for my sins!
What will I say when I am dying and everything shall leave me? Ecce venio ad Te
quem amavi, quem quaesivi, quem semper optavi! (Here I am Lord, the one whom I have
loved, whom I have sought, whom I have always desired!)
I want my whole life to be an act of faith, hope and love, even at the cost of dying
for it; I want Your glory to mean so much to me that I shall defend it against everything
and everyone.
Never have my lips uttered a word of complaint against You, and with your help I
will never do so, even if these lips of mine would rot, o my God! And if Satan tempts me,
his temptations shall never conquer my spirit, but I shall suppress them with my faith and
love, that their stench will not infect others.
I want written on my forehead: “God is my glory”; written on my mind, “God is
my light”; and written on my heart, “God is my love!”
I want to mock whatever does not come from Him, for Him, and with Him; I want
to hate it, even if it seems to be very appealing and good, because only You, o my God,
are the source of beauty, truth and goodness!
A book that would have even a hint of being against the glory of God would be for
me filthier than a tomb and more disgusting than limbs eaten away by leprosy.
An object tainted and disgraceful because it is against His will and contrary to His
Law is for me a greater abomination than a demon.
Knowledge that does not bring me to know God better and love Him more, is
darker than a deep abyss!
My God, my God, what can I say of You, I, who am such a tiny creature of Yours?
I shall make of my intellect a drum of light to cheer Your eternal truth; I shall make of my
heart a cymbal of love, to sing my love to You; I shall make of my body a harp with ten
strings, attuned to Your commands, to sing to You all of my faithfulness!
What can I say of You, I that am created by Your omnipotence, cleansed by Your
mercy, vivified by Your love? I shall say that I am Yours, that I sing Your mercy forever
and run to You like a deer runs to rushing water!
O please do not tell me that I am dwelling too long on one word of the Gospel,
because the protests that are made against love by the foolish voices that roam the world
against God are never deemed excessive!
Ponder what men of God say about Him, and see if there does not spring out—and
actually will spring out from our hearts, as if struck by a rock in the desert—a river of
love, a devastating, forcefully flowing river that attempts to drag all the ugliness of human
ingratitude into the abyss.

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 O how could it be considered excessive to give witness to that which is infinite?
Can ever a heart that moans be stopped or is it possible to curb the passion of a
wounded love? I moan, my God, because of the most vile human worms that interfere
with Your glory, and my love is wounded by the injuries You receive from them! Why do
You not give me wings that I may become a flying beacon, why do not I become a flame,
why I do not soar to where Your Name is disowned and why can I not consume with my
love all that opposes your Love?

Ask me again, my God,

And you, who do you say that I am?

Ask me again, my God, “Who do you say that I am?” Ask me again, because I
cannot get tired to repeat the answer: You are charity!
What do I say about You? My entire being shall answer, as victim of love for You,
through the suffering endured by my miserable body as evidence of love for You: You
alone are worthy of all love, only You!
What do I say about You? My sister, death, shall answer for me: extinguishing my
mortal flame, in the midst of my anguish and agony: You are life!
What do I say about You? The putrefaction that dissolves my body in the tomb
shall answer for me: everything grows old like an old cloth, but You are the Everlasting
one!
What do I say about You? The harmony of eternal glory, where I hope one day my
soul shall be and praise you in eternity shall answer for me: Holy, Holy, Holy are You,
God of glory, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Power, Wisdom and Love… O Most Holy
Trinity!...

5. The way that leads to God: Christian self-denial.

Announcing to them very clearly His Passion and death, Jesus presented a new
understanding to the Apostles. They too had dreamed of a glorious and triumphant
Messiah, who would have restored the kingdom of Israel, and this hope did not even end
after Jesus’ resurrection. The Apostles had hoped that He would subdue in a sensational
way the hostility of the Rabbis, the Scribes and the Pharisees; now to hear from Him that
it was necessary, that is, that it was inevitable, for Him to suffer greatly and be rejected by
the elders, the chief priests, and from the scribes, their minds must have become greatly
disturbed, especially because they did not understand entirely the meaning of His words.
Their dreams of greatness were failing, and they felt they were looking ahead to a dark
future. It is true that Jesus had said that after being killed He would resurrect on the third
day, but to them what could the promise of a miracle, that to the average mind seemed
inconceivable, signify given the terrible prospect of persecution and death?
Jesus saw that they appeared disoriented and also He saw the deep disbelief they
had in his words; they absolutely did not want admit this possibility and for this reason
they could not understand it, as can be seen also in the other Gospels in their description
of this point. The bewilderment they were experiencing, and the vivid hope they had in a
glamorous triumph, was also influencing the multitude of people with whom the Apostles

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had been in contact. Thus Jesus exclaimed to them and to everyone: If any man will come
after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me.
To take up the cross, also in the common language of the Jewish people, meant to
suffer; thus there was no possibility of the illusion of immediate triumphs and the material
advantages deriving from them; whoever wanted to follow Him had to first deny himself,
accept the inevitable pain of his own sorrowful life and the inevitable hurts and contrasts
with evil. To deny himself, means to deny one’s own ideas, aspirations, views and one’s
own will; however, to deny oneself is not useless nihilism, but embracing the thought and
the will of God, which means to deny oneself in order to elevate oneself, to change into a
new creature, and to no longer live naturally but supernaturally.

Jesus says: Who wants

to save his life, will lose it.

Jesus Christ therefore added: Who wants to save his life, will lose it. This means
that those who pretend to serve Him, keeping their natural way of living, selfish,
centralized, hungry for honors and material advantages, will not achieve that which is true
life; but instead, those who deny their own way of thinking for the sake of Him, and deny
their aspirations thus dying to self, will save the real life of their own souls, reaching
perfection and eternal salvation.
How worthwhile, in fact, are the things of the world and its material advantages
compared to eternity? They only detract from the true life, because they do not constitute
merits but rather demerits: it is impossible to live a worldly life without staining the soul,
and it is impossible to allow passions to enflame us and not to plunge into the deepest
abyss. Before the reality of eternal life, how could it be possible to hesitate, even if
following Jesus would cost us our lives; for this reason, the words of the Savior also apply
to the extreme witness of loyalty and love, that is to martyrdom, which is the extreme
sacrifice of self. It is well worth it, then, to deny one’s thoughts, will, comforts, vanity and
even to immolate oneself when necessary, and to give witness to the truth to save oneself.
All this by nature is hard. It means making a complete denial of self even before
the world that does not understand such a choice and scoffs at it; it means the renunciation
of self, riches, honor, and even that minimum of respect that can be received from others.
When going against the common current, in fact, it is easily possible to be exposed to
ridicule, and be tempted to hide our own profession of Christian faith. However, all this is
incompatible with the interests of our own salvation and the glory of God. Thus, Jesus
declared solemnly that He, before the whole universe, when He will come to judge the
world in His glory, He will be ashamed of those who were ashamed of Him and of His
words.

Against human respect.

With this solemn affirmation, Jesus started the fight against human respect, a fight
that is still going on, and forever shall be going on within the Church. It seems impossible
that there are souls who pay more attention to a miserable joke of a vile person than to the
judgment of God, and yet there are many; for much of our sorrow, the scourge of human

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respect is much more common and extensive than we believe. The basis of this is the lack
of a true and deep faith, the preoccupation with acquiring miserable material possessions
on earth and the lack of a true love and appreciation of God; it is for this reason Jesus
added that among those present there were some who would not die without seeing the
Kingdom of God. He thus promised that some of His disciples would see His glory, and
they would be able to judge if it was right or not to neglect such a glorious King, to be
ashamed of Him, to deny Him in favor of the miserable creatures of the earth.
The understanding of these words becomes clear from what Jesus did about eight
days later, or to be more precise six days later, according to the Gospels of St. Matthew
and St. Mark, when Jesus transfigured Himself in the presence of Peter, James and John.
These Apostles observed Him in the magnificence of His glory, in the company of Moses
and Elijah, as we shall soon see, and so they were able to leave to mankind a real measure
of comparison, comparing the darkness of the world and the mysterious and divine light of
the Redeemer.
Who would dare to deny Jesus and be ashamed of Him and His words, as they
were so well received by Moses and Elijah who were in deep adoration, and proclaimed
by the Father to be Words of life?
We really have all the reasons to be ashamed of the world and its false doctrines
which are unsurpassed in their baseness in the eyes of God, and nothing shall appear more
abominable to us than these on the Day of Judgment in the splendor of the eternal
kingdom.
We also believe that somehow in some part of our inner self we shall contemplate
the Kingdom of God before dying. It can happen to souls taken by an interior fervor who
receive an illumination that anticipates in a certain way a vision of the eternal Kingdom,
or to souls who might be attracted by sudden grace to the heights of the spirit and can
focus on God in truthfulness and purity. In these moments of inner transfiguration we
must be careful to keep the light the Lord gives to us, and acquire new vigor in walking
the path of self-denial and of the cross.
We can think of a moment of light like “a vacation of the spirit”, that in this way,
takes new power in its ascent and surpasses with full interior freedom all the degrading
worthlessness of human-based respect. In this illumination of grace everything appears
easy to us: we are not afraid of the battles with the world, crosses seem sweet, and our
total self-denial appears as it is, the complete freedom of the spirit; the soul understands
that it is good to be with the Lord and to be at His service.

6. The transfiguration of Jesus Christ

The fights against Jesus were increasing daily because the priests, the Scribes and
the Pharisees who did not recognize in Him a divine mission and found that His teaching
of others and His making of proselytes was unbearable. These fights, hidden in the
beginning, were becoming more and more open and brazen, shaking also the already fairly
weak faith of the Apostles. It was necessary then, for the very glory of God, to show at
least a ray of that divine majesty that entirely enveloped the Lord and that one day will
shine in his most holy Humanity before all peoples of the world.

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 With the divine restraint that distinguishes all that comes from God, Jesus believed
it to be enough to show himself before only three witnesses of the earth and two of
Heaven: Peter, James and John to represent mankind, and Moses and Elijah representing
those who had longed for Redemption in the Old Covenant. For in the Law it was written
that in the mouths of two or three witnesses was the truth.
If Jesus had revealed himself in this way before all the Apostles it would have
resulted in a movement of enthusiasm that He wanted to avoid, and his enemies would
have taken this as a reason to intensify the fight. Moreover, if the three witnesses came
away with only a little understanding of the grandiose revelation, the crowd would have
understood even less, and in the enthusiasm of the moment the high purpose for which
Jesus was revealing Himself would have been in vain.
St. Peter wanted to remain on the mountain and make three tents, to which the
Apostles and the disciples would have gone, but this would have caused a movement
capable of hindering the whole plan of God. Jesus, besides, worked for the Church,
especially for the Church, and He wanted to leave in the Church a witness of His divine
glory; in order that in future centuries it would be better understood that as He was true
man, He was at the same time true God. For that time it was enough to have three
witnesses to be able to ponder on the great revelation, to understand the meaning of it, and
to transmit the testimony of it to the Church.
Jesus, therefore, took Peter, James and John with him and went to the mountain to
pray. Since He almost always prayed during the night it is possible to believe that it was
already evening when He went up the mountain with his Apostles. This also appears true
since the Apostles were very tired and sleepy: after a day of hectic activity, in the quiet
solitude of the mountain with its comfortable temperature and humidity, it is clear that
they could easily fall asleep. However, since they had gone there with Jesus to pray, they
were trying to stay awake, and this can be derived from the Greek Text, that notes they
were awake despite being sleepy and were able to see the great scene that took place on
the mountain.
Jesus prayed, and his transfiguration makes us understand what had to be his
prayer.
Literally illuminated by His infinite love for His Father, entirely enraptured in His
glory, His face shown with divine light, and this very intense light made all His clothes
entirely white. It was the most sublime of all ecstasies; it was the Word that gave glory to
his Father and enjoyed His Father's infinite love taking his assumed humanity in the
splendor of His glory and the fragrance of His love; it was the Word erupting, so to speak,
from His assumed humanity, rendering it almost diaphanous with light going through His
body, and illuminating it.
This sight was sublime, immense, of unsurpassed glory and majesty; in Jesus now,
the true God was seen, just as when God is in His normally hidden state, Jesus’ true
humanity was visible. The Word glorified the Father knowing Him and appreciating Him,
and his assumed humanity shone in Him and through Him like a sacrificial flame. It was
an anticipated reparation for the forthcoming slaughter of his divine Body and it was a
manifestation of how Redemption would restore man, incorporating him in Christ and
making him shine with His light.
In that mysterious splendor Jesus prayed and His prayer reached above the meager
atmosphere of the earth and continued to rise into the immensity of the firmament and

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beyond; those rays could not be dispersed by the vast darkness, but rather they went
beyond; they shone more brightly than the brightest stars and they made the Body of Jesus
as appear in the heavens as the most brilliantly shining star. If there had been inhabitants
near distant stars they would have seen far away in the distance a new splendor greater
than any other they had ever seen before, because the splendor of the Godhead in that
moment penetrated the entire universe, as the Deity had deigned to come to earth to
restore everything.
Jesus prayed and the splendor of His Soul and Body was proportionate to the
humiliation that he would have to suffer during the Passion. It was in fact consistent with
the divine glory that the Man-God would be slain, but it was also a requirement of the
same glory that He would be recognized for who He was. He wanted to be overcome by
love, but in no way appear as if He was accidentally overcome by the storm of
godlessness and impiety, and for this reason Moses and Elijah came to give witness to the
plan of God, thus announced by the Law and the Prophets, and they conversed with Him.
This economy of justice and order that is God’s is so admirable; an event that
could have maligned the Incarnate Word as an outcast, a cursed one, a worm on the wood
of the Cross, was on the contrary, allowed by God as part of His plan, something
confirmed by the presence of Moses and Elijah; it made clear that what men would do to
Him, had already been stated previously as part of a plan of love, and that God had
allowed it, He himself, for His infinite love and mercy. This solemn affirmation was
therefore a requirement for the divine glory.
Jesus prayed talking with Moses and Elijah of His departure; it was a sublime
canticle raised to God, One and Triune as a grandiose Psalm, unwinding in a most brilliant
parallelism, because while Moses and Elijah exalted God for His promises, Jesus in
exaltation, accepted in Himself the fulfillment of those promises and showed through His
life the perfect harmony of this parallelism. The two Testaments were at once side by side,
the shadows of the past becoming the light of reality and the reality illuminating the truth
of the symbols and the figures of the past; in this admirable canticle all the ancient
histories went by like a distant harmony, with the Man-God in the foreground as a
triumphant melody of love. All this was necessary for the glory of God, because so often
man had disfigured the divine plan, and most of all because man did not yet understand
the plan of the Cross.
This new, admirable, sublime canticle which made harmonious the shadows of the
past with the new reality became, therefore, a prayer of reparation for what man would do
to the Lord, without which they would have deserved a thousand times worse fate than
that of Uzzah; by laying their hands on the Redeemer, the Ark of God, they would have
been swallowed by the earth.
O if we would have recorded this new song of love! The holy Church has,
however, echoed it sublimely, and in all her marvelous liturgy makes a comparison, in
continuous praise, between the Old and New Testaments. In a grandiose Psalm, to the
voices of the Law and the Prophets, responds in a perfect parallel, the voice of the new
reality, in the mercies of Redemption and in the splendor of the sanctification of souls.
While Jesus was speaking of his death and was praying with Moses and Elijah, he
certainly also turned His Heart toward men, because they were the objects of his merciful
love. He wanted to die for them, and in dying He wanted to incorporate them in Himself,
to turn them into living praises to God; He wanted to give His merits to them, to enrich

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them and to have the splendor of his mercy envelop them; but they were sleeping and
even the three Apostles, privileged spectators of this incredible scene were heavy with
sleep struggling to stay awake, despite the fact that the immense splendor had shaken
them. Evidently their souls had not understood what was happening, even though they
were physically looking at the scene; they felt a peace and an interior joy that made them
feel blessed, yet they did not yet understand the nature of that joy and that consolation.
Peter, more than the others, was as if beside himself and because his thoughts
remained within his earthly frame of mind, he thought it was good for them to stay there
and to build three tents, one for Jesus, one for Moses and one for Elijah. He spoke like
someone who is between waking and sleeping; his intellect and consciousness were not
clear, and he did not know what he was saying. He spoke as if dreaming, and Jesus did not
even answer him, because those poor human words could not rise to Him. They were a
concrete example of those prayers suggested by flesh and blood that do not rise above the
tenuous earthly atmosphere and do not reach God.
The great light had not yet entirely awakened the Apostles, and Peter talked in a
foolish way, but when they saw a cloud enveloping Jesus, Moses and Elijah, maybe for
the very sudden contrast between the intense light and the shadow of the cloud, they woke
up entirely, and were taken by a great fear, because in that cloud the Father appeared
pointing solemnly to the Son as Teacher of mankind. A solemn voice came from it that
said: “This is my beloved Son, listen to Him.
The voice was not an earthly voice, it was superhuman, magnificent, and powerful
and inspired a reverential terror, like the voice of the Sinai.
Mount Tabor was truly the Sinai of the new covenant where His Son was revealed,
just as the Upper Room was the mountain where the Holy Spirit was revealed. On Tabor
the cloud also represented the Holy Spirit that unites the Father to the Son and the Son to
the Father in infinite Love. The revelation in the Upper Room was singular to the Holy
Spirit, as that of the Son’s was on Mt. Tabor, and as that of the Father’s was on Mt. Sinai.
Thus the mystery that was accomplished that night was truly magnificent, and the
three Apostles had reason to fear. It was not yet, however, the moment to disclose it and
so Jesus, in St. Matthew (Mt. 17:9), ordered them not to speak of it to anyone until He had
risen from the dead. They thus remained silent, although they had to be extraordinarily
moved.

Transfiguring ourselves in Christ Jesus!

The transfiguration of Jesus Christ is a very important teaching for us, because we
must also transfigure ourselves for Him and in Him into new creatures. He already has
redeemed us and his mercy has enriched us, but we must accept it and make it the life of
our lives through the Sacraments and especially through the Most Holy Eucharist. The
Altar is the mountain on which we must ascend prayerfully, and on which, receiving
Christ, we must become transfigured.
In the Eucharist, He comes to us and transfuses his life in ours; in those precious
moments we shine before God, and if we could with our senses perceive what happens to
us, we would see ourselves entirely illuminated and in splendor in a world that lies in the
perennial darkness of sin. Our inner powers are, and should be, witnesses and adorers of

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the miracle of love that is accomplished in us. Unfortunately our powers are sleepy and
hence barely, if at all, are aware of this miracle. It is necessary to awaken them that they
may become alive again and become attractive supernaturally. Like Peter, our hardened
hearts expect only a tabernacle of fleeting happiness and accept Jesus in the hope of
earthly gains; however, as in the case of Peter, our hearts do not know what our desires
truly are, because we do not think of not belonging to this world.
It is good for us to be here, St. Peter said, which is clear: however did he forget the
great lesson of Jesus on self-denial and on carrying our Cross every day? We cannot reach
eternal peace and eternal transfiguration, if we are not first transformed by trials and
sorrows. In these purifying tests our spirit is enlightened and the interior covering of our
soul whitens; thus the soul converses with Heaven and truly becomes an adopted child of
God for Jesus Christ and in Jesus Christ.
Let us consider this carefully: our mountain of transfiguration is the Calvary of our
daily life, and we have to be grateful to the Lord when He makes us worthy to be brought
to these holy heights which truly elevate our lives. It is good for us to be in the height of
God's Will because, doing what God wants, we become objects of his delight. Thus in
doing His Will our fervor, joy, aridity or pain—as He wishes—is all accepted because He
alone knows what we need to be transfigured into living songs of His glory.
O my Lord, do with me always as You want, make me do only what is pleasing to
You, imbibe me with your Will and make me a new creature inflamed by your love.
Amen.

7. The healing of the possessed epileptic.

The Apostles who did not go with Jesus on the mount of transfiguration, were
accustomed to seeing the divine Teacher going with the three favorites to pray, and so
they did not ask them what they had done that night. Besides they tended to not dwell too
much on what was happening around them, because they were simple people and were
occupied by basic daily tasks. They waited that morning for Jesus to come down from the
mountain; meanwhile, a great number of people had assembled around them, desirous to
listen to Jesus and to receive the benefits He bestowed. During this time, as is made clear
from the Gospel text, a poor father who had a possessed, epileptic son, knowing that the
Apostles had effected healings during their mission, had asked them to free his son, but
they were unsuccessful. Maybe the crowd distracted them, and since they could not pray,
Satan did not abandon his prey.
The father was devastated, but he also waited for Jesus, still hoping to obtain the
great favor. In reality he went to the Apostles and to Jesus not so much to obtain a miracle
but to receive a healing; he did not believe in the divine power of Jesus but believed that
He had some secret remedy for sicknesses; may be this was the reason why he asked his
Apostles, as His closest associates, because they would have had to know the medicines
that the Master used for various ailments. We understand this by the reproach that Jesus
makes to his disbelief (Lk 9:41), and also by the detailed way in which the father
describes the misfortune of his son. Had he faith in the divine power of Jesus, he would
have immediately asked for a miracle, instead he spoke to Him as to a medical doctor.
The poor father, as a precaution, having his son near him and fearing an outburst
of his sickness, stood at the back of the crowd; this is the reason why in the Sacred Text it

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is written that he shouted to Jesus from the crowd; he shouted from a distance, also
because remaining at the back, it was impossible to approach Him. He begged for pity for
his only son, telling of the pain he suffered: “He was possessed by a spirit who made him
cry out loudly, who would cause that he be thrown violently to the ground; overwhelmed,
he would squirm, and foam at the mouth. As soon as he would begin to recover, the spirit
would again torment him relentlessly.”
Jesus Christ did not reproach the father directly for the little faith he had in Him,
so as not to afflict him further because he was in such great distress; and so He spoke to
all the present, because His warning was useful for all, including his Apostles, and
exclaimed: "O faithless and perverse generation, how long will I be with you and endure
you?” He had done so many extraordinary miracles everywhere, and yet they still did not
believe in His divine power; He had shown the truth of his mission and yet they, stubborn,
still opposed it and disowned it; how could He stay in such a place that was so false and
hostile and bear it?
Jesus, looking into their hearts, knew very well that the enthusiasm of the people
was based on curiosity and was superficial; He knew that the few who believed had a
faltering faith, overwhelmed easily at every dark moment and upset by the distortion of
reason; He knew that at the least signs of trouble or violence against Him, everyone would
withdraw or turn against Him, thus He had great reason for addressing them as a faithless
and perverse generation; faithless because they did not believe and perverse because some
were actually plotting against Him.
Jesus’ heart was full of sadness; nothing seemed able to change those very hard
hearts, which in the long run persisted even more in their stubborn opposition; He should
have abandoned them, but instead his love supported them, and awaited their repentance!
After he had reproached the crowd, Jesus, addressing the father of the young man,
ordered him to bring Him his son. As he approached, Satan threw the youngster to the
ground, tossing him violently; it was Satan’s last effort to impede the young man to reach
Jesus, hoping in this way not to lose his prey, and at the same time to inflict his last act of
revenge on the youngster. The Lord allowed it to show to everyone that the boy was not
just an epileptic but above all a possessed one; thus He reproached the unclean spirit, He
threw satan out of him, healed the child entirely and gave him back to his father.

Our generation,
faithless and perverse and spiritually epileptic

The reproach Jesus gave to the generation that was contemporary to Him, can be
given, perhaps with even with more reason, to our faithless and perverse generation. Jesus
Christ came down the mountain where He went to glorify his Father with his immense
love and where He had spoken to Moses and Elijah of His departure, that is, of his
Passion and death. His heart was full of the divine truth and divine glory, and for this
reason, seeing the little faith of the crowd, He called them faithless; His heart was full of
the torments and the pains that they were preparing for him, and thus He called them
perverse.
He benefitted them in every way, marvelously feeding them, instructing them in
the eternal truths, enlightening them with divine light, and yet they did not believe and

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were preparing to torture Him. Is our generation more innocent than the one of those
Jewish people? Christianity has brought countless benefits to mankind, the light of truth
always shines in the Church, the divine mercy sustains and forgives us and yet our
generation disowns Him and persecutes Him in his body.
We have continuous ups and downs, which means we are epileptic in the spirit,
because we let ourselves be roused by our passions and by unclean spirits; we shout
because we become subjected to the spirit of arrogance and wrath; we throw ourselves to
the ground, because we ignore eternal treasures for the greed for temporal things; we
writhe on the ground and fling ourselves, because we forget all basic rules of charity, and
we foam at the mouth because we have forgotten all modesty and prudence in talking; in
fact, our words are filth spewed forth by the epilepsy of impurity!
The world is perpetually agitated; it does not know peace anymore and the nations
are agitated by the epilepsy of weapons and wars. Today more than ever we need Jesus,
we must have recourse to Him to rebuke the unclean spirit that inflicts that last convulsion
on our epileptic social body, and to give us back to the Heavenly Father healed of our
dreadful infirmity.

8. Announcement of the Passion

The miracle of the healing of the possessed epileptic moved the people and all
were astonished at what Jesus was doing.
What was in this astonishment and admiration? They thought that the Lord was
truly great, that He should reign over Israel, and that He would get rid of the Roman yoke.
The Apostles were also astonished by this popular enthusiasm and had to think in their
hearts that they would have a place of privilege in the kingdom of the divine Master. This
appears clear from the discussion that they had with each other.
Seeing their thoughts of worldly ambition, Jesus called them around Himself and
said: The Son of man shall soon be delivered into the hands of men, by which He meant:
He is going to be taken, tortured and condemned; do not become enthusiastic with the
exultation of the multitude, nor think of useless designs about your future, because now is
not the hour of glory, but of the Passion and death.
The words of Jesus were certainly a little obscure, but the Apostles should have
understood them if they thought about what He had said at other times and his recent
exhortation on the renunciation and self-denial and of taking up one’s cross. Instead, they
were so taken in by their thoughts that His words did not register with them. They
understood however from his attitude that He must have had some sad thoughts in mind,
but dared not question him for fear of receiving bad news. Their reticence is deeply
psychological, because when we make some fantastic assumptions and are taken by a
paroxysm of enthusiasm, we do not want to be disappointed by the words of others and so
avoid those conversations that could dispel our fancies.

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 The least among you is the greatest.

The Apostles, in that moment were dreaming about a kingdom on earth, and
hoping to have high positions in it, shared their ideas with each other and started to argue
about who among them would be the greatest. From a psychological point of view,
perhaps the ones who started this debate and proposed it in the first place could have been
the three favorite Apostles, who still had fresh in their minds the magnificent scene of the
transfiguration. They could not speak about it, having been expressly forbidden to do so
by Jesus; however, if one has a secret it is often difficult to keep it under wraps;
unwittingly, it manifests itself through something that is not quite right with that person or
one’s attitude might suggest not everything is normal; not talking about it directly, one
goes around it, so to speak, and so it cannot be helped that something slips out.
Peter, James and John did not understand the meaning of the transfiguration, but
that glory was for them an indication and promise of an imminent triumph in which they
hoped to have a major part; logically seeing that the crowds were enthusiastic about the
works of Jesus, they thought the time was already ripe for such a triumph, and so began to
discuss who would have a major part in it.
Jesus did not hear their talk, because they were far from where He was, but he saw
the thoughts of their heart, and taking a child with Him by hand, called all of them to
come near Him, and said again: "Whoever receives this child in my name receives me, and
whoever receives me receives the one who sent me. For the one who is least among all of
you is the one who is the greatest."
Jesus first manifested his fondness for children, and asserted to love them as
Himself; thus whoever wanted to be loved by Him had to become little, and therefore it
followed that the littlest received the greatest love. The reasoning was concise as a
syllogism, rather as a chain of syllogisms, equivalent to this phrase: “You are disputing
who is the greatest among you; I tell you, the greatest among you is the one who is loved
most by me and my Father. Do you see this child? I love him immensely because he is
little, I love him as another self and I consider as done to me and to my Father what is
done to him; hence, become small then, and you shall become great in my heart.” Thus
Jesus excluded completely the ephemeral greatness that could result from any high place,
not accepting anything other than the greatness obtained through the love in humility and
littleness.

The apostolate is not a monopoly!

This lesson of littleness caused John to be overcome by remorse; they had seen a
man who in the name of Jesus was casting out demons and they forbade him to continue
because he did not follow them. They believed that kind of apostolate to be an intrusion on
their rights and their duties, thinking that it could harm their interests and start a new
movement of people away from them. Thus John understood that they had been motivated
by human reasoning and a secret desire to centralize and, so to speak, have a monopoly
even on good things; it seemed to him to be against that charity which was already

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beginning to take hold of his heart; he felt pain and remorse and asked Jesus if He, with
his authority, would decide this issue.
Jesus answered that they did not have to forbid that man to do good, for he who is
not against you, is for you. He meant to say that if that man had wanted to form a sect
opposed to the apostolate and if he had wanted to act apart from Him and according to his
own whims then they should have forbidden him to continue; but if he was not against
them, and worked in the divine Name truly casting out demons, to forbid him was the
same as rejecting an indirect cooperation and putting an obstacle on the furthering of
God’s Kingdom.
These few words contain an important lesson, because, unfortunately, how the
Apostles reacted toward the man who was casting out demons in the name of Jesus is too
often repeated when doing good works and in the apostolate. It is a very common and
wretched habit to impede someone who is doing good and even to persecute them only
because their actions did not start from us, or even worse, because their actions establish a
kind of competition with what we do.
It is awful!
Perhaps just this is the biggest injury done to the spreading of the grace and the
mercy of God, because not only does it claim to monopolize good works, but it is
wretched pride that furthers the notion of being singularly able to do good, and to be the
sole source of how it is to be done in detail. It is, fundamentally, a desire to replace the
effect of grace with our own actions thereby reducing their goodness and to subtly become
a sole provider. It is important to consider that this is essentially against the greater glory
of God, and glorifies only our own spiritual “good works enterprise”, even if not for
material gain.
It is necessary to oppose only what is in contradiction with the Church, and the
judgment of this should be left to the Church; all initiatives, even the smallest, done with
the approval of the Church either simply, solemnly, or sometimes even implicitly, must be
encouraged, and we must be happy of the new activity that glorifies God.
Material works and activities can be monopolized, because they depend more or
less on the genius of human enterprise; there can certainly be a specialist in diseases of the
nervous system, a specialist in pastries and liqueurs, a monopolist of spices and tobacco,
but there absolutely must not be a monopoly of the Spirit of God that goes where it wills
and when it wills.
He who has more experience and expertise in doing good must indeed help and
counsel those who know less; and he must be happy that new energies, new good
initiatives and new activities will come to enrich the Church.
We could say, for instance: what is the reason for a new missionary congregation
when there are so many? What is the use of a new company of victim souls, when there is
one already? Is it not more useful to have only one center?
Our answer is: certainly not.
Just as God has created a great variety of species of plants and animals of the same
general type, this great variety is also evident in the works of grace. Each has a special
appearance and each new bud gives a greater vitality to the goodness of the Lord that is
poured out, and the increased fervor of those who started it.
Some works, besides, if they were to be taken on by a large, established group,
might require many formalities before anything could proceed, in contrast to the greater

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agility of a just-established group; for example, to establish a religious house in a small
place requires a great deal of effort, but to create an association of souls who advocate the
same good works, it is only necessary to have the zeal of an interested person and the
fervor of many who wish to associate with this cause.
If, for instance, a new orphanage is started near one that is already thriving, this is
a very positive development and, since true goodness is a fruit of grace and not of
commerce, the grace and the Providence of God is able to feed the two equally well.
Let us believe, instead, that we are truly incapable of doing good on our own and
in great humility let us try to help those who are doing it.
There is nothing worse than persecuting those who do holy works; there is nothing
that attracts more the chastisement of God than this.
Who does this is a slave of Satan, because Satan uses such a person to prevent
another from doing good, to distress souls, and to draw evil from what is good, which is
the opposite of God who draws good from evil.
It is true that all good works meet with difficulties, and these are ever more
arduous in proportion to the size of the good work, but it is also true that he who initiates
and perpetuates these difficulties is cursed.
The problem is that while good works are attacked from all sides, evil that spreads
around the world is not equally fought, and in a practical sense, the supposed zeal with
which holy works are opposed, results only in the benefit of the evildoers and the
exultation of hell. Also, those in leadership roles must be very vigilant of these snares of
hell, and not be led by false reports and slanderous insinuations; not only is it necessary to
pay attention to those who want to prevent good works from occurring, but also to punish
those against holy initiatives, and to continue encouraging the righteous to go on in their
holy ways.

9. Jesus travels toward Jerusalem

Since the time of Jesus’ ascension into Heaven after his Passion and death was
approaching, he showed his resolution to go to Jerusalem. He knew very well that in that
city He would be condemned to death, and since his love compelled him to give his life
for the salvation of mankind, He was determined and ready to accept the bitter torments
awaiting him. Here we are in the last seven months of his life, and Jesus, after having
evangelized Galilee, started on his way to Jerusalem to preach the good news in Judea and
Perea and to complete his mission on Calvary.

The Samaritans refuse to offer Jesus their hospitality.

Having with Him not only the Apostles but also a good number of disciples, Jesus
sent ahead some of them to prepare food and lodging for the group, and to prepare the
people to receive Him.
The shortest way to go to Jerusalem was by crossing Samaria, a region that was
extremely hostile to the Jews, especially when they went to the Temple to adore the Lord.
The Samaritans, in fact, had also built a Temple on Mt. Gerizim, rivaling the one in
Jerusalem and claimed that would be the place to worship God instead of in the holy city.

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When they knew that a Galilean or a Jew was going to the Temple, they showed such
hostility toward him that it forced him either to decide against doing so or to change
direction, making a much longer journey through Perea.
This was the reason that when the messengers of Jesus entered a city of Samaria to
find lodging, the Samaritans did not want to receive them and drove them away.
James and John were outraged at this and they would have liked to call down fire
from heaven on that ungrateful city. They had seen Jesus on Tabor in glory, and with
Jesus also Moses and Elijah; the remembrance of the divine majesty of the Master
provoked in them outrage against those who rejected Him, and the memory of Elijah who
had called down fire against his enemies gave them the desire to imitate that action and to
punish the Samaritans.
Jesus instead reproached them sternly saying: “You know not of what spirit you
are. The Son of man came not to destroy, but to save souls.” They believed to talk out of
zeal; instead those thoughts of severe justice came to them from Satan and from their own
nature. They did not discern in that moment the spirit that animated them. The refusal of
hospitality was rude; they were very upset; they felt insulted; and their desire for justice
was a subtle and subconscious desire for revenge. Not only did they want to show the
superiority of the Divine Master but also their own superiority; they imagined that a
spectacular sign would have humiliated them; there was in that desire of revenge also the
hostility that they felt, in particular against the Samaritans, thinking of them as
excommunicated and cursed.
Jesus, however, did not want to go to Samaria to lose souls; He had gone there to
save souls dearest to Him, and He only wanted to spread mercy and forgiveness; and He
felt compassion for those poor people who rejected him and so He went away to another
village.
Jesus does not want to force us to come to Him.

He condemned in this way the impulsiveness of false zeal and with His example
He taught us to seek souls with great docility and kindness. What good is there in being
impetuous? It causes only a reaction and an increased persistence of the will in doing evil.
The Lord does not want us to come to Himself by force, but by love; if sometimes He
resorts to healthy punishments, He only does so to appeal to souls who still have a chance
to convert and to love him. His public punishments always had a character of mercy and
were the final assault of his love on souls that persisted in evil, or the final purification for
those who are holy. Impetuous zeal, in reality, always arises from nature, always has a
character of anger, revenge or retaliation and far from saving, can lose souls more quickly.

The religious vocation.

While Jesus was walking, a man asked to follow Him wherever He went. He was a
young man, or a man that, taken by an enthusiasm for Jesus’ words, did not want to miss
any, and he wanted to follow Him assuming thus to make himself His disciple on his own,
based on a natural affinity that had come to him. But the vocation to the apostolate cannot
arise from the nature, it needs sacrifices and renunciations that cannot be done without
special graces, thus Jesus said: “The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air nests: but
the Son of man does not have where to lay his head.” If he wanted to follow him, he had

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to be ready for a life of deprivation and poverty, and obviously he did not have this
interior desire, even if believing to have a firm desire to follow Him.
It is not right to go to the apostolate or religious life with a natural enthusiasm or
human objectives, but only through a divine call and self-renunciation. Jesus, to indicate
this more clearly spoke to another and said: “Follow me!” He said this to a man who had
often felt the inner impulse of grace but had opposed it with difficulties because he did not
have the courage to embrace a wandering lifestyle, made of sacrifices and trials; but his
soul was desirous of perfection and he needed a dash of grace to follow his vocation, and
for this reason Jesus resolutely called him: “Follow me.” He countered with an obstacle:
his father was old and he wanted first to close his eyes and bury him; but Jesus replied:
“Let the dead bury their dead: but you go, and proclaim the kingdom of God.”
Maybe in the home of that man there were many people that were hostile to God
and dead to grace, so that if he had left his own vocation hanging, how could he keep it?
The act of mercy he wanted to do to his father, his relatives could have done, it was not
necessary for him do it, and he risked ruining his vocation and his apostolate. He had
already received many graces, he listened to the words of life, and he was able to transmit
them to others. Could he oppose this for an act of piety that his relatives could do? They,
dead to grace, could at least do a good action; for him, called to the holy life of the
apostolate, it would have been an obstacle; it was thus opportune that the dead to life
would do this act of natural virtue while he, reborn to grace, proceeded to announce the
kingdom of God.
To the stern words of Jesus, another who was already called, as it appears from the
text, and who heard in that exhortation the duty to follow the Lord wholeheartedly, asked
Him permission to at least to go say goodbye to his relatives at home; however, to go bid
them farewell would have been for him tantamount to renouncing his calling, because his
family environment was hostile to his vocation. Jesus, who knew this and foresaw what
would happen, warned him in other words: be aware that going there you will not be
faithful to me, and you shall be like the one that first puts his hand on the plow, but then
gets discouraged and leaves the job unfinished. You shall look back, which means, you
shall think of the comforts you left behind, the freedom of doing whatever you wish in
your house, the tranquility you shall have if you renounce me, and so you will end up
giving into nature and becoming unfaithful.
These are precious admonitions for those with a vocation to the priesthood or to
the religious life: he who is guided not by the call of God but by the fervor of a fleeting
moment or by fanciful, theoretical views, does not think of the sacrifices that he must
embrace, and when he meets them he becomes upset, refuses them and goes back to the
world, with a perturbed spirit, or stays in his false vocation with a spirit of despair.
It is important, therefore, to let the Lord call him, to beg Him for the great grace of
the vocation, and embrace it only for the love of Him, in the most complete spirit of
sacrifice. He who is called by God, may find it difficult to obey, due to the tenderness of
his heart, or for pity toward his dear ones, or for human conveniences, and thus he may
become unfaithful.
If one is to belong entirely to God, it is not possible to ponder the natural
affections of the heart; on the contrary, it is indispensable to deny these openly and in
everything that it is natural or human, because often relatives do not understand either the
ways of God, or have an interest in his glory.

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 Do not those who embrace the married state do the same for the love of another?
The man goes with his wife, sorrowfully leaving the comfort of his house and he loves her
more than anyone else; if he fears that someone wants to take her away from him, he does
not let him come near.
Who has ever considered this to be inhuman or an exaggeration?
Cannot the same be done for God?
Besides parents are not eternal on earth, they shall pass away, and it is right to first
consider diligently the eternal interests of all; to leave parents and relatives for the love of
God means to enrich them with great merits, because a son or a daughter consecrated to
God is a great claim of eternal salvation for the parents and for the relatives; it means to
provide essentially for their eternal good.
It is most beautiful to give ourselves to God when He calls us, to offer ourselves
and renounce everything for His love, and to find ourselves, later on, all together in
eternity in eternal bliss.
He who makes excuses when God calls and presumes to reconcile his own views
and aspirations with the call of God, walks in the kingdom of death, puts his hand on the
plow but then turns his face to look back at what he is missing. He follows not God but
himself and his own will, and thus is not worthy of the kingdom of God.

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 Chapter 10
1. The mission of the 72 disciples. Parable of the Good Samaritan. Martha and Mary.

1 Then, after these things, the Lord also designated another seventy-two. And he sent them
in pairs before his face, into every city and place where he was to arrive. 2 And he said to
them: “Certainly the harvest is great, but the workers are few. Therefore, ask the Lord of
the harvest to send workers into his harvest. 3 Go forth. Behold, I send you out like lambs
among wolves. 4 Do not choose to carry a purse, nor provisions, nor shoes; and you shall
greet no one along the way. 5 Into whatever house you will have entered, first say, ‘Peace
to this house.’ 6 And if a son of peace is there, your peace will rest upon him. But if not, it
will return to you. 7 And remain in the same house, eating and drinking the things that are
with them. For the worker is worthy of his pay. Do not choose to pass from house to
house. 8 And into whatever city you have entered and they have received you, eat what
they set before you. 9 And cure the sick who are in that place, and proclaim to them, ‘The
kingdom of God has drawn near to you.’ 10 But into whatever city you have entered and
they have not received you, going out into its main streets, say: 11 ‘Even the dust which
clings to us from your city, we wipe away against you. Yet know this: the kingdom of God
has drawn near.’ 12 I say to you, that in that day, Sodom will be forgiven more than that
city will be. 13 Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the miracles that
have been wrought in you, had been wrought in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented
long ago, sitting in haircloth and ashes. 14 Yet truly, Tyre and Sidon will be forgiven
more in the judgment than you will be. 15 And as for you, Capernaum, who would be
exalted even up to Heaven: you shall be submerged into Hell. 16 Whoever hears you,
hears me. And whoever despises you, despises me. And whoever despises me, despises him
who sent me.” 17 Then the seventy-two returned with gladness, saying, “Lord, even the
demons are subject to us, in your name.” 18 And he said to them: “I was watching as
Satan fell like lightning from heaven. 19 Behold, I have given you authority to tread upon
serpents and scorpions, and upon all the powers of the enemy, and nothing shall hurt you.
20 Yet truly, do not choose to rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you; but rejoice
that your names are written in heaven.” 21 In the same hour, he exulted in the Holy Spirit,
and he said: “I confess to you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have
hidden these things from the wise and the prudent, and have revealed them to little ones. It
is so, Father, because this way was pleasing before you. 22 All things have been delivered
to me by my Father. And no one knows who the Son is, except the Father, and who the
Father is, except the Son, and those to whom the Son has chosen to reveal him.” 23 And
turning to his disciples, he said: “Blessed are the eyes that see what you see. 24 For I say
to you, that many prophets and kings wanted to see the things that you see, and they did
not see them, and to hear the things that you hear, and they did not hear them.” 25 And
behold, a certain expert in the law rose up, testing him and saying, “Teacher, what must I
do to possess eternal life?” 26 But he said to him: “What is written in the law? How do
you read it?” 27 In response, he said: “You shall love the Lord your God from your whole
heart, and from your whole soul, and from all your strength, and from all your mind, and
your neighbor as yourself.” 28 And he said to him: “You have answered correctly. Do
this, and you will live.” 29 But since he wanted to justify himself, he said to Jesus, “And
who is my neighbor?” 30 Then Jesus, taking this up, said: “A certain man descended

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from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he happened upon robbers, who now also plundered him.
And inflicting him with wounds, they went away, leaving him behind, half-alive. 31 And it
happened that a certain priest was descending along the same way. And seeing him, he
passed by. 32 And similarly a Levite, when he was near the place, also saw him, and he
passed by. 33 But a certain Samaritan, being on a journey, came near him. And seeing
him, he was moved by mercy. 34 And approaching him, he bound up his wounds, pouring
oil and wine on them. And setting him on his pack animal, he brought him to an inn, and
he took care of him. 35 And the next day, he took out two denarii, and he gave them to the
proprietor, and he said: ‘Take care of him. And whatever extra you will have spent, I will
repay to you at my return.’ 36 Which of these three, does it seem to you, was a neighbor to
him who fell among the robbers?” 37 Then he said, “The one who acted with mercy
toward him.” And Jesus said to him, “Go, and act similarly.” 38 Now it happened that,
while they were traveling, he entered into a certain town. And a certain woman, named
Martha, received him into her home. 39 And she had a sister, named Mary, who, while
sitting beside the Lord’s feet, was listening to his word. 40 Now Martha was continually
busying herself with serving. And she stood still and said: “Lord, is it not a concern to
you that my sister has left me to serve alone? Therefore, speak to her, so that she may help
me.” 41 And the Lord responded by saying to her: “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and
troubled over many things. 42 And yet only one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the
best portion, and it shall not be taken away from her.”

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2. Jesus instructs the seventy-two disciples.

As the end of His mission approached, Jesus Christ wanted to multiply the number of
ministers of his word in order that it be spread with greater urgency throughout all of
Palestine. He elected seventy-two disciples to whom he gave special faculties. They were
not the same level as the Apostles, but only slightly less. Since the Apostles were the first
Bishops of the world, with St. Peter as their head, the selected disciples were like the
priests. Jesus Himself, therefore, started to form the hierarchy under his direction: He was
at the top of everything; St. Peter was the head of the Apostles and His vicar for them and
for the Church, followed by the seventy two disciples who collaborated and worked with
Him and the Apostles. He therefore sent them to every city where he was going to be, in
fact, to prepare souls for his coming, and instructed them on how to perform this mission
with appropriate teachings:
First of all, he inspired in them a real concern for the souls they would meet
saying: The harvest is abundant, but the laborers are few. They themselves were few but
the souls in their care were many, and it was almost as if there were a harvest to be
gathered; therefore, they had to have a great concern for the work to be done and not to
worry about their own comfort. As there were only a few of them, why didn’t Jesus elect
more? Because recognizing a vocation and having the attitude to undertake a supernatural
mission are the fruits of graces that not everyone accepts, and in order to receive and align
oneself to them it is necessary to pray intensely.

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 It is the Lord who sends laborers into his vineyard, and Jesus elected the Apostles
and the disciples after long periods of prayer to the Father. Prayer is in our hands as our
degree of omnipotence; God gives us this capability and requires it of us that we may
cooperate with Him in the great works of His love. God could create the children of
Abraham out of stones, but instead, He wants us to cooperate both in the election of those
who will become ministers to their formation and for the salvation of their souls. This
great law of love and fertility shows us how much God loves us, and with what sensitivity
He respects our freedom and the great dignity that He has given us.

As sheep among wolves.

The chosen disciples had to go and preach the Divine Word to save souls, but they
also had to seek among those they met their successors; to succeed in this latter effort,
they would have to pray to God to multiply the vocations of future laborers. The Church,
in fact, would become itself an apostolate, and in the Church there had to be, more than in
the nations, the so-called spiritual demographic problem. It would not be enough to
perform a holy work in the Church and then leave it like a ripened fruit. It was necessary
to let it germinate and continue, and then to seek from God those who would be able to
continue to perform it.
What would be the use of sowing a field in order to bear fruits without the seeds?
The souls won to the faith are the fruits of the vineyard of God, the priests are like the
seeds, because they, with the help of God, enable new plants to germinate continually.
The harvest grows not by the power of the farmer but by the fertility that God
gives to the land; but if a farmer does not cultivate and harvest it, it rots. Thus to go in the
Name of God to sow the Word also includes the need to preserve and multiply its fruits,
and so Jesus, addressing not only the disciples, but the Church in all ages, says: Pray the
Lord of the harvest, to send out laborers for His harvest.
In sending his disciples, Jesus made them consider the great difficulties of their
ministry, saying: Behold I send you as lambs among wolves. They were not going to
harvest peacefully like those that cut sheaves of wheat with scythes; rather, they were
going to be met with souls full of miseries and agitated by passions. They had to
overcome their resistance not with violence but by addressing them with humility and
goodness.
This is a fundamental and constant character of the apostolate in the Church; any
deviation from this approach produces only ruin in souls.
Every day experience confirms this, and it is wonderful that the Church has always
been faithful in Her great and holy ministers of the apostolate and of the hierarchy.
Misguided souls have really in themselves something fierce and terrible, and it is
indeed appropriate to liken them to wolves: they are unruly, aggressively greedy, arrogant,
violent, and often have at their disposal the worldly means to resist, even with weapons,
and push themselves to the most violent extremes.
This violent resistance took place in the Jewish nation, in the pagan nations when
Christianity began to spread, and also in modern nations more or less apostate from God,
and in these last mentioned, very often in far more barbaric, savage and aggressive ways
than in the pagan nations.

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 The Church does not go to them with vehemence or with force, even at the cost of
appearing overwhelmed or defeated, even at the cost of alienating the feelings of those
who would love to see in Her the power of Her strength.
She is in diametric opposition to the modern generations, who are accustomed
from an early age to violence: She remains faithful to the fundamental, and I would say
constitutional precept of her divine Founder, advancing steadily as lambs among wolves.
And besides, one of the glories of the Church is the calm and solemn voice of the
Pope in tragic international times and the serene objectivity of Vatican diplomacy. The
world She faces is certainly a wolf, a wolf capable and bloodthirsty, but it is true that in
the end it is always overcome by the gentle and quiet dignity of the Church.

For the missionaries, poverty, simplicity,

trust in Providence

After succinctly making known with divine words the nature of the mission of his
disciples—and therefore of the Church itself—Jesus Christ gives them recommendations
regarding the attitude that they should have and how they should comport themselves. His
instructions are given according to the mentality the disciples had; and basically told them
to give no consideration to anything that is related to human prestige or to hope in their
own abilities: Carry no purse, no sack, nor sandals; and greet no one along the way,
which means to not go about as merchants or traveling salesmen, carrying their wares, and
to refrain from stopping to chat with others as tourists might; but rather they should travel
austerely, be collected and in silence, like those who have to fulfill a sacred mission.
The disciples were still of simple minds and so Jesus tells them, giving them
examples, to not bring anything superfluous, as it is clear from the context, nor
replacements items, trusting entirely on Providence. It is obvious that they could keep
what they carried on themselves for personal use, and they could greet the people who
they met out of charity or kindness but not to engage in unnecessary idle chatting with
people.
If you compare how austerely the Catholic missionaries undertake their journeys
with the comforts sought by the propagandists of sects, it is possible to understand well
the deep reasons behind the exhortations of the Lord. A missionary travels as a poor man
and brings with him the treasure of divine riches. The others travel like rich people and
bring with them the poor baggage of their mistakes and their aversion to the Church. They
travel as tourists, bringing with them wife and children, seeking all the comforts of life.
This alone should be enough to distinguish them from the true messengers of the truth and
of the Gospel.
Jesus Christ wants his disciples to go as carriers of peace and with a plan of
charity. They must save souls, reconcile them to God and give them back their peace of
conscience. Sacred ministry is fundamentally a question of peace, and its fruits are fruits
of peace. Those who refuse it, refuse peace; and this peace shall return to the preacher,
and thus he can be in peace by having done his duty and is happy to receive the merit of it.
This expression of Jesus may seem a little obscure, but it is instead
psychologically very deep. He who is involved in an earthly mission hopes for glory or
material gain; he obviously tries his best to succeed and grieves or even despairs in case of
failure. All that he has done, or anything he makes, he considers lost if he does not

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achieve what he had planned; although maybe through no fault of his own, he believes
that he deserves a reprimand, and he regards himself as a failure.
It is not this way in sacred ministry, however. The man who engages in it, does so
principally for the glory of God and for the salvation of souls. His work of peace is
becomes fruitful for those who accept it and profit from it and this peace remains in them.
His work is not lost whether people profit from it or refuse it, because it remains
meritorious to him who does the work, and it can truly be said that it returns to him. Thus,
he does not fail, and he has no reason to be regarded as useless in the house of God: he
wanted to work for Him and he indeed glorified Him, he wanted to obey the mandate he
received, and he has done so, in as much as it depended on him; he wanted legitimately to
earn a merit for his eternal life, and he did so; hence he can only be at peace, though
grieving because of the rejection of those souls he wanted to save.
The minister of the Divine Word, consequently, must always and constantly have
the thought and the desire to glorify God in his apostolate if he does not want to waste his
time; and he should not lose hope if he is not successful with certain souls, but instead
should content himself with praying intensely for them so that the mercy of God may
conquer and save them.
Souls put thousand obstacles and difficulties in the way of their salvation, and to
enlighten them or to renew them is very hard work, and truly an epic struggle. Pride drives
people to resist the invitation of grace. Stubborn ignorance or bad faith makes them
illogically resistant; personal whims, and each has many, sometimes make them
unbending. If one talks to them when they are taken by something in a fit of passion—
regardless of its nature—and especially if pertaining to matters of impurity or anger, most
of the time they are unwilling to listen and may even go so far as to become violent; if one
wants to instill in them the desire for a perfect act, they will not accept it at all, when it
does not agree with their inclinations. Sometimes their intellect is clouded by any
imbalance and no amount of reason can convince them, their will petrified and
unswerving in a false aspiration that does not tolerate any words to the contrary; their
heart is entangled in a web of deceit and does not wish to be unraveled from it, they are
slaves and want to remain so. For this reason, an eagerness to save them hurts them, an
insistence makes them angry, kindness in their regard seems to them intolerable, because
of their hostility, they despise all that is done for them and they would rather run away
from the paths of salvation.
In these difficult battles, which are able to consume the soul and the body of a
minister of God or a person dedicated to the apostolate, the word of Jesus is of supreme
comfort: what is done is not lost; on the contrary indeed, in the economy of grace, it
returns to those who do good; it returns, in the strictest sense, as an experience, as an
impetus for an increased vigilance over oneself, as a greater desire to pray, to be humble,
to have self-control, and also to try again; to return to the task better prepared to
evangelize other souls.

Pilgrims of God in the apostolate

It is impossible to take on an apostolate while seeking our own comfort, or while

retaining a multitude of personal habits or whims. These are irreconcilable with a
transient, pilgrim way of life which is eminently and necessarily flexible and adaptable to

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everything; this utterly flexible way of life is completely appropriate to the pilgrim who is
dedicated to doing good works. Just as it is inconceivable in the life of a soldier to dwell
on individual needs and whims, so much more so is it inconceivable to have the apostolic
life subjected to requirements of one’s own nature. Thus Jesus added: And remain in the
same house that has hosted you, do not move about from one house to another, as those
people who are looking for distractions, earthly friendships, or more comfort, you eat and
drink what is offered to you, without demanding anything special or exotic, for the laborer
deserves his payment. Wherever you are welcomed, continues Jesus, eat such things as
are set before you, cure the sick in it and say to them: “The kingdom of God is at hand for
you”.
What deep wisdom is in these words and how apt they are to produce in the life
and social interactions of an apostle that right balance that does not distract his activities
from the mission he has!
Those who are hosted, in fact, may fall into two sorts of excesses: one is to
constantly regard oneself as a burden, or oppositely, to believe oneself to deserve regal
treatment.
A disciple can be excessively formal, which is annoying, or too demanding which
is tasteless and rude; he might count to the penny what he consumes and may require
special care, believing that what is done for him is not enough. In general, food received
for free often seems insufficient or not good enough to those who have a demanding
nature; it seems a heavy weight to bear for those highly conceited who would rather give
then to receive, to show independence or superiority.
The optimal rule is holy simplicity united with a spirit of penance: those who work
are worthy to receive support from those for whom they work, and in working for God
they must regard all as a gift from God whatever they receive, without too much quibbling
and without too much calculation.
As this is the word of Jesus, as such it is able to destroy by itself all of the ways
that pride, under the form of apparent respect and generosity, or selfishness, disguised as
requirements and needs, try to interfere with the work done for the glory of God.
The Lord’s work must be done joyfully, with the spirit of pilgrims and hearts of
penitents; what is given must be received with simple humility, and material generosity is
to be paid back with spiritual generosity. As an example Jesus Christ said two things: cure
the sick and say to them, 'The kingdom of God is at hand for you”, that is, do good to
those who suffer, and give thoughts of spiritual happiness to those who seek the Lord;
heal the sickness of the souls in need of spiritual help, and help ascend the path of holiness
those who seek it; give back spiritually what you have received materially in being hosted.
The disciples had from Jesus the power to heal physical infirmity and, naturally,
He naturally urged them to make use of it. In fact, he strongly urged them to use it as He
had given it to them for that particular mission; we have the great power to beg for graces
for those who do good to us and who help us in our apostolate, and we must use it. If one
ponders the immense superiority of a spiritual benefit to a material one, one cannot feel
awkward in receiving a physical gift for the glory of God.
It is obvious also, that Jesus speaks of the hospitality received from strangers and
not from family members; those who belong to the same spiritual family must feel at
home when they are received in one of the houses of their own religious order, but always

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with a spirit of simplicity and mortification without complicating their lives in useless
entanglements, with needless formalities or excessive demands.

How to behave with those

who reject the Word of Truth.

Jesus Chris warned his disciples on how to deal with the cities where they would
not be well received, and also in this exhortation He gave them a sense of proportion in
how to react. At one extreme, they could act with indifference to the rejection, almost if
they did not care for the salvation of their souls, or on the other, they could be so upset as
to invoke the chastisement of the Lord on them. Jesus, instead, encouraged them to show
publicly their disappointment and in so doing try at least to move them to repentance,
reminding them that with their refusal they would risk more serious punishments.
Whatever town you enter and they do not receive you, go out into the streets and say: ’The
dust of your town that clings to our feet, even that we shake off against you.” However,
they were to do this not because they wanted to invoke punishments on them, but to testify
that they had evangelized them; therefore Jesus added that they had to proclaim the truth
once more in going away, thinking that those cities at the day of judgment would be
treated more harshly than Sodom.
An apostle cannot remain indifferent to those who refuse the Word of God, and
will not convert; he must show his sorrow for their lack of acceptance, insist as much as
possible, although, of course, not to the point of forcing someone to accept. If he is driven
away he will leave, but leaves with a protest, saying a last good word to attempt to
overcome their obstinacy. Afterward he remains silent and leaves everything to prayer.
Jesus Christ with this example shows the pain caused to Him by those cities He
loved, that remained unfaithful to his mercy, and with immense pain He reprimands
Chorazin, Bethsaida and Capernaum, predicting the severe judgment that they would
receive and their total ruin; afterwards, to seal with divine authority the mission of the
disciples and those of their successors, and to explain the reason why the cities that had
driven them away would be punished, He exclaimed: Whoever listens to you listens to me.
Whoever rejects you rejects me. And whoever rejects me rejects the One who sent me."
To reject a Priest, therefore, means to reject Jesus himself and to reject Jesus
means to reject God himself. It is a severe warning not only to all men, but also to the
nations that call themselves civil: when a nation despises the Church, in some way or
another it always ends up despising the Redeemer, and when it despises the Redeemer it
falls into theoretical and practical atheism and goes to ruin.
The terrible words of Jesus against Chorazin, Bethsaida and Capernaum are
directly applicable for the same reasons to cities of our time that used to be Christian but
have fallen into apostasy, have become heretical or effectively embrace pagan atheism.
Today the nations are obsessed by a strong desire for greatness; they want to rise
up to heaven through domination and theft, regardless of any moral or legal laws to the
contrary, however as happened to Capernaum, these will be thrust down to hell, that is, to
suffer the most serious humiliations and calamities.
All men shall be convinced, by their own sad experience, that no one can exclude
the Church with impunity, and thereby exclude the Savior and God; they shall see the

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passing of the plow upon these great cities, just as it passed over the three cities of
Chorazin, Bethsaida and Capernaum, of which nothing more remains.

The disciples return from their mission.

The Sacred Text does not say anything of what the disciples did during their
mission; it relates only of their joy in having witnessed the power of the Name of Jesus,
before whom the demons had also trembled.
They spoke about it to the divine Teacher with exultation, believing to announce to
Him something of which He was not aware, but He showed them that He had followed
them with His omniscience, and added: “I have observed Satan fall like lightning from the
sky” which means when you threw him out, I saw him deprived of his dark power and
plunge downward like lightning. Satan tumbled down like lightning from Heaven when he
fell miserably from his glory, but with his dreadful pride he still presumes to rise and he
uses his natural powers to assert his supposed greatness.
How many phenomena, that we believe to be purely natural, are caused or
intensified by him, who tries to harm the bodies of men with disasters and catastrophes
and to entangle them spiritually in material concerns! We laughed at our elders who saw
the wretched hand of Satan in so many discoveries and modern inventions, and yet they
might have been right. A famous modern French writer, who, to his own shame was an
unbeliever, said: “Only the simplest mind may fail to notice the terrible work of Satan in
all modern discoveries that all seek to steal men away from their spiritual lives.”
Mankind is being increasingly captivated by material things, and is so besieged by
Satan through many of the modern inventions, that it is becoming impossible to see how
to break loose from these steel barbs and regain freedom of the spirit. Our appalling
superficiality keeps us from considering this: cinema, radio, television, luxury cars,
airplanes and so on, are or at least can be tools that Satan can use as means of steeping
human beings in materialism. For idolatry, given to simple and primitive peoples as a
means of inclining them to material things Satan now substitutes the powerful, compelling
attraction of formidable discoveries.**
The illusory power in the idol that was supposed to impress man and make him to
adore the object, is now manifested in the application of material things which inspire
modern men to such wicked idolatry as to make temples dedicated to machines, to engines
and so on, as happens in Soviet Union. Satan in these short-lived triumphs has the illusion
of a high role in our world, almost as ruler, and every time he is defeated by the spirit and
by grace, he falls like lightning, because his supposed power is like an electric shock that
makes him sink into the earth as it makes contact with the other pole.
If we think how electricity is the secret behind so many discoveries that satan has
exploited against God, it becomes easier to understand why Jesus Christ has compared the
evil spirit to lightening; Satan almost simulates the spirit through electricity, and induces
in men the fatal, ultra-materialistic idea, that the spiritual and the divine manifestations are
-----------------------------------------
**The discoveries made by men, from movies to atomic energy, should be used for the common good of
human progress; instead often, unfortunately, they become diabolical instruments to do evil (as for example
in the cases of pornography, the atomic bomb, and so on.)
mere effects of the electricity and in this way makes it possible to induce so many men
and false scientists to the most vile and degrading idolatry.

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 It is necessary to be extremely vigilant and to remain strictly with the Church in
our present times, in order not to deviate from the right path. Even if Satan would make us
fear that we are falling behind the times, or even if, hypothetically, we would mistakenly
refuse to accept some new research or scientific discovery, it is a thousand times more
important to safeguard in ourselves the sacred collection of eternal truths, more than any
natural truth, because eternal truths bring us to God and to His immortal glory, while
natural truths bring us, at the best, to a sterile speculation or a poor application that will
disappear as time goes by, and one day shall be consumed by fire.

Jesus rejoices because the Lord

reveals himself to little ones.

The disciples of Jesus Christ returned delighted by the good and marvelous results
they achieved during their preaching, because they had attracted the crowds and thereby
enhanced their prestige; but the Redeemer immediately makes them understand that this
must not be the reason for their joy; the powers that they exercised did not come from
them nor gave them any merit: Behold, I have given you the power to tread upon serpents
and scorpions and upon the full force of the enemy; all this comes from Me and is of no
use to you in attaining your eternal life; it makes you immune to any bodily harm and
truly with these powers nothing will harm you; however, you are not to exalt yourself
because the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice because your names are written in
heaven, and they are written in Heaven because of your faith and the good works that you
do.
At that moment Jesus saw the greatness of the souls that, despising the world, live
supernaturally; He saw them shining in the splendor of faith, immensely above all human
understanding, He saw them despised by the wretched world but preferred by the Father,
saw the true reverse of what the world sees or believes to see and rejoiced in the Holy
Spirit, that is, He rejoiced in the love and glory of God, and exclaimed: "I give you praise,
Father, Lord of heaven and earth, for although you have hidden these things from the
wise and the learned you have revealed them to the childlike. Yes, Father, such has been
your gracious will.”
These are sublime words, as a true judgment of the proud world all full of itself in
its folly and in its ephemeral conceits. The so-called wise and thoughtful men of the world
believe themselves to be its only great ones; and instead they become fossilized in their
ideas, despising all that does not look wise to them, according to their own views; instead
they are the actual foolish and imprudent people, trading divine wisdom and the eternal
good for nothing. “Yes, Father, such has been your gracious will” and not on a whim but
for a most wise plan of justice, and for this reason Jesus Christ, admiring its wisdom and
its harmony said: “I give you praise, Father”.
O, how different is human appreciation from the divine, and how miserable and
wretched shall appear those who on earth were extolled as geniuses or great artists and
scientists, but had no faith!
And to what end all their knowledge?
They know the stories or the small facts about the earth, if they even know these,
and all this science, learned with difficulty, is still nothing compared to all human

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knowledge; their souls are completely ignorant of all that is true science and true
goodness, and they are not able to move even an inch past material things. Sorrowfully,
their souls shall leave this life and find themselves in the disordered, gloomy abysses of
perdition. Confronted with these abysses, no science, power or greatness of the world will
count for anything, and too late they will come to understand that what they had embraced
in life was only misery and utter nothingness.
Continuing His marvelous talk, Jesus determines the real axis around which
everything must converge, the true center that radiates life in all creatures: All things have
been handed over to me by my Father, everything, with no exception, including science,
and including everything that is great on earth, and nothing can be great without Him, or
even worse, against Him. Therefore to know, to love and to serve Him is the very essence
of the greatness of man; to know Him not in a worldly way or because of historical
tradition, but to know Him in the divine light of revelation, drawn from the same divine
depth, because no one knows who the Son is except the Father.
From the Redeemer, the center of everything, we ascend to the Father; the Son is
the mediator between man and God; He descended to earth to reveal to us the mysteries of
God; thus we cannot go to God without the Son, who reveals Him to us and anyone to
whom the Son wishes to reveal Him. He revealed it first of all, and above all, to His
Church, and for Her to the Pope; thus we do not go to God without the Redeemer and the
Pope, to whom the Redeemer has given the deposit of revelation.
This is the great way, the immense way traced by Jesus Christ for mankind, this is
the whole axis of history, it is the center around which all ages are oriented. Today as the
nations so foolishly fight against God, against Christ, and against the Church, it is
important to consider that every deviation from this center of gravity brings ruin and
unhappiness, as we see around us every day.
The beatitude of life does not lie in the dreams of the unbeliever nor in the
enjoyment of the material life; it is not in found in shutting one’s eyes to faith and opening
them to the most trivial and disastrous errors, which arise from the depths of hell; the true
beatitude is found in the light of Faith, in the fear of the Lord and in the eternal hope, not
only for individual persons but for all nations.
It is for this reason that Jesus, in addressing His disciples who were already
oriented towards supreme spiritual goodness in Him and for Him, exclaimed: "Blessed are
the eyes that see what you see.” The ardent wishes of the Prophets and the Kings of Israel
had been accomplished in them, and what these Prophets and Kings—in vain—yearned to
see and hear, because the fullness of time had not yet been reached, had now been
revealed to his disciples. This must be the reason for their immense joy, because they were
personally present for the great revelations of God, and for the accomplishment of His
mercies.

The ideologies of the world.

Today more than ever, the world is trying to attract people with ideologies and odd
ways of thinking, often cleverly disguised, presuming to create new beliefs and new
guidelines for mankind; it is an incredible foolishness, is the cause of catastrophic error,
and is a diabolical trap for poor souls who are ignorant and unable to examine the

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absurdity and evilness of these ideas. Anyone who succeeds in gaining access in any way
to the levers of power of a nation, pretends to create a new axis of rotation for all human
energies. Dragged into this vortex are unsuspecting souls and the youth. It is a crime that
leads to ruin, if God does not intervene.**
With diabolical manipulation, today it is possible to directly influence the
information given to the public: in schools, through the press, through cinema, etc. and in
so doing giving the impression that new heights have been reached, these new ideologies
seem to be colossal breakthroughs and achievements, when in fact they are nothing but
appearances and fictions which hide obliteration and chaos.
Man destroys more than he builds and has the illusion that greatness is in
extending his reach or in demonstrations of strength, without thinking that the extending
of his reach diminishes the richness of life, and the showing of strength is incredibly
wasteful.
Whoever is able to live comfortably in four rooms and yet demands a forty-room
apartment will spend his day cleaning them, and the maintenance costs will consume the
income of his family.
This proud greatness is only useful for the glory of a few maniacs and results in
abject poverty that consumes and ruins the people.
Leaders beat the bass drums in parades of strength while the populace plays the
viola in the parades of misery. O if mankind had not separated itself from God, there
would be prosperity in the land and since this is the true wealth of a people, mankind
would have had, in the name of God, that wellbeing that is good for a peaceful life and a
true elevation of the spirit.

4.To love God and one’s neighbor: the great way of salvation and peace.

A doctor of Law—a scribe—who was following Jesus to scrutinize him and

perhaps even to control him was listening to his allusions to the fulfillment of the hope of
the Kings and the Prophets and the beatitude of those who would be part of it. The man
stood up to test him, that is, posed Him a clear spiritual question because he wanted to see
what new theories He had taught as a comparison to the older ones. The scribe’s
psychological approach at that moment, so to speak, was the following: Jesus was
speaking about the fulfillment of the messianic kingdom but did not explicitly say in that
instance that He was the Messiah; the scribe wanted to scrutinize what His precise
thoughts were and so asked: what would he have to do to inherit eternal life, concealing
his intention to scrutinize Him and to see, after this first question, what new ideas He had
on the triumphant reign of Israel and how He would declare Himself to be the propagator
of them.

-----------------------------------
** Don Dolindo was writing during the time of Fascism, as we already said in another place.

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 Thus he asked: "Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?" He expected
Jesus to give a novel exposition on the wandering ways of salvation and he expected Him
to say: “You should believe in me, follow me and serve me.” The words of Jesus—
repeating them for greater clarity—alluded to new revelations given to little ones, to the
knowledge of the Father for the Son and of the Son for the Father and of the beatitude of
those who helped in the accomplishment of the old promises; the figures and the
prophecies seemed to him to be extremely presumptuous, and the scribe hoped, with this
question on eternal life, to put Him to the test, that is to put Him in a tight spot, to make
him confess his true thoughts, and then force him to recognize his falsity, according to
him.
Jesus however, had not come to destroy the Law, but to fulfill it. Thus instead of
announcing new things to him, He Himself asked the scribe what was written in the Law,
making him to go back to what God had already said. Thus He said: “How do you read
it?" What is written in this fundamental question, and how do you read it and interpret the
Word of God? The scribe answered citing the precept of the Law that the Jews used to
pray morning and evening and that he knew very well: “You shall love the Lord, your
God, with all your heart, with all your being, with all your strength, and with all your
mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” (Lv 19:18) And Jesus replied to him: “You have
answered correctly; do this and you will live.”

The parable of the Samaritan.

The scribe perhaps felt humiliated to have asked such an elementary question, and
he felt humiliated especially because he was amid the populace, who would think him
ignorant; therefore he wanted to justify himself, adding that he had asked that question to
know who was his neighbor; that is, toward whom would he have to exercise charity. It is
clear from the context that he, confused at having to answer something so elementary,
changed the subject with a new question, which actually he had not intended to ask in his
first interrogation.
Jesus Christ answered him with a parable that most likely recounted an incident
that had recently happened: an Israelite, going from Jerusalem to Jericho fell victim to
robbers. The road he needed to take ran for about 28 kilometers [about 17 miles] and
passed through a desert that even today is infested by robbers. Thus this unfortunate
instance of misfortune was sadly not an extraordinary occurrence. The robbers not only
stripped the man of everything he had but also beat and wounded him, leaving him half
dead on the ground.
A priest also was coming from Jerusalem after serving in the temple; he saw that
unhappy man so battered, but he continued on his way with no pity for him. He did not
want to assume responsibility nor take the trouble for someone he did not know, forgetting
that, as a minister of God, he should have pity on him. A Levite also did the same: he
stopped a moment out of curiosity, maybe with some words of pity, but then he too went
on his way.
After that a Samaritan went by; he was a traveler, says the Sacred Text, maybe he
was traveling for business; nevertheless, he stopped by the wounded man, bandaged up his
wounds pouring oil and wine on them, to soothe the pain, as they used to do in ancient

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times; then he put him on his own beast and brought him to a public inn, located on the
outskirts of Jericho, for the convenience of pilgrims.
In that place he remained overnight and personally took care of the wounded man;
in the morning he had to continue his journey and left him in the care of the innkeeper,
paying him two silver coins promising to give him more when he came back to cover any
additional expense incurred. When He finished talking, Jesus asked the scribe: “Which of
these three, in your opinion, was neighbor to the robbers' victim?" and he answered: "The
one who treated him with mercy." Jesus then said to him, "Go and do likewise."
The Redeemer wanted delicately to give a lesson to the scribe.
The Samaritans were hated by the Jews who paid them back with equal hostility,
and yet a Samaritan took care of a Jew; would a Jew do the same for a Samaritan?
Certainly not, since neither a Priest or a Levite had any pity for their fellow-
countryman, even though they should have taken care of his soul because of their sacred
ministry.
He who has mercy and helps another who is suffering is his neighbor, as also is a
man who regards as neighbor anyone who suffers without any distinction of nationality,
race or religion. Suffering establishes a holy brotherhood among men: that is of mutual
charity, and because in exile the pain is stronger, it is necessary to break down the barriers
of social divisions and to give each other the embrace of charity, which is the strongest
feeling of peace among nations.
We live in cruel and hypocritical times, where empty words abound, social
assistance and initiatives to practice it are plentiful, but charity is lacking because services
which should be provided become bureaucracy and are limited to the privileged few
leaving in poverty those who really are suffering from it and shunning those considered
outsiders.
The social services given are virtually a joke—although not deliberately so,
because they lack the very basis of charity that is inspired by the love of God. If the Lord
is not loved, charity is not done for Him and under the inspiration of His grace. It is not
possible to see the reason why one must help one’s neighbor without this inspiration
because, if we do not see a person through the lens given to us by God, our neighbors in
reality are strangers, and they could even be our opponents.
O if only the world, instead of wasting time in useless man-made initiatives to
diminish human suffering, would love God, they would then receive from above the life-
giving dew of charity! If only men would be persuaded to see that any initiative inspired
by secular norms of society and not by God is inexorably destined to be devoured by fraud
and selfishness!
Social assistance programs proliferate based on tax receipts and not on loving
charity; they truly yield very poor results and sometimes they even achieve the opposite of
what their purpose is, because opportunists and embezzlers take advantage of them.
The earth is illuminated by the sun during the day, and the moon is the splendor of
its night; the sun in our lives is our love for God and the moon during the night of our
troubles and misfortunes is lit with the love for neighbor, which is a reflection of the love
for God. It is not possible to conceive a different life or claim that peace and spiritual
welfare, both corporeal and eternal, can come from other sources. There is no substitute
for the love of God and where it is not there, there is only desolation and the night of
eternal death.

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 Mankind and the nations have attempted thousands of experiments of all kinds to
attempt to attain a certain acceptable standard of happiness, but have not yet tried in
earnest to turn truly to God, loving Him with their whole hearts, and glorifying God in all
the activities of their lives.
O Lord raise this shining sun over our desolate valley, light in our hearts a true and
deep love for You, so that among men charity, peace and temporal and eternal goodness
can flourish.
You must come, o Jesus, to heal us; but you cannot come if our love does not call
on you.
You are the merciful Samaritan who came to heal us, redeeming us and leading us
to your Church to find salvation and you can come again our way, to heal our wounds and
restore us to life in your Church.
Once You paid the price of our redemption and You continue to pay it for us to
free us from the wounds of our corrupt nature. You can still save us if we truly love you,
demonstrating our love for You with a full, Christian and holy life, fully aligning our will
to your adorable Will.

5. Porro unum est necessarium. Only one thing is necessary. The profundity of this
phrase.

While Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem, He went into a town called Bethany and
stayed in the house of a family devoted to Him: the family of Lazarus. Lazarus had two
sisters: Martha, perhaps the elder, who mainly took care of the housework, and Mary,
commonly identified with Mary Magdalene, who was already converted by Jesus. Martha,
wanting to properly receive Jesus as an honored guest, was preparing the meal but noticed
that her sister was seated at Jesus’ feet listening to Him in delight; she became upset and
complained to Jesus.
To her it looked like Mary was being selfish and lazy, as there were so many
things to do. But Jesus rebuked her gently telling her: "Martha, Martha, you are anxious
and worried about many things. There is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the
better part and it will not be taken from her."
These words seem very simple and yet in them there is an entire valuation of
human life on earth and an admonition to men to never be anxious of that which is
ephemeral. Those words: There is need of only one thing, porro unum est necessarium,
should be engraved on our hearts and become the rule of our activities. Worldly people, in
fact, living for this world alone, without thoughts of eternal life, believe it not only of
utmost importance to look after one’s temporal affairs but that taking care of spiritual
matters would be considered a waste of time and useless. Even those who believe they
have consideration for spiritual things, still greatly value an active lifestyle and busily try
to help those unhappy people in their temporal suffering, and consider a life of prayer and
contemplation to be useless and futile.
And yet it is completely the opposite.
The natural, temporal life and its concerns, is only a means for the spiritual life,
and the spiritually active life is only the fruit of the contemplative and interior life; it is
foolish to forget the soul and only to take care of the body, as it is equally foolish to
indulge in external good works without empowering them with an inner life of prayer.

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 If we think that ultimately everything comes to an end in life, how can we think or
suppose that something ephemeral can have importance, or conversely, who can believe
that something that lasts forever is worth nothing? It can be said that all the confusion in
our lives is based on just how little or even no value we impart to eternal treasures and to
those things that lead us to them. Prayer, the Holy Mass, the Sacraments, the Word of
God—these are always last on the minds of most men.
For instance, for parents, school is of paramount importance for their children, in
directing them to any profession they will choose to pursue, but often their spiritual life is
given no weight at all although it directs them to their eternal life.
If a daughter is to marry, nothing is ever enough: her dowry, her trousseaux,
expenditures on luxuries; but if she has to enter the monastery everything seems to be too
much. If the daughter marries it does not matter if she will settle far away, and her tears of
separation will be dismissed as just short of being hysterical; but if in giving herself to
God she must live far away, it becomes an unbearable pain and the parents try every way
to prevent it.
If a son is to face very serious dangers in a profession that he has chosen, it does
not matter, but if he must do a little renunciation to become priest, it seems like madness.
It is very painful to note the unconscionable attitude toward what is eternal, as if
we were only for this life and this earth. Let us shout to the world that wants to attract us
with its lures and attractions: Porro unum est necessarium, only one thing is necessary;
what is temporal is taken away from us and what is eternal is never taken away. He who
gives himself to God chooses the best part, even in the present life, and this part never
offers disappointments but is full of peace and unparalleled satisfactions.

The true values of life.

One could argue that with this principle and with this valuation of what is
necessary, all present lifestyles would end and civilization with all its works would have
no reason to exist. To respond to this we reverse the argument, that the principles of the
world virtually eliminate all spiritual life and what occurs is deemed completely random
and so fabulous civilizations are led inexorably into barbarism. If this were not
unequivocally the case throughout all—yes all—human history, if there were but one—
yes just one—exception, the illusion of a civilization without spirituality could be even
tolerated as possible; but unfortunately it is well known where all the great empires end
and will end. The appalling savagery of the Egyptians, the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the
Romans and today’s contemporary modern empires is well known.
Who disagrees with this is either blind to the overwhelming evidence or believes
that civilization is the cause of murder, oppression, the corruption of morality, legalized
theft, abortion, divorce, prostitution, infanticide, and so on.
As corruption is manifested in the body with swelling in its wounds, in its tumors,
and, in the best cases, in its obesity, the corruption of the nations is manifested in
imperialism that culminates in death.
Today the boasts of imperialism are everywhere, everyone is focused on their own
personal gain, and no one thinks that this exaggerated pride is a warning sign of the death
of the nation.

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 Porro unum est necessarium, only one thing is necessary: to live honestly,
devoutly as Christians, and in a holy way.
Whether or not great monuments exist is perfectly incidental; many countries do
not have them and they live better.
Whether or not there are eminent scholars, is completely secondary, because even
without poets and novelists, the world would continue to go on.
Whether or not townspeople can hang their clothing up to dry in the sunshine
depends on the prevailing civic ordinances of that town; however, it is outrageous that it
can be forbidden to hang clothing out to dry, but that the dirty laundry of moral
degradation can be on full display; that garbage is hauled away and removed but the
impure rot displayed in storefronts is not; that it is forbidden for an innocent goat to go
down an elegant city street, but a corrupt and corrupting woman is able to do so freely.
We are not saying to go back to a primitive form of life, which in many respects
might be very desirable, but we say again that it is necessary to remember: porro unum est
necessarium, only one thing is necessary. To seek the high elevation of the spirit is the
true apex of civilization, and civilization truly progresses when it encourages and helps
the spirit to be independent from material things.

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 Chapter 11

The Our Father and the persevering faith in prayer. The possessed mute and the evil
spirits. The sign of Jonah. Reproaches to the Pharisees.

1 And it happened that, while he was in a certain place praying, when he ceased, one of
his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, as John also taught his disciples.” 2
And he said to them: “When you are praying, say: Father, may your name be kept holy.
May your kingdom come. 3 Give us this day our daily bread. 4 And forgive us our sins,
since we also forgive all who are indebted to us. And lead us not into temptation.” 5 And
he said to them: “Which of you will have a friend and will go to him in the middle of the
night, and will say to him: ‘Friend, lend me three loaves, 6 because a friend of mine has
arrived from a journey to me, and I do not have anything to set before him.’ 7 And from
within, he would answer by saying: ‘Do not disturb me. The door is closed now, and my
children and I are in bed. I cannot get up and give it to you.’ 8 Yet if he will persevere in
knocking, I tell you that, even though he would not get up and give it to him because he is
a friend, yet due to his continued insistence, he will get up and give him whatever he
needs. 9 And so I say to you: Ask, and it shall be given to you. Seek, and you shall find.
Knock, and it shall be opened to you. 10 For everyone who asks, receives. And whoever
seeks, finds. And whoever knocks, it shall be opened to him. 11 So then, who among you, if
he asks his father for bread, he would give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, he would
give him a serpent, instead of a fish? 12 Or if he will ask for an egg, he would offer to him
a scorpion? 13 Therefore, if you, being evil, know how to give good things to your sons,
how much more will your Father give, from heaven, a spirit of goodness to those who ask
him?” 14 And he was casting out a demon, and the man was mute. But when he had cast
out the demon, the mute man spoke, and so the crowds were amazed. 15 But some of them
said, “It is by Beelzebub, the leader of demons, that he casts out demons.” 16 And others,
testing him, required a sign from heaven of him. 17 But when he perceived their thoughts,
he said to them: “Every kingdom divided against itself will become desolate, and house
will fall upon house. 18 So then, if Satan is also divided against himself, how will his
kingdom stand? For you say that it is by Beelzebub that I cast out demons. 19 But if I cast
out demons by Beelzebub, by whom do your own sons cast them out? Therefore, they shall
be your judges. 20 Moreover, if it is by the finger of God that I cast out demons, then
certainly the kingdom of God has overtaken you. 21 When a strong armed man guards his
entrance, the things that he possesses are at peace. 22 But if a stronger one,
overwhelming him, has defeated him, he will take away all his weapons, in which he
trusted, and he will distribute his spoils. 23 Whoever is not with me, is against me. And
whoever does not gather with me, scatters. 24 When an unclean spirit has departed from a
man, he walks through waterless places, seeking rest. And not finding any, he says: ‘I will
return to my house, from which I departed.’ 25 And when he has arrived, he finds it swept
clean and decorated. 26 Then he goes, and he takes in seven other spirits with him, more
wicked than himself, and they enter and live there. And so, the end of that man is made
worse than the beginning.” 27 And it happened that, when he was saying these things, a
certain woman from the crowd, lifting up her voice, said to him, “Blessed is the womb
that bore you and the breasts that nursed you.” 28 Then he said, “Yes, but moreover:

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blessed are those who hear the word of God and keep it.” 29 Then, as the crowds were
quickly gathering, he began to say: “This generation is a wicked generation: it seeks a
sign. But no sign will be given to it, except the sign of the prophet Jonah. 30 For just as
Jonah was a sign to the Ninevites, so also will the Son of man be to this generation. 31
The queen of the South will rise up, at the judgment, with the men of this generation, and
she will condemn them. For she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of
Solomon. And behold, more than Solomon is here. 32 The men of Nineveh will rise up, at
the judgment, with this generation, and they will condemn it. For at the preaching of
Jonah, they repented. And behold, more than Jonah is here. 33 No one lights a candle and
places it in hiding, nor under a bushel basket, but upon a lamp stand, so that those who
enter may see the light. 34 Your eye is the light of your body. If your eye is wholesome,
your entire body will be filled with light. But if it is wicked, then even your body will be
darkened. 35 Therefore, take care, lest the light that is within you become darkness. 36 So
then, if your entire body becomes filled with light, not having any part in darkness, then it
will be entirely light, and, like a shining lamp, it will illuminate you.” 37 And as he was
speaking, a certain Pharisee asked him to eat with him. And going inside, he sat down to
eat. 38 But the Pharisee began to say, thinking within himself: “Why might it be that he
has not washed before eating?” 39 And the Lord said to him: “You Pharisees today clean
what is outside the cup and the plate, but what is inside of you is full of plunder and
iniquity. 40 Fools! Did not he who made what is outside, indeed also make what is inside?
41 Yet truly, give what is above as alms, and behold, all things are clean for you. 42 But
woe to you, Pharisees! For you tithe mint and rue and every herb, but you ignore
judgment and the charity of God. But these things you ought to have done, without
omitting the others. 43 Woe to you, Pharisees! For you love the first seats in the
synagogues, and greetings in the marketplace. 44 Woe to you! For you are like graves
that are not noticeable, so that men walk over them without realizing it.” 45 Then one of
the experts in the law, in response, said to him, “Teacher, in saying these things, you
bring an insult against us as well.” 46 So he said: “And woe to you experts in the law!
For you weigh men down with burdens which they are not able to bear, but you
yourselves do not touch the weight with even one of your fingers. 47 Woe to you, who
build the tombs of the prophets, while it is your fathers who killed them! 48 Clearly, you
are testifying that you consent to the actions of your fathers, because even though they
killed them, you build their sepulchers.49 Because of this also, the wisdom of God said: I
will send to them Prophets and Apostles, and some of these they will kill or persecute, 50
so that the blood of all the Prophets, which has been shed since the foundation of the
world, may be charged against this generation: 51 from the blood of Abel, even to the
blood of Zachariah, who perished between the altar and the sanctuary. So I say to you: it
will be required of this generation! 52 Woe to you, experts in the law! For you have taken
away the key of knowledge. You yourselves do not enter, and those who were entering,
you would have prohibited.” 53 Then, while he was saying these things to them, the
Pharisees and the experts in the law began to insist strongly that he restrain his mouth
about many things. 54 And waiting to ambush him, they sought something from his mouth
that they might seize upon, in order to accuse him.

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2. The prayer taught us by Jesus, admirable directive of all our prayers.

Jesus Christ, as He usually did, went off by Himself to a lonely place to pray, and
one of His disciples who noticed the great elevation of His spirit and the great kindness
which emanated from His whole person had a great desire to pray like Him and so asked
Him: "Lord, teach us to pray just as John taught his disciples”. It is clear from this
question and from others like it, that the Apostles recognized that they did not know how
to pray but that they had an increasingly strong desire to do so, in particular in seeing how
fascinating their Master was in prayer.
When Jesus prayed, He shined with love and majesty and many hearts were
conquered; He awakened in them a desire to be united with God; His transfiguration on
Mt. Tabor was certainly one of the most beautiful manifestations of his way of praying,
which gives us an idea of the great majesty that He must have had when speaking to the
Father.
He was not, in fact, Son by adoption but consubstantial with the Father; He did not
pray because of a need to ask the Father for anything, but rather to praise Him, bless Him
and love Him for all of us, and so He established in this way a basis of worthiness that
was lacking in our prayers.
He interceded on our behalf, through His love, in a most perfect union with the
Father, admiring and adoring His plans in equal measure with His infinite Wisdom and He
shined with a singular and mysterious beauty that fascinated and conquered.
As man and mediator of mankind, Jesus begged the Father for our needs and His
face shined with a ray of charity; as Son of God He praised, blessed and loved the Father,
and He shined with eternal Light. He had the majesty of God and a singular tenderness:
standing, his eyes raised to the sky, with open arms in an expression of love, he was
smiling from His deep intimacy with God, while at the same time He was anguished
because of our needs; thus it created an indescribable sight for the Apostles, although they
did not yet fully appreciate its value.
It is evident that Jesus Christ, in answering the request of His disciple and all
others who made and make the same request, gave him a prayer that echoed His very
prayer. Saint Luke does not describe it in its entirety, omitting some of the questions and
making it shorter, perhaps because it was a well-known prayer and was commonly used;
however in this formulation, brief as it is, there is the substance of that prayer, and in this
shorter form itself the Lord wanted to warn us that He did not want to give us a strictly
exclusive formula for prayer, but rather He wanted to lay out guidelines for all our prayers.
The Our Father, we can in fact say, is like a compass that steers all our prayers in the right
direction, and for this reason the Church always makes us recite it at the beginning and at
the end of all the canonical hours, almost determining before God the precise meaning and
intention of all her petitions.

The Our Father.

Father: this is how a soul must approach God. God should not be viewed with the
superstitious fear that the pagans had of divinity, often expressed in form of idols; nor

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with the servile fear of the Judaism of old, which had deviated from the spirit of the
Patriarchs; God has to be regarded as a Father, thus the creator of everything and one’s
own creator, supremely provident, and most loving.
A biological father gives life to his son with love, and through his life he loves
him, as long as he is not reduced to a brutal state from vices.
God gives life through an act of his infinite Will which is Love; He preserves it
with the Providence that is love; the soul then prays confessing the reality of God, his
Love and his Providence, confessing it in an act of living faith. Where this faith that
enables us to speak with God, to His infinite existence, and to His wise and loving Being
is not present, if one does not have an intimacy with Him that comes from faith, true and
practically felt, then the prayer does not rise above our poor atmosphere and becomes
more an outburst of personal impotence than a confident request to God.
The emptiness of so many prayers that we recite is the absence of a sincere faith in
God. Many people, a vast number in fact, when praying still have the spirit of idolatry;
they believe and they do not believe in God, they accept and do not accept Him, and they
are hesitant in their hearts; subconsciously they want to test Him, as one can test the
effectiveness of a medicine.
Father, hallowed be Your name. Here is the second absolutely necessary directive
for our prayers: to consider everything in the light of giving glory to God and to want
everything according to His Holy Will. Oftentimes, instead, we arrive to the heights of
folly by wanting to impose our views and our human interests upon the Lord; and
therefore we remain inept and impotent, relying only on our poor human strength. When
the soul truly believes and appreciates the Lord for who He is, and asks in full submission
to His greater glory, then mercy and goodness for all is spread.
How could we receive the heat of the sun if we try to avoid its rays, or pretend to
reduce them with our own narrow-mindedness? The triumph of the light of the sun, and
consequently the removal of the obstacles that prevent its diffusion, is also our whole
desire to receive its life-giving warmth.
When we pray we must, then, give God His place, to desire life and its necessities
only for His greater glory and for the triumph of His love within us, in the fullness of His
kingdom: Your kingdom come.
If we truly ponder the miserable aspirations of our prayers, always turned to
fulfilling our selfishness, and when we think that the vast majority of people almost
completely ignore what it means to love God and to desire His glory, it is no wonder that
so many of our prayers remain with our miserable selves, and are thus unfulfilled.
In outlining the directive for our prayers, Jesus Christ clearly distinguishes the
requirements of the life of the soul from those of the living body in our natural condition.
For this reason the Our Father has two distinct parts; what is necessary for the life of the
soul is the filial intimacy with God, for the grace that makes souls His sons or daughters:
their Father. In this simple word there is the marvelous synthesis of the elevation of the
soul to the splendor of the grace that restores, elevates and sanctifies it. The intimacy with
God is love in its many gradations and shades and this love is fully synthesized in the
desire to glorify God and make Him reign in our own lives.
Therefore we ask to God for this state of grace, for love for Him, for zeal for His
glory, for the sanctification of all souls, and for His kingdom to reign in all of them, a
kingdom of most tender love.

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 All the greatest manifestations of the life of sanctity and the life of the Church are
in these brief and marvelous words.
For the life of the body, in line with that of the spirit, we need food and everything
that is required to govern the temporal mission that is our very life: Give us each day our
daily bread. We need peace, an absolute essential requirement for a life that is not
constrained, as it is today, by an exasperating bustle of tyranny and oppression.
However, peace is not outside the soul, and can certainly not be considered an
oppression of the stronger over the weaker; it is the tranquility of order and this tranquility
is the harmony of the conscience and that of charity: forgive us our sins, as we
ourselves forgive everyone in debt to us. We are all miserable, and no one can expect to be
greater than another; we confess to be sinners, we ask for forgiveness, and we promise
forgiveness to those who wrong us. In this way the root of all that disturbs peace is
destroyed.
The grace of God in us and charity toward our neighbor are the two spiritual gifts
on which depend the peaceful prosperity of our temporal lives; sinners never have peace,
even though Satan does his best to make them appear successful; but where charity is not
there, the blessing of God is not there either. Satan takes advantage of the situation of
someone (actually very few fall into this category), who can no longer receive eternal
gifts; he allows this person to collect miserable worldly goods as a small token for some
work of his; Satan presents these people as happy in their evildoings to the world, but the
apparent peace in these individuals is a lie, because they are actually very unhappy in their
hearts, and besides it is an even greater lie to make people believe or suppose that sin
brings prosperity.
No, the sinful masses live with a thousand tribulations, and the arrogant masses are
very unhappy in the pangs of their remorse and interior anguish that remove their inner
peace. What benefit are temporal, material goods without peace? And how is it possible to
have peace without the forgiveness of God and His grace? And how can one have grace
and forgiveness without forgiving our debtors?
When our prayer for earthly goods is not aligned to these precise guidelines, it is a
useless prayer; that is, when we do not ask for what is necessary for life and not more, and
not ask for it in harmony with grace and charity, then the prayer becomes useless and can
sometimes make us believe, in a diabolical illusion, that it has the opposite effect. How
many, with their souls filled with greed, hate, envy and sins of all kinds, ask God not for
what their body needs for their spiritual lives, but instead for what their body needs for
their material, temporal lives, and then lament that they have not been heard!
How many are weighed down by impure sins that bring disorder to their lives,
even if concealed and without anybody knowing, and yet they lament the misery of their
bodies, which is the immediate consequence of these sins! How many are ruthless in
judging and even more ruthless in inveighing against their neighbors, and expect that from
this chaos their prayer will resound in the Heavens, where everything is peaceful,
harmonious and of sweet charity!
Life is a test of a few years, and during these years we must deserve, by the grace
of God, the eternal reward. This test comes to us from the very condition in which we live
and also by the snares and attacks of Satan. There is then a third element to help our
earthly life: defense from danger. Without this providential defense, which we can only
have from God, the life of our soul is overwhelmed by guilt and the life of the body from

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misfortune. For this reason Jesus Christ makes us ask God: do not subject us to the final
test, which means do not allow us to be defeated by temptations but, in testing us, give us,
o Father, the strength to remain faithful, reducing the perils due to our fragility.
It is, above all, an act of humility that reconciles us with the mercy of God,
because it is the confession of our weakness with an act of trust and abandonment to the
mercy of God. Those who believe too highly in themselves, thinking that they can face the
ordeals of ordinary life and the even harder ones of sanctity, can be overcome by them;
those who are aware of their own fragility, instead, ask God only for the grace to resist
temptation and not to fall, also begging that He may shield them from everything that,
because of our misery, could overcome us.
With this last request, the directives for our prayers given to us by Jesus are
completed: to believe firmly in God, to trust in Him as children of His, and to be His
friends by grace; this is the foundation of all true prayer. We have to ask for graces for our
souls, not for the fulfillment of our selfish desires but as an answer to our true purpose in
life, and we beg for the glory of God and his kingdom because this is the way that we can
receive those graces.
Any requests that are apart from the glory of God and his kingdom are sterile
prayers for us and can even harm us. For our temporal body we need only to ask for what
is needed to sustain us, our daily bread, without adding unnecessary things, and ask for
the gift of peace, which is the fruit of justice and charity.
Finally let us consider ourselves fragile in regard to the tests that serve for the
attainment of our eternal lives and ask God to defend and preserve our spiritual lives.
As we said before, Jesus Christ gave to the Apostles the directives for all prayers
through the formulation that He taught them, and in doing so gave them a marvelous view
into the model of his own prayer life: He, the Son of God, came on earth to proclaim the
divine adoptive paternity of all men, and to raise all creatures to Heaven: Our Father who
art in Heaven. He prayed for the exaltation of the name of God, and in the human nature
that He had assumed, for a resounding of the praises that from all eternity He gave to the
Father: Hallowed be Thy Name.
Jesus had come to establish His kingdom over all creation, and proclaimed His
kingdom through this great prayer, that would culminate with His Sacrifice on Golgotha:
Your kingdom come. He established the kingdom of God by completely fulfilling the
designs of His infinite Love, that is his Will, and implored that on earth this loving Will
would be the bond and source of harmony of all human activities for the Glory of God, as
in Heaven it eternally bonds the Father and the Son: Thy will be done on earth as it is in
Heaven. He, therefore, Son of God, turned to his Father; He who was His substantial
glory, glorified Him and established his triumphant kingdom, doing his Will, becoming
obedient until death, and loving Him in His Infinite Love.
Being true man as He was true God, Jesus, our mediator and pilgrim on earth,
asked on our behalf for temporal goods: nourishment, peace and defense from every
danger—in other words for that basic prosperity that helps a life to orient itself to God and
not to result in a miserable struggle for fleeting goods, a confusion of contrasting desires
and a brutal race for power, all of which only renders one a slave to Satan and a victim of
those very tests that must direct life towards God.
This was the great prayer of the life of Jesus Christ on earth, and therefore it is
clear that to the disciple who witnessed Him in one of His great elevations of His spirit

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and who begged Him for all of us how to pray, Jesus gave a sublime formula of prayer
that was a model of his prayer, and a directive for all of our prayers.

3. Conditions for receiving an answer: perseverance in praying and full

abandonment to the mercy of God.

When children ask for something, they want to have it immediately and without
listening to any reasons, and start to cry desperately if they are not granted what they
want. If they had common sense, they would submit to the discretion of their parents,
since only they can judge what is good or what can harm them.
We ask God for so many graces with the same thoughtlessness of children, but not
with the same insistence because of a lack of confidence and trust. As soon as the prayer
is uttered we want to see its results, and to see it answered in accordance to our thoughts
and our desires; then when it seems to us that we are not heard, we become disheartened,
do away with all prayers, and grumble over Divine Providence.
Jesus Christ, to complete his instruction on prayer, expressed with a parable and an
analogy the need to persevere in prayer and to abandon oneself to Divine Mercy. The
parable has a very deep meaning, even though, at first glance, it does not seem that it
directly applies to the relationship between the soul and God: a man receives at midnight a
knock on the door from a friend who, because he was traveling, now asks for hospitality.
The Jews, when the weather was very hot, used to travel at night, thus it was not
unusual for this traveler to ask for hospitality at midnight. Since in Palestine it was not
common to keep reserves of bread, as it was freshly prepared daily in sufficient quantities
for that day, the friend of the traveler not having bread in his house and not wanting to be
remiss in his offer of hospitality, went to ask an acquaintance nearby to borrow some
bread and so, in turn, knocked at his door. The other answered that he was already in bed
with his children, did not want to be troubled, and he could not get up because he would
wake up the children. His friend did not lose heart at that rejection, but continued to knock
with such insistence that the other, not so much out of friendship but to make him go
away, left his bed and gave to him the three loaves for which he was asking.
Jesus Christ adds, when he finished telling this parable: And I tell you, ask and you
will receive; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For
everyone who asks, receives; and the one who seeks, finds; and to the one who knocks, the
door will be opened. Thus this parable had this basic meaning: insist to receive, insist with
the faith to obtain, insist because God wants to hear this insistence from us.
The general meaning of Jesus’ argument goes from less to more: since the friend
who did not want to be bothered and did not have the will to give anything, did, in fact
give at the end, if not out of friendship but because of insistence on the part of the other
man, how much more will God, who wants us to ask and is delighted by our filial
insistence, hear and answer our persevering prayers.
God does not become annoyed by our supplications, he cannot become bored, but
in order to answer them He wants to be asked with such insistence to the point that
another would be annoyed.
The Lord wants this for our own good, because only the persistent prayer gives us
the habit of talking to him like sons and puts us in communication with him. If He

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answered our requests immediately, our prayers would have no meaning for us.
We are like motors that cannot get put in gear unless they are first allowed to
warm up; we need to insist in asking, to inflame our hearts and get them used to those
outbursts of love that make us able to be heard. In his divine kindness, the Lord does not
want to give us what we ask of Him as a mere handout; rather He requires our insistence
to be our contribution to the grace that we will receive.
We ask of His power, we seek for his wisdom, and knock for his love. Asking
insistently, his power supports our weakness; seeking, his wisdom leads to our strength;
knocking, his love opens for us the doors of his mercy and makes up for what our faults
demolish.
Heaven is very distant from us, and our insistence is not needed to bend His mercy
toward us. Just the opposite—it elevates us to Him; God knows what we need. Jesus says
on another occasion, we are the ones that do not know what God wants from us; praying
with insistence establishes between Him and us that intimate familiarity that makes us,
little by little, able to do his Most Holy Will.

When it seems to us
that our prayers are not heard.

Jesus Christ assures us that he who asks receives, and yet this assurance
notwithstanding we feel at loss because it seems to us that almost always it is the opposite:
we ask and nothing is given to us, we seek and we do not find, we knock and it is not
opened to us, and this is what we tell Him before and after we pray to Him. It is rare,
actually very rare, to find a person that does not retain a minimum of skepticism on the
efficacy of prayer, and it is equally rare to find someone that will confess to have prayed
poorly and thus not to have deserved the grace asked for. This is a most sorrowful
situation, exploited thousands of times by Satan to move us away from prayer.
At the same time Jesus Christ enlightens us further on this interesting question
with the same words that He uses to show us the certainty of the positive outcomes of
prayer: What father among you would hand his son a snake when he asks for a fish? Or
hand him a scorpion when he asks for an egg? (Lk 11:11)
Thus, it is evident, that the Heavenly Father hears us when we ask for what is
good, the true good, as Jesus added, the good spirit, which is the grace of a holy life and
the graces for the soul.
The Redeemer could not contradict himself and if once He said: Seek therefore
first the Kingdom of God, and his righteousness, and all these things shall be given you
besides (Mt 6:33): Jesus could not promise the efficacy of prayer if done only for the
receipt of temporal benefits.
Besides we are ungrateful children, and so we ask for the stone, the snake and the
scorpion, instead of the bread, the fish and the egg, and if the Father answers the son who
asks for what is good, He does not grant the request of the other who asks Him for evil.
Therefore this expression of Jesus works both ways.
The true and deep reason for which we often are not heard in our prayer is because
of our evil spirit: we do not have faith, we do not trust in God, we do not love Him. We
are seriously burdened by our past sins, almost always sins of impurity, or present sins,

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causes of unfulfilled graces. We have no charity toward our neighbor in all things, and we
do not think that God deals with us as we deal with others; there is no simplicity in us and
no abandonment to Him, and in truth when we ask, we always conceal some preconceived
ill-feeling against Him.
We pray but without getting outside of our own misery, we are like roaring
airplanes that cannot take off from the ground, or like stripped gears, which spin uselessly
and do not impart forward motion to the vehicle.
We speak a lot to ourselves and very rarely to God, because we say words that our
distractions and our boredom render devoid of meaning.
If we truly spoke to God, as the saints did, we would see even miraculous effects
from our prayers.
Instead of saying that our prayer is useless, we should instead recognize in
humility that we do not ask, do not seek, and do not knock. We must ask with the
insistence of children, we should seek with the confidence of friends, we should knock
with the humility of subjects, and we go to God with the certainty of His mercy, to God
One and Triune; we cannot ignore this and it is necessary that in us there is something that
will bring us closer to Him, to His Power, His Wisdom and His Love.
We must believe that He can do everything, effectively and completely, and that
He does it all with wisdom and love and wants our true well-being. For our soul to deviate
from this position means to subvert the prayer and render it useless—as useless, one could
say, as trying to put in a two prong outlet a three prong plug.
What are harmful to our prayer are these paradoxical situations: we assume we can
go to God but remain in ourselves; we beg for His intervention but trust only in our own
strength or in those of other men; we would like to draw on His power but deny it; gain
His wisdom but grumble about it; and receive His love but stifle it. How many times we
pray with this spirit, almost without realizing it, and do not ask, do not seek and do not
knock. If however, Jesus Christ tells us with certainty that those who pray are heard, when
we are not heard, we must have the absolute certainty that we did not pray: to assert the
opposite, is the same as to declare false the Word of the Eternal Wisdom, and that is
absurd.
The continued insistence in prayer, a precondition to be fulfilled, is not necessary
for God but it is for us, as we have said before, and it is a need of our soul to orient itself
to Him. We must insist and not desist.
We have, in fact, the habit of starting to pray with a natural enthusiasm, which we
believe to be faith, with a certain presumption, which we believe to be hope, and with a
little fervor which we consider to be love. As the days go by these dispositions wane and
so the initial enthusiasm gives way to fatigue, the hope to mistrust, and the fervor to
apathy; the prayer little by little diminishes, as a lit wick does without oil: it gives off
smoke in impatience and very often dies in acts of real disbelief. Let us ask God for the
good spirit, fruit of the infusion of the Holy Spirit, and let us turn to Him with our whole
lives.
Our prayer should not come merely from our lips, or from a weak heart; the whole
soul must pray, or better all our being, remaining faithful to our duties and seeking the
Kingdom of God and His Justice above all things.
We must have our eyes fixed on eternal life, especially our eternal life, because
God listens to the majority of our prayers in relation to that supreme goal. In Heaven we

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shall see the embroidery of his love and we will see that none of our prayers were lost,
even those that did not rise above our small temporal existence, and we can add even
those that have been infected by the light of passions. In fact, even if these prayers do not
reach God, God hears them and He comes to us, accepting them as cries of our sick
nature. He then answers us with the reverse of our petitions and with this reversal
straightens them and changes them into requests for good and supplications for eternal
life.
You ask for the healing of a person who binds you to the earth and God listens to
you taking her away from you; you ask for the recovery of another who is very sick, and
God listens to you by taking him safely to His heavenly home.
You ask for prosperity and receive poverty, because poverty is good for you; you
seek glory and receive the humiliation, because it takes you to the real glory.
How many of these false beliefs does God straighten out, and how much we need
to be grateful in the very disappointments that we believe we have when we pray!
One last difficulty: sometimes we indeed ask God for precisely the good spirit, for
virtues and perfections but we do not believe to have been heard; is then the word of Jesus
incorrect? We respond first of all with a comparison. A vacuum pump removes water
from the hold of a boat, but although the sailor uses the pump to get water out the hold it
nevertheless remains flooded. Is the pump useless? No, it is just barely sufficient to offset
the leak and consequently the water that gushes into the hold. A brush can be used to
clean clothes, but if the cloth is too greasy or muddy a quick brushing is not enough: it
will be necessary to work on the stain and that requires some time. The hot stove warms
water; but if instead of water there is ice in the pot a hot stove is barely enough to dissolve
the ice, but the water remains cold. A shutter opens by pulling a rope, but if there is a
compression spring that counteracts the movement, the shutter closes again.
We might desire the good spirit, however we do not consider the evilness that
counterbalances it; we want to purify ourselves, but we shy away from those radical and
energetic means that would truly make us become good; we want fervor but we do not
measure how thickly frozen are our inner beings.
Yes, we want perfection for our use and consumption but without the sacrifices
and without self-restraint; we want to treat our wounds without cauterization but with the
balm that caresses our pride and our nature; we can tell ourselves of our own insolence but
we will not tolerate others to note it to us, not even if ninety-nine percent less critically
than what we say; we surely want to ascend, but we want to remain where we are and not
part with any of our baggage. Therefore the prayer is not useless, but it is like the vacuum
pump that fights the rising water in the hold; it does produce results but they are not
visible until there is formed a difference between nature and grace.
Who knows where some souls would go if the people to whom they belong would
not pray, and who knows where their nature would take them if they did not ask God for
the good spirit, even in a markedly reduced capacity!
On what true flights of sanctity would a soul embark if, in asking for the good
spirit, it truly abandoned itself to the action of grace! Nature sometimes deceives us and
we, even praying to be perfect, have in the spirit some areas into which we do not want
grace to penetrate; we do as Jonah did, embarking on a ship in a storm to flee from the
face of God, we sleep on our repulsion to the Divine Will and complain of not advancing.
If we could throw ourselves fully into the ocean of Divine Love who could say where His

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grace would take us and what holiness we would be able to reach! Pray, pray without ever
getting tired, and let us leave to God the care to answer us when and how He thinks. We
can also pray for temporal things if we want but leaving to him the care to measure the
ration according to what these are useful for our eternal life.
Let us be convinced that God is our Father and whatever our prayer is, He will
always hear us and give us what is good.**

4. Liberation of the possessed mute.

They presented to Jesus a possessed man who was mute, and according to
Matthew was also blind (Mt 12:22). The Redeemer began to drive out Satan, the real
cause of the man’s infirmity, and after He had driven him out the man spoke and saw.
From the Sacred Text it is clear that Jesus had to vie with Satan to strip him of his prey,
since it is written that He was: driving out a demon that was mute; the expression driving
out, assumes that this took some time to do and the resulting amazement of the crowd
shows that the liberation of the possessed man was extraordinary to behold.

The blind, the deaf and the mutes of Satan.

Satan generally spoke for those he possessed, trying to ward off the irresistible
power of Jesus; this time he did not speak but instead greatly agitated the unfortunate man
who had to have been lashing out is a terrifying manner. The infernal spirit knew by
experience that to the exclamations of his possessed people Jesus replied by commanding
them to be silent and hence liberating them; thus, by making this possessed man deaf and
mute, he tried to avoid or delay the powerful order of Jesus. He further made the
unfortunate man also blind to impede him from seeing Jesus utter the imperious words
which He would use to cast Satan out.
Satan, in his foolishness, believed to have closed in this way all the windows, so to
speak, through which the man could receive grace, and had made him the clear image of
those he holds tightly into the snares of evil; blind to the evidence of the truth, deaf to the
words of life, and mute, stubbornly mute, to the words of prayer. They do not see, do not
hear and do not pray, and their ruin becomes irreparable, without a miraculous
intervention of grace. Whatever you tell them is impenetrable for them and the
stubbornness of their will becomes so tough as to seem invincible.
Unfortunately, the earth is full of these blind, deaf and mute individuals, and to
win them over the intervention of Jesus Christ is necessary, because only He can, by
grace, enter into their hearts and conquer them. The Sacred Text does not say how Jesus
freed the possessed man, but it is clear that He did it with an act of power, maybe touching
him with his hand; certainly He had to do it with such majesty that the crowd was
completely amazed.

------------------------------------------------
** Beautiful meditations on the tenuous connection to grace.

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 Beelzebub and his kingdom.

Some of those who followed Jesus only wanted to find ways to accuse Him, thus,
unable to deny the evidence of the miracle that had just occurred and seeing the great
excitement of the people said, with deep malignancy, that He drove out demons by the
power of Beelzebub, the prince of demons. They knew full well that it was a meritless and
absurd assertion, but in their depravity they hoped it would sow doubt in the crowd of
people and diminish their faith in Him. Others, not daring to deny the miracle, attempted
to diminish its importance by asking for a sign from heaven.
By simply asking for a more impressive miracle they could have devalued, in the
minds of those present, what they had seen, considering it no big thing; they did not care
in reality, to have a new sign, because they would not have believed even a sign from
heaven; however, knowing the mentality of the people, they knew that the simple question
could generate in all of them a sense of distrust. They also were hoping, and actually
believed that Jesus could not give a sign from heaven, unlike the prophet Elijah,
commanding perhaps fire to descend from the sky, because they supposed maliciously that
His acts were either mere tricks or were diabolical. In reality, for these perfidious people
to ask for a sign from heaven was only a way to persuade the crowd to their evil beliefs
and ideas. This perversity is concealed in the hearts of men when they obstinately do not
want to see the truth!
Jesus Christ, delving into their thoughts and knowing the wicked intentions of
these scheming questions, started by refuting the allegation that He worked on behalf of
Beelzebub with an irrefutable argument: He drove out Satan; He drove him out
specifically in order that he not harm the soul and the body of those he possessed;
therefore, He worked directly against Satan’s goals, and in doing so was dismantling his
dark domain. If He had worked in concert with Beelzebub, Satan would not have used
Him to destroy his own kingdom, that kingdom he tried to keep and maintain in many
ways; for then he would be at odds with himself, which would show that his kingdom was
already crumbling due to interior collapse, as a ruined nation collapses when it is wracked
by internal discord.
It was an irrefutable argument, but Jesus completed it with another one. Among
the Jews there were already many exorcists, sons—that is—disciples of the Priests,
Scribes and Pharisees, who drove away demons, knowing very well that they could drive
them away only in the name of God and after many prayers. It clearly would have been
preposterous for his opponents to drive them away in the name of Satan, because the
contrast between Satan and God was too obvious; on the other hand the difficulties with
which the exorcists met in driving away demons, a subject about which they often spoke
about amongst themselves, was already a testament to the ridiculousness of their
slanderous and evil assertion, and they themselves having this experience would have
been the best to judge it as complete rubbish.
In saying that Satan would drive out Satan, the work of the exorcists in the Temple
was per se devalued and, with that perverse insinuation, they were going against
themselves, throwing a sinister shadow on their ministry. Since it was absurd for Satan to
drive out Satan and since it was demonstrated, by the same experience of the exorcists,
that this could not happen, the result was that Jesus drove out demons by the finger of

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God, that is, by His divine power, and in driving Satan out He defeated his kingdom, and
as a consequence the Kingdom of God was now upon them.
Satan, until then, was in the world like a strong armed man guarding his atrium,
that is, the entrance to his house, believing himself able to keep his possessions safe until
one stronger than he comes to defeat and rob him. Only a stronger man can defeat another
that is armed and is resolutely determined to defend his possessions at all costs.
Hence it was also evident from this fact that Satan had been defeated not by
himself but by someone stronger than he.
With a veiled phrase Jesus turned the accusation his enemies had made against
them, so that they could ponder the situation that they were in: Whoever is not with me is
against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters. If He drove away Satan by
divine virtue and declared Himself to be his enemy, it was evident that those who declared
themselves His enemies, were friends of Satan; if He, in driving away the infernal spirit
defeated his kingdom and ushered in the kingdom of God, it was evident that those who
opposed Him in this work were great collaborators of Satan and enemies of the Kingdom
of God. If they were not enemies of Satan, they would have been in harmony with Jesus
who crushed Satan driving him away; since they instead were enemies of the Redeemer,
the evil spirit possessed them.
It appears clear from the context that among those who opposed Jesus there were
some that had once followed Him in the past but had now been re-possessed by Satan,
although they pretended to continue to follow Jesus. At that time, when they had been
freed from Satan, the evil spirit had gone off to search tirelessly in the desert of perdition
for other souls. Afterwards, he returned to attack these liberated men with seven worse
spirits than he had and regained possession of them, reducing them to an even more awful
state. For this reason they should have been careful and vigilant because they acted under
diabolical suggestion and therefore were in danger of eternal and irreparable ruin.

Blessed are they who listen to the Word of God.

While Jesus was talking, a woman raised her voice among the crowd and said:
“Blessed is the womb that carried you and the breasts at which you nursed.”
Evidently the woman heard in the words of the Redeemer the voice of truth, made
aware because of some sorrowful personal experience she had with those who opposed
him.
From a psychological standpoint, in fact, we applaud a speaker with much more
spontaneity and warmth if his words coincide strongly with our personal experience.
When those who have been victims of oppression by bullies without the possibility of
reacting hear someone who has the courage to face these bullies and confuse them, they
applaud and shout with expressions of praise and blessings, showing the great satisfaction
their souls feel and indirectly allow them to vent their own resentment.
The exclamation of the woman, after a rather obscure speech by Jesus, would not
be explainable without admitting that she had feelings of resentment against the scribes
and the Pharisees. This is why Jesus, without contradicting the praise that she gave to His
Most Holy Mother, rather confirmed and supplemented it, and answered: “Rather, blessed

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are those who hear the word of God and observe it.” He meant to say: yes, My Mother is
blessed because She has begotten and nursed Me, but She is even more blessed because
She listened to the Word of God and practiced it; therefore do not take comfort in the
reproaches made to your oppressors, but listen to the Word of God and put it into practice
using charity.
Besides, that woman addressed Mary as a common mother, and Jesus with His
words declared Her covertly Mother of God. She in fact, heard the celestial message and
believed in it, She welcomed in Her bosom the substantial Word of the Father, kept it with
Her love, and listened to the Word of God from Him and practiced it.
She did not conceive and nourish Him as just any woman, but she had conceived
the Word incarnate by the Holy Spirit and so took care of the God-Man not as any other
child conceived by the flesh would have been. The woman exalted Mary as the Mother of
a Prophet and Jesus in his reply exalted her as the Mother of the Word.
As can be seen, the interpretation of this verse of the Gospel is very different from
the arbitrary interpretation of the Protestants who want to see it as a diminishment of
Mary. Considering that St. Luke in his Gospel chose to underscore in a particular way the
praise that someone gave to Mary, makes it even more clear how absurd the erroneous
hypothesis of some Protestants really is.
The reply of Christ to the woman that exalted Him was also directed against the
insinuation of the scribes and Pharisees, who wanted to portray Him as a friend of Satan;
we would say that it was a public exclamation of the love that Jesus has toward His
Father, a desire to ward off the praise that He received thereby showing that He cared only
for the glory of the Father and to better convince the crowds that He was against Satan.
Moreover, psychologically speaking, when we are wrongly accused of wickedness, it is
natural for us to seize every opportunity to show our piety and devotion; some feelings
that would remain hidden in our hearts are expressed with greater energy and become
manifested as our singular concerns.
Jesus Christ wanted to show the people how much He appreciated the Law of God
and how far He was from performing diabolical tricks to gather personal glory; therefore
to the woman who exalted Him in magnifying the beatitude of His Mother in conceiving
and nursing Him, He forcefully spoke extolling the blessed nature of those who listened,
kept and practiced the Word of God.

5. The sign that Jesus would give to His mission.

Jesus Christ did not give an immediate answer to those who asked for a sign from
heaven, but waited till still more people gathered in the crowd, because it was too
important to dispel the illusion of wanting to see a physically impressive miracle when
they already lived in the fullness of a supernatural one, which exceeded any past
manifestation. For that perverse generation, what would a sign from heaven have meant
anyway? And since they had come to call the defeat of Satan himself a work of Satan,
what more could matter to them?
It was absurd to think that Satan could cast himself out, but it was not absurd to
ponder that he could produce a striking phenomenon; therefore, a sign from heaven would

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have become occasion for new evil insinuations. God would give an unequivocal and
definitive sign of the truth, not from the heavens but from the depths of the earth, making
Jesus rise from the dead, a sign that would not be like the sign of Elijah, a manifestation of
terrible justice, but like the sign of Jonah for the Ninevites: an invitation to penance and
salvation. When Jonah was expelled onto the beach at Nineveh by the whale, with this
event he became for the Ninevites a messenger of penance and mercy; so too Jesus Christ,
emerging from the darkness of the tomb after being killed, would show that He was the
victor over death and hell.
He himself, therefore, would be the miracle, and actually He already was, because
all his life was a living and speaking embodiment of his mission.
This is why Jesus Christ added that the queen of the south, that is the Queen of
Sheba who came from far away to hear the wisdom of Solomon, and the men of Nineveh
who did penance at the preaching of Jonah, would rise like judges and would condemn
this unfaithful generation who had in their midst one greater than Solomon, hearing words
of truth that were even more clear than those of Jonah.

The pure eye understands the way of the Lord.

But why did this ungrateful generation, witness of the biggest miracle done by
God on earth, not believe? Because it had extinguished in itself the light of God.
Celestial gifts cannot be received only to remain empty and God does not grant
them for this; but as a lamp is kindled and put on a stand that it might give light to those
who enter, so also the gifts of God are lights that must steer the whole soul towards Him,
as long as a soul is simple and looks at Him with good intentions.
When the inner intention is pure, the soul sees illuminated what God reveals, but
when it is false and dark, the soul sees only darkness. In that case even the most
resplendent and miraculous light becomes useless and the most impressive miracles do not
shake it. God has given us reason as lamp for our interior life, to make us see the light that
comes from Him; our reason must always be put onto a higher plane, as a lamp is put on a
lamp stand; if our reason becomes dull and coarse from being hidden in the darkness of
human miseries or becomes oppressed by errors it becomes only a source of darkness for
our soul.
The inner eye sees darkness where there is light when it is not pure, and it becomes
clouded by prejudices and errors.
Also in the business of the world, one with a pessimistic eye, obscured by
malevolence, sees everything as wrong and evil around him. Even more, he sees
everything wrong in the ways of God, which exceed his capabilities immensely, when he
embraces a false point of view.

Today mankind is blind and lacks

the light of God.

The lesson that Jesus Christ gave to the scribes and the Pharisees is extremely
important for our generation, which is accustomed to first blind all reason, bury it under a

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detritus of falsehoods and then thus marred, claim that it is the only light and guide for
life. Sorrowfully, the way the education is set up today, it has resulted in an impenetrable
darkness in every field, and most deeply dark in those fields that are purely speculative.
We absorb the pagan errors from infancy, and we nourish ourselves with the darkness of
ancient literature; when reason should start developing and then awaken, we cover it with
the pile of garbage that is thoughts of ancient and modern philosophers gone astray, and
continue to obscure it. If that were not enough, we soil with a thousand impurities the eyes
of the spirit and direct all of our bodily activities toward a false and illusory goal.
In a time that was most ironically called and is still called the “enlightenment” we,
in reality, lit just a few smoky candles under a bushel basket, that is on the ground floor. It
is no wonder then that it is difficult for this generation to accept the supernatural, and
rather readily throws itself into the abyss of ridiculous and irrational thinking of the
deranged evildoers.
We live amidst the splendor of the light of the Church and her Saints, but we see
darkness everywhere because our eyes, interior and exterior, are impure.
Intellectually we are blind and morally we are in the darkness of impurity.
May the Lord give us the grace to look only to the Church, the true lamp that is
always raised up and purify our eyes from the smoke of impurity. Our only salvation is in
our Catholic Apostolic Roman Church, and without her mankind will only hurtle
downward to the bottom of the abyss. It is shameful that after twenty centuries of
Redemption, we are still dealing with errors, while we should all be in the light of the
truth; it is a tragedy that living amid the miracles of the life of the Church, we are still
searching for extraordinary miracles in order to believe. We are a thousand times guiltier
then the ancient Jewish people and we must beg in a loud voice that the Divine Mercy
resurrect us.

6. Jesus reproaches the Scribes and the Pharisees.

While Jesus was talking on this very important subject a Pharisee invited him to
dine at his home. From the severe words the Redeemer used in addressing him it can be
noted that the Pharisee was not conscious in the least of a moral problem on which
depended his salvation or perdition. It is essential for every soul that seeks perfection and
the ways of God, to orient its ability to reason towards God, to seek Him with all the inner
forces of the spirit, to be able to appreciate the moments of grace and respond to grace
with great rectitude; but to the poor Pharisee these things seemed like complicated ideals
and as it was already time to eat, that is lunchtime, he invited Jesus to his house, maybe to
put an end to the talk.
The poor man most likely was accustomed to give only a rapid passing thought to
his interior soul; he lived a life of appearances and believed that perfection consisted of
these. Most likely he was one of those who participated in the insinuations against Jesus,
or at least had witnessed them, and so possibly to mitigate the impact that, he believed,
had upset Him and to lessen the confusion that his answer had produced on his enemies,
he invited him to have lunch at his house with a familiar gesture of ostentatious cordiality
that is used when someone wants to end an argument in friendly terms, without confessing
his wrong.

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 To say in fact that Jesus cast out demons by virtue of Beelzebub had been
enormously repulsive, and Jesus’ refutation of this was a very severe blow to the prestige
of the scribes and Pharisees, who believed themselves to be excellent men of reason; the
invitation to lunch cut short that very severe instruction on the righteousness of reason and
intent, and it was like wanting to give a happy ending to a very insulting insinuation.
Jesus Christ accepted the invitation because of his immense love toward those
souls He was pressed to enlighten, and doing so without belittling them too much in the
presence of the crowd; in a private home He could speak more clearly and more
strongly—something which was necessary to do in order to counter the pride that made
them feel as if they were perfect when in reality they were in the depths of perdition. To
have attributed the most powerful manifestations of the divine goodness to Satan was a
horrendous insult to God, and so to let them reflect on the misery into which they fell was
an act of mercy to shake them up and push them to repentance.
The strict language of Jesus must be considered in this light in order to understand
it: He looked at the glory of God and the miserable state of those who tried to attack it; He
burned with zeal and charity, and the severe character of his speech was restorative and
medicinal for their souls. Besides, He ended the ancient age and started the new one, and
of course He had to show the scribes and Pharisees the serious responsibility of their
fathers, knowing that it would culminate in His death. Jesus wanted to make them
understand that they were on a false path and that they needed to convert rather than
conspire against Him.
Jesus Christ entered the house of the one who had invited him and sat immediately
at table. The Pharisee was shocked that he had not made the usual ablutions before the
meal, because they used always to wash their hands, not so much for cleaning and hygiene
as for the purification of any legal uncleanness that they might have contracted. It was
logical that Jesus, the Holy of Holies and the purest lily, would not wash himself with this
particular intention, but he did this because he was very sorry for the injury done to God
and also to have the opportunity to educate those dining with Him. The Pharisee did not
dare to scold him, but Jesus reading in the depths of his heart and responding to his
thoughts spoke to him sternly, to rebuke him and some of the others present of the
injustices they had done and the serious sins they consummated. “Oh you Pharisees!
Although you cleanse the outside of the cup and the dish, inside you are filled with
plunder and evil. You fools! Did not the maker of the outside also makes the inside?”
Evidently his divine gaze had noticed that all the items on the table had been bought by
greedily harassing the sellers at the marketplace, and those shady and evil practices had
been used to purchase things for the house or at least to pay poorly for them.
These injustices weighed heavily on His most delicate Heart. It was weighed
down by those acts in which the Pharisees indulged without scruples, and weighed down
by those apparent acts of charity, like when they ate, which were done only for outward
appearances. The Jews kept their doors open when they dined and often the poor came to
ask for something. The Pharisees, after committing their hundred injustices at the market,
if they had an audience, would give leftovers to the beggars, but with a contemptuous
gesture that ill-concealed their interior disappointment in doing so.
This is why Jesus, after reproaching them for their robbery and iniquities, and
having witnessed perhaps at the very moment one of those alms-giving moments made for
show, added: do it rather with what is left to you, that is from what you did not acquire

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from evildoing—from your own treasure, or, according to the Greek text, what is inside
you, that is from what you give out of genuine charity and not for outward appearances or
custom. You give alms out of what you have unjustly obtained from others, and this does
not purify you from the injustice; you have to give from what is legitimately yours, and do
so with the sincerity of supernatural charity, because only this can purify you from your
faults.
That this is the true sense of the words of Jesus is clear and also from what He
adds: Woe to you Pharisees! You pay tithes of mint and of rue and of every garden herb
even in becoming obsessively exact for the sake of scruples which the Law does not
command but you pay no attention to judgment and to love for God. To give to the
Temple more tithes of the seeds of the earth, that is ears of wheat and the fruits of trees, as
prescribed in the Law (Lv 27:30, Dt 14:22) including the smallest products, this is good in
itself, because it is a sign of love and subjection to God; but to be content with this and to
not look after the duties of justice and charity is to seriously misconstrue the Law of God.
You, however, adds Jesus sorrowfully, you are not scrupulous in your tithing for the love
of God; you do it as an outward display of sanctity, rejoicing to be honored by others as
being righteous, and in so doing you are only like hidden tombs, whose decay is not seen
and is unnoticed by passersby.
To these very severe words, one of the doctors of the law revealed himself and
said forcefully: “Teacher, by saying this you are insulting us too.” The scribes and the
Pharisees, in fact, formed a single party, and what the scribes claimed to practice was
taught specifically by the Doctors of the Law; to condemn those who practiced was the
same as reproaching those who taught. And because the great deviations from the Law of
God depended on the false teaching, Jesus answered: “Woe also to you scholars of the
law! You impose on people burdens hard to carry, but you yourselves do not lift one
finger to touch them.” You, scholars of the Law are the first among the unjust, because
you invent duties that do not exist, and only for those who are subject to you; you are
strictly demanding in regard to others, but you yourselves are really are the most lax and
negligent in the service of God and use every kind of injustice against your neighbor.
But the main fault of the scribes was in systematically refusing the special mercies
that God sent to His people to convert them. They reproached and persecuted all the
messengers sent by the Lord. However they did build monumental tombs to the prophets
whom their fathers persecuted and killed, thus showing that the special mission of those
sent by God was not only possible but also true. You honor the Prophets killed by your
fathers, Jesus meant to say, but you do not say a word about those who killed them, and
even today you continue in the same way, thus showing your agreement in how they
acted.
You killed them to silence them, and you built monuments for them because they
cannot speak anymore; if you built the monuments to make up for the wrong of your
fathers, you would not continue to do the same with those messengers that God sends you.
You inherited the sins of your fathers and combined all of them in yourselves with
increased malignancy because you see great signs that your fathers did not see; for this
reason the blood of the Prophets, from Abel to Zachariah shall be upon this generation.
All of the Prophets were sent to announce or prefigure the Redeemer and to
prepare his people to receive Him. Those who killed the Prophets committed a most
serious crime, but stopped short of committing the most terrifying evil which would be to

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suppress the Redeemer Himself. Only the generation contemporary to Jesus arrived at this
singular excess and so its crime was the sum of all the past crimes.
Abel was the first to prefigure the Redeemer, killed because of envy, and
Zachariah, the High Priest, was stoned to death by order of King Joash between the Holy
of Holies and the Altar of Holocausts; he was the last one, prefiguring the killing of the
Redeemer, High Priest and Victim, killed before the Father to expiate our sins, and before
Jerusalem, the Altar of God on earth, the only center where the Lord was worshiped.
Zachariah is called son of Barachiah, but instead he was the son of Iddo, maybe
because his father had two names, which was common among the Jews; but also in this he
prefigured Jesus Christ who was the true Son of God the Father and was believed to be the
son of Joseph, husband of Mary Most Holy.
Jesus, as Son of God, was generated by his eternal knowledge (prefigured by
Iddo); but on earth he appeared as son of the humble carpenter, who lived obeying the
Lord, kneeling before his Will and blessing Him in his sufferings (prefigured by
Barachiah). He came to accomplish the Law and the Prophets, and the Doctors of the Law
should have brought the people to recognize Him, explaining the true meaning of the
Word of God. But they, even though they had the key of knowledge, that is, even knowing
that the real reason for all the Scriptures was to announce the Redeemer, and even having
in their possession the secret of the interpretation of the Scriptures and the key to their
mysteries in this fundamental sense, they nevertheless committed the unimaginable crime
of not accepting the truth and preventing others from accepting it.
To Jesus’ just and severe indictment of them, the Pharisees and Doctors of the Law
instead of recognizing their faults and converting, colluded with each other and harassed
Him with many tendentious questions to try to catch him and have an opportunity to
condemn Him. In this way they confirmed with facts their hostility to the Redeemer, and
once more they rendered themselves unworthy of the Divine mercy.

Jesus reproaches also us.

The whole history of mankind is a history of iniquity, ungratefulness and

foolishness; but maybe no other time is so worthy of reproach as our times, wherein we
pretend to be so illuminated precise and exact in our knowledge and in our lives. It is a
fact that, when it comes to our judging supernatural events, the criterion used is the one of
the Pharisees: people try to look for the slightest nit to not believe; on the other hand when
it comes to judging the most trivial lies, the most unlimited faith is used supported by
arguments cloaked by wise-sounding big words or with the endorsement of people with
public eminence.
God visits us in so many ways and enlightens us with His great mercy through the
Catholic Church, but the poor unbelievers do not accept her light and the least bit of
reporting by the newspapers of any new scientific “finding” or historical “interpretation”
designed to deny the true Faith causes them to rush to believe in some new scientific truth
or way to live. The Church is always targeted by the hypocritical human sciences and her
truth is always the first to be attacked. How many lies are taken as absolute truths, how
much truth is thrown out as tall talk, how many deceptions pass as miracles and how many
miracles pass as deceptions!

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 If a supernatural fact is reported we see the stupid smile of the foolish supermen of
the cognoscenti ready to portray it as a tall tale; on the contrary just tell a foolish
superstitious fact and we see the same men very attentive, ready to swear to its truth!
These are Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, who pretend to brand as falsehoods the most
real facts and drink as truth the most stupid nonsense.
The history of all the tales of the famous critics and super-critics of mankind
would be most amusing: we will mention only one episode, just one, to show of what we
are capable, even we the most civilized critics, the day we leave the light of the Church
and allow ourselves to be guided by a fallen reason from the most simple-minded
prejudices.
In 1870, at the expense of the State, in a most elegant edition, Le Livre des
Sauvages (Book on Primitive Peoples) was published in France. The book reproduced
about 200 folders containing signs made by American Indians, which constituted the
single compendium of the literature of primitive men.
In the publication, the most eminent scholars of the time were represented, such as
Duke of Walenski, Paul Lacroix, the Chief Librarian, Mr. Domenech and others. The
folders containing the signs were studied by the most competent scholars who attempted
to interpret them; they were divided into chapters, and their meaning was determined. Yet
those famous folders, as it was discovered later, were just rudimentary doodles and
sketches drawn by the son of a German immigrant, who shepherded herds in the forests of
Canada!
Unfortunately, our human culture is full of these stories and others even more
ridiculous, while the Faith is always triumphant in its truths, and its supernatural facts are
always timely and appropriate to our times.
In practical matters of life, how many sacrifices is our generation capable of, when
deceived or dragged by a few troublemakers or a very few authentically paranoid leaders?
And unfortunately, our same generation is not able to do little sacrifices for God, nor does
it know how to obey His Law of love and that of the Church! If the Lord calls us and
sends us Saints, true Prophets of our times, they are ridiculed and persecuted; if the Lord
does miracles they are being dismissed as tales; if He punishes us, the most oppressive
and draconian laws prevent us from recognizing the voice of the Lord with the excuse of
needing to keep up the prestige of the nation or the morale of the people.
In short, under the hypocritical disguise of science, power, civilization and
greatness, the Redeemer and His Church are denied, and we proceed rapidly toward ruin!
May the Lord set us right and give us the grace to remain faithful to Him, and only
to Him, in the Catholic, Apostolic Roman Church!

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 Chapter 12
1. The hypocrisy of the Pharisees. The sin against the Holy Spirit. Greed and the self-
assured rich man. Confidence in God. Jesus came to bring fire and war.
Reconciliation.

1 Then, as great crowds were standing so close that they were stepping on one another, he
began to say to his disciples: “Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy.
2 For there is nothing covered, which will not be revealed, nor anything hidden, which
will not be known. 3 For the things that you have spoken in darkness will be declared in
the light. And what you have said in the ear in bedrooms will be proclaimed from the
housetops. 4 So I say to you, my friends: Do not be fearful of those who kill the body, and
afterwards have no more that they can do. 5 But I will reveal to you whom you should
fear. Fear him who, after he will have killed, has the power to cast into Hell. So I say to
you: Fear him. 6 Are not five sparrows sold for two small coins? And yet not one of these
is forgotten in the sight of God. 7 But even the very hairs of your head have all been
numbered. Therefore, do not be afraid. You are worth more than many sparrows. 8 But I
say to you: Everyone who will have confessed me before men, the Son of man will also
confess him before the Angels of God. 9 But everyone who will have denied me before
men, he will be denied before the Angels of God. 10 And everyone who speaks a word
against the Son of man, it will be forgiven of him. But of him who will have blasphemed
against the Holy Spirit, it will not be forgiven. 11 And when they will lead you to the
synagogues, and to magistrates and authorities, do not choose to be worried about how or
what you will answer, or about what you might say. 12 For the Holy Spirit will teach you,
in the same hour, what you must say.” 13 And someone from the crowd said to him,
“Teacher, tell my brother to share the inheritance with me.” 14 But he said to him, “Man,
who has appointed me as judge or arbitrator over you?” 15 So he said to them: “Be
cautious and wary of all avarice. For a person’s life is not found in the abundance of the
things that he possesses.” 16 Then he spoke to them using a comparison, saying: “The
fertile land of a certain wealthy man produced crops. 17 And he thought within himself,
saying: ‘What should I do? For I have nowhere to gather together my crops.’ 18 And he
said: ‘This is what I will do. I will tear down my barns and build larger ones. And into
these, I will gather all the things that have been grown for me, as well as my goods. 19
And I will say to my soul: Soul, you have many goods, stored up for many years. Relax,
eat, drink, and be cheerful.’ 20 But God said to him: ‘Foolish one, this very night they
require your soul of you. To whom, then, will those things belong, which you have
prepared?’ 21 So it is with him who stores up for himself, and is not wealthy with God.”
22 And he said to his disciples: “And so I say to you: Do not choose to be anxious about
your life, as to what you may eat, nor about your body, as to what you will wear. 23 Life is
more than food, and the body is more than clothing. 24 Consider the ravens. For they
neither sow nor reap; there is no storehouse or barn for them. And yet God pastures them.
How much more are you, compared to them? 25 But which of you, by thinking, is able to
add one cubit to his stature? 26 Therefore, if you are not capable, in what is so little, why
be anxious about the rest? 27 Consider the lilies, how they grow. They neither work nor

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weave. But I say to you, not even Solomon, in all his glory, was clothed like one of these.
28 Therefore, if God so clothes the grass, which is in the field today and thrown into the
furnace tomorrow, how much more you, O little in faith? 29 And so, do not choose to
inquire as to what you will eat, or what you will drink. And do not choose to be lifted up
on high. 30 For all these things are sought by the Gentiles of the world. And your Father
knows that you have need of these things. 31 Yet truly, seek first the kingdom of God, and
his justice, and all these things shall be added to you. 32 Do not be afraid, little flock; for
it has pleased your Father to give you the kingdom. 33 Sell what you possess, and give
alms. Make for yourselves purses that will not wear out, a treasure that will not fall short,
in heaven, where no thief approaches, and no moth corrupts. 34 For where your treasure
is, there will your heart be also. 35 Let your waists be girded, and let lamps be burning in
your hands. 36 And let you yourselves be like men awaiting their lord, when he will return
from the wedding; so that, when he arrives and knocks, they may open to him promptly. 37
Blessed are those servants whom the Lord, when he returns, will find being vigilant. Amen
I say to you, that he will gird himself and have them sit down to eat, while he, continuing
on, will minister to them. 38 And if he will return in the second watch, or if in the third
watch, and if he will find them to be so: then blessed are those servants. 39 But know this:
that if the father of the family knew at what hour the thief would arrive, he would certainly
stand watch, and he would not permit his house to be broken into. 40 You also must be
prepared. For the Son of man will return at an hour that you will not realize.” 41 Then
Peter said to him, “Lord, are you telling this parable to us, or also to everyone?” 42 So
the Lord said: “Who do you think is the faithful and prudent steward, whom his Lord has
appointed over his family, in order to give them their measure of wheat in due time? 43
Blessed is that servant if, when his Lord will return, he will find him acting in this manner.
44 Truly I say to you, that he will appoint him over all that he possesses. 45 But if that
servant will have said in his heart, ‘My Lord has made a delay in his return,’ and if he has
begun to strike the men and women servants, and to eat and drink, and to be inebriated,46
then the Lord of that servant will return on a day which he hoped not, and at an hour
which he knew not. And he will separate him, and he will place his portion with that of the
unfaithful. 47 And that servant, who knew the will of his Lord, and who did not prepare
and did not act according to his will, will be beaten many times over. 48 Yet he who did
not know, and who acted in a way that deserves a beating, will be beaten fewer times. So
then, of all to whom much has been given, much will be required. And of those to whom
much has been entrusted, even more will be asked. 49 I have come to cast a fire upon the
earth. And what should I desire, except that it may be kindled? 50 And I have a baptism,
with which I am to be baptized. And how I am constrained, even until it may be
accomplished! 51 Do you think that I have come to give peace to the earth? No, I tell you,
but division. 52 For from this time on, there will be five in one house: divided as three
against two, and as two against three. 53 A father will be divided against a son, and a son
against his father; a mother against a daughter and a daughter against a mother; a
mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-
law.” 54 And he also said to the crowds: “When you see a cloud rising from the setting of
the sun, immediately you say, ‘A rain cloud is coming.’ And so it does. 55 And when a
south wind is blowing, you say, ‘It will be hot.’ And so it is. 56 You hypocrites! You
discern the face of the heavens, and of the earth, yet how is it that you do not discern this
time? 57 And why do you not, even among yourselves, judge what is just? 58 So, when you

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are going with your adversary to the ruler, while you are on the way, make an effort to be
freed from him, lest perhaps he may lead you to the judge, and the judge may deliver you
to the officer, and the officer may cast you into prison. 59 I tell you, you will not depart
from there, until you have paid the very last coin.”

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2. The hypocrisy of the Pharisees.
A great multitude of people was gathered around Jesus, and He felt moved,
thinking of how the Pharisees were exposing these souls to many dangers who were being
led along false paths by them; for this reason He turned to his disciples, who would
themselves become shepherds of souls and the guides of a new people, saying: "Beware of
the leaven of the Pharisees, that is their hypocrisy”. Fermentation leavens the mass of the
bread, and the Pharisees, by their example, taught the people to live a life full of pride and
appearances. They deformed the Law of God with their hypocrisy, misrepresented the
words of Jesus and with their hidden agenda tried to prevent God's word from yielding
fruit. The apostles, therefore, had need to be attentive and vigilant because the time was
coming when they would have to preach the Gospel to the whole world, and preaching it
integrally, without worrying about the opposition of their enemies.
Everything they heard, in familiar and intimate conversations with Him, would
have to be told publicly, and God himself one day would expose all the snares of the
Pharisees in the universal judgment. Jesus Christ preached to them the future of the
apostolate, and warned them against opportunistic reasoning that, under an appearance of
prudence, could make them reluctant preachers of the truth.

Do not be afraid to confess the faith.

The Pharisees would try to intimidate them, and eventually the time would come
when they would persecute them till death; but they had no need to fear those who could
kill their bodies, after which they could do no more; they had to fear God, who could not
only kill them in their present life, but condemn them eternally in hell, if they were not
faithful to their mission. They had to be strong before persecutions and trust entirely in
God, in whose hands is the destiny of men, and from whom everything depends.
Five sparrows could be bought at that time for two assaria, that is for about 14
cents†, and nobody thought, in buying them, that they had been forgotten by God. He
created them and so did not abandon them to chance, but instead He took account of their
little lives, not allowing that their lives be taken away from them without some reason. If
God takes care of sparrows, how would He not take care of men? Who would dare say
that He would abandon men to their own devices if He even knows the number of hairs on
each one of their heads and does not let one single hair fall out without His will?
The apostles would find themselves in very trying circumstances; they would have
to deal with the evil of men and the harassment of persecutors without weapons or other
means of physical defense. Their only defense had to be the Lord God and they were to
put their trust only in Him.

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†
Translator’s note: Today (2014) approximately $1.

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 They had the very strict duty to propagate the faith and to propagate it to the whole
world; thus to confess or deny it could not be an indifferent act for them, and they would
have to give very close account of how they did on Judgment Day.
To implant this sacred duty in their minds, Jesus announced what would happen to
those who confessed or denied His Name: They would have from Him, before the angels,
that is, at the universal judgment, a sentence of blessing or a judgment of condemnation.

The sin against the Holy Spirit.

With these stern words Jesus set the foundations of Christian character, in perfect
contrast to the world which is eminently servile and opportunist. The world drifts along
transported by fads and self-interest; the world shouts hosannas to those in leadership
roles and changes flags (and loyalties) at every new gust of wind.

The Christian, and particularly the apostle, cannot let himself be carried away by
flattery, nor intimidated by threats but should always advocate the truth at all times and
before all peoples, aware of the crime he would commit if he did not—the sin against the
Holy Spirit, which is to deny the light that He gives from above to propagate and support
the truth in the world.
The scribes and the Pharisee sinned against the Holy Spirit when they attributed to
Satan the signs that God gave to confirm the truth, and their sin could be called
unforgivable because it put them in a position from which it was virtually impossible to
return to God (Mt 12:31-32; Mk 3:28-29); thus the denial of truth by those who had to
witness and propagate the truth, was an equally grave sin, the same as a blasphemy
against the Holy Spirit, that is the denial of those revelations that He gives specifically to
spread the truth.
Afterwards, Jesus Christ taught from which source the apostles - and more
generally all Christians – would have to draw strength and support to confess the truth
before those people who were in power over the land, saying that they had to expect, in
the very moment of danger, the help of the Holy Spirit and the inspiration on how to
answer. The history of the martyrs of all times, including in most recent times, is a clear
confirmation of the promise of Jesus, because the martyrs, brought before tyrants, have
always given admirable answers, and have confused the arrogance of the wicked.

The martyrs, heroes of the Church.

Sadly, we live in a time where it is very difficult to speak the truth, because those
who impose by force a political regime presume to impose their errors with the same
aggression, almost as if it were a new Gospel*. The Church, heir of the word of Jesus
Christ, resists the wicked currents and undauntedly proclaims the truth, even at the cost of
martyrdom. If men at least had an appreciation of human dignity, they should be grateful
to the Church that keeps her torch high even during raging storms and in the face of
human cowardice. Before tyrants of thought and conscience, just as before those of true

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* The author Don Dolindo writes during the height of the Fascist period, with uncommon courage in those
day.

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freedom and morality, the Church supports the right of truth and goodness, and remains
alone in confronting the waves of persecution, increasing the number of her confessors
and her martyrs.
It is a wonderful display of divine love and human dignity that can be considered unique
today amidst so many aberrations of thought and politics. If you could pass all of
the essentially legalized wrongdoing in the world that waves its flags and keeps high its
long extinguished torch through the sieve of truth, nothing would remain except small
clusters of fanatics and fools: the rest would slip through the small holes and the mesh of
opportunism.
Only in the Church do we have the opposite phenomenon, because only the
Church supports truth and goodness; when a persecution comes to torment her, and Satan
conjures up a most bitter war against her, she retains her true witness, character, strength,
dignity and true heroism, with no raids, no batons, no castor oil, no swords, no bombs, no
punitive sorties; she evinces the heroism that enlightens, forgives, dies, and leaves in
blood the shining trace of truth and the comforting perfume of goodness.
The Church is a solid wall that no bomb has been able to break down, because the
words of Jesus have made of his children a phalanx of heroes.
Today, in so many parts of the world the old pagan persecutions seem to have
become almost trivial and inconsequential when compared to modern barbarism. Today
the Church fills her martyrology with thousands of new martyrs: 770,000 martyrs in Spain
alone for example. Before the tyranny of thought and life, She keeps Her head high,
confesses Jesus Christ, proclaims the truth, and receives admiration and sympathy even
from those who would be against her.
Tyrants may have been able to shatter the power of great armies, but they could
not crack the unarmed power of the Church, strong in its fear of God, and only concerned
with His judgment.

3. Not worrying about worldly possessions and living trusting in God is the strong
foundation of a Christian character.

While Jesus was speaking to His disciples to instill in them and in His Church the
granite foundations of a strong Christian character in the face of struggles and persecution,
a young man from the crowd interrupted Him, asking Him to intervene with his authority
in the division of an inheritance with his brother. Often Rabbis were called to be judges
for questions about wills and inheritances, and that man wanted to appeal to Jesus, as to
the most authoritative of the teachers.
At that moment, our Redeemer was looking into the future at the coming centuries,
He was considering the path His church would take in the world, and was forming the
foundations of Christian character in the face of earthly life; it could be said that He was
completely taken by this great idea and this is why he refused to judge by saying "Friend,
who appointed me as your judge and arbitrator?"
He is the judge of all mankind. Thus, He could have been the arbitrator, but in that
moment He was occupied with His great mission of Redeemer, He was thinking of His
Church and retorted that He did not come to deal with base issues of greed and interest nor
was He head of humanity for this.

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 Evidently this young man was not contending with his brother for a question of
justice but rather one of greed, and he was asking the intervention of Jesus not to have
Him as the absolute arbiter but to receive from Him a favorable judgment for his own
greed; however Jesus was not appointed as judge and arbiter for justifying greed and
injustice. Moreover, He was looking further into the future and in answering the young
man He wanted to lay the foundation for another element of the Christian character,
saying to everyone: "Take care to guard against all greed, for the life of a man does not
consist of an overabundance of possessions."
Material goods do not constitute the life of a man, nor should they or even less the
greed for them be his goal; to focus only on these material preoccupations causes
cowardice of character, because in so doing a man loses the courage to face the world and
all its tyrannies because he wants to preserve his temporal interests, his place in society,
his employment, and one’s situation in the world*.
He then becomes a slave, condescends to the arrogance of the wicked, hiding his
faith and his duties, and practically he is an apostate to truth and goodness. It is essential
to the Christian character to not put one’s trust in earthly things and to not worry about
them, because the preferred weapon of despots is to steal and to starve: for this reason
Jesus explained with a parable how foolish it is to put hope in material goods that must be
left behind, and how foolish it is to compromise one’s eternal life by choosing fleeting
things that cannot be preserved.
If what we possess on earth could last forever, it would be much less foolish to be
attached to such things, but knowing that they will inexorably pass away and that they for
us are only temporary things, it is foolish to place our hearts on them.

The parable of Jesus

Jesus then recounted a parable, which applies to all people: a rich man’s land had
become incredibly fruitful. The abundance of the harvest gave him an unshakable
confidence in his future, and he thought to protect his wealth and make it stable. Therefore
he decided to demolish the old barn, cramped and confined, and to build others that were
much bigger. This was his idea of safety, and he already fully expected to have a rich and
abundant life for years to come when the voice of God came to him and said in that very
night he would die.
What would be the use of all he had accumulated if he had to leave it? And who
would enjoy the fruit of his labors? Since he had not thought of the good of his soul, what
would he bring with him to the next life, standing before God?
Most men busy themselves with procuring material goods, an elegant house,
secure sources of income, comforts and luxuries, and often sacrifice themselves greatly in
order to succeed, even to the point of compromising their own souls. However, material
goods do not lengthen one’s life, let alone make it eternal; years go by, or months, or days,
and then everything must be left behind. It is a terrible thought and it should make us
wiser.

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* The comments of Don Dolindo show, unfortunately, a reality that still has not yet changed.

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 There are many who accumulate money, houses, works of art, jewels, gold coins,
rare books and become very attached to these things; but to what end? After they die
others consume their goods and their only heredity is the tomb! Those who are attached to
these things only worry how to preserve them, but if one does not have a heart free for
God, he does not have a character that is able to resist evil and, when something happens,
he falls into the abyss of sin or even apostasy. Many times people are more afraid of the
loss of material goods than of death itself, and in face of the risk of losing their position in
life, they are ever anxious and seek any means necessary to preserve opportunistically
their material goods.
This is the real cause of why good people submit to the arrogance of despots and
the reason why these despots end up having the upper hand. The people are brought to the
lowest levels and accept the greatest wrongdoing for fear of losing their position, of not
doing well in school, of the material future of their children and so they give in to the most
pernicious and vile anti-Christian laws. And yet it would be enough to trust in God and
deal with unbelievers with absolute intransigence thereby forcing them to surrender.

Everything is precarious in life

except to trust in God

Jesus Christ with most tender words and wonderful comparisons exhorts his
disciples and Christians of all times to have such a trust in God, with complete and
unlimited confidence as to make their character strong and unshakable in all
circumstances: For life is more than food and the body more than clothing; then, would
not God who gave life and the body, also give food and clothes to those who trust in Him?
He shows his providence even to animals and provides them with food, although they do
not harvest or sow and do not have storerooms or barns. This is a fundamental point about
God's providence, because it is clear that no animal fails to find its food even though it
does not have a special aptitude for accumulating reserves; an animal moves about, looks
for food and God enables it to find it. If there are some exceptions to this rule it is only
among the animals that live with men who should be more attentive to their livelihood.
For this reason Jesus gives the example of the raven that lives freely in the fields.
Faith in providence does not come from man but from God, and it is proportionate to the
trust we place in Him, and not on the amount of wages or income we earn.
The Lord wants us entirely abandoned to Him, and He shows us how we will fail
in all our efforts to secure a position in the material world. Our real assurance is only in
God, because our lives depend on Him.
No one can grow taller by intensely thinking about it over and over again; at most
he might become shorter, consuming his health with worry; how then, as this small matter
cannot be achieved, can we expect to do what is much more difficult: providing for
ourselves a stable position in life? What position can be stable forever?
If you have a job you may get sick or lose it; if you own fields, they may become
barren; if you own houses they may collapse or be burdened with taxes; if you have
income generating securities, they may become impaired; if someone close to you
provides for you, he may not be able to continue.
Everything is uncertain in this world except to trust in God, and follow His will,
serving Him and expecting from his goodness our livelihood and the necessities for our

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lives.
Look at the lilies of the fields: they do not toil or spin, and yet they are dressed by
God as not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed; now if God takes care of plants,
would He not care even more for all men who serve and trust in Him? Why torment your
spirit with material things, as do those who do not believe in God? To provide for your
own needs under the eyes of God is not an evil thing, but tormenting your spirit, or, even
worse, going against the divine will presuming to know by yourself the best for your own
future, is not that truly foolhardy?
Jesus goes even further and teaches us to not only not torment the spirit with the
thought of accumulating or obtaining a position, but to expand the spirit through charity
and generosity done through a pure love for God; to seek the eternal goods and thereby
becoming confident to receive also the goods of the world. This is a sublime law of life,
which makes the soul truly superior to all earthly things, and heroic in keeping those
goods and those eternal treasures that never end. To think that God was pleased to give us
the kingdom, constituting us as masters of the world, trusting in Him, and to ponder that
He gave the kingdom to us, directing us toward eternal life; this will give us such a
freedom and security of spirit to make us rulers of the world, triumphant in life, and
instruments of divine providence for others.
Being detached from everything, always living with a transient spirit on this earth,
depending on God for everything and working not so much to make money but rather to
accomplish God’s will in the mission He gives us: this is the wonderful secret of having a
calm superiority of character and achieving a deep peace that nobody can disturb or
overwhelm.
What a profound thought: God takes care of me, even of the hair on my head!
Seeing a hair fall from our heads and thinking, it does not fall without the divine will,
makes us truly feel in the arms of divine providence and our lives no longer seem like a
jumble of random or haphazard events.
To live not only abandoned to divine providence, but to also be its instruments
through generosity, alms giving and help given to others, and looking toward the eternal
reward that no one can take away from us, means to put our hearts in heaven, seeking our
eternal treasure, and to give little consideration to the violence or abuses of men.

4. The strong foundation of a Christian character: to think of ourselves as travelers

on this earth, as servants waiting for their master and being stewards of his
possessions.

In those times long garments were typically worn, and so traveling people would
raise and tie them with a belt around their loins to enable them to move more freely. If
they were going to a nuptial feast, since it was celebrated at night, they carried burning
lamps. Jesus wants us to live on earth with girded loins, that is as travelers, and that we are
to be like servants who are waiting for the return of their master from a wedding and, not
knowing at what time he comes, are vigilant in the night.
Life is a continuous expectation of death, and death is the solemn moment in
which Jesus, the bridegroom of the Church, comes to pick up our soul, and introduce it to
the eternal wedding feast. He will come suddenly, when we least expect it, since nobody

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knows the moment of death.
Life on earth is like a long night, because it does not have the true light of joy, and
it is a test. It may be almost regarded as divided into three vigils, as the ancients divided
the night: youth, manhood and old age. The Lord can come during any of these three
vigils, and it is necessary that we be vigilant to welcome him, if we want him to make us
partakers in the eternal glory, almost like a master who girds himself, has his faithful
servants sit down at table and gives them food. The Lord in his glory gives us his own
happiness, and it may be truly said that He surrounds and nourishes us, because in his
greatness He makes himself proportionate to each soul, according to its capacity, and He
feeds it with eternal goods.
During the night that is our life, thieves can also come to steal our soul, because
demons are always ready to ambush us, and we must be vigilant to avoid being robbed of
our eternal goods. The Lord comes very suddenly and, as we are vigilantly waiting for
Him, we must also be on guard against the incursions of demons that try to compromise
the moment when the soul meets God.
Here is a perspective on life that cannot accept illusions and cannot make a Christian
hesitant to meet his obligations: since he is a traveler, he lives in a transient situation and
he cannot be at all interested in what is temporal and even less in what could deprive him
of his eternal goods.
Peter, listening to this teaching, asked the Teacher if it was meant for everyone or
only for the apostles; he would have liked to understand better what it meant to be vigilant
and to
wait for Him, and so he asked for clarification. Maybe he thought that Jesus spoke of the
temporal kingdom they were expecting. Jesus Christ did not answer him directly, because
it was clear that the instructions were for everyone, but He added to his talk what
pertained especially to the apostles, and in general to the ministers of God. They, in fact,
must not only be vigilant for themselves, but also for all others, as faithful and wise
stewards of the gifts of God to souls.
Jesus Christ expresses this thought with a question: Who, then, is the faithful and
prudent steward, and so on. He spoke in this way because He was surrounded by the
scribes and the Pharisees, who were violent and unfaithful stewards. He wanted to tell
him: “Do you believe that there are faithful and prudent stewards who give to everyone
what God grants for the good of souls?” And without going into detailed reproaches, He
insists that a minister of God must watch over all souls and perform with great care and
fidelity the offices received from the Lord toward them, keeping in mind the final account.
Those ministers who believe that life consists of having fun or is just a search for material
comforts, and hence mishandle souls instead of healing them and give themselves to a
disordered life, what in the final judgment will be considered unfaithful and will be
punished.

The Priest and his mission.

With a divine gaze that embraces the future, Jesus looks at each priest and
compares them to those under the Old Covenant; those under the Old Covenant are

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mitigated in their miseries, but the others, having known the will of God, and having had
much more, will be punished much more severely on the Day of Judgment if they have the
misfortune of being unfaithful. The strong character of a priest therefore depends on the
idea that he aligns himself to the mission he has received from God. We are all travelers
on earth and must be vigilant in waiting for the hour of God; but the priest, besides being a
traveler, is also the steward of the heavenly goods and is responsible for each soul
entrusted to him; thus, much less than other people can he think lightly of his life, or lead
it carelessly, almost as if he did not have to give an account for his lifestyle; he received
more than all others, and so more than all others he will be punished for his infidelity.
This thought alone should be enough to enable him to be very vigilant over his
duties and to give him a strong character so that he can be firm in the face of the
difficulties of life and of the apostolate.
What is unfortunate is just this: many times the ministers of God forget their
responsibilities and the account they will have to make of them on the Day of Judgment,
and they lose their sense of duty. If they would consider that a bad example, lack of
compassion, and even a simple missed opportunity to educate could produce irreparable
harm to a soul, how would they dare lead a bad or superficial life?
The priest is the teacher of the peoples; he is their only educator, because only
with the light of God can he move souls towards goodness; if he does not know how to
transmit this wonderful light or even pose obstacles to its spreading, he will be responsible
before God for all the sins of the peoples entrusted to him.
This is a truth that must be weighed carefully, in order not to find very sad
surprises and to not be irreparably held to account in eternity.

5. True love and heroic sacrifices in true charity and forgiveness.

Many have waxed poetically on the name of Rome, saying that it is a name for
love: Rome equals love*. However they do not consider that during the period when it was
ruled by pagans, Rome was love reversed literally, which equates to implacable hatred.
Imperial Rome especially has littered the world with ruins and slaughters, enslaving
everything under its imperialistic tyranny and the fatuous glory of a few leaders. In fact,
all the histories of human conquest have this sad legacy of hatred and bloodshed.
Jesus Christ instead proclaims himself the conqueror of love with his bloody
sacrifice and He places love, heroic sacrifice, and charity as the basis of a Christian
character. He has come to bring fire to the earth, not the fire of destruction but that of
charity, and He only desires this fire to be lighted; He came to bring this fire submitting
himself to a complete sacrifice and suffering that flowed over Him like a baptism; and His
love made him anxiously desire this suffering, keeping Him distressed until He had
suffered all the pains He was to endure.
He leaves this love and sacrifice as a beautiful inheritance to his followers, since
the conversion of the world will bring them persecution and pain even by their closest
family members.

___________________________________
* “Roma” spelled backwards is “amor” which means love in Latin.

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 Thus do not be deceived; the preaching of the Gospel, in addressing human
passions, will produce violent reactions that shall be the cause of great suffering for the
apostles of the Divine Word and all their successors.
This was already announced by the prophets and to see its fulfillment must be for
everybody a proof of its veracity. The scribes and the Pharisees condemned themselves by
rejecting the truth, because even though they knew how to understand the changing
weather patterns by observing the clouds in the sky or the blowing of the wind, they did
not want to distinguish the unmistakable signs of the coming of the Messiah in the very
persecution that was moved against Him and his disciples. They themselves were
fulfilling the predictions of the prophets, and did not want to realize that its fulfillment
was the sign of the accomplishment of the divine promises.
The allusion to the obstinacy of the scribes and Pharisees in denying the truth is
like a subtext in the discourse of Jesus. He soon continues his prophetic proclamation of
the great persecution that his followers would suffer, exhorting them to meekness,
prudence and charity. This was the great single force to which they would have to appeal
to defend themselves, because Christians are children of peace and messengers of charity.
They should look for agreement, peace and charity, prudently avoiding what would
embitter their opponents, which could produce more violence in them.
This is the program of the Church, to which she has remained faithful throughout the
ages: faced with the brutality of her enemies who would suppress her, she always seeks to
bring peace and harmony, and Her diplomacy is always inspired to seek the glory of God
and the good of all souls.
That must be the spirit of all of His ministers and all His faithful, since finding
agreement with adversaries, or at least being prudent in dealing with them when they show
themselves unable to reach an agreement, saves the good from extreme destruction. From
the parable that
Jesus tells (verses 58 and 59) it is evident that He does not want his followers to be fond of
quarrels, because in disagreements there are dissensions, aversions, and hatreds that are the
antithesis of goodness toward souls. Even when we are right, in a clash that does not affect
the soul or the conscience, it is necessary to yield to avoid the risk of encountering obstacles
in doing good, and to avoid being worse off even before judges, as often happens.

The various epochs of the Church.

This chapter of the Gospel of St. Luke implicitly outlines the various epochs of the
Church, and the attitudes that the faithful should have: the Church was born in the Jewish
nation, between the opposition and the corruption of the scribes and Pharisees, and had to
be aware of their spirit of hypocrisy and disloyalty. At her birth, the Church would be
made a sign of persecution, in which she would feel lost; she had to go on trusting God,
discounting the dangers ahead and refusing to accept any restrictions in confessing the
truth, even at the cost of martyrdom.
After the epoch of persecutions and of martyrs followed a triumphal time in which
the Church had to be careful not to be absorbed by temporal pursuits and putting Her trust
in the hands of men.

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 The attitude of Jesus toward the young man who called on Him to be a judge in the
matter of an inheritance and the parable of the rich man who put all of his trust in himself,
say it clearly. The Church must abhor material and temporal struggles, and her life must
not be focused on the enjoyment of the super abundance of material goods but to store up
treasures in Heaven.
During the age of her material prosperity, the Church would be enriched by hosts
of souls, abandoning themselves to God as do birds of the air and flowers of the fields and
these souls would really own the kingdom of God within them. The establishment of the
great religious orders fully realized the program of the Redeemer instilling a complete
trust in God in the Church and preserving in her the sacred fire of poverty and love for the
eternal reward, even amidst the deviated spirit of the world.
After the epoch of the religious orders, in an age of general decline, Jesus exhorts
us to be watchful while awaiting the return of the divine Bridegroom to come and reign,
and in particular that his ministers be faithful to their duties; it is the announcement of the
preparation of his reign which is now carried on through the apostolate of groups of
Catholic laity and for a the rebirth of zeal in the spirits of the many ministers of the Lord.
This is the time in which Jesus lit the fire that He came to bring upon earth, and He did it
right in the middle of conflicts, amidst the very excesses of rampant wickedness of these
last and most bloody persecutions.
We already see the dawn of the wondrous apostolate and the dawn of the bloodiest
persecutions, which will see the dissolution of the traditional family and fierce hostility
erupt between its members.
Amid the vicissitudes of life, our attitude is outlined by Jesus with wonderfully
penetrating words: be loyal without pretense; propagate the truth without fear of man or
human respect; strive for eternal things and trust only in God; wait for the kingdom of
God on earth, trust in the restoration of all, and wait for Him in the heavens. Finally live
as pilgrims, with peace in the soul, vigilant and in the harmony of charity. Living in this
way we will not be overwhelmed by evil, we will love and serve God and we will reach
happily our heavenly destination.

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 Chapter 13

1. The need for penance. The barren fig tree. Healing of a crippled woman. The
mustard seed and the yeast. The number of the saved. Hostility of Herod. Punishment
of Jerusalem.

1 And there were present, at that very time, some who were reporting about the Galileans,
whose blood Pilate mixed with their sacrifices. 2 And responding, he said to them: “Do
you think that these Galilean[s must have sinned more than all other Galileans, because
they suffered so much? 3 No, I tell you. But unless you repent, you will all perish
similarly. 4 And those eighteen upon whom the tower of Siloam fell and killed them, do
you think that they also were greater transgressors than all the men living in Jerusalem?
5 No, I tell you. But if you do not repent, you will all perish similarly.” 6 And he also told
this parable: “A certain man had a fig tree, which was planted in his vineyard. And he
came seeking fruit on it, but found none. 7 Then he said to the cultivator of the vineyard:
‘Behold, for these three years I came seeking fruit on this fig tree, and I have found none.
Therefore, cut it down. For why should it even occupy the land?’ 8 But in response, he
said to him: ‘Lord, let it be for this year also, during which time I will dig around it and
add fertilizer. 9 And, indeed, it should bear fruit. But if not, in the future, you shall cut it
down.’ ” 10 Now he was teaching in their synagogue on the Sabbaths. 11 And behold,
there was a woman who had a spirit of infirmity for eighteen years. And she was bent
over; and she was unable to look upwards at all. 12 And when Jesus saw her, he called
her to himself, and he said to her, “Woman, you are released from your infirmity.” 13
And he laid his hands upon her, and immediately she was straightened, and she glorified
God. 14 Then, as a result, the ruler of the synagogue became angry that Jesus had cured
on the Sabbath, and he said to the crowd: “There are six days on which you ought to
work. Therefore, come and be cured on those, and not on the day of the Sabbath.” 15
Then the Lord said to him in response: “You hypocrites! Does not each one of you, on the
Sabbath, release his ox or donkey from the stall, and lead it to water? 16 So then, should
not this daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has bound for lo these eighteen years, be
released from this restraint on the day of the Sabbath?” 17 And as he was saying these
things, all his adversaries were ashamed. And all the people rejoiced in everything that
was being done gloriously by him. 18 And so he said: “To what is the kingdom of God
similar, and to what figure shall I compare it? 19 It is like a grain of mustard seed, which
a man took and cast into his garden. And it grew, and it became a great tree, and the
birds of the air rested in its branches.” 20 And again, he said: “To what figure shall I
compare the kingdom of God? 21 It is like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three
measures of fine wheat flour, until it was entirely leavened.” 22 And he was traveling
through the cities and towns, teaching and making his way to Jerusalem. 23 And someone
said to him, “Lord, are they few who are saved?” But he said to them: 24 “Strive to enter
through the narrow gate. For many, I tell you, will seek to enter and not be able. 25 Then,
when the father of the family will have entered and shut the door, you will begin to stand
outside and to knock at the door, saying, ‘Lord, open to us.’ And in response, he will say
to you, ‘I do not know where you are from.’ 26 Then you will begin to say, ‘We ate and
drank in your presence, and you taught in our streets.’ 27 And he will say to you: ‘I do not

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know where you are from. Depart from me, all you workers of iniquity!’ 28 In that place,
there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth, when you see Abraham, and Isaac, and
Jacob, and all the prophets, in the kingdom of God, yet you yourselves are expelled
outside. 29 And they will arrive from the East, and the West, and the North, and the
South; and they will recline at table in the kingdom of God. 30 And behold, those who are
last will be first, and those who are first will be last.” 31 On the same day, some of the
Pharisees approached, saying to him: “Depart, and go away from here. For Herod
wishes to kill you.” 32 And he said to them: “Go and tell that fox: ‘Behold, I cast out
demons and accomplish healings, today and tomorrow. And on the third day I reach the
end.’ 33 Yet truly, it is necessary for me to walk today and tomorrow and the following
day. For it does not fall to a prophet to perish beyond Jerusalem. 34 Jerusalem,
Jerusalem! You kill the prophets, and you stone those who are sent to you. Daily, I wanted
to gather together your children, in the manner of a bird with her nest under her wings,
but you were not willing 35 Behold, your house will be left desolate for you. But I say to
you, that you shall not see me, until it happens that you say: ‘Blessed is he who has
arrived in the name of the Lord.’ ”
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2. Without repentance we go to perdition. When God calls we must answer if we do
not want to be cut off from life as a barren fig tree.

While Jesus was speaking, some people came to tell him of a massacre ordered by
Pilate in the atrium of the Temple to suppress a rebellion of the people, and specifically of
Galileans. Often these rebellions took place during religious festivals, when large groups
of people gathered, and therefore the Romans had stationed a permanent garrison at the
Antonia Fortress to suppress them quickly and brutally. History does not record this
specific massacre inflicted by Pilate, which had to be one of those many bloody
repressions commonly ordered by the Roman rulers, but it is clear from the context that
those who gave news of it to Jesus were still terrified.
Jesus Christ did not take into consideration the political cause of the massacre, but
rather the moral cause of it—damning sinfulness—and He called everybody to
repentance. Rebellions are useless when they are caused by infidelity to the law of God;
instead of rebelling it is necessary to make reparations for sins and to reconcile with God's
mercy.
Perhaps some of those who brought news of the massacre ordered by Pilate also
had the intention to incite Jesus into condemning it, thereby creating a pretense to accuse
Him before the governor; but the Redeemer, with His divine answer, did not give them an
excuse to malign Him, but on the contrary, He called them to the duty of penance and
reminded them of the responsibility that they had in that public tragedy as well as in the
destruction of the tower of Siloam, which, according to tradition, was also caused by
Pilate.

The public calamities.

The words of Jesus open a new perspective on how we need to consider public
social tragedies, wars, oppressions and tyrannies; their natural or political causes
seemingly accidental; in reality, they are entirely caused by sin, and they produce all their

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disastrous effects when they are not counterbalanced with reparation and penance.
Viewing public tragedies any other way is wrong. Also personal tragedies have the same
sorrowful cause, especially and the worst of misfortunes—eternal perdition—and
therefore Jesus said in general terms: If you do not repent, you will all perish as they
did!*. If we do not orient our souls towards God and do not subdue our senses and our
passions for the sake of our souls, we move against the Divine Will, and we go towards
perdition.
Public calamities that afflict nations and the trials we experience in our lives are in
effect penances that the Lord sends to save us. Public disasters punish or purify nations
Sorrowfully, we must recognize that we are all sinners and we all must feel the
need for reparation. Penance must, first of all, come from our interior, eliminating false
praise from ourselves and recognizing the Law and the Divine Will as our guides; we
must punish our will and our rebellious senses, voluntarily depriving ourselves of what
attracts us and makes us lose control of ourselves; moreover there must be a contrite and
filial abandonment to the infinite mercy of God through the Sacrament of Penance by
those that are immersed in sin, and at the same time they are for each soul a great penance,
perhaps the most grave and purifying of penances, because they are inevitable. For
instance as a war approaches, a most terrible scourge especially in our time: we see cities
preparing themselves in a funereal way: they dim the lights, evacuate strategic sites,
minimize the so-called civil lifestyle and give themselves to a military lifestyle.** The
overall atmosphere is one of sadness, mothers wailing, brides moaning, and young people,
even though they try to hide it, feel death behind them and they understand that their lives
could end as well.
What is all this apparatus of sadness?
It is God’s call to repentance, the sorrowful but inescapable expiation of sins that
have been committed. If souls hear the voice of God in time and anticipate their penance
like the Ninevites did, the scourge will stop; but if they continue down the path of sin they
shall be caught in the whirlwind.
To many people life sometimes seems like a cruel fate, but it is a serious mistake
to think this. Every disaster is rooted in sin, and it can be healed with penance.
Unfortunately many souls often follow the opposite direction; they stay with their own
sins and in fact increase their rebellion against God. Certain despondent attitudes arising
from not understanding suffering can become blasphemous, thereby opening the gates to
one’s life to Satan; then goodness can no longer be found, and one falls from abyss to
abyss possibly even arriving to extreme temporal and eternal ruin. Therefore, when we
find ourselves in a tribulation, let us think of it as a call from God, let us examine our
faults, let us eliminate them through Confession and repair them with penance; let us go
on God’s way once more, and the Lord will forgive us also in our present life, giving us
again peace and prosperity.

-----------------------------------------------
*How appropriate is this call to do penance today!
**We remember the dramatic period when it was announced that Italy, too, would enter into the war (World War II) and
so streetlights were darkened and people were told that no light could be visible in their windows to avoid air strikes.

The parable of the fruitless fig tree.

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 Sometimes the Lord sends us a tribulation but the prayers of others or of the
Church eliminate it giving us, by the grace of God, a little more time to do penance. In
this case, however, we must not be dismissive of the divine mercy and believe that the
situation has been somehow rectified.
The parable of the fruitless fig tree very eloquently makes this point and so we
must not take its message lightly: the Lord seeks fruits—holy works—from our lives, and
if we do not produce them, He shall inflict on us a scourge.
It is not enough then to have a weak and temporary resolution of repentance in
order to avoid the scourge. We must change internally and begin a new life, a Christian
holy life.
Certain habits, certain vices, certain miseries must be radically eliminated from our
souls by appealing to the grace and mercy of God. If we do not do this, our lives become
even more entangled with tribulations each passing day and, becoming prey to Satan, we
become extremely unhappy.
When they notified Jesus about the massacre of the Galileans, He certainly thought
of the future destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans and saw in that massacre, as also in
the ruins of the tower of Siloam, a first warning of God to the ungrateful populace. Those
heartfelt words, If you do not repent, you shall all perish as they did on his lips had a
much broader meaning than a simple call to individual repentance; He called the entire
nation to renew itself in the face of the threat of imminent downfall.
In the end, the parable of the fruitless tree completed His sorrowful appeal to the
ungrateful people: already for three years He had preached repentance and the coming of
the kingdom of God but in vain; He looked at this ungrateful nation for the fruit of so
much mercy. There was nothing left for the Lord to do but to cut it off from all the other
nations and let it go to ruin; and yet He himself prayed to obtain at least a deferral from
this most serious scourge: but would the nation have benefited?
After the death of Jesus, a forty year period of merciful delay went by before
Jerusalem was destroyed, but the people did not repent; when finally the day of
accountability came, justice was inexorable, not for revenge but because there was
nothing more to do; the fig tree had been resistant to the last treatment of the farmer, and
now could be only used as firewood.

The story of Israel as

the story of many nations and individuals.

It is most sorrowful that the story of Israel is repeated both in the lives of
individual people as well as in the history of many nations, and we can certainly say that it
continues to unfold even under our own eyes. What are these rumors of war that terrify us
without outbreaks of war? The Pope prays*, good and faithful souls pray as well and

---------------------------------------------------------------
*Pope Pious XII continually offered prayers and begged Benito Mussolini several times not to go to war (as it is written
also in the diary of Ciano, who was Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs and Mussolini's son-in-law) but he was not
heard. The words of Don Dolindo, who wrote about it well in advance, were truly prophetic.

the fearful terrible scourge seems like a hurricane that is moving away. But where is the

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repentance of the people?
Indeed, we can say the opposite: that life instead is becoming ever more disorderly
and daily rouses the wrath of God. At this rate the scourge shall inevitably come, and
many arrogant nations will painfully be reduced to tatters, together with the idols they
erected. The scourge will have the character of a hurricane of fire and steel, and the
nations that rely on their brute strength to build themselves up against God and the Church
will be swept away like straw in a tornado.
Let us listen to God who calls us, let us amend our lives, make reparation for our
faults and reconcile ourselves with the divine mercy. Let us not sin anymore—not sin
anymore; this is the secret of the revival of our own prosperity and that of the nations.
Any other precaution or initiative is just an illusion leading to the ruin of mind and body.

3. Healing of a woman who could not look up and a rebuke to the Pharisees who
always looked down.

Jesus was teaching in a synagogue on a Sabbath about the kingdom of God. The
sacred scriptures do not say explicitly what He was teaching, but He threw out in the
synagogue, so to speak, a new seed on the old field and the yeast in the mass of flour to
clear out what had passed and to raise souls to heaven.
While He was speaking to the people assembled there, along came a woman who
was crippled and bent by a diabolical possession, and was completely incapable of
standing erect, so much so that she was bent down and faced the ground. She was the
living image of the Jewish people and the entire human race, so bent down under the
weight of the slavery of Satan because of their sins that they could not look up to heaven
and instead looked only upon the things of the earth.
The poor woman did not come to the Synagogue to be healed but to listen to the
divine Word; she did not ask anything of Jesus, and it was Jesus himself who called her to
come closer to Him, told her that He would heal her, and then straightened her by laying
His hands on her.
Satan, who possessed that poor woman, at the touch of the vivifying hand of Jesus,
could not pose any resistance and immediately left her, freeing her nerve centers that had
been in his possession, and immediately her body resumed its natural position. The
woman, now straightened, started to glorify God. It was a most beautiful scene that should
have moved the rabbi of the Synagogue deeply, having witnessed firsthand a miracle, but
instead he became indignant against Jesus because He had healed her on the Sabbath.
Clearly his mind had not even registered the fact that he had been present at a
miracle; already prejudiced against Jesus by the envy and hatred now traditional for the
scribes and Pharisees, he believed the healing to be a purely natural phenomenon, and thus
he viewed it as a violation of the Sabbath obligation against work.
However, even considering it merely a natural phenomenon, he still would not
have the right to complain since Jesus Christ did not do any material work—He only
imposed his hands on the sick woman—but the rabbi of the synagogue did not want to
miss the opportunity to rebuke Jesus and, not daring to do it directly, posed himself as a
defender of God's Law before the people, scolding the woman in seeking treatment on the
Sabbath day. The bitterness of his soul was manifested through his words in an expression

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that was seemingly balanced and dispassionate, since he could not have ignored the fact
that to cure an infirmity was an act of mercy and not a menial job.
Jesus Christ responded not only to the rabbi of the Synagogue but to all the
Pharisees there present, and with an “ad hominem” argument showed the foolishness of
their being scandalized and the duplicity of their souls. In fact they admitted that it was
permissible, on a Sabbath day, to untie an animal, move it from the stable and lead it to
drink. If one wanted to quibble, then, to move an animal was a job, and yet according to
them, it was permitted to give relief to the animal. How then could it be considered work
to heal a creature bound by Satan, and to heal her with a word and a simple act of laying
hands on her? The argument was so obvious that the Pharisees became very embarrassed
and were unable to come up with any answer, while the people rejoiced for the wonderful
things that Jesus did in their midst.
The poor woman physically could not raise her eyes up to heaven and the
Pharisees could not do it spiritually, because they always kept their eyes fixed on the
earth; the Redeemer, with the touch of his divine hands physically straightened the
woman, and He also tried to spiritually straighten the Pharisees, but they were too proud
and evil minded, and did not raise their eyes to God and to the marvelous plan of
Redemption. Absorbed in their meagerness, they remained tied to Satan, and believed
themselves be able to block the way of the Redeemer and of His divine mercy that was
already spreading throughout the earth.

The kingdom of God.

For this reason Jesus added that the kingdom of God was like a mustard seed,
which once it is planted grows and develops or was like yeast that leavens the whole loaf.
Far from being stifled by the malignancy of men, it would grow more and more and would
be the refuge of souls, just as a tree is a shelter of life for birds. He would be the leaven of
the new life renewing all humanity.
Today more than ever men are bent towards the earth, bound by Satan to modern
civilization and only interested in material things, unable to look upward.
This bending of all human activities toward earth is a truly sorrowful state of
affairs, even when these activities seem to have an appearance of spirituality, or perhaps,
even more, when they are colored with a rotten pagan spirituality. Only Jesus can raise us
upward with the touch of His most holy hands, and only Jesus can once again reopen for
us holy eternal horizons.
The Pharisees were scandalized that Jesus healed a sick woman on a Sabbath but
believed it to be perfectly lawful to heal beasts on a Sabbath, because it was in their
interest to do so. In fact, they even had a kind of love for animals which trumped true
charity, as we see in our modern civilization. Animal rights groups are eagerly promoted
while at the same time major investments are made to find ever more refined means of
human destruction during war; many times the needs of animals are taken a ridiculous
extent at the expense of the poor, and also we see the obsession to maximizing humanity’s
physical well being through debauchery and corruption at the expense of its spiritual well-
being.
The true and worst kind of hypocrisy is to worry about preventing diseases of the
body while at the same time promoting or encouraging spiritual corruption; it is pure

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hypocrisy to make laws restricting the stench that comes from a heap of dung but then
have laws freely allowing moral dung heaps. May the Lord, in His mercy, extend to us His
Hands and let us again raise our heads, our hearts and our souls towards God that we may
truly live as His children and not become coarsened to the level of beasts!

4. We have to strive to get to heaven, regardless of the pitfalls of evil.

While Jesus was walking towards Jerusalem, a man asked Him if only a few would
be saved. Why did he ask Him this question? Maybe because getting closer to Jerusalem
he considered the sins of that ungrateful city, or because he was thinking of the ruins
caused by past wars; perhaps he asked the question because coming closer to the city the
lax morality and corruption of its inhabitants were more obvious to him.
Jesus Christ did not answer the question directly, because it was not a question that
concerned men, but God. How is it important for us to know if there will be only a few or
many who will be saved? For us it is necessary to be saved and because we are not
predestined to perdition or salvation, to be saved depends on our efforts in doing good and
in our filial appeal to the divine mercy.
More than knowing the number of the elect, we need to make an effort to belong to
that number, not presuming to be able to have a privileged position in Paradise because
we had it on earth, as being part of the chosen people. This is the basic meaning of the
answer of Jesus. He exhorted them to enter in Heaven through the narrow door, that is,
through the path of renouncing our disordered passions and being faithful to the divine
law.
The world thinks this path to be narrow and oppressive, and Jesus calls it narrow
in this sense, but in reality the true narrow and oppressive door is the one of the evil,
because it ties the soul to the toils of a most awful slavery. The gate of heaven appears
narrow, but in reality it is immensely large and beautiful, it is enough only to enter it in
order to understand.
The narrow door can also be seen as the epilogue of one’s life, when one carries to
God what one has done, and since the time of the test has passed, one cannot do anything
to change one’s condition.
The divine justice then is like something narrow, in the sense of a precise
assessment of a life, self-evident and therefore irrevocable. Many would like in that
moment to enter and to change their condition, but they will not be able to do it because
the door will be closed, their life in time is ended, and it is not possible to begin again. To
think, as many foolish people do, that after death there can be another way and in a new
earthly existence to resume the path of life, is just a dangerous fantasy; when one has
arrived, one has arrived; and when the door of earthly life is closed there is no other
alternative: either to stay inside with the Father of the family and rejoice, or remain
outside to suffer, in eternal perdition.
Speaking directly to the Jewish people, Jesus pointed out that their position of
privilege among the peoples of the earth did not constitute a claim for the attainment of
eternal glory. If they did not do good works, they too would be far from God in eternity,
just as surely as the master of a house is far from someone who is completely unknown to
him; they will purely and simply be considered as committers of iniquity, and will be

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condemned to eternal damnation, away from the saints and away also from all the persons
who are saved and will come from all parts of the world.
Then it will be realized that the last called by God to His kingdom will be first,
and the first, that is many who are part of the chosen people, called by God first, shall be
last.
The way of salvation is narrow, because there are many who plot against it and try
to put obstacles in its path. There is in the world a strange enmity against all that is good,
an enmity that comes from diabolical suggestions, and sometimes even ensnares good
people, making them involuntarily instruments of the evil one.
It is necessary to continue to walk straight ahead and to look towards the ultimate
goal we must reach.

Evil cannot ruin the plan of God.

Evil is not able to destroy the plan of God, and the evildoers, as much as they try,
are not able to stop its unfolding. Evildoers may for a while appear to triumph over the
good, but then the justice of God intervenes and sweeps them away.
This great truth, a necessary support for those who take the narrow door, was
proclaimed by Jesus in front the people, when some Pharisees went to tell him to leave
because Herod wanted to kill him. Jesus proclaimed that above Herod was the irresistible
power of the divine Will, and He answered those Pharisees who had cunningly, with that
provocation, wanted to frighten Him in His ministry, "Go and tell that fox, Behold, I cast
out demons and I perform healings today and tomorrow, and on the third day I
accomplish my purpose”. Jesus called Herod a fox because he was cruel and cunning in
his evil and also called him this way as a warning to the Pharisees for the conniving nature
of their words. Herod did not want Jesus to go to Jerusalem because he feared that He
would proclaim himself King of Israel there thus dethroning him. The greatness and the
power of Jesus were now too greatly known, and His miracles proved that He was the
awaited Messiah; Herod would have liked to kill him or at least to force him to retreat to
small towns where it would be impossible for Him to promote a revolution and take over
the centers of the national life.
This cunning and evil plan, however, was entirely in opposition with the divine
Will, and Jesus declared that He would accomplish to the very end what God wanted and
he would die in Jerusalem, that is He would be condemned by the supreme religious
authority of that city, as in the past all the Prophets had been condemned.
Jesus Christ was crucified outside Jerusalem, on Calvary, but He was condemned
by the High Priest, who led the Romans to condemn Him, and this crime filled the
measure of iniquity of the ungrateful city and the chosen people, condemning them to
complete, extreme destruction.
Jesus Christ in announcing his own death, considered the love that moved Him to
sacrifice Himself and the great love that moved Him to try in so many ways to save his
people from destruction; His heart was deeply distressed and with heartfelt sorrow He
turned to the holy city saying with great love: “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the
prophets and stone those sent to you, how many times I yearned to gather your children
together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, but you were unwilling! Behold,

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your house will be abandoned.” Jesus deeply grieves and He announces the punishment,
but also proclaims mercy to all Israel in the last times.
Israel would not see Jesus again, that is, would not have Him as protector and
defender until the time when, recognizing Him as Messiah and Redeemer, would hail Him
saying: Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. These words Jesus Christ said
with absolute firmness, prophesying, and they certainly will have their fulfillment.
Israel, more than ever today is persecuted from all sides, and sees its house
deserted; it is trapped in terrible tribulations and does not have anywhere to go, disliked as
it is by the peoples; this, however, looks like the first indication of its conversion, since
abandoned by all people, it will feel the need to orient itself to the Catholic Church,
finding the way to salvation.*
When we do good and the evildoers intimidate us because they want us to give up,
we will respond as Jesus did: Behold, I shall work today and tomorrow, and I shall finish
only when God shall will it. No man can put an end to our holy activities, and especially
those which are the unavoidable duties of our ministry; the more Satan moves wars on us
the more we must act, lest we be admonished by God and go to our eternal perdition.

----------------------------------------------------------------
*The Catholic Church did a lot during the war to save the Jews, especially under the guidance of Pope Pius XII. In fact
at the end of the war the Rabbi of Rome felt it to be his duty to publicly thank the Pope.
After the Council, Catholics as well now have a more brotherly attitude toward the Jews, who are the descendants of the
ancient Patriarchs and they also, at a time known only to God, shall enter into the Church.

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 Chapter 14

1. The healing of the man with dropsy on the Sabbath. Do not seek the first place.
Practice of charity. Parable of the banquet. How to follow Jesus.

1 And it happened that, when Jesus entered the house of a certain leader of the Pharisees
on the Sabbath to eat bread, they were observing him. And behold, a certain man before
him was afflicted with edema. 3 And responding, Jesus spoke to the experts in the law and
to the Pharisees, saying, “Is it lawful to cure on the Sabbath?” 4 But they kept silent. Yet
truly, taking hold of him, he healed him and sent him away. 5 And responding to them, he
said, “Which of you will have a donkey or an ox fall into a pit, and will not promptly pull
him out, on the day of the Sabbath?” 6 And they were unable to respond to him about
these things. 7 Then he also told a parable, to those who were invited, noticing how they
chose the first seats at the table, saying to them: 8 “When you are invited to a wedding, do
not sit down in the first place, lest perhaps someone more honored than yourself may have
been invited by him. 9 And then he who called both you and him, approaching, may say to
you, ‘Give this place to him.’ And then you would begin, with shame, to take the last
place. 10 But when you are invited, go, sit down in the lowest place, so that, when he who
invited you arrives, he may say to you, ‘Friend, go up higher.’ Then you will have glory in
the sight of those who sit at table together with you. 11 For everyone who exalts himself
shall be humbled, and whoever humbles himself shall be exalted.” 12 Then he also said to
the one who had invited him: “When you prepare a lunch or dinner, do not choose to call
your friends, or your brothers, or your relatives, or your wealthy neighbors, lest perhaps
they might then invite you in return and repayment would made to you. 13 But when you
prepare a feast, call the poor, the disabled, the lame, and the blind. 14 And you will be
blessed because they do not have a way to repay you. So then, your recompense will be in
the resurrection of the just.” 15When someone sitting at table with him had heard these
things, he said to him, “Blessed is he who will eat bread in the kingdom of God.” 16 So he
said to him: “A certain man prepared a great feast, and he invited many. 17 And he sent
his servant, at the hour of the feast, to tell the invited to come; for now everything was
ready. 18 And at once they all began to make excuses. The first said to him: ‘I bought a
farm, and I need to go out and see it. I ask you to excuse me.’ 19 And another said: ‘I
bought five yoke of oxen, and I am going to examine them. I ask you to excuse me.’ 20 And
another said, ‘I have taken a wife, and therefore I am not able to go.’ 21 And returning,
the servant reported these things to his lord. Then the father of the family, becoming
angry, said to his servant: ‘Go out quickly into the streets and neighborhoods of the city.
And lead here the poor, and the disabled, and the blind, and the lame.’ 22 And the servant
said: ‘It has been done, just as you ordered, lord, and there is still room.’ 23 And the lord
said to the servant: ‘Go out to the highways and hedges, and compel them to enter, so that
my house may be filled. 24 For I tell you, that none of those men who were invited will
taste of my feast.’ ” 25 Now great crowds traveled with him. And turning around, he said
to them: 26 “If anyone comes to me, and does not hate his father, and mother, and wife,
and children, and brothers, and sisters, and yes, even his own life, he is not able to be my
disciple. 27 And whoever does not bear his cross and come after me, is not able to be my
disciple. 28 For who among you, wanting to build a tower, would not first sit down and

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determine the costs that are required, to see if he has the means to complete it? 29
Otherwise, after he will have laid the foundation and not been able to finish it, everyone
who sees it may begin to mock him, 30 saying: ‘This man began to build what he was not
able to finish.’ 31 Or, what king, advancing to engage in war against another king, would
not first sit down and consider whether he may be able, with ten thousand, to meet one
who comes against him with twenty thousand? 32 If not, then while the other is still far
away, sending a delegation, he would ask him for terms of peace. 33 Therefore, every one
of you who does not renounce all that he possesses is not able to be my disciple. 34 Salt is
good. But if the salt has lost its flavor, with what will it be seasoned? 35It is useful neither
in soil, nor in manure, so instead, it shall be thrown away. Whoever has ears to hear, let
him hear.”
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2. The healing of a man suffering from dropsy and about charity.

Jesus Christ entered the home of a leading Pharisee on a Sabbath, to dine at his
house. He had invited Him, perhaps because he was seeking an occasion to find a reason
to accuse Him, since the Sacred Text says that they kept their eyes on Him.
It would not be surprising that at the house of a leading Pharisee many among
them would have been hostile to the Redeemer and ready to accuse Him. They knew that
He did not give importance to their customs regarding eating and because this might
enable them to find something with which to reproach him, they invited him to dinner.
The banquet hall, as usual, was open to all and thus it was easy for a man suffering
from dropsy to enter unsuspected and to present himself to Jesus. He did not ask Him for
anything, for fear of the Pharisees, maybe recalling the recommendation of the head of the
synagogue (Lk 13:14) to not be cured on the Sabbath day, but stood before Jesus and
waited for his mercy. From the context it is noted that the dropsy-afflicted man was not
introduced at the banquet by the Pharisees and that he also must have believed in Jesus,
because he was healed.
The Redeemer, speaking to the scribes present and to the Pharisees, asked: "Is it
lawful to cure on the Sabbath or not?" With this question He put them in a dilemma,
because they knew that to heal was not servile work, and they also knew that to condemn
an act of charity on a Sabbath day was the same as condemning themselves. Therefore
they remained silent. It is evident from the words of Jesus that, even though they did not
speak, they remained contrary to the idea of healing someone on a Sabbath day, and not so
much for the love of the Law, but for their hostility toward the Lord. Seeing that He
indeed healed the man suffering from dropsy, they made signs of disapproval, murmuring
in their own hearts. Thus Jesus answering their thoughts said "Who among you, if your
son or ox falls into a cistern, would not immediately pull him out on the Sabbath day?
In those times, wells did not have guardrails and were covered only by a stone
when not in use; therefore it was very possible that an ass or an ox could fall into one.
Thus how could it be said that to save a beast from the waters of a well was permissible,
but to save a man from dropsy (which is an abnormal swelling of the body because of the
retention and accumulation of fluids) was not?

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 The first places at the table

The Pharisees could not answer Jesus, but they indicated how disturbed they were
by the humiliation suffered in how they placed themselves at the table, almost to make up
for it, carefully sitting at the most important places. It is possible that maybe one of them
at that moment was asked by the head of the family to yield his place to another guest of
more importance, and maybe he had complained, because Jesus, addressing everyone
there, began to encourage them to take the last places, if not because of virtue, at least in
order to not lose face in front of the others.
Certainly Jesus would have preferred to encourage them to seek the last place
because of true and sincere humility, but his guests were not capable of this, and so He
was content to convince them at least for human reasons. With this He wanted in a way to
promote good manners, which are a sort of preparation and disposition toward true virtue
because they always represent a power over one’s own weakness and a first attempt at
charity towards others.
It is important, in fact, even for the purposes of seeking virtue, to temper one’s
actions through a sound education and proper etiquette. True virtue always results in a
graceful and gentle way of doing things, but when virtue is missing or has not yet formed,
a graceful and gentle way of acting produces in the soul a natural disposition that may
facilitate, later, the action of grace. Jesus Christ, obviously, does not exhort anyone to act
for a natural purpose, but rather to understand that a lack of virtue will lead to a lack of
external behavioral forms that in turn will awaken the contempt of others. Hence to the
Pharisees who, after all, were only interested in being honored in front of everyone, it was
enough reason to encourage them to stop being so proud and arrogant—attitudes that were
so harmful to their souls.

Etiquette, a basic virtue.

Perhaps if souls who are beginners in virtue were taught proper etiquette and civil
behavior, they would gain virtue itself. Etiquette is like a fine garment put on a poor
commoner; it is a motivation to exchange certain bad habits, maybe acquired since birth,
with more decent habits. It is then used by the Lord for elevating the spirit. It is the first
refinement of disposition that gives itself to God, a stroke of nobility taught to those who
are not habitually genteel.*
In teaching them to choose the last places at the table, Jesus noticed that at the
table of the Pharisee all the guests were distinguished, and therefore there was a race to
take the top places.
It was a vain, ostentatious display of their importance: lavish ceremonies done for
self-serving purposes. Jesus, looking into their hearts, saw what went beyond those
invitations made for pure opportunism, for returning an obligation, or for indebting others,
and He felt in that room the chilling absence of any acts of kindness or spiritual
motivation; thus He turned to the Pharisee, who had invited him and asked him to next

-------------------------------------------------------
*This is a very opportune reflection, because not infrequently, in the name of spirituality, we neglect those
standards of civil behavior and propriety, which are also the result of a Christian sensitivity that does not
want to make others uncomfortable, but calls for a treatment that respects each person.

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time give a dinner inviting the poor, the crippled, the lame and the blind, and in so doing
to receive merits before God for his eternal life.
Exhorting him in this way, Jesus gave him a spiritual benefit directing him to the
path of true good, and so giving him a precious return for the invitation He had received
on that day.

The banquets and the parties.

The exhortation of Jesus to the Pharisee is very precious to us and is a guide for a
very common habit among all peoples: the giving of banquets and parties during holidays
and solemnities. Jesus does not condemn giving a banquet, which is usually done to
increase the joy of a celebration, but urges us not make it a poor reflection of pride or
personal interest. He wants the poor and the unfortunate also to participate in our
celebrations, not necessarily by literally inviting them to the dinner—though this would be
commendable—but to nevertheless include them in our joy.
A meal cannot be reduced to a gorging through, that of course would be a
shameful thing to do; rather, it is a larger gathering of family members and dear friends in
an outpouring of generosity, because joy naturally extends itself to others.
Now, as we are all children of the celestial Father, it is right that we share and are
generous with those less fortunate. O if only the value of our charitable alms could be
understood, and we could see the many blessings the poor bring to our celebrations, we
would never omit them from our alms giving and charity. In this way our banquets will
not be reduced to essentially a disguised Epicureanism and our simple joy on earth will be
changed into the joy of Heaven.

3. The great meal prepared by God for His people in their Redemption, and the way
to acquire Redemption.

When Jesus exhorted the Pharisee to invite the poor, the crippled, the lame and the
blind to the banquet, He was thinking surely of the great invitation of the Heavenly Father
to His people in their Redemption. His words had such deep tenderness that one of the
guests was so moved, and understanding His thought exclaimed: “Blessed is the one who
will dine in the kingdom of God.”
He must have heard Jesus talking of the eternal kingdom as a feast (Mt 22:1-14) on
other occasions, and now remembering this, he reminded Him of it in his exclamation
because he wanted to hear Him utter another beautiful parable. There is a deeply
psychological element to this situation: we love to listen again and again to those who are
great speakers especially when they talk about matters that transfuse their lives, and about
those subjects that most interest them. Jesus, who knew that He had come to give
mankind the celestial banquet, certainly could not speak about this subject without
infusing in his words and in his Heart all his tenderness.
In the heart of the man at his table He saw the desire to listen again to the parable
and exclaimed: “A man gave a great dinner to which he invited many”. As they were all
at table, the parable took on a more immediate character and Jesus willingly repeated the
story to give a timely lesson from the banquet.

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 Invitations to a banquet, among the Jews, were made long beforehand; and when
finally the hour of the banquet approached and everything was ready, the servants were
sent to call and accompany the guests. For this reason Jesus added that the master of the
house at dinnertime sent a servant to call the guests, to tell them that the dinner was ready.
However all the invited very rudely began to make excuses; they had given such little
thought to the banquet that, when the hour came, they decided to go on with their business
and one of them even got married on that day.
One said he had bought a farm and had to go to see it; another that he had
purchased five yoke of oxen and needed to evaluate them; another said more flatly and
more rudely that he had taken a wife and therefore I cannot come. Some made an attempt
at proper form in refusing and told the servant I ask you, consider me excused; but the one
who had married, overwhelmed with preparations for the nuptial banquet, said flatly I
cannot come.
The owner was enraged. One who prepares a feast with love undergoes unusual
expenses and becomes tired from the additional work; thus he is pleased if his guests
come to eat. Sometimes he even prepares a surprise, offers especially refined food, and
eagerly awaits praise for his efforts from guests that enjoy his fare. In his displeasure, not
wanting to waste what he had prepared, he said to the servant to go into the streets and
alleys of the city and to gather the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind and invite
them to come and eat; only those poor people at mealtime, in fact, would be so needy as to
be found in public roads at that time searching for charity.
The servant went to call them, and as there was still more room, the master ordered
him to go and invite other poor, abandoned people he found along the highways, the
hedgerows, and affectionately prod them to come to the banquet. In fact by the hedges
there could be found the more desperately poor, who were ashamed to appear in public or
who feared harassment for any of their problems, and so they would have had to be forced
to enter.
Finally the banquet hall was filled, and the host exclaimed that none of those who
had refused the invitation to the dinner would taste the meal.
This exclamation may have appeared useless, since the invited guests had already
rejected his invitation, but Jesus meant to say that those who reject the banquet of life, in
the final judgment will come to realize they have made the wrong choice, but by then the
time of trial will have already come to an end.
The conclusion of the parable concerns its spiritual application, an application that
Jesus did not make, maybe because He had made the connection at other times and also
perhaps because He did not want to clash with the Pharisees who were present.
The man who offered the great banquet is God, who prepared great graces for His
faithful with the Redemption. He first invited all the chosen people. However, Israel,
distracted by its material aspirations and earthly and sensual pleasures, did not accept the
invitation and refused the graces. God then sent his apostles all over the world among the
Gentiles and invited those who were poor for their lack of graces, those who were crippled
in their lives, those who were blind because they did not have the truth, and the lame
because they were unable to move supernaturally, and from these formed a new people to
invite to the great banquet. The pagans responded to the invitation, but since there will be
still be room to complete the number of the elected, God will send his servants in the end
times to call to the faith the most poor and distant people, savages who live in forests and

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those who are most abandoned, and will unite them to the Church, the banquet of life, and
to his Kingdom, the banquet of eternal glory. God will compel them to enter not with
violence but with great graces and will make them enter, not against their will, but
winning them over through mercy and charity.

God’s invitations.

We have, therefore, three invitations to the banquet of graces: one given in

friendship to the chosen people; one given mercifully to the Gentiles and one given from
an excess of goodness to the most savage of peoples. God, who loves to give himself to
his creatures to make them happy, and who gives respecting their freedom, is limitless in
His mercy, and continually calls all to life bestowing on other peoples the graces rejected
by those who were invited first.
Modern civilization, considering only material aspirations, commerce, and wanton
pleasures, apostate from God, rejects the Banquet of life. The Lord then calls the so-called
uncivilized peoples, makes them share in the graces to show that before Him there is no
difference between race or condition, and that He considers each equally.
The great banquet of the Lord is the Eucharistic banquet, the awesome banquet of
graces to which He calls souls. How shameful is the attitude of these souls before so great
a gift! Some, taken by the preoccupation of worldly living, say that they cannot go, and
waste their time in the insatiable purchase of material goods; others absorbed in trade can
only deal with cattle, pigs, fabric and merchandise, and lose the ineffable treasure of Holy
Communion; others, finally, are swept up in the maelstrom of the sensual, and cannot
appreciate the priceless treasures of the Eucharistic life.
It is extremely distressing to see the Altar deserted; this banquet of immense
happiness; and it is extremely distressing to see poor souls lost miserably in the most
meaningless and often fatal earthly joys! When the span of a person’s life is considered, it
is truly heartbreaking to see countless unhappy souls that go through this life tearing
themselves to pieces. How many men are away from the Sacraments, how many seek
comfort for their lives from what tears them apart, and how many live desperately both in
this temporal life and in eternity! We, who have the fortune to serve our Heavenly Father
must never tire of inviting souls to the Feast of Life and we must not ever fail to accept the
daily invitation to the celestial Table, to be able to one day join the eternal Table in glory.
Jesus left the banquet of the Pharisee sorrowfully, thinking of how different the
thoughts of the men were from his own, and of the reasons for which so many do not
accept the invitation of God. Therefore, to the large crowd of people gathered around him
He began to say openly that it was impossible to reconcile their thoughts and interests
with the thoughts of God and the eternal interests, and thus He exclaimed: “If anyone
comes to me without hating his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters,
and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not carry his own cross
and come after me cannot be my disciple.”
It is evident that Jesus does not mean to hate one’s dear ones, but to have them in
no consideration when they are an obstacle or they hinder our path to Heaven. He speaks
of one’s closest relationships, and even of one’s very life, to describe those things that we
care about the most, as can be care for one’s father, mother and so on up to our own very

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lives. In the same way, He said at another time, pluck out your eye, cut off your hand or
your foot and so on if they are the cause of scandal.
It can happen that parents or people that are close to us could be against the
interests of God, and then it is necessary for us to hate them—that is to stand opposite to
their ways, and to follow a life completely opposite to theirs; however, more generally,
Jesus wants to say that if what is dear to us or what we are attached to is in opposition to
the precepts or the will of God, these must be rejected and opposed by us as one who hates
another.
Hate, in fact, in establishing a complete separation between two people making
them irreconcilable, is the most effective expression of how our separation should be from
the world and from the spirit of the world, and from all that draws us in opposition to the
precepts and love of Jesus.
It is necessary to deny oneself, and be convinced that you cannot embrace the Law
of the Redeemer, without embracing the cross and following Him on the way of
immolation and Calvary. This is essential and fundamental for whoever really wants to be
perfect and attain Paradise.

The careful and serious response to the invitation of God

With two parables Jesus illustrates what is the Christian life, and with how much
careful consideration and seriousness it must be embraced. He who builds a tower plans
its construction carefully beforehand, sitting at the table, and with great precision
calculates the nature and extent of the expenses that are necessary to complete it, in order
not to be exposed to the derision of others, and to avoid starting a job that he cannot
complete. A king that wants to move in war against another king first must see if he is
strong enough to defeat his opponent, otherwise he tries to engage in peaceful
negotiations. Christian life is then like the construction of a building and a war that is
fought and requires great fortitude and reflection; fortitude and reflection are obtained by
the divine Goodness, repudiating and giving up everything that draws the soul to earthly
desires.
Whoever does not detach himself from everything and does not persist to fight the
world, the devil and the flesh becomes like insipid salt that is no longer good, fit neither
for the soil nor for the manure pile—that is, cannot even be used as waste, either to enrich
the soil directly or to be mixed with fertilizer—but rather is thrown out, is rejected by
God, and he will lose his eternal life. Jesus adds, Whoever has ears to hear ought to hear",
addressing especially his disciples who would have to build up the Church and fight the
great battle with the world, with the devil and with the flesh; they, more than anyone else
would have to repudiate themselves and renounce everything for the love of God.
The apostles could not be expected to attain places of honor in the world, nor
could they aspire to make arrangements for their families; the apostolate required a
complete renunciation of any bond with the family and any material interest, because they
had to go into the world to preach the good news with great tribulation, and even at the
cost of losing their own lives. Jesus, in saying “Whoever has ears to hear ought to hear”,
perhaps turned particularly to Judas, who already had begun to dislike the company of the
Lord, and in carrying the bag of charitable donations thought only of making a profit, to

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ensure for himself an independent lifestyle having all necessities and being free of
worries.
Our path, too, on this earth is a path of self-denial and sacrifice if we want to
follow Jesus and to work to spread His kingdom. Almost always, those who understand
our great aspirations the least are just our closest relatives; it then becomes a necessity for
us to counteract their ideas or their views in order to follow Jesus faithfully.
We are not for this earth, and so we should not have material comforts, lofty
careers, honors, great residences, not to speak of wanton pleasure and revelry as goals for
our lives. Let us abandon ourselves to God, seek His Will and His glory, following Jesus
faithfully and persevere in serving Him until the end, and in so doing attain eternal
happiness.

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 Chapter 15

1. The lost sheep. The lost coin. The prodigal son.

1 Now tax collectors and sinners were drawing near to him, so that they might listen to
him. 2 And the Pharisees and the scribes murmured, saying, “This one accepts sinners
and eats with them.” 3 And he told this parable to them, saying: 4 “What man among you,
who has one hundred sheep, and if he will have lost one of them, would not leave the
ninety-nine in the desert and go after the one whom he had lost, until he finds it? 5 And
when he has found it, he places it on his shoulders, rejoicing. 6 And returning home, he
calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to them: ‘Congratulate me! For I have
found my sheep, which had been lost.’ 7 I say to you, that there will be so much more joy
in heaven over one sinner repenting, than over the ninety-nine just, who do not need to
repent. 8 Or what woman, having ten drachmas, if she will have lost one drachma, would
not light a candle, and sweep the house, and diligently search until she finds it? 9 And
when she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying: ‘Rejoice with
me! For I have found the drachma, which I had lost.’ 10 So I say to you, there will be joy
before the Angels of God over even one sinner who is repentant.” 11 And he said: “A
certain man had two sons. 12 And the younger of them said to the father, ‘Father, give me
the portion of your estate which would go to me.’ And he divided the estate between them.
13 And after not many days, the younger son, gathering it all together, set out on a long
journey to a distant region. And there, he dissipated his substance, living in luxury. 14
And after he had consumed it all, a great famine occurred in that region, and he began to
be in need. 15 And he went and attached himself to one of the citizens of that region. And
he sent him to his farm, in order to feed the swine. 16 And he wanted to fill his belly with
the scraps that the swine ate. But no one would give it to him. 17 And returning to his
senses, he said: ‘How many hired hands in my father’s house have abundant bread, while
I perish here in famine! 18 I shall rise up and go to my father, and I will say to him:
Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. 19 I am not worthy to be called your
son. Make me one of your hired hands.’ 20 And rising up, he went to his father. But while
he was still at a distance, his father saw him, and he was moved with compassion, and
running to him, he fell upon his neck and kissed him. 21 And the son said to him: ‘Father,
I have sinned against heaven and before you. Now I am not worthy to be called your son.’
22 But the father said to his servants: ‘Quickly! Bring out the best robe, and clothe him
with it. And put a ring on his hand and shoes on his feet. 23 And bring the fatted calf here,
and kill it. And let us eat and hold a feast. 24 For this son of mine was dead, and has
revived; he was lost, and is found.’ And they began to feast. 25 But his elder son was in
the field. And when he returned and drew near to the house, he heard music and dancing.
26 And he called one of the servants, and he questioned him as to what these things
meant. 27 And he said to him: ‘Your brother has returned, and your father has killed the
fatted calf, because he has received him safely.’ 28 Then he became indignant, and he was
unwilling to enter. Therefore, his father, going out, began to plead with him. 29 And in
response, he said to his father: ‘Behold, I have been serving you for so many years. And I
have never transgressed your commandment. And yet, you have never given me even a
young goat, so that I might feast with my friends. 30 Yet after this son of yours returned,

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who has devoured his substance with loose women, you have killed the fatted calf for
him.’ 31 But he said to him: ‘Son, you are with me always, and all that I have is yours. 32
But it was necessary to feast and to rejoice. For this brother of yours was dead, and has
revived; he was lost, and is found.’ ”

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2. The infinite mercy of God in searching for sinners and welcoming them, in an
overview of the parables of Jesus.

Sinners and tax collectors were coming from everywhere to listen to Jesus. The
Greek text says that all sinners and tax collectors approached Him to point out that all of
them were attracted by the goodness of Jesus, even those who did not convert because of
their guilt.
In fact the Redeemer was powerfully attractive; He had come to earth to regenerate
the people and in himself He had the delicacy of a mother, the loving care of a pastor and
the warmth of an affectionate father. Sinners too, in approaching Jesus felt interiorly to
become better persons because their souls would spontaneously humble themselves before
that immense light of sanctity.
The Pharisees and the scribes did not tolerate the goodness of Jesus because it was
in vivid contrast with the hardness of their souls; solicitous as they were of their own fame
and glory, they despised sinners in order to show their feigned sense of righteousness and
disapproved of Jesus’ attitude not because they did not like it, but to point out to the
people that He was not as righteous as they were. They believed that his familiarity with
sinners depended solely on his superficiality, and they wanted to point out that since He
was not able to recognize them, He was not a Prophet.
Their true natures were revealed through a mixture of pride, malignancy and
dislike that they evinced.
In answering, Jesus Christ did not expose their true natures, however, as he could
have, but instead He revealed the mercy of God and of his own Heart; in this way He
opened the souls of sinners of all times to a greater trust and made known the great secret
of His divine mission. He did this by telling the people three parables to show the
goodness of God in searching out and welcoming sinners, revealing that He was seeking
also those sinners who had gone astray, not for a superficial evaluation of their sins, or out
of simple, natural compassion, but because He was God and He searched for sinners to
give them mercy. Moreover, these three parables show His clear consideration for sinners
of every nation in every age, looking upon them as little lambs gone astray from the flock
of God; as human values, lost with damage to everyone, and as distant children far from
their Father's heart.
A shepherd searches for the lost sheep out of compassion, a woman searches for a
valuable object out of interest, and a father’s most tender love longs for the rebellious son
who has left him.
These are the three great moments of the Divine Mercy.
The Lord calls sinful mankind as a shepherd calls lost sheep. He redeems mankind
by paying the ransom, and welcomes it with immense fatherly love, restoring its original
splendor. He welcomed Israel and sought to find it in the wilderness of the world just as
one seeks a lost sheep, carrying it Himself through the ways of` life as a shepherd carries

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his sheep on his shoulder. He came to earth from Heaven to give it light, to search for lost
mankind, to restore its greatness, lost because of sin; His heart awaits humanity gone
astray and apostate, immersed in the filth of impurity, reduced to a state of extreme
squalor, and welcomes it with fatherly love, rehabilitating it.
God’s mercy always includes a loving search, a divine evaluation of a soul, and an
immense love with which to welcome it. It can be said that the three parables proposed by
Jesus were an indication of the three great manifestations of the mercy of God One and
Triune: first, that of the Father, given to the chosen people, his flock; second, that of the
Son, given for our Redemption, and as the One who pays the price of our ransom; and
third, that of the Holy Spirit manifested in the Church everyday, and in a marvelous way
at the end of the times, receiving into His Heart the corrupted and apostate children gone
astray from His paternal love.
Jesus talks of the joy of the shepherd in finding the lost sheep, the happiness of the
woman in finding her lost coin, and the joy of the father embracing again his once
misguided son, but this was not to imply that God loves sinners more than the righteous
instead it was make clear His mercy is so full and so complete that He welcomes repentant
sinners as if they were righteous. He tells of the great festivity in Heaven that occurs for a
repentant sinner, to let us know that the joy of the Blessed is greater for a soul who is
saved, than for those who are already saved or righteous; the same can be said of a father
who rejoices more for a son who was sick and is now healed than for his other sons who
are in good health. This does not mean that he has a greater appreciation for those who are
sick than for those who are in good health, but rather precisely because he values good
health, is why he rejoices that his sick son is now cured.*
Repentant sinners also always have more humility, gratitude and love, which
render them dearer to the Lord making it easier for them to receive the flow of graces.
Sin is an awful sickness that is always loathsome to God; but true penance can
bloom in the heart of sinners even more than in the righteous, and the tenderness of God is
particularly drawn to this blooming of love and virtue. It should be noted that Jesus is
brief in relating the parables of the lost sheep and the lost coin, while instead He tells the
parable of the prodigal son in great and beautiful detail, to emphasize the love by which
God as father accepts the sinners who come to Him repentant.
His divine Heart’s tenderness had no boundaries when He spoke of what the soul
does in seeking God; in the exuberance of the parable, He revealed the exuberance of
God’s love. We might say that in His profound charity towards us He wanted to give more
emphasis to the need of a sinner in seeking God then what God does for a sinner; His love
for us in his search for us is infinite and His love to welcome us again is supremely tender.
Hence the divine psychological reasoning of the Redeemer in taking more time to describe
the parable of the prodigal son; because the magnitude of this parable can also make us
understand how exceptional the mercy God will be in the end times toward His apostate
children returning to His Heart.

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* A very clear and appropriate reflection about the father who cures his son’s sickness and loves his healing
precisely because he loves health, well-being and justice.

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3. The three parables of the mercy of God: the lost sheep.

The Pharisees showed themselves ruthless against sinners because their salvation
did not interest them. They loved God so little that they did not mind losing His love, and
instead were extremely venal and interested in everything that concerned their possessions
and their money.
Jesus, in order to render most intelligible the delicacy of divine goodness to them,
appealed directly to their material interests, and in particular to the sheep of their
sheepfolds which constituted real wealth in those times. From a psychological standpoint
there is a very loving retort in the brevity with which Jesus answers the Pharisees: "What
man among you having a hundred sheep and losing one of them would not leave the
ninety-nine in the desert and go after the lost one until he finds it? His divine Heart is
wounded by their murmuring, however to get their attention He does not tell them a story,
but rather goes directly to a topic that would interest and move them, thus saying in
essence: why, do you not know that all sinners are my sheep and I love them, in a way,
like a shepherd loves his sheepfold? You take care of your sheep and if one of them is
lost, you do not rest until you have found it, and yet I should let one of my sheep perish,
lost in the ravines of their guilt? It is a forcefully strong argument, which shows all the
love Jesus has for poor sinners; and in fact Christian charity has welcomed this parable
and, we would say, developed and made it one of the tenderest symbols of the merciful
love of the Savior.
A shepherd has one hundred sheep and leads them in the desert to graze—that is to
say in an untilled parcel of land, away from houses and used for grazing. As the sheep are
grazing he finds that one of them is lost. Thus to notice this, it implies that he does not
lead his sheep around carelessly, but rather, takes care of each of them and counts them
one by one. In this way he realizes that one of them is lost. Full of anguish, he then
secures the ninety-nine sheep and runs all over the hills to look for his missing little sheep,
calling for it as his loving spirit moves him. Finally he finds it, entangled among the
thorns; he untangles it; he sees it is tired, hungry, frightened; he kisses and caresses it and
puts it on his shoulders as it bleats. Then he runs home happily to tell his friends and
neighbors the good news and to celebrate with them.
His love thus communicated to his friends the grief he felt at losing his sheep
making his misadventure a source of concern for all of them. Everyone in fact heard his
joyful call, came from their houses, ran and congratulated him and celebrated with him,
caressing the once-lost sheep.
The Lord is not indifferent to the sinful soul, his gaze lovingly follows it as it
strays, He is so loving that it seems that He does not have any other care but for this one
soul. He does not cease to run after the little sheep, runs after it with gifts of grace, with
tribulations and the voices of his crucified love.
It belongs to Him, it is His little sheep, and when He finds it, he sets it on his
shoulders, because He carries and supports it with the very special help of His grace, and
regards it as a trophy of His victory before the Heavenly Court. Men are not able to fully
appreciate the return of a soul to God; there are good men who rejoice in it but they do not
grasp its value; only in Heaven can the loss of a soul and its return to a state of grace be
fully appreciated and for this reason Jesus says that the feast is done in Heaven.

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 To lose God is a terrible misfortune; to find Him again is an immeasurable grace,
because it is the finding of our first principle and our ultimate goal. In Heaven, charity is
perfect, and for this reason there is immense rejoicing over one sinner who returns to God.
This shows us the wonderful communion of the Saints who are with us and who are
especially concerned for our eternal salvation as we journey here on earth.

The lost coin that was found.

The scribes and Pharisees were exceedingly interested in and were greatly attached
to money, so Jesus continues His great teaching of God's mercy with another parable that
could convince them a little more easily; he does not directly involve them this time, as he
did in the case of the lost sheep, as He was moved by an extreme delicacy of charity,
because while it would be commendable a search for a lost lamb, it was not equally
commendable to search eagerly for money.
Jesus Christ reminds them gently of their venality, with a parable about a poor
woman. Within this context, in fact, He is able to more pronouncedly stress the extreme
care with which the poor woman searched for her lost coin. The coin was the equivalent of
about 0.87 Italian Lire today; the woman had ten of them totaling what would correspond
to about 8.70 Italian Lire†; thus to lose one of them, was not to be taken lightly for her.
The Jewish homes did not have much light and even today often have few windows, thus
the woman lit a candle to look for the coin and not finding it, she began to sweep the
house carefully checking every possible place. Her anxiety did not escape her friends and
neighbors who were very sorry for her loss, thus, as soon as she found the coin, she
quickly called them to share her joy with them and that they may rejoice with her.
Jesus wanted to say to the scribes and Pharisees: “How is it that you do not find
peace if you lose but one coin and yet you complain if I seek sinners who are my own
inheritance? In fact He searches for them with the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Mother of
Sinners, and with the Church. Mary lights a lamp, enlightening souls with inner
inspirations*, and the Church sweeps the house with spiritual exercises, with missions and
with daily means of spiritual resurrection that she offers to her faithful. Jesus in this way
finds souls, riches of priceless value for Him, his love exults and all the Blessed rejoice
with Him because they also were saved by the infinite mercy of God.

The prodigal son.

To the Pharisees it seemed impossible that God would welcome sinners and so
they tried to find something in Jesus’ familiarity with them that could be a reason against
His Divinity, and because of this the Savior showed, in a most tender story, the way God
welcomes sinners and indirectly proclaimed Himself to be God, because that was the way
that He welcomed them, in the excess of His merciful love, not for acceptance of their

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†
Translator’s note: the Italian Lire values reflect the time when Don Dolindo was writing. However, each
coin in today’s (2014) U.S. dollars could be worth about $17 - $20.
*Most delicate and moving consideration on the mission of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

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actions. The parable of the prodigal son with which Jesus Christ manifests fully God’s and
His mercy, is most beautiful and touching; it is more than a story, it is a detailed
description of the degradation and resurrection of a sinner. The One who reads hearts
wanted to illustrate the particular positions of the sinners. Therefore we must meditate
carefully on all the circumstances of the parable, because each has a profound
psychological value.
“A man had two sons, and the younger son said to his father, Father, give me the
share of your estate that should come to me.” Children were entitled to their father’s
inheritance at that time; the eldest, in the Jewish tradition, was entitled to double the share
of the other children in terms of the division of the estate which could be done when the
father was still living or after his death. Thus the younger son of this father requested his
part of the inheritance. Why did he ask for it considering that he had such an immensely
wonderful father? It is evident from the context: he wanted to enjoy life on his terms; the
house looked too empty to him, parental supervision was too overwhelming, he did not
see eye-to-eye with his brother, the only company he had at home, and he wanted to look
for friends and diversions far away.
At that moment, the father could have denied him his part of the inheritance and
postpone the division of the estate to such a later time as after his death; but instead he
agreed to do it then and there because his son demanded it with the arrogance of the
wicked that is not practically possible to challenge. Theoretically a father can always
object to his children’s demands, but some offspring are so unruly that to have them near
is unbearable and their leaving can be seen like a blessing. Thus the father, although
suffering a great deal for his son’s departure, gave him the part of the estate due to him
and could not do otherwise.
After a few days the wild young son put together the money and everything else he
had, and went away to a distant country. He wanted to be completely independent, did not
want any sort of restraint, and so chose to go to a faraway country. Perhaps the father, in
greatest anguish, was not even able to say goodbye to him before he left, because his son
slipped away, as happens in such cases, as if he were an enemy; this can be noted from the
painful expectation of a return that the father hoped for.
The young man believed to have achieved his happiness and when he was far
away from home it seemed to him that he could finally breathe. He believed now to be in
charge of himself and gave in to a dissolute life, consuming everything he had. At that
time there came a great famine to the country where he was, and he found himself in the
most abject poverty. He searched for a job and was reduced to be a servant, he who was of
noble birth, and to be a servant of a pagan who sent him to take care of his pigs. A Jew
would not have kept a herd of pigs and that master, putting the young man in charge of
these unclean animals reduced him to a state of great dejection. Further, he kept the
unfortunate young man in such poor conditions that he longed to eat the pods, or
according to the Greek text, the carrots, that were given to the pigs, but no one gave them
to him. He was reduced to the level of a slave and his great humiliation took away the
courage to at least ask for the food that was given to the pigs. What bitter days the
unhappy young man spent! As a keeper of pigs he had plenty of time to consider his
current state because that kind of work did not occupy his mind and therefore forced him
to constantly reflect on his situation; at the same time the lives of those filthy beasts were
an image and reminder of the debased life he had recently led. He remembered the days in

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the peace and cleanliness of his father’s home, he remembered the way their servants were
treated, with respect, affection and provided for with plenty for all their needs; he
remembered above all the goodness of his father and thus he was hopeful that he would at
least receive him as a servant.
One of the effects of sin, and especially of that of impurity, is indecision and
despair, and so the young man remained for a time to feed the pigs without rebelling
against his present state of life; he who had rebelled against his father, submitted passively
to a harsh and severe man and did not say a word. But the idea that it would be possible
for him to serve in the house of his father began to seem feasible, and one day, having
thus decided he said to himself: I shall get up and go to my father and I shall say to him,
“Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I no longer deserve to be called
your son; treat me as you would treat one of your hired workers.” He was so depressed
that he did not have the strength to stand up without forcing himself: I shall get up and go;
he was so confused that he prepared what he would say to his father; he was still far from
loving his father, his motivation to go was mainly in light of the harm that his dissolute
life had caused him and the awful state in which he found himself as a result. It was his
father’s love that rehabilitated him and made it possible to change his repentance from
disappointment into perfect contrition.
The father had not forgotten his son and everyday he looked sorrowfully at the
road on which his young son had left, it made him so sad! The sun seemed duller, the
loneliness more desolate and people going by gave him continuous pangs of loss.
He looked far away and wept silently, crying tears of love and even of anger,
blaming in his heart his son’s failures. The ingratitude that he had shown him could not
but deeply disgust him.
Then one day he sees a young man advancing, worn out, all ragged, leaning on a
makeshift walking stick because he was so weak and tired. He recognized him at once: it
was his son! He felt so moved that forgetting everything, he ran to him, threw his arms
around his neck and kissed him in a flood of most loving tears. The son, also weeping,
said what he had prepared to say and what he repeated to himself along the way: Father, I
have sinned against heaven and against you; I no longer deserve to be called your son. He
did not complete the phrase he had prepared and did not say that he wanted to be a servant
in the house perhaps because the father did not give him the time to do so, but also maybe
because that expression did not seem appropriate anymore in the face of so much love and
so much mercy.
The father seeing him all ragged quickly called his servants and ordered them to
dress him in the best, most beautiful clothes after bathing him; he also ordered them to put
a ring with the family seal on his finger as sign of special honor, and sandals on his feet,
as befitted a free man. Slaves went barefoot, and the poor young man returning from a
state of slavery, had no sandals.
Afterward the father ordered that the calf, that had been fatted up with special food
and that was being saved for some great circumstance, be killed and that a banquet be
prepared, because this son of mine was dead, and has come to life again; he was lost, and
has been found. These last words of the father reveal all his love and all his joy; while the
young man protested that he was not worthy to be called his son anymore, the father calls
him with great affection: this my son.

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 A banquet was prepared and among joyful songs and music people started eating.
The father’s eldest son was not there because he had gone to the fields to supervise the
workers. Coming home he heard from a distance the music and dancing of the feast and
calling one of the servants asked him what was happening. Upon hearing the reason he
became very angry and would not enter.
In all happy feasts there is always someone who is discordant, but this time the
anger of the eldest son could have degenerated into a fight, and so the father wanting to
avoid this ran himself to implore him to enter. He could have imposed it, but how would
that have helped? Instead, he begged him to enter the house with the same merciful heart,
having pity on his son’s displeasure. But the son reacted angrily saying that he had always
served him faithfully without ever having had the gift of a little goat to feast with his
friends, and added scornfully: But when your son returns who swallowed up your property
with prostitutes, for him you slaughter the fattened calf. He did not call the returning
young man brother, but being angry, called him your son almost as if he did not belong to
him anymore and expressed directly and contemptuously the guilty state of his brother:
who swallowed up his property with prostitutes. It seemed to him beyond the pale to kill
for him, above all else, the fatted calf.
In deep sorrow the father tried to appease his eldest son bringing him to consider
that he should not feel hurt by this act of mercy, because it did not diminish his rights:
everything I have is yours but adding, he remind him of the brotherly love, that it was
right to have a banquet and a party, because your brother was resurrected and found.
The son had called his brother your son, and the father instead of calling him son,
called him your brother, to make him think that the person for whom the banquet was
given was not a stranger to him, but rather was his brother, and that he should have been
much more happy, because it was as a dead person resurrected and one led astray who had
changed for the better.
Jesus Christ could not describe in a more moving and tender way the state of a
sinner and the infinite mercy God in taking him back into His grace when he truly repents.
He could not express in a deeper way the mercy of God towards the whole of mankind,
towards entire nations and peoples when they come back to Him. There are two different
applications of this parable that we need to meditate upon: the father who has two children
is God who has, among His children, those who are good and those who are bad, and He
has among nations those who are faithful to Him and those who abandon Him.
God is a father who has given His creatures freewill which they may exercise
virtuously in a positive way or if they choose, in a negative way, even if such actions—of
their own doing—are abusive and harmful. When a man sins he leaves God, his Father; he
leaves His loving company and abandons himself to debauchery, destroying grace and all
the good qualities that God had given him; sin brings him to the most squalid misery, and
from serving God he becomes a slave to the most awful passions. The characteristics of
this state are degradation and hunger, since the soul does not ever feel satiated, and lives
in a state of the greatest spiritual and physical unhappiness.
The same happens when entire nations apostatizing move away from God: living
lustfully, they reduce themselves to be slaves of Satan and slaves of their own awful
agents, and they become miserably despondent. Most sorrowfully the pigsty is the natural
ending of being far away from God, and misery is the natural consequence.
Under the impetus of great punishments the sinner comes back to his senses and

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has a first inclination of returning to God; he considers the brevity and the nullity of his
false joys, considers the peace and happiness of those who do good, he feels ashamed of
himself and decides to return to the Heavenly Father, going to those who represent Him
on earth. Father I have sinned; here is the humble confession that the sinner makes at the
foot of the Confessor; here is the humble confession of the apostatized nations when they
see their ruin.
God is infinite mercy and right away embraces the sinner who truly repents in his
heart; he commands to his servants, that is the Priests, to put on, with the absolution, the
clothes of grace; He does not put them on him directly but he calls his servants and they
must put on his finger the ring of new graces and on his feet the sandals of freedom,
commanding afterward a banquet of love, that the repentant may partake of all this
goodness.
To each single penitent soul God gives the delights of the Eucharistic banquet and
to nations that do not have an eternal future, God grants an abundance of material goods
and prosperity.
The end of the parable applies particularly to the Jewish people and to the scandal
of the Pharisees in seeing Jesus being always kind toward sinners. They were refusing to
be part of the kingdom of God and the banquet of life because they saw that Jesus
welcomed sinners; and yet they should have exulted and rejoiced because that familiarity
converted and saved those people.
The Heavenly Father not only have one first “son,” namely, the Jewish people; He
had also a younger one: the Gentile people; if Jesus searched for publicans and sinners, He
was seeking to bring them, the younger “son,” back to the Heavenly Father with his first-
fruits of mercy. This should have given them a great joy, because all men are children of
God, Jews and Gentiles, and the Jews should have rejoiced to see the younger son
welcomed in the merciful arms of God and be a part of the banquet of life.
The parable of the prodigal son, as we have said before, also points to the return of
the apostate nations to God in the end times.
We cannot dismiss the timeliness and accuracy of this very vivid story which we
are already living today: God has two children: the Jewish people and the Gentiles. This
latter “son”, younger in age, after being in the family home, claims his share of the
inheritance—all material claims—to use in his own way; he uses these gifts of God at his
whim, thus, and turns away from Him living a dissolute life.
The famous Declaration of Human Rights during the French Revolution was the
official act by which the people, rebelling against God, claimed the rights distorted and
misrepresented as their own inheritance*. God never forces anyone to do what is good and
for His high purposes he let them freely choose their own way.
In disordered possession of their full inheritance, the nations turned away from
God and took up a systematically dissolute life that marks today our so-called modern
civilization.

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*This is in reference to the aberrations, the crimes and so on, that were done in the name of freedom—as a
revolutionary woman condemned to death said: “Freedom, freedom, how many crimes are committed in
your name!”—However not all the ideas of the revolution were wrong.

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 Our contemporary history is a true horror. It is true that in every age many nations,
and also Christian nations, have been burdened by awful crimes, but when we think of the
good that reigned in them, the many saintly kings, all the many manifestations of faith, of
mercy and of charity, it must be recognized that following this latest apostasy, the nations
have fallen into a depth of corruption beyond what our fathers ever imagined. Deeply
characteristic of this corruption is a ubiquitous impurity, which is pushed little by little to
the most degrading excesses.
Distance from God produces misery, and misery leads to the most degrading forms
of slavery. Men who were created to live in Divine Providence and to be in holy freedom,
see their resources dwindle to nothing, become poor and starving, and have to endure the
harsh demands of a cruel ruler. The economic state of modern nations is frightening, and
with the excuse of military needs they go towards a complete internal slavery. Men in
these nations are slaves of the State—a demanding, cruel, ruthless ruler—and have
nothing to eat.
They tend to the pigs, but the pigs do not even share with them what they have.
Ultimately, the apostate peoples live to tend to the corrupted herds of their leaders, as can
be seen everywhere, and do not obtain anything from their slavery. This is how the
apostasy has reduced the peoples! No further proof of this is needed as we see it every
day.
But a time of rebirth will come and it will come because of the very harshness of
the crisis that tortures the people. Almost as if awakening from sleep, they shall say: I
shall get up and go to my father. A period of resurrection of the Christian conscience will
take over the apostasy, and there will be a period of return.
The Heavenly Father, full of mercy, will come to meet the peoples, will embrace
and kiss them and endow them with special graces to introduce them anew into the
Church. His servants shall dress souls anew, putting them back into the grace of God,
putting on their finger the ring of new promises and of a new filiality with God; they will
prepare the banquet with the fatted calf, that is with the exuberance of Eucharistic gifts.
There will also be at the time, no doubt, discordant voices present because in the ever
changing world complete harmony is not possible, but the goodness of our common
Father, the Pope, shall know how to reconcile these divergent voices in order to maintain
unity among the Christian people.
The father, on the other hand, who invites—indeed begs—the older brother to
enter into the banquet, can symbolize the Pope of Love who with great fondness will
invite the Jews to be a part of the joy of the Catholic world, and his loving insistence will
move them to conversion, thus forming a single fold under one shepherd.
Writing these pages and contemplating upon the mercy of God moves one to
tearfully beg the Lord for mercy for us and for everyone.
How sad it is to see souls that are in the most abject poverty and in the most
painful grief because they are far from God! How tender it is to see God who despite such
ingratitude welcomes all!
O Lord, we have really sinned against heaven and against you and we are not
worthy to be called your children! Welcome us as your servants, give us holy freedom in
our hearts, clothe us again with your grace and invite us to partake in your banquet of love
on earth and in heaven.

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 Chapter 16
The dishonest steward. The hypocrisy of the Pharisees. Indissoluble marriage. The
parable of the rich man and Lazarus.

1 And he also said to his disciples: “A certain man was wealthy, and he had a steward of
his estate. And this man was accused to him of having dissipated his goods. 2 And he
called him and said to him: ‘What is this that I hear about you? Give an account of your
stewardship. For you can no longer be my steward.’ 3 And the steward said within
himself: ‘What shall I do? For my lord is taking the stewardship away from me. I am not
strong enough to dig. I am too ashamed to beg. 4 I know what I will do so that, when I
have been removed from the stewardship, they may receive me into their houses.’ 5 And
so, calling together each one of his lord’s debtors, he said to the first, ‘How much do you
owe my lord?’ 6 So he said, ‘One hundred jars of oil.’ And he said to him, ‘Take your
invoice, and quickly, sit down and write fifty.’ 7 Next, he said to another, ‘In truth, how
much do you owe?’ And he said, ‘One hundred measures of wheat.’ He said to him, ‘Take
your record books, and write eighty.’ 8 And the lord praised the iniquitous steward, in
that he had acted prudently. For the sons of this age are more prudent with their
generation than are the sons of light. 9 And so I say to you, make friends for yourself
using iniquitous mammon, so that, when you will have passed away, they may receive you
into the eternal tabernacles. 10 Whoever is faithful in what is least, is also faithful in what
is greater. And whoever is unjust in what is small, is also unjust in what is greater. 11 So
then, if you have not been faithful with iniquitous mammon, who will trust you with what
is true? 12 And if you have not been faithful with what belongs to another, who will give
you what is yours? 13 No servant is able to serve two lords. For either he will hate the
one and love the other, or he will cling to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve
God and mammon.” 14 But the Pharisees, who were greedy, were listening to all these
things. And they ridiculed him. 15 And he said to them: “You are the ones who justify
yourselves in the sight of men. But God knows your hearts. For what is lifted up by men is
an abomination in the sight of God. 16 The law and the prophets were until John. Since
then, the kingdom of God is being evangelized, and everyone acts with violence toward it.
17 But it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away, than for one dot of the law to fall
away. 18 Everyone who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery. And
whoever marries her who has been divorced by her husband commits adultery. 19 A
certain man was wealthy, and he was clothed in purple and in fine linen. And he feasted
splendidly every day. 20 And there was a certain beggar, named Lazarus, who lay at his
gate, covered with sores, 21 wanting to be filled with the crumbs which were falling from
the wealthy man’s table. But no one gave it to him. And even the dogs came and licked his
sores. 22 Then it happened that the beggar died, and he was carried by the Angels into the
bosom of Abraham. Now the wealthy man also died, and he was entombed in Hell. 23
Then lifting up his eyes, while he was in torments, he saw Abraham far away, and Lazarus
in his bosom. 24 And crying out, he said: ‘Father Abraham, take pity on me and send
Lazarus, so that he may dip the tip of his finger in water to refresh my tongue. For I am
tortured in this fire.’ 25 And Abraham said to him: ‘Son, recall that you received good
things in your life, and in comparison, Lazarus received bad things. But now he is

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consoled, and truly you are tormented. 26 And besides all this, between us and you a
great chasm has been established, so that those who might want to cross from here to you
are not able, nor can someone cross from there to here.’ 27 And he said: ‘Then, father, I
beg you to send him to my father’s house, for I have five brothers, 28 so that he may testify
to them, lest they also come into this place of torments.’ 29 And Abraham said to him:
‘They have Moses and the prophets. Let them listen to them.’ 30 So he said: ‘No, father
Abraham. But if someone were to go to them from the dead, they would repent.’ 31 But he
said to him: ‘If they will not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they believe
even if someone has resurrected from the dead.’ ”
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2. The dishonest steward and the necessity of using wealth in a good way for eternal
life.
With the parable of the prodigal son, Jesus had shown the moral and material ruin
that the abuse of wealth could produce; with the parable of the unfaithful steward He
shows how wealth can be used positively. The argument of the Lord is ‘from least to
most’: if a dishonest steward using richness that were not his but only entrusted to him
could provide for his future using a little shrewdness and generosity—although not
entirely without fraud—how much more can one who uses the wealth he receives from the
Lord by acquiring friends in eternity provide for his eternal salvation through good works!
Jesus obviously did not intended to propose an unjust act as a model of behavior,
but in telling this beautiful parable, he wanted to show that indirectly riches almost always
bear the brand of injustice and iniquity on them. This is why He called them "mammon
iniquitatis" (unrighteous riches) and made no distinction between just and unjust riches. If
a chart were made describing the “journey” made by a piece of money, it would clearly
show that at some point there would be an unfortunate act either from where it came from
or where it was going in the future. We never think that the money that we have in our
pockets is perhaps the price of a sin or of very bitter tears, and thus in order that it might
not hurt us, we almost always should reconsacrate our money through giving alms. We
could even have in our pockets the price of an impurity or a murder, and those funds, even
though passed to us lawfully, carry germs of a terrible infection with them. Many people,
after handling money wash their hands, and they are right to do so, because it is the most
dirty thing there is, passing through many hands; but in taking that money we should also
make an act of reparation to God, and put aside a little percentage of it, however small, for
charity, to disinfect it spiritually.

The parable of the dishonest steward.

The parable that Jesus told was probably something that really happened and
which He used for teaching a truth: a rich man, a man so rich that he was not angered by
the ultimate discovery of a fraud committed against him, had a servant to whom,
according to the translated Greek words, he had entrusted the administration of all his
property. This total control that had given to him explains the ease with which this
steward was able to siphon off the goods of his master for his own benefit, to the point
that other employees began noticing it, and reported his fraud to the master. The master
after examining the situation clearly saw the veracity of this accusation, and calling the

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steward told him to prepare a full accounting and to leave immediately thereafter. The
master, notwithstanding the fraud he had suffered, still had a bit of confidence in this
servant, and also, since the servant had been managing his administrative affairs up to that
time he naturally had to go to him to get to the bottom of the situation. He had also must
have had some affection for the poor steward, and since he was very rich, wanted to give
him a chance to get his affairs in order.
This man did not think of the goodness of the master, nor was he sorry for the
fraud he had done to him to the point that he even committed further frauds at the last
minute. He was worried for his own situation and he thought: "Here I am about to fall
very soon into the most abject poverty. What will I do for a living? I could work hoeing
the earth, but I do not know how to; I could beg, but coming from my present position I
would be too ashamed; the only option I have is to be rescued by others without being put
to shame.” And he thought immediately to make the debtors of his master obligated to
him by remitting to them of a portion of the debt they owed his master.
Thus he summoned them to clarify their outstanding debts, asking each of them
how much they owned to the master. The first replied that he owed him a hundred barrels
of oil, or in the Hebrew measure, one hundred baths of oil. A bath was about 10 gallons
thus he owed the master 1000 gallons of oil. The steward asked him to bring the
promissory note, and reduced the debt in half. To the second he asked the same thing and
the man replied, “A hundred measures of wheat”. According to the Hebrew measure he
owed him a hundred kors, and since one kor was 12 bushels, he owed 1200 bushels of
wheat.
The steward reduced this to eighty for him, because if he had reduced it in half, it
would show a generous adjustment that could make his master suspicious, thus he could
discover the new fraud. Also, even though the second remittance was 20% rather than
50%, he actually forgave more to the second debtor than to the first in absolute terms. He
proceeded in this way with all the debtors, as is obvious from the context of the parable.
When the master discovered the steward’s new fraud and his reason for doing so, he
commended him; he did not approve of the theft but he admired the cunning with which
he had operated to save himself from the complete ruin that threatened him. In fact Jesus
added, “For the children of this world are more prudent in dealing with their own
generation than are the children of light.”
With these last words Jesus indirectly justified the reason for which he had
proposed this parable: the men of the world, the children of this world, all dedicated to
things of the earth, know much more how to look after their own interests using human
prudence and even using evil ways to protect themselves and to secure their future; the
children of the light, instead, who possess eternal truth and aspire to things eternal, do not
think of their future, and often exchange it for nothing.
Jesus’ aphorism, within the context of the parable, means that the children of this
world in seeking temporal things do much more than what the children of light do for their
spiritual good and for their eternal future. The first group tries to obtain the greatest
temporal benefits from their wealth, while the latter does not draw even the least spiritual
benefit that could increase their spiritual goods. This is why Jesus exhorts us to make
friends in heaven even with “unjust” wealth, that is, as said before, a wealth that comes
from things gone wrong by their very nature, and to collect spiritual goods through works
of charity; and Jesus adds that the fidelity that one has over a little, that is over what is

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transitional and temporal, makes one faithful in much, because it corresponds to the graces
and to what leads to eternal life.
Comparatively speaking, temporal wealth is nothing compared with spiritual
wealth which buys us eternal life; thus if one is dishonest in small matters and does not
know how to make good use of his wealth through charity, he will be unjust also in larger
matters and will squander the graces he receives and his spiritual wealth. If he does not
know how to make good use of something of so little importance, as temporal wealth is,
how can God give him spiritual wealth? Spiritual wealth is the true wealth, and is the
treasure of the soul which is truly owned, because it gives one the right to the eternal
reward. Temporal wealth had previous and will have future owners, and so is never truly
owned; if we can’t be trusted with what we do not own, how can we be made owners of
something much greater? The Lord cannot give graces to a soul who does not know to use
well what is given to him only temporarily.

We are all “stewards” of our Celestial Father.

These maxims of Jesus are very precious and give us a new understanding of life:
we need to interpret these sayings in the light of this parable that He related: during our
lifetime we are all “stewards” of our Celestial Father, because we each have a role and a
mission in the complex harmony of His Providence. We must perform our roles and
receive from Him the patrimony of graces that we need to merit eternal life. Some of us
have a wealth of intelligence, others have strength, and still others have riches and
material goods.
These are small things before the treasures of grace, of Faith, Hope, Charity and
the gifts of the Holy Spirit. The present life is to be lived always keeping in mind how it
relates to the eternal life. He who accomplishes well his mission receives from God, as
part of his patrimony, all of the graces that will prepare him for the possession of the
eternal reward; for this reason it is of the utmost importance for those who have riches to
change them into the wealth of eternal glory through charity, in order to compensate for
the deficiencies and faults that are committed in the administration of what is temporal
and cannot be considered truly owned.
The foolishness of those who pretended and demanded to put the world on reckless
social bases, arrived to the point to call material wealth a theft from the population at
large, only to steal it for themselves on a large scale in truly felonious ways, with all the
dire social consequences of which we are spectators and victims. Jesus Christ, with divine
wisdom, gives the true meaning of what riches are: they are mammona iniquitatis
(unrighteous riches)—unrighteous from all the injustices that stain them, and from all
those for which they are used.
Since man’s time on earth is temporary and having to leave it eventually, he
cannot say that riches are truly his; and he administers them not on behalf of the nation or
society but for God, supreme and eternal Goodness, and supreme and eternal charity. Only
charity done for God, keeping in mind the responsibility that we have before Him, can
really balance the use of wealth; any other human device leads necessarily into oppression
and arrogance, making as law that violent disorder that before was only sporadic and
individual. There are, in fact, individuals who misuse wealth and oppress others, but when

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the State replaces the individual, the State itself becomes the overbearing and oppressive
despoiler and, above all, it has the brutal and uncontrolled force to assert itself.
Jurists unanimously agree that the State is the worst administrator and in its hands
the wealth of private individuals goes to waste and is destroyed. And this is logical,
because those who represent the State are interested in their own self-interest and do not
care about what does not belong to them. There is therefore the phenomenon of theft on a
large scale and the wasting of private property.
He who possesses riches, in other words, is only a steward of the riches of
Providence, a responsible steward before Him who reads the hearts and the consciences of
all. When death comes, the Celestial Master says to the rich man Give Me a full account of
your stewardship because you can no longer be steward. Then the rich man must now
present to God his works of charity and goodness, and in order to present them he must
have already done them in his lifetime. All riches then, be they the result or instrument of
iniquity, can become instruments of eternal friendship. It is evident, then, from the very
context of the parable, that if works of charity make possible for the unjust steward to find
friendship in Heaven, the holy use of owned riches changes them really into eternal
wealth. It is then, that loyalty in small matters produces loyalty in great ones, and this
means that the loyalty to God in material things produces the loyalty needed for spiritual
graces and the eternal life.
In conclusion, it is God that we must serve, and those who want to use wealth for
their own sake presume to serve two opposing masters. However, it is not possible to
become attached in a disordered way to temporal goods and to seek eternal goods, to love
personal gain and to love God, to seek personal advantage in a disordered fashion and at
the same time seek the advantage of one’s neighbor by means of charity.
Those who consider wealth and money as an end and not a means of life and who
do not use it to do good, are miserable servants of Mammon; they are men who consume
and sacrifice themselves as slaves for what does not belong to them, strictly speaking, as
at God’s summons they must leave it all at their death.
Even outside the context of the parables, it is universally true that it is not possible
to serve two masters, not only for the fact that material riches are in opposition to spiritual
rewards, which is true; but for everything that constitutes the material life of the world
that is in opposition to the spiritual life, the Christian life.
How is it possible to unite together error and truth, impurity with purity, arrogance
with humility, oppression and peaceful justice? Who can follow the law of the world,
condemned by God, and at the same time the law of God? Jesus sets out the contrast
between the two masters in terms of love and hate: He will either hate one and love the
other, or be devoted to one and despise the other.
Therefore the contrast is not superficial, it refers not to a diversity of views, but it
is radical and absolute, it does not recognize nor can it accept any alternative. In truth, he
who is not totally of God, belongs to the world or to Satan, and a token act of charity does
not change his attitude towards God. This person, in reality, does not love Him, and that
little love he accepts is for his own advantage, or because interiorly he does not want to
ignore the Faith and the Religion of his forefathers.
There is nothing more incomplete and miserable than a Faith accepted only as an
ancestral tradition: Faith must be love, and total love; it is not possible to love with the
heart of one’s ancestors, or to believe because they believed. We believe by the authority

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of God who reveals it to us. We obey not because of an old habit, but we obey a divine
Law always current and always gently imposed by his adorable Will.

3. The false righteousness of the Pharisees and the deep divergence between what is
human and what is divine.

The Pharisees, in hearing the words of Jesus concerning wealth, scoffed ad sneered
at Him because they were avaricious. Their scoffing created a grave scandal for the
people, and Jesus rebuked them with a severe reprimand. The context makes it clear how
the Pharisees mocked Jesus: they said that riches were a priceless gift because they served
to make life enjoyable and furthermore, the hope of eternal happiness was an illusion,
since in life there is money and pleasure. And making a mockery of the proclamation of
the kingdom of God of which Jesus continually spoke, they despised Him in opposing, to
the announcement of the divine Law, their materialistic and carnal kingdom of happiness
to the one that the Messiah would bring. From the answer of Jesus it is clear that they had
to make some references to the supposed happiness of changing one’s wife and the need
to have plenty of money to enjoy life.
With their jokes and their sneers the Pharisees had the ability to separate the
people from the truth and the kingdom of God, and for this reason the Redeemer
unmasked their true intentions in the light of the same Law and of the same Prophets, in
whom they gloried themselves, and whose words they carried written on their clothes,
while in fact completely ignoring them.
Their shameless mockery revealed their hearts, and since they were eager to be
considered holy by the people, Jesus wanted to attract the attention of all the people on
this involuntary revelation saying: You justify yourselves in the sight of others, but God
knows your hearts. Thus what he meant was: you Pharisees who speak in this way, you
who want to be considered righteous before the people; behold, you deceive many, and
you even appear superior before men, but this superiority in truth is an abomination in the
sight of God, as what you deem of high value in the present life is an abomination.
Honors, pleasures, riches are the things that you hope for in the coming kingdom of God,
interpreting the Scriptures in your own way; I tell you that the Law and the Prophets
lasted until John, and you cannot, in this light, question the very clear announcement that
John has already made about the Messiah being here among you and the Kingdom of God.
You believe yourselves to be righteous and you want others to believe so as well,
but you are not, because while the proclamation of John has resulted in many people
trying very hard to enter into the Kingdom of God, you are not entering at all, twisting the
meaning of the Law in your immoral lives, as if you had the power to change it at your
own whim.
Behold, you speak of pleasures, and you believe you can change your wife, paying
for another one with your money, while at the same time pretending to be righteous before
the people; and I tell you, you are adulterers before God, because everyone who divorces
his wife and marries another commits adultery, and the one who marries a woman
divorced from her husband commits adultery.
Psychologically it is difficult to mock what is good and holy without slipping into
lewdness; the Pharisees had fallen into it alluding to the necessity of money in order to
have a wife for their whims. Jesus, exposing their corrupt hearts, put back into place the

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holy law of marriage, confounding and condemning forever the abuses introduced by the
human misery.
How profound and widely applicable are Jesus’ words: for what is of human
esteem is an abomination in the sight of God! These divine words illustrate just how
meaningless that which is valued from a purely human context and what is socially
esteemed is compared to the eternal life, and the plan of God. Everything that is
appreciated or praised by the world is most objectionable before God. One can endlessly
debate how certain temporal riches are valued in daily life, one can dismiss as pointless
that which does not apply to the present life, but one can never destroy the word of the
Eternal Truth that calls such concerns an abomination.

Today goodness is despised

and evil is exalted.

We can see this, during these unhappy times of intellectual, artistic and moral
decadence: today only brutal power is appreciated with an irresponsibility that is
frightening; the present life is only satisfied through the triumphs of pride, the abuses of
manipulating others for personal gain, the basest pleasures of the senses, and everything
that is instant gratification.
Abominable men, full of criminality, have risen to the throne of proud arrogance,
and are considered as new messiahs of humanity; the fundamental ideas of Christianity
have been distorted, and the true meaning of life is considered outdated; humility,
goodness, patience, and even charity are all despised; all that is virtuous seems boring, and
the old shining examples of the Saints are cast aside as obsolete, while instead those so-
called heroes of the world are exalted with holy words, that are thereby desecrated and
blasphemed.
It is in this way that the wretched, vice-filled life becomes glorious, and Paradise is
replaced by meaningless immortality of earthly glory. It is truly deeply distressing to see
the subtle and overt manners with which the Church is persecuted, almost as if people
wanted to remove it from the land as a false conception of how life should be lived. All
this is abominable before God and we must convince ourselves of this, those of us who
follow the Lord, because we ourselves could be taken and conquered by the spirit of the
world that whirls everything about like a hurricane.
Even we may subconsciously despise poverty and believe that worldly elegance is
good; we may aspire to be esteemed by our fellow men, hating the way of humiliation and
contempt; we may believe mortification and penance to be madness or a mental imbalance
and regard the desire to seek God alone and rejecting the things of this world as immoral;
we may even believe to reject what is of the world to be simple-minded.
We could gradually forget the Gospel and form a new Christian law, revised and
corrected in our own way, believing the poisonous ideas of the world. Jesus Christ has
given us an infallible criterion of evaluation that we must not forget: for what is of human
esteem is an abomination in the sight of God. Here there is no illusion, and in the light of
these words, we cannot fall into the snares of the world. We must one day stand before
God, and be in harmony with Him, not with the world. The laws of life as conceived by
men are false, and we should not expose ourselves to the danger of losing ourselves

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forever in order to follow them. Come now! Can we be afraid to make a bad impression in
front of men, and not be afraid to make a bad impression before God?

4. The Parable of the rich man.

To impress better in all hearts just how opposed earthly wealth and pleasure are
with what is valued in the sight of God, and to describe more effectively how riches must
be used, Jesus told a most beautiful parable, which is a true revelation on the mystery of
the afterlife in reference to the life we live on earth.
There was a man so rich that he dressed like a king, in purple and fine linen of
Egypt, called byssus. He was a bon vivant, and every day he gave splendid banquets. At
the door of his sumptuous palace there was a poor man named Lazarus, an abbreviation
for Eleazar. He was sick, exhausted, starving and from where he was he could smell the
food of the rich man and hoped to get at least some of the leftovers; but no one gave him
anything. Dogs came to lick his wounds, maybe dogs from the rich man’s palace, which
shows that they were better looked after than the poor man. Lazarus did not even have the
strength to shoo them away, and maybe they relieved the itchiness of his wounds.
So from an earthly standpoint we have a splendid life on the one hand and a most
sorrowful one on the other; but for God things are completely different. The poor man, in
fact, died and was brought by angels to the bosom of Abraham, that is, to Limbo, where
the righteous, in the company of Abraham waited for the Redeemer to open the doors of
Heaven. It was a place of happiness and natural peace, far superior to any condition of
earthly happiness. Shortly afterward the rich man also died, and he was buried in hell. His
dissolute life had produced its fruits of death, and in the fire of hell he suffered horrible
torments.
From that place of torment, God allowed him to see Abraham and Lazarus in his
bosom, far off, together, and in happiness. What a contrast to the miserable life that the
poor man had lived, and the life of torments that the rich man was now living! He hoped
to have at least some relief from the pain he was suffering, and turning to Abraham, the
head of the people to which he belonged, he begged him to send Lazarus to him that he
would dip the tip of his finger in water to cool his tongue, as he was being scorched by the
flames. Abraham answered with unimpeachable words: the rich man had received
immense treasure in his mortal life and had done no holy works; Lazarus received
tribulation and suffered in peace for the love of God. Now the situation had changed
irrevocably, because in eternity the state is immutable and it was impossible that Lazarus
could change it, because of the unbridgeable gulf separating the state of salvation to that
of perdition.
The poor rich man, seeing that he could not change his situation, worried about his
five brothers and begged Abraham to send Lazarus to alert them to the danger they faced.
Abraham did not say that Lazarus could not go to them, but answered that they already
had Moses and the Prophets, and that they could save themselves with the light of their
words. The unfortunate man insisted that if they had an appropriate warning from a dead
man they would repent. It seemed to him that the appearance of a happy soul like Lazarus
warning them of their own perdition would have shaken them. However Abraham said

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flatly that if they did not believe Moses and the Prophets, they would not believe even the
words of a deceased man returning from the dead.

Illusions and realities of life

This is precisely the situation of life and eternity: On this earth we undergo a test
during which we must not be concerned with pleasures and enjoyment, but do good
works. The pains that we suffer are not misery, but a means to deserve, and to produce in
their proportion, eternal happiness. He who suffers in the manner of Lazarus is not a
wretch but rather, is a privileged person, and those who greatly enjoy riches in the
temporal life have the terrible surprise finding perdition in the other life. The rich man
despised the poor, and yet he was the one worthy of pity. His life was reduced to a
continual feast, while that of Lazarus was a continuous accumulation of merit for his
suffering and patience.
Those who are suffering, therefore, should not despair, but must lift their eyes to
the eternal life, and to have as a goal the eternal happiness which is the only true joy, and
those who have plenty in this life should not forget the eternal life and should endeavor to
make friends in heaven with works of charity. The rich man from the place of his torment
wanted to help his brothers; it was not an act of supernatural virtue, of which he was
unable, but a natural act of compassion towards his brothers, because also the damned
may have similar feelings since natural bonds persist in eternity; but what benefit would
there have been by his concern and what would have been beneficial to his brothers even
from the vision of a dead man who came back to life? They did not believe the words of
Moses and the Prophets, so they would dismiss the apparition of a dead as an illusion.
This happens to those who stubbornly lead a disordered life: they are hard and
insensitive, and neither take notice of, nor attribute anything to the supernatural; they
believe their fatuous lives to be the only reality, and believe what is divine and eternal to
be an illusion.
It is necessary to worry about these poor, unfortunate people and pray whole-
heartedly for their conversion.
Let us never envy the fate of these pleasure-lovers, but let us embrace our cross
with resignation and thank God when our life does not give us anything.
How important can a few years of passing pleasures be, which are nevertheless
always sprinkled with bitter gall?
What worth is there is in being honored on earth compared to the eternal glory we
await in Heaven?
It is noteworthy that in this parable only the name of the poor man is remembered,
while the name of the rich man has been forgotten by time.
In fact, if on earth we can remember a glorious name, it is not the one of someone
considered great in the world, but those of the Saints in Heaven, dispossessed and
despised by the world.
To conceive our life in an all-material way means to conceive it in an animalistic
way. The animals, not having an eternal life, do not have aspirations that transcend their
lifetime. If you notice, there is not a single animal in creation that does something that
could exceed the bounds of its life, or accomplishes something, even in a very

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rudimentary way, to leave consciously something of itself behind after it dies. They worry
about their lives and the preservation of their species, which are only instincts God gives
them; they eat, drink and work only for this.
Man, instead, shows his desire for eternity in the very works that he does, and he
leaves something of himself in his work, to keep his memory alive. This is a symptom of
the immortality to which he aspires *.
Is there a greater way to become immortal than to save one’s own soul? It is not
wealth that saves us but our own good works and our deeds of charity. We need, therefore
to live a holy life, and when God gives us wealth we must change it through charity into
treasures for heaven. If rich people would consider carefully the dangers of their
condition, they would not glory in being rich, and neither would they aim to increase their
material possessions, but they would become, as they are, stewards of the Heavenly
Father, helping the poor and the suffering! What a gift it is on earth the life of holy
poverty and docility in the face of suffering which opens to us the gates of heaven!

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* This feeling is so strong that it is found also in those who call themselves materialists and who say they do
not believe in the afterlife. The strength of the spiritual life that goes beyond time and space is immutable.

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 Chapter 17

1. Things that cause sin. Correcting one’s brother. The power of faith. Our duty. The
ten lepers. The kingdom of God and the return of the Son of Man.

1 And he said to his disciples: “It is impossible for scandals not to occur. But woe to him
through whom they come! 2 It would be better for him if a millstone were placed around
his neck and he were thrown into the sea, than to lead astray one of these little ones. 3 Be
attentive to yourselves. If your brother has sinned against you, correct him. And if he has
repented, forgive him. 4 And if he has sinned against you seven times a day, and seven
times a day has turned back to you, saying, ‘I am sorry,’ then forgive him.” 5 And the
Apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith.” 6 But the Lord said: “If you have faith
like a grain of mustard seed, you may say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted, and be
transplanted into the sea.’ And it would obey you. 7 But which of you, having a servant
plowing or feeding cattle, would say to him, as he was returning from the field, ‘Come in
immediately; sit down to eat,’ 8 and would not say to him: ‘Prepare my dinner; gird
yourself and minister to me, while I eat and drink; and after these things, you shall eat
and drink?’ 9 Would he be grateful to that servant, for doing what he commanded him to
do? 10 I think not. So too, when you have done all these things that have been taught to
you, you should say: ‘We are useless servants. We have done what we should have done.’
” 11 And it happened that, while he was traveling to Jerusalem, he passed through the
midst of Samaria and Galilee. 12 And as he was entering a certain town, ten leprous men
met him, and they stood at a distance. 13 And they lifted up their voice, saying, “Jesus,
Teacher, take pity on us.” 14 And when he saw them, he said, “Go, show yourselves to the
priests.” And it happened that, as they were going, they were cleansed. 15 And one of
them, when he saw that he was cleansed, returned, magnifying God with a loud voice. 16
And he fell face down before his feet, giving thanks. And this one was a Samaritan. 17 And
in response, Jesus said: “Were not ten made clean? And so where are the nine? 18 Was
no one found who would return and give glory to God, except this foreigner?” 19 And he
said to him: “Rise up, go forth. For your faith has saved you.” 20 Then he was questioned
by the Pharisees: “When does the kingdom of God arrive?” And in response, he said to
them: “The kingdom of God arrives unobserved. 21 And so, they will not say, ‘Behold, it
is here,’ or ‘Behold, it is there.’ For behold, the kingdom of God is within you.” 22 And
he said to his disciples: “The time will come when you will desire to see one day of the
Son of man, and you will not see it. 23 And they will say to you, ‘Behold, he is here,’ and
‘Behold, he is there.’ Do not choose to go out, and do not follow them. 24 For just as
lightning flashes from under heaven and shines to whatever is under heaven, so also will
the Son of man be in his day. 25 But first he must suffer many things and be rejected by
this generation. 26 And just as it happened in the days of Noah, so also will it be in the
days of the Son of man. 27 They were eating and drinking; they were taking wives and
being given in marriage, even until the day that Noah entered the ark. And the flood came
and destroyed them all. 28 It shall be similar to what happened in the days of Lot. They
were eating and drinking; they were buying and selling; they were planting and building.
29 Then, on the day that Lot departed from Sodom, it rained fire and brimstone from
heaven, and it destroyed them all. 30 According to these things, so shall it be in the day

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when the Son of man will be revealed. 31 In that hour, whoever will be on the rooftop,
with his goods in the house, let him not descend to take them. And whoever will be in the
field, similarly, let him not turn back. 32 Remember Lot’s wife. 33 Whoever has sought to
save his life, will lose it; and whoever has lost it, will bring it back to life. 34 I say to you,
in that night, there will be two in one bed. One will be taken up, and the other will be left
behind. 35 Two will be at the grindstone together. One will be taken up, and the other will
be left behind. Two will be in the field. One will be taken up, and the other will be left
behind.” 36 Responding, they said to him, “Where, Lord?” 37 And he said to them,
“Wherever the body will be, in that place also, the eagles shall be gathered together.”
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2. There are things that cause sin, but woe to those who enable them!

The Pharisees, making a mockery of Jesus, shocked the people in a horrible way
because this sort of mockery prevents one’s faculty of reason to understand the truth, and
even removes it, due to the contempt of those who proclaim it. Laughing stupidly at an
essential understanding puzzles and paralyzes all interior movement of grace in a soul. For
this reason Jesus, saddened by the ill effects that the mockeries of the Pharisees had on the
people, said to his disciples: “It is inevitable that scandals occur, but woe to the person
through whom they occur.” The world being a place of trial, with the consequence that the
good and the bad are comingled, it is inevitable that there are scandals caused by bad
people; however, the responsibility of these people before God is great indeed, and the
punishment that they shall receive will be equally great; so great, in fact, that Jesus does
not hesitate to add that it would be better for them to be thrown into the sea with a
millstone around their neck. Death would prevent them to scandalize further and would
thus reduce greatly the account that they will have to give of themselves to God.
If we would ponder the value of a soul, the priceless value of its supernatural life
and its eternal salvation, the deep meaning of the sorrowful expression of Jesus would
become very clear, and so no one would dare to harm others with scandals for any reason,
especially the young, in their education and faith. Scandals destroy morality, they are evil
blows inflicted on those who cannot or do not know to defend themselves, a betrayal of
those who fight the most bitter fight with Satan and with the flesh. It is a sin that attracts
the curse of God on him who commits it, regardless of the excuses he brings to reduce his
responsibility. Facing a temptation or a new occasion of sin, every soul is small and
weak, and it is the greatest cruelty to put it in danger of losing the greatest good of its life:
Faith, Hope and Love of God.
It is necessary, therefore, to be very vigilant over our words and actions, and to not
be a cause of spiritual ruin for others, albeit unwittingly or carelessly, especially in dealing
with children. These tender souls easily absorb what they experience, and much more
easily experience evil; a word can ruin them forever, an obscenity can throw them toward
the slopes of the evildoers, an error can derange them forever in the ways of God.

Scandal and occasions of sin, today.

Today the world is full of scandals and unfortunately there are snares for souls at
every step. If a woman, for example, would think about the evil she does with her
immodesty, how could she sleep at night? And how does a writer, heretical or lewd,

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peacefully rest while liberally spreading the seeds of error and corruption in souls?
Journalists have a terrible responsibility before God, because every day they spread
scandals with their newspapers and, except for a few who are good, they become
poisoners of public opinion.
People talk, write and work with a superficiality that is frightening, they distort the
values of life, they take souls away from Jesus Christ, and deforming the spirit in a
thousand ways, they throw the creatures of God into the most horrifying depths of
corruption and eternal ruin. If we consider how difficult it is to repair the harm done by a
single scandal, it should make us tremble.
The bad seed germinates, multiplies, and spreads; and just a single corrupting
word could be the cause of countless faults. This is why death is preferable, and a death
inflicted by the authorities upon those who commit scandals.
Many shed and have shed crocodile tears on the severity with which the Church
punished scandalous heretics; they pity the offender and have no compassion for the
victims; they shed tears on the death of an evil man and do not care about the spiritual
death of the innocents. And yet they do not dare to condemn the severity of the State for
imposing and applying the death penalty for lesser crimes* the Church, with her severity
has been a true mother of souls and far more delicate than a surgeon who, with metal
instruments, severs the gangrenous limb from the body so that the infection may not lead
to death.
Jesus Christ not only commands us not to give scandal or be the cause of scandals,
but also to help spread goodness through brotherly correction; with this, He does not lead
us to ruthlessness but to forgiveness. With the admirable balance of His divine words, He
first exhorts us to watch ourselves that we may not become occasions to hurt others; then
He exhorts us not to remain indifferent in the face of a scandal but to reprimand whoever
is guilty, and finally not to be ruthless but to forgive without limits those who show
remorse.
We often, in fact, search for scandals, and in doing so, the doors are opened to
them, and they spread. This is one of the reasons for the real inundation of scandal in the
world. If people hear, for example, that there is a showing of a scandalous film, everyone
deplores it, yet all or most, while deploring it, go to see it.
People try to pry into what others are doing and have a morbid taste to know all
the most unsavory details, thus turning into a fountain of mud those putrid waters that
would have stagnated within a single person. For this reason Jesus, with His divine
wisdom, says: Watch over yourself. We cannot possibly avoid scandals if we do not run
away from them, and we cannot flee from them if we do not watch over ourselves. Does it
matter that others are bad? What is the use to know their perversity, to ruminate upon it
and to talk about it? We must be concerned with our own soul, taking care to protect it
from evil, keeping it away from scandals, keeping ourselves in a holy inner isolation,
which saves our soul from dangerous situations.**
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*At the time of Don Dolindo also Italy imposed the death penalty for certain crimes.
**These reflections are very current; they would be very useful in fact to journalists, reporters, TV personalities—if they
would read them—who for soliciting attention and spreading the news and selling newspapers, give detailed accounts
reconstructing murders, robberies and so on, with a wealth of minute detail and technical descriptions which stimulate
not only the readers, but also those who are still inexperienced in the arts of theft, murder, and so on. Human psychology
states that many people are highly influenced by pictures and descriptions. Also the lack of any moral condemnation of
evil by those in the media is reprehensible.

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 If a scandalous situation is upon us and threatens to hurt us, if it is a sin directed
against our soul, in that case we must not remain indifferent but reprimand the guilty
person and forgive him when he repents. We should not be derogatory and ruthless with
those who spread evil, but instead we should try to bring them with charity to make
reparation, and to forgive them when they repent. A sincere and explicit repentance is
already reparation for a scandal, and the charity in forgiving reassures the heart of the
sinner and moves his will again on the path of goodness.

3. The power of faith and the duty to serve God.

Talking about scandals, Jesus Christ alluded primarily to the Pharisees who turned
souls away from their faith in the kingdom of God; yet also speaking of forgiveness, He
wanted to avoid that the apostles would have an unrelenting resentment against them. He
wanted them to regard the evil with horror but not to become isolated as if they were
members of a party or sect. The Church is universal even though she banishes from her
heart those who leave her; all the Church wants is to save and to give generously her
forgiveness to sinners.
The apostles understood that Jesus was protecting them against scandals because
scandals indeed shook their faith, and actually feeling a decreased faith, they asked Him to
increase their faith in their hearts. Among the scandals, in fact, the worst of all is the one
that removes faith from the soul; it is a real interior assassination, since a soul without
faith is dark, confused, desperate, and dead.
Sometimes a single word or a foolish statement of contempt can throw a soul into
doubt, and a positive and voluntary doubt of the eternal truth is already a loss of Faith.
Even a sneer can deflect souls from the truth thus producing great destruction. If people
would reflect upon the nature of this dangerous fact, they would not be so quick to report
on the perversity of others, nor would they dare spread such ignorant and outrageous
propaganda against everything that is supernatural, under the pretext of maintaining
critical and historical accuracy. Even if they might be justified on occasion in describing
an evil action, no one should ever sew doubts in the souls of little ones, doubts which later
spread over the totality of their Faith, plunging them miserably into the whirlpool of errors
and losing the grace of God.
Faith is an immensely valuable treasure for souls in everyday life, because it is a
beacon of light and an immense consolation in all time of distress; it must, therefore, be
guarded jealously in one’s heart as well as in the hearts of others.
The apostles, asking to grow in faith, desired to see wonderful deeds accomplished in
order to confuse the Pharisees, and probably wished to do these works themselves. This is
why Jesus said to them that if they had the faith the size of a small mustard seed—a bare
minimum—but that faith was alive and able to grow, they could uproot and plant a
mulberry tree in the sea with a command*.

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* Jesus repeated often the same teachings, adapting them to the circumstances in which He found Himself in
order to make them more alive; in the parallel passage in St. Matthew when they were in front of a mountain
He said that faith could move the mountain; here, being in front of a mulberry tree, He said that the faith
could transplant it into the sea.

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 With His divine insight Jesus foresaw the great works and miracles that the
apostles would perform thereby spreading the Faith in the world, and so to prevent them
and their successors falling prey to vanity or presumption, He added, with His divinely
penetrating style, that they would indeed one day work a great deal of miracles, but they
would never have a reason to grow conceited; on the contrary they should regard
themselves as useless servants, meaning that they were not needed by God, because it
would be God who would do the miracles with His omnipotence.

The useless servants

It is clear from the context that the apostles had also asked to grow in faith for a
faint and subconscious sense of vanity; they desired that miracles would confuse the
Pharisees, and they believed it to be necessary that the Master defend Himself against the
plotting of His enemies. For this reason Jesus subtly and through a parable said, that they
should consider themselves like the servants of a master, plowing his fields and grazing
his flock, and even if they would do wonders for the apostolate, they should never think to
take the glory for themselves, but to think of themselves only as useless servants who
were simply commanded to perform a task as part of their duty.
Those who understand just how much pride inflates one’s sense of self and how
easily our fallen nature feels vain for a job well done, in turn understand very well the
timing and the truth of Jesus’ cautionary remark. Sincerely believing oneself to be
nothing, gives one an immense interior joy while the inner feeling of humility protects the
good that has been done, and gives it back to God who makes it more fruitful with His
grace and multiplies it in souls.
In every age the words of Jesus have been a defense against vanity for the
messengers of the divine Word. Those who work for an apostolate, in fact, being
instruments of God's grace, often witness the wonders of His power and the divine mercy
in their work, and subsequently they can also attribute it to their virtues and skill.
The Lord, in His mercy, works great wonders with minimal means and through inept
men; but also when His intervention is obvious in works done well, the person who has
been the instrument may feel personal satisfaction for this work, and could also demand
recognition of his efforts before God. The word of Jesus immediately brings him back to
reality, and recognizing that he only did his duty, and that he is a useless servant because
he did it imperfectly, he humbles himself, he prostrates himself, he appeals to the divine
mercy, and then it is possible for the good work done to bear fruit.
Those who have a little experience with the true apostolate know how deadly proud
satisfaction can be, and know that it is a sure sign of not having produced the true fruits of
eternal life. It is necessary, therefore, to have humility and not to seek personal
satisfaction but only the glory of God and the true good of souls.

The healing of the lepers

Passover celebrations were approaching, and Jesus took his last trip to Jerusalem
to accomplish His divine mission. He traveled through Samaria and Galilee, that is,
between the borders of Samaria and Galilee, heading for Perea. As he was approaching a
village, still in the countryside, ten lepers went to meet Him; they stopped far off so as to

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not have contact with the people, and they shouted loudly begging for mercy. Their faith
was at that time an act of trust; they knew Him to be powerful and hoped that He would
ease their pain; it was not a faith of complete abandonment, and Jesus wanted to
resuscitate this in them with a command to which they could only obey with a full faith.
Go, He said, show yourselves to the priests.
When lepers were healed they would go to the Rabbis to obtain from them the
confirmation that they were in fact healed and make their offering to the temple (Lv
14:10-21). However those lepers were still sick, and only by an act of living faith and
obedience would they have gone to Jerusalem. As they were going, they became healed
and thus continued on their journey. One of them however, a Samaritan, aware of having
been cured, retraced his steps and glorifying God with a loud voice, prostrated himself at
the feet of the Redeemer, thanking Him. The other nine, exhilarated at having been cured
and concerned as they were to re-enter immediately society from which the terrible
disease had excluded them, did not think of going back to thank Jesus and glorify God.
Jesus lamented this act of ingratitude which prevented their cure to be made known to the
people around Him and exhorted the people to be grateful for all divine blessings; He
pointed out that only a Samaritan had this disposition, even though he was despised as a
heretic and schismatic.

The leprosy of sin

Going through Samaria, Jesus wanted to do an act of pure mercy toward a people
so much despised by the Jews, and He pointed out the gratitude and the faith of the
Samaritan. By this He wanted to show that the Samaritans were not an inferior people—
on the contrary—it could be said that in this moment they were superior to the Jews. In
this way He wanted to eliminate, going through Samaria, the sense of contempt felt by his
fellow Jews, prevented all recriminations and indirectly called all people to the unity He
had come to establish on earth. Jesus Christ went to Jerusalem to give His life for all and
himself become like a leper of love. He went to sinners, who truly have leprous souls; He
wanted with a miracle to manifest symbolically what was burning in his Heart. He would
give His blood to save us; nevertheless, He would not apply the price of redemption
without the mediation of a priest.
It is a most sad illusion to think that only because He can save us without
mediators, He wants to do so. In instituting the priesthood He told to everyone to "Go
show yourself to the priest." It is obvious, by the way, because since He saved us by His
obedience and even by His death on the cross, He wants us to have the benefit of salvation
by obedience and humiliation of ourselves at the feet of a priest, so that our miserable sin
may die.
We are indeed lepers when we sin, and we have lesions that consume our soul; we
cry out to God for mercy and go to the priests to receive it. When we are sincerely sorry
and have a deep conviction of the evil we have done in having offended God, then we too
experience that while we are going to a priest we are cleansed because perfect contrition
wipes our sins away immediately; however, it is necessary for us to go always to the
priest, because this is the condition put in place by Jesus to be forgiven as we cannot be
sure our contrition is perfect. The lepers also had a duty to go to the temple so that their
healing could be officially and legally recognized.

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The gratitude of men

The Lord lamented the fact that only one of the ten healed lepers had come back to
thank Him and to give praise to God, and so He wanted to teach us the great importance of
being grateful for the blessings we receive from the Lord. The act of gratitude is the
recognition of the glory of God, it is a confession of His power and a filial abandonment
to Him that He may bless us as the most loving of fathers.
The Lord does not require our gratitude to benefit Himself, although our praise
increases His glory adventitiously, but because our act of gratitude opens to us new
sources of mercy and graces. Jesus Christ, in fact, though the Samaritan leper was already
healed, on seeing him prostrated at His feet, said with great care: "Stand up and go; your
faith has saved you." With these words He wanted to show that new graces were poured
on his soul and body, and that the faith in Him, the most precious gift among all others,
was strengthened in him with this special mercy.
Each time we thank our Lord we receive from His goodness new graces. For this
reason the early Christians used to greet each other with these lovely words: Deo gratias.
These words seemed foolish to the Gentiles, because they were more a conclusion than a
greeting; and yet the early Christians they indeed greeted each other in this way, thanking
God to have met again and grateful that Jesus Christ had redeemed them.

We, the ungrateful

We must confess that we are ungrateful towards God, even though we live
constantly surrounded by His continual spiritual and physical gifts, which we do not
consider, because they are innumerable. If we would only reflect on the main ones, which
are the life of our soul and body, free from danger, or the natural and supernatural beauty
that surrounds us, we would live prostrated with our face on the floor, filled with
gratitude. Instead we are not only ungrateful, but we complain of even the most beautiful
gifts of God: our life, the purification of our life through crosses, and the tender love with
which He delivers us from evil, moving us in the direction of our eternity.
We have at our disposal the Sacrament of Penance that cleanses our spiritual
leprosy and not only we do not thank God for it, but many times we regard it as a burden.
We have the Eucharist, the gift of gifts, and yet we are so cold before the Tabernacle, even
expressing boredom. We have a thousand riches in the Church and yet go on living like
the downtrodden, almost despising the life we have received, attaching ourselves
miserably to the vanities of the world! How much pain we give to Jesus with our
ingratitude!

5. The Kingdom of God and its fulfillment

The healing of the ten lepers greatly attracted the attention of some of the Pharisees, who
thought, at least at that time, that something really extraordinary was happening in Israel.
Thus they asked Jesus when the Kingdom of God would come. They were not thinking
explicitly that He was the promised Messiah, but the possibility that He could be the one

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did cross their minds, and they posed Him this question to probe His thinking. It does not
appear from the context that their question was insidious, they were genuinely shocked,
and hoped that Jesus would enlighten them on it. They wished that He would preach to
them on the awaited glorious political realm. They still did not believe at that time that He
would be its leader, but that He could be its herald.
Jesus Christ responded by rectifying their ideas on the political realm they were
awaiting saying: "The coming of the kingdom of God cannot be seen, and no one will
announce look here it is, or, there it is. For behold, the kingdom of God is among you."
Jesus excludes the kingdom of God from the apparatus of external forces and material
splendor. The Divine King shall not be described as an earthly king who shows himself
with the splendor of his ministers and his armed forces; He will be the universal King of
the hearts and will be present to everyone, reigning in them with faith, hope, and charity
and with His sacramental presence.
There is certainly an allusion to His Eucharistic kingdom in the words: the
Kingdom of God is within you, as there is reference in all His answers to His real presence
in the whole Church in the divine Tabernacle; He is not only here and there, but He is
everywhere in the sacred Host, and from the Host of love He reigns in hearts; He reigns
without attracting the eyes, hidden in the great mystery of the Eucharistic species. It is to
be noted that here Jesus does not speak of the Church but of the Kingdom of God. The
Church is the tangible manifestation of this kingdom, it is like its vital center, and it does
have also an external apparatus of greatness; but the Kingdom of God in the Church has
nothing to do with luxury or appearances, it is in our hearts because it is the inner life that
animates it.
The whole history of the Church is proof of this inner kingdom, because the
Church only aims for the salvation of souls. Her external appearance, inevitably because
She is also a perfect society on earth, aims to carry on her teachings and to minister to
souls; therefore, it will always remain true that the kingdom of God is within us.

Upheavals, revolutions and death

After answering the Pharisees, Jesus turns to His disciples and tells them the various
phases of the Kingdom of God until the end of times and briefly touches on His imminent
Passion, the infinite price that He shall pay for the conquest of His kingdom of love. Jesus
alludes to the persecution that they will have to endure after His death, for which they
shall wish to see one of the days of the Son of man, recalling with nostalgia the time spent
with Him during the days of His mortal life, but will not see Him.
In the middle of the first wave of persecutions, which they shall suffer at the hands
of their fellow Jews, certain disruptions will occur that will lead to the destruction of the
holy city, and during those times of revolutionary upheaval many will proclaim
themselves be the Messiah. It will be said at that time, by the partisans of this or that
group that the Messiah is here and there as they will be trying to get the people to fight, as
if the kingdom had already come! Jesus warns his disciples against these illusions.
Previously, He said to the Pharisees that the Kingdom of God would come without
splendor, now He tells the disciples in another way that the Son of Man will not be here
nor there; when His final triumph comes it will come like lightening, shining above all

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peoples as the judge of all. Therefore they must not let themselves be deceived by
insurrectionists, who will arise to instigate rebellion, because the Son of Man will not
come at that time. He shall first suffer greatly, and then be rejected by this generation, not
only by His contemporaries during His Passion and death, but also by their descendants in
the global apostasy of the last days.
The transition that Jesus makes between the tribulation that is going to befall
Jerusalem and the one to befall the world before the universal judgment is clear: He
speaks obscurely of the last events, because they would not directly affect the Apostles,
and He speaks more clearly about what they should do during the imminent destruction of
Jerusalem; He merges together these two events, because they characterized the last
cataclysm in the world.
And here He describes the typical attitude that men will have when these end times
occur: they will go carefree as at they did during the time of the Flood and of Sodom; they
will eat and drink as if nothing would happen and, despite the clear warnings of the
cataclysm, they will continue to live freely their material lives, taking care of their affairs,
without caring for their soul.
By comparison, Jesus warns us too that the cataclysm will be so sudden that there
will be no time to go from one place to another, and with this same comparison He warns
his disciples that at the first signs of the destruction of Jerusalem to waste no time even to
secure the tools of their trade but to flee for their lives, remembering Lot's wife, who
having stopped for a moment, died in the catastrophe of Sodom.
Returning to the topic of the end of the world, Jesus added: Whoever seeks to
preserve his life will lose it, but whoever loses it will save it. He alludes to the terrible
persecution of the last days, in which those who will want to save their physical lives will
lose the life of their soul because they will be forced to apostatize, and those who will let
themselves be killed for the love of God will save their soul. The impetus of the
persecution will be such that the apostasies will multiply, that people who live together in
their intimacy of love two people in one bed, or who share a common effort like a person
in the field, will be divided, one will remain loyal and the other will apostatize. This is the
most obvious sense of the mysterious words of Jesus. I tell you, on that night, which is
during the terrible tribulation: one will be taken, the other left.
The apostles did not understand the meaning of the Redeemer’s mysterious words
and so asked him where those things would happen and Jesus answered that where the
body is, there also the eagles will gather, meaning: the massacre will be universal and
thus occur everywhere in the world, because where the bodies will be, there will the birds
of prey gather to devour the corpses. Maybe He also alluded to the Romans, who would
destroy Jerusalem, advancing everywhere with their eagles, the design emblazoned on
their war banners. They would not spare anyone; they would be like eagles, birds of prey
that swoop down on bodies to devour them.

The Kingdom of God will not be a political triumph

To make it even more clear, when the Jews asked about the coming of the Kingdom of
God, Jesus answered concisely by expressing its characteristics, its development and final
epilogue on earth: the Kingdom of God would not be a political triumph but the triumph

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of the heart; this feature would be constant in all times, but most eloquent in the great
manifestation of the kingdom of love in souls. It was therefore wrong to think of an
exterior triumph and a conquest of power, such as the Pharisees were awaiting, and so no
one should pay any attention to those troublemakers that would claim to be the Messiah,
throwing the city into the destructive wave of revolution and ruin.
Saying to the Apostles that one day they would desire to see one of the days of the
Son of man, Jesus said to them clearly that He would leave them by dying; but then He
immediately followed this by announcing His second coming in glory. He added that after
his passion and death, and after the universal apostasy from Him, He would come from
Heaven as lightning, and dominate the whole earth with His judgment under Heaven.
Before this glorious coming, the world would apostasize from Him and would
become like in the days of Noah and Sodom, paying no attention to any heavenly signs,
immersed carelessly in material life, notwithstanding the great scourges that would
presage the end of the world. The punishment would be terrible for Jerusalem in its
destruction, and similarly for the entire world in the end times; it would come so suddenly
and forcefully that there would be no time for those who would hesitate. It would be a
material scourge that would leave no escape and a moral scourge of persecution so fierce
that it would separate people from each other and even the ones they cared about, because
of apostasy and because of death. Finally, it would be a complete scourge for Jerusalem
caused by the Roman army, surrounding Jerusalem from all sides, as it will be for the
whole world, filled with dead bodies everywhere.
The end of the world and the judgment of God must give our life another view and
another direction; we should not strive to leave this earth long lasting monuments of our
material achievements at the expense of our eternal interests, since all human
accomplishments will be consumed by fire without leaving a trace.
This is of highest importance, and we are called to reflect upon it, because many
people, with the excuse of providing for those who will come after them, are lost
miserably. Everything will perish, everything, without exception; in eternity only the good
or the evil we have done during our lifetime will remain.
How awful will it be for those who, instead of leaving holy works, will leave
scandalous works! What abyss will open before those who had no faith?
Let us pay attention to our true interests and let us save our soul; let us serve God
faithfully and seek eternal treasures; let us live as true Christians and beseech the Lord to
be merciful to us on the last day.

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 Chapter 18

1.The unjust judge. The Pharisee and the publican. Jesus and children. The rich young
man. Reward to the followers of Jesus. Prophecy of the Passion. The blind man of
Jericho.

1 Now he also told them a parable, that we should continually pray and not cease, 2
saying: “There was a certain judge in a certain city, who did not fear God and did not
respect man. 3 But there was a certain widow in that city, and she went to him, saying,
‘Vindicate me from my adversary.’ 4 And he refused to do so for a long time. But
afterwards, he said within himself: ‘Even though I do not fear God, nor respect man, 5 yet
because this widow is pestering me, I will vindicate her, lest by returning, she may, in the
end, wear me out.’ ” 6 Then the Lord said: “Listen to what the unjust judge said. 7 So
then, will not God grant the vindication of his elect, who cry out to him day and night? Or
will he continue to endure them? 8 I tell you that he will quickly bring vindication to them.
Yet truly, when the Son of man returns, do you think that he will find faith on earth?” 9
Now about certain persons who consider themselves to be just, while disdaining others, he
told also this parable: 10 “Two men ascended to the temple, in order to pray. One was a
Pharisee, and the other was a tax collector. 11 Standing, the Pharisee prayed within
himself in this way: ‘O God, I give thanks to you that I am not like the rest of men:
robbers, unjust, adulterers, even as this tax collector chooses to be. 12 I fast twice
between Sabbaths. I give tithes from all that I possess.’ 13 And the tax collector, standing
at a distance, was not willing to even lift up his eyes to heaven. But he struck his chest,
saying: ‘O God, be merciful to me, a sinner.’ 14 I say to you, this one descended to his
house justified, but not the other. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled; and
whoever humbles himself will be exalted.” 15 And they were bringing little children to
him, so that he might touch them. And when the disciples saw this, they rebuked them. 16
But Jesus, calling them together, said: “Allow the children to come to me, and do not be
an obstacle to them. For of such is the kingdom of God. 17 Amen, I say to you, whoever
will not accept the kingdom of God like a child, will not enter into it.” 18 And a certain
leader questioned him, saying: “Good teacher, what should I do to possess eternal life?”
19 Then Jesus said to him: “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone.
20 You know the commandments: You shall not kill. You shall not commit adultery. You
shall not steal. You shall not give false testimony. Honor your father and mother.” 21 And
he said, “I have kept all these things from my youth.” 22 And when Jesus heard this, he
said to him: “One thing is still lacking for you. Sell all the things that you have, and give
to the poor. And then you will have treasure in heaven. And come, follow me.” 23 When
he heard this, he became very sorrowful. For he was very rich. 24 Then Jesus, seeing him
brought to sorrow, said: “How difficult it is for those who have money to enter into the
kingdom of God! 25 For it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, than
for a wealthy man to enter into the kingdom of God.” 26 And those who were listening to
this said, “Then who is able to be saved?” 27 He said to them, “Things that are
impossible with men are possible with God.” 28 And Peter said, “Behold, we have left
everything, and we have followed you.” 29 And he said to them: “Amen, I say to you,
there is no one who has left behind home, or parents, or brothers, or a wife, or children,

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for the sake of the kingdom of God, 30 who will not receive much more in this time, and in
the age to come eternal life.” 31 Then Jesus took the twelve aside, and he said to them:
“Behold, we are ascending to Jerusalem, and everything shall be completed which was
written by the prophets about the Son of man. 32 For he will be handed over to the
Gentiles, and he will be mocked and scourged and spit upon. 33 And after they have
scourged him, they will kill him. And on the third day, he will rise again.” 34 But they
understood none of these things. For this word was concealed from them, and they did not
understand the things that were said. 35 Now it happened that, as he was approaching
Jericho, a certain blind man was sitting beside the way, begging. 36 And when he heard
the multitude passing by, he asked what this was. 37 And they told him that Jesus of
Nazareth was passing by. 38 And he cried out, saying, “Jesus, Son of David, take pity on
me!” 39 And those who were passing by rebuked him, so that he would be silent. Yet truly,
he cried out all the more, “Son of David, take pity on me!” 40 Then Jesus, standing still,
ordered him to be brought to him. And when he had drawn near, he questioned him, 41
saying, “What do you want, that I might do for you?” So he said, “Lord, that I may see.”
42 And Jesus said to him: “Look around. Your faith has saved you.” 43 And immediately
he saw. And he followed him, magnifying God. And all the people, when they saw this,
gave praise to God.

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2. Persistent and humble prayer. The simplicity of children.

Having noted in the previous chapter the tribulations of the end times of the world,
Jesus urged his followers to be persistent almost to the point of being bothersome in
prayer to obtain the merciful justice of God against the injustices of one’s persecutors. In
the end times, in fact, the iniquity of men will be so great and the apostasy so widespread
that all human remedies or initiatives will become ineffectual; only the great means of
prayer will remain. Jesus urges everyone to pray, relating a parable which also
characterizes the nature of the heads of state in the end times.
There was a judge in a city that feared neither God nor had any respect for people.
He was a skeptic; an unbeliever, with no notion of higher justice, and consequently he did
not have any sense of respect or charity towards anyone. These sad characteristics are
already very visible in the atheist and unbelieving chiefs that preside over our modern
states; these leaders do not know true justice but only wrongdoing, corruption and
oppression.
There was a widow in a city who had received some serious injury or was greatly
wronged, and unable to defend herself—being a widow—she appealed to the unjust judge;
however it was to no avail, because he did not care about her situation and despised her
for asking. But she did not relent or tire in her pleading and thus became so bothersome
that the exasperated judge, in order to stop being tormented by her insistence, agreed to
rule in her favor.
With this parable Jesus made an argument from less to more: if an unjust judge,
who did not care about justice, yielded to the insistent prayers of a widow, will not God,
who is justice in the purest sense, listen to the prayers of those who invoke Him day and
night against the oppression of the wicked?

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 Will not the prayer that can win over a wicked man because someone has become
bothersome to him, win over the infinite goodness of God because of love? He will surely
listen to those who plead with Him, and He will not delay and will quickly bring justice.
Jesus gives the reason for His exhortation and very clearly identifies the time for
which it is intended, adding: But when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?
These will be the times—the end times—in which it will be more than ever urgent
to pray. The Son of Man will come with an extraordinary outpouring of grace in the
Church and for the Church, but He will find souls with no faith and completely
unconcerned; He will come in the end times to judge everyone, and shall appear glorious
in those days when the apostasy on earth will be almost complete; the few faithful
survivors, tossed about amid awful persecutions and unable to defend themselves, will
have to find refuge in God alone, and they will find Him, if they pray unceasingly.

Are we near the times predicted by Jesus?

The times predicted by Jesus already have began to appear in many nations, where
apostasy and atheism are wreaking havoc, and where persecution, overt or subtle, leaves
the faithful without help and without defense, at the mercy of the wicked.
The present situation of the world is such that it is impossible to discern how to
correct it effectively.
Some people even hope in a global war, not considering that war is a terrible
punishment that always leaves a trail of other spiritual and material punishments. Others
have the illusion to be able to conquer the despots of the world, without thinking that these
people have a brutal power in their hands and will not let anyone sway their minds or
conquer them. There is only prayer, and for this reason the Church is intensifying prayer
in these times and tries to vanquish the wicked with this great power that is almost like a
bombardment from on high on their fortified positions.
Those who hear about prayer when a serious threat is looming, mockingly cast it
aside as a naive illusion. It can be said, in fact, that, almost all people subconsciously,
each to a greater or lesser degree, question the effectiveness of prayer, believing it to be a
childish fallback during times when decisive and urgent action is needed.
This interior false state is due to the fact that everyone has experienced times
where prayer has failed them; in fact these failed instances for some add up to the
conclusion that their prayer efforts are a complete failure. No one considers that they may
pray poorly or even not pray at all, all the while reciting many prayers. No one humbles
himself sincerely when his prayer is not granted or when submitting himself to the Lord
when pleading for his assistance, and so it can be said that we rarely if ever truly plead to
Him. For this reason Jesus wanted through a parable to reveal the attitude of the spirit that
makes a prayer effective. This is a very important thing to ponder, because prayer is more
vital to us than bread.

The Pharisee and the Publican.

Two men went to the Temple to pray; one was a Pharisee, full of himself, proud
and arrogant, and the other was a publican, that is, a tax-collector. Tax-collectors were

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generally considered to be detestable sinners. The Pharisee began to pray in a strange way:
he was standing with an arrogant attitude and, more than praying, he began to commend
himself, thanking God with his hypocritical mind for the good qualities he thought he
possessed; in reality, thusly pleased with himself, he placed himself above all others and
also above the publican, with a sense of profound contempt for all. To his good civil
qualities, he added his religious ones, so to speak, limiting these to fasting and to the
paying of tithes but omitting completely the acts of true worship to God and the humble
adoration of His Majesty.
It is not unlikely that Jesus based the parable on something that had really
happened; but in any case, He distilled into the prayer of the Pharisee an attitude of false
piety to demonstrate the reasons why prayer can be ineffective.
The soul stands upright before God, when it presumes of itself and lacks humility;
it is standing when it claims that God hears it and, more than asking Him, the soul wants
to impose itself on His Majesty, and not infrequently, in a hidden way, actually curses
God. In his arrogant attitude, the Pharisee prayed within himself, and did not pray to God,
and his arrogant words remained inside himself, and so did not go up to the throne of the
Most High because no prayer of those who pray with arrogance reaches Him.
He prayed within himself, literally he mumbled to himself the words he was
saying, because in fact he did not expand or elevate his soul to God.
He prayed, but in reality he was praising himself, saying that he was not like other
men - extortionists, unjust, and adulterers - without realizing that his act of arrogance was
rapacious of the glory of God; unjust towards his neighbors, whom he considered unfairly;
and adulterous, at least spiritually, for the many grave infidelities he did against the divine
Law.
How many times do we pray with a state of mind that brings us condemnation
because we carry in our hearts our miserable sins, making recriminations against our
neighbor? Instead of begging we contend with God, and believe the distribution of his
Providence to be unjust, rebelling against Him in the very act in which we should be
submitting to His mercy!
Instead of begging and recognizing ourselves to be poor and needy, we believe we
deserve to have our requests fulfilled; our evil pride closes the door of grace, and the Lord
cannot grant our prayer.
How beautiful and effective it is to pray like the poor publican, who did not even
dare to lift his eyes to heaven, and beating his chest said to the Lord: O God, be merciful
to me a sinner! Let us acknowledge ourselves to be sinners, because unfortunately we are
sinners; let us confess to be unworthy of the divine mercies, deeply humbling ourselves,
and God shall exalt us with His grace and mercy. He who relies on himself will be
humbled and does not receive graces; he who humbles himself before God is exalted and
finds he is immediately granted that for which he asked.
The publican begged for mercy and received mercy, leaving the Temple justified,
which means he was restored to a state of grace; The Pharisee praised himself and left the
house of God condemned, because the way he spoke showed clearly that the good works
of which he boasted were done for vanity and not piety. Hence any goodness in his acts
vanished, and therefore they were rejected by God.
When we pray let us first of all have in mind the desire to reestablish our
friendship with God; let us ask Him to forgive us for our sins and humble ourselves for

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what we did, begging for the grace not to sin anymore. When we are in the grace of God,
we receive more than what we need from a temporal perspective, and the divine mercy
exalts us also in our present life, giving us a life of peace entirely surrendered to His love.
During the last times, of which Jesus speaks exhorting us to prayer, there will be,
as we can already see, a strong outburst of pride; everyone believing himself to be a
superman, taking before God such a presumptive attitude which deserves only to be
rebuked and rejected. Pride is, and shall always be, the cause of great tribulations for our
lives; it is, and shall be, the main cause of the apostasy of Faith, that reduces and will
reduce poor nations to entrenched warring factions. We must oppose this pride with our
humility to repair the injuries done to the Lord, putting ourselves most humbly before
Him and begging for His infinite goodness: O God, be merciful to me a sinner.

The children and the Kingdom of God.

While Jesus was speaking on the necessity to humble ourselves before God, some
children were brought before Him, in order that He might bless and touch them. Since
they were making a lot of noise, the Apostles were shouting at them and tried to send
them away. Jesus instead, calling them to Himself, said: Let the children come to me and
do not prevent them; for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. He added: Amen, I
say to you, whoever does not accept the kingdom of God like a child will not enter it.
The crowd of children arrived just in time to make it possible for Him to complete
His great lesson of humility: it is not possible to go to God with arrogance, thinking to be
important; it is necessary to go with the humble and simple heart of a child.
He who presumes to approach the divine without humility finds himself falling
into darkness; he does not enter into what is heavenly, and is lost in the confusion of his
own reason. If we would go to God as little children of a very loving Father, o how our
life would become calm and full of light and blessings!
Today instead we attempt to make children into adults, destroying the simplicity of
their age, cramming their heads even with political ideas* and leading them astray with
violent aspirations. It is an awful crime of our times, and Jesus condemned it with His
divine words: Let the children come to me. They cannot but to go to Him, because only
Jesus knows how to form them and to draw from their innocent hearts their hidden
treasures. The modern world claims to form a generation of heroes, and instead forms
gangs of criminals; it believes to discipline the youth and instead makes them strongly
rebellious to all laws; it removes from the children the joys of their innocence, giving
them a heavy and unhappy life right from the beginning.
Faith blossoms and flourishes in the simple and innocent soul like the one of a
child. When man attempts to contend with God, he loses his moral direction, falls into the
confusion of his own ideas, fantasizes upon a thousand inane “modern” ways of thinking,
loses his peace and the truth, and lives a very unhappy life.
Proposing children as model of simplicity and submission, it is clear that Jesus did
not suggest an unbridled childhood but one in which the child went to Him and lived with
His blessings.
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* As it was mentioned before, Don Dolindo was writing at the time of the Fascist regime.

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 He presented to us the natural qualities of childhood as a model, but not the
deviations that may occur at that age; He spoke about childhood, in other words, without
reference to individual children, who very often are not at all examples of simplicity,
virtue and submission to the Divine Will.
Let us keep this most precious gift in our hearts, which is our Faith, greatly
preferring to leave our poor reason in darkness rather than soaking it in the exasperating
lights and blazing fires of passion and folly. The holy darkness of Faith always shines like
the many stars in the sky, and becomes brilliant in the humble heart; the so-called “light”
of reason is instead always full of dark stormy clouds that cast the soul into an oppressive
turbulent obscurity. O Lord, give us the gift of a simple Faith, and let us rest like babies in
your fatherly arms.

3. The true ideal of youth. The heroism of renunciation. The light of Golgotha.

The young, growing up, are always being affected by fads, trends and other
motivating forces that can become a non-stop, powerful source of enthusiasm for them;
having to make their mark in life, they aspire to great things and dreams. Whatever is
dashing, heroic and great attracts youth, and they are capable of both sacrifice and
unbridled desire. They rush down both the paths of good and evil, because they love what
is “great”, in other words, they know no limits to their aspirations, and want to see them
all to their conclusion. By their effervescent nature, youth love new things, embrace them,
follow them, and remain attached to those that promote them; youth are like a busy
construction site in full activity, but with no real direction and guidance; like the explosion
of a blind force of nature: a volcanic eruption, a storm, a hurricane, or a tornado.

The “Age” of the Youth

Jesus Christ, in answering a rich young man’s query on what he should do to have
eternal life, traced for all young people the true path to their generous aspirations. His
great lesson is more valuable today than ever before, which is a time that we can call the
Age of the Youth. In fact, all revolutions and causes today are designed to attract young
people, playing off of and building on their reckless impetuosity; there are many who try
to tear them away from the Church, knowing how much the Church forms them, because
they are the hope of her maternal love.
A rich young man, who belonged to one of the important families in the city, went
to Jesus and said, "Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?" The way he
asked shows he was very interested in Him. No doubt he had seen Jesus’s very
affectionate and patient manner with the children who crowded around Him, and for this
reason he called Jesus good. Being of noble birth, rich, and accustomed to commanding,
he did not conceive that someone could have such tolerance with simple people and much
less with restless children, and he could not refrain from calling Jesus good.
He was attracted to His goodness by a natural sense of admiration, and he wanted
eternal life not so much for a true desire for Heaven but for a vague natural ideal of
something higher. There are in fact in desires to holiness and to a perfect life that arise

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more from our imagination than from our hearts, and for an idealism that aspires to great
things, without knowing exactly what we want to achieve*.

Jesus said: Why do you call me good?

Jesus Christ answered that young man with great love, as it is reported in the
Gospel of St. Mark, (Mk 10:21) and wanting to direct him to a real, perfect supernatural
life, began to correct the natural admiration that he had shown for Him—and hence his
calling Him good—and said, "Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone.
He wanted tell him indirectly: You call me good admiring in Me a natural goodness of
heart toward little children and the poor; now I tell you no one is good but God alone and
my goodness is not the result of a sensitive natural feeling, but rather of the outpouring of
divine charity that saves all men. You then, if you want to rise to the heights of perfection,
begin to recognize in Me the very goodness of God, and begin to believe in Me.
The young man did not understand Jesus’s profound thought, and perhaps he may
have even misinterpreted it as a negation of His real divinity.
Jesus continued by briefly summarizing the Ten Commandments of the Law, to
move him toward the real path of mercy and perfection, because holiness does not consist
in doing uncommon things, but in doing well what God wants from us. In God’s Law, and
therefore that of the Church, one is always assured of following the right, supernatural
way without fear of illusions. Jesus, besides, wanted first of all to show once again that He
had not come to abolish the law but to perfect it. The young man answered that he had
observed those Commandments since he was a child.
It was the truth, and Jesus loved him for this reason, as it is said in St. Mark, and
He wished to give him a much greater treasure then all the possessions he had; therefore
He added: There is still one thing left for you: sell all that you have and distribute it to the
poor, and you will have a treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me. Jesus brought him,
all of a sudden, to the antithesis of the spirit of the world and put in front of him the ideal
of heroic youth, a life of charity, of renunciation and divine love.

How Francis of Assisi answered Jesus

To the world, the ideals of a young man are wealth, self-satisfaction, and to follow
a life of leisure; for Jesus they are charity, voluntary poverty and the Cross.
That young man did not have the courage to embrace a heroic life and he was
dismayed, saddened and went away discouraged, the living image of all those rich people
who over the centuries did not want to be holy in their heart.

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*Serious reflection and consideration should motivate one to eternal life and holiness, not an idealism that
merely seeks extraordinary things.

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 The words of Jesus, however, were not in vain and were picked up after more than
a thousand years later by another rich young man yearning for perfection, Francis of
Assisi. Francis, after hearing these words, took them entirely to heart, espoused poverty,
embraced the Cross, and showed in his life and in his holiness the treasure he had acquired
with his heroic renunciation.
Riches are, after all, a nuisance, and if they exceed all measures they become a real
burden that is carried until death and is later left to others; even though a man may lack
the courage to get rid of them or even if he uses his riches to perform works of charity, he
cannot fail to recognize that his possessions are not happiness but only an annoying and
troubling burden.
Jesus seeing the young man leaving in dismay, with sadness in his Heart
exclaimed: How hard it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God! For it
is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the
kingdom of God." He used a proverb popular at the time to indicate the difficulty that
people who are rich have to enter into the Kingdom of God and to leave the spirit of the
world*. He would not say, speaking in a strict sense, that riches are an obstacle to the
Kingdom of God, because they can be put to good use, as He himself had suggested to the
young man; but He wanted to say that those who are entirely attached to them would find
it very difficult to follow the Law of God and practice the virtues.
Those who interpreted His words in their narrowest meaning exclaimed: Then who
can be saved? They wanted to say: Who can be saved among the rich? And if everyone is
attached to wealth (because even if they do not have it, they still desire it) who can be
saved?
Jesus answered that what was not possible for man, was possible for God, who by
his grace can change the heart of a man, even when it seems impossible to human efforts.
God, in fact, has changed the hearts of many kings and made them great Saints.
St. Peter, considering the danger of riches, felt satisfied not to have any, besides
also having left what he had for love of Jesus, he felt secure that he and his fellow
disciples were saved, and exclaimed: We have given up our possessions and followed you.
The Savior answered that not only they would have eternal life, but so too would
anyone who leaves everything behind—home, parents, brothers, wives and children—for
the sake of the kingdom of God, that is to become apostles for the Kingdom of God. They
too would receive much more in this life, because they would be without burdens, in full
interior freedom, trusting in the Divine Providence and they would acquire eternal life in
Heaven.
Simplicity of life becomes source of interior calm, and in reducing our needs it
becomes the source of true well-being. Besides, when we leave everything for the love of
God, He is our Lord and He provides for all we need, as it can be seen in those people
who are entirely consecrated to Him.

---------------------------------
* The “Eye of the Needle” does not refer to the eye of a sewing needle, but rather to very small entrance
doors that can still be found in some houses in the Middle East, especially in Syria. These are very narrow
doors of regular height—very slit like—giving the impression of a sewing needle’s eye. It would be
impossible for a camel to pass through such a narrow entrance; hence the validity of this comparison (but
not the more paradoxical comparison with the eye of a sewing needle). (See also the note to Mt 19:24).

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 Jesus predicts His Passion to the Apostles

Youth always dreams of pleasure, greatness and riches, and avoids and rejects
misery in life; instead their most beautiful ideal should be the renunciation of material
gain, poverty, humility and sacrifice. Jesus said to the rich man that in order to be perfect
he would have to follow Him. He completed this beautiful lesson for all mankind’s sake
as well, showing how to follow Him. He did not speak to everyone but only to the
Apostles when He was alone with them, because He wanted them to be the custodians of
the wonderful mystery of the Cross, the sublime destination of all souls who are truly
generous and great.
Jesus told them about his death and Passion and the fulfillment in Himself of what
the Prophets had foretold; He told them in advance what was going to happen to Him, and
pointed out what had to be the fulfillment of the sublime aspirations of a soul made in his
likeness, in poverty, in renunciation of everything in order to spread the Kingdom of God.
The Apostles did not understand at the time the meaning of his words, because
they did not know the prophecies of the Prophets, nor did the understanding that the life of
their divine Master would end so sorrowfully even remotely enter their minds; however,
they received the divine teaching. Later, when everything was accomplished, not only did
they understand but also they realized what would happen in their own lives, as they
followed the divine Master to the extreme humiliation of martyrdom.

The blind man of Jericho

With Passover approaching, crowds of pilgrims from all parts flocked to

Jerusalem, and the roads to the holy city were crowded with the poor, the sick, the lame,
and the blind, all asking for alms. When Jesus approached Jericho, two blind beggars, as
St. Matthew (Mt 20:29-30) relates, hearing the roar of the crowd, asked what was
happening. They were told that Jesus the Nazarene was coming. One of them then began
to scream as loud as he could: Jesus, Son of David, have pity on me. He shouted with such
insistence, together with his companion, and so loudly, that those who were walking
ahead of Jesus shouted back to them to be silent rebuking mostly the one who was the
louder of the two; but he, from the depth of his misery, full of faith, sure to have mercy
rendered to him, called on Him even louder: Son of David, have pity on me.
Hearing that they were rebuking him, Jesus stopped and ordered them to bring him
to Him; his divine Heart could not bear that he was mistreated, nor wanted that one who
had faith in Him to remain disappointed. As soon as the blind man was near Him He
asked What do you want me to do for you? The blind man replied, "Lord, let me see."
Jesus told him, Have sight; your faith has saved you. He asked the same question to his
companion, and He healed him also. Then they followed Him glorifying God, and also all
the people following gave praise to the Lord.
St. Matthew says that there were two blind men and St. Mark and St. Luke instead
speak of only one blind man, perhaps because the one was more persistent in his praying,
but this is an incidental circumstance to the teaching that the Gospel wants to give us.
There were two blind men in the world: the Jewish people and the Gentiles, and
both aspired to have the light of truth, but one of them shouted louder and had more faith
in their renewal, that one is the Jewish people. Jesus came for both of them, gave

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consolation to both, but turned especially to the Jewish people, and did His work among
them. The two blind men could also be seen as only one, because they represent mankind,
and their cry is the cry of man who has lost his spiritual sight; it is the cry of our
generation, covered by so many mistakes, sitting along the streets of the world, begging
for the true light of life.

Unhappiness and adversity are the cries

of blind humanity

The cry of blind humanity comes from its misfortunes, and no one brings a helping
hand; on the contrary, its cry is considered a bother and a nuisance. Only Jesus stops, calls
poor humanity to Himself, resuscitates in the hearts of the people the desire to be healed,
and heals them. Our poor civilization is reduced to being like a blind beggar, seeking
respite along the path of life and receiving only reproaches.
Our times are cruel, without charity, without compassion, selfish and even able to
stifle the cry of the poor, believing to help but in reality only hiding the problems. Poverty
in large cities is appalling, even when it does not always appear evident, because of the
draconian provisions against the poor, who are denied the ability to even beg for a piece of
bread or some relief.
We need Jesus, because He alone can illuminate our darkness, and we must cry out
to Him, despite the disbelief that tries to silence us, because only crying out for His
merciful love can we have His light. When we feel blinded in life and cannot see anything
other than an inexorable path of pain and misery going forward, let us cry out to Jesus:
Lord, let me see and in the light of Faith we will see again our eternal goals, and spend our
life following Jesus and glorifying God. Instead of remaining poor blind beggars we will
become seers, and seers who have eyes only for God and await from Him prosperity and
peace.

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 Chapter 19
1. Zacchaeus. The parable of the ten gold coins. Triumphal entry of Jesus into
Jerusalem. The cleansing of the Temple.

1 And having entered, he walked through Jericho. 2 And behold, there was a man named
Zacchaeus. And he was the leader of the tax collectors, and he was wealthy. 3 And he
sought to see Jesus, to see who he was. But he was unable to do so, because of the crowd,
for he was small in stature. 4 And running ahead, he climbed up a sycamore tree, so that
he might see him. For he was to pass near there. 5 And when he had arrived at the place,
Jesus looked up and saw him, and he said to him: “Zacchaeus, hurry down. For today, I
should lodge in your house.” 6 And hurrying, he came down, and he received him joyfully.
7 And when they all saw this, they murmured, saying that he had turned aside to a sinful
man 8 But Zacchaeus, standing still, said to the Lord: “Behold, Lord, one half of my
goods I give to the poor. And if I have cheated anyone in any matter, I will repay him
fourfold.” 9 Jesus said to him: “Today, salvation has come to this house; because of this,
he too is a son of Abraham. 10 For the Son of man has come to seek and to save what had
been lost.” 11 As they were listening to these things, continuing on, he spoke a parable,
because he was nearing Jerusalem, and because they guessed that the kingdom of God
might be manifested without delay. 12 Therefore, he said: “A certain man of nobility
traveled to a far away region, to receive for himself a kingdom, and to return. 13 And
calling his ten servants, he gave them ten pounds, and he said to them: ‘Do business until
I return.’ 14 But his citizens hated him. And so they sent a delegation after him, saying,
‘We do not want this one to reign over us.’ 15 And it happened that he returned, having
received the kingdom. And he ordered the servants, to whom he had given the money, to
be called so that he would know how much each one had earned by doing business. 16
Now the first approached, saying: ‘Lord, your one pound has earned ten pounds.’ 17 And
he said to him: ‘Well done, good servant. Since you have been faithful in a small matter,
you will hold authority over ten cities.’18 And the second came, saying: ‘Lord, your one
pound has earned five pounds.’ 19 And he said to him, ‘And so, you shall be over five
cities.’ 20 And another approached, saying: ‘Lord, behold your one pound, which I kept
stored in a cloth. 21 For I feared you, because you are an austere man. You take up what
you did not lay down, and you reap what you did not sow.’ 22 He said to him: ‘By your
own mouth, do I judge you, O wicked servant. You knew that I am an austere man, taking
up what I did not lay down, and reaping what I did not sow. 23 And so, why did you not
give my money to the bank, so that, upon my return, I might have withdrawn it with
interest?’ 24 And he said to the bystanders, ‘Take the pound away from him, and give it to
him who has ten pounds.’ 25 And they said to him, ‘Lord, he has ten pounds.’ 26 So then,
I say to you, that to all who have, it shall be given, and he will have in abundance. And
from him who does not have, even what he has will be taken from him. 27 ‘Yet truly, as for
those enemies of mine, who did not want me to reign over them, bring them here, and put
them to death before me.’ ” 28 And having said these things, he went ahead, ascending to
Jerusalem. 29 And it happened that, when he had drawn near to Bethphage and Bethania,
to the mount which is called Olivet, he sent two of his disciples, 30 saying: “Go into the
town which is opposite you. Upon entering it, you will find the colt of a donkey, tied, on

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which no man has ever sat. Untie it, and lead it here. 31 And if anyone will ask you, ‘Why
are you untying it?’ you shall say this to him: ‘Because the Lord has requested its
service.’ ” 32 And those who were sent went out, and they found the colt standing, just as
he told them.33 Then, as they were untying the colt, its owners said to them, “Why are you
untying the colt?” 34 So they said, “Because the Lord has need of it.” 35 And they led it
to Jesus. And casting their garments on the colt, they helped Jesus onto it. 36 Then, as he
was traveling, they were laying down their garments along the way. 37 And when he was
now drawing near to the descent of Mount Olivet, the entire crowd of his disciples began
to praise God joyfully, with a loud voice, over all the powerful works which they had seen,
38 saying: “Blessed is the king who has arrived in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven
and glory on high!” 39 And certain Pharisees within the crowd said to him, “Teacher,
rebuke your disciples.” 40 And he said to them, “I tell you, that if these will keep silent,
the stones themselves will cry out.” 41 And when he drew near, seeing the city, he wept
over it, saying: 42 “If only you had known, indeed even in this your day, which things are
for your peace. But now they are hidden from your eyes. 43 For the days will overtake
you. And your enemies will encircle you with a valley. And they will surround you and
hem you in on every side. 44 And they will knock you down to the ground, with your sons
who are in you. And they will not leave stone upon stone within you, because you did not
recognize the time of your visitation.” 45 And entering into the temple, he began to cast
out those who sold in it, and those who bought, 46 saying to them: “It is written: ‘My
house is a house of prayer.’ But you have made it into a den of robbers.” 47 And he was
teaching in the temple daily. And the leaders of the priests, and the scribes, and the
leaders of the people were seeking to destroy him. 48 But they could not find what to do to
him. For all the people were listening to him attentively.

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2. Zacchaeus.
In going to Jerusalem, Jesus, on his way went by Jericho. The fame of the miracles
He worked, and especially His restoring sight to the blind, aroused a great enthusiasm in
the city and the people crowded around Him in great numbers. Now in Jericho there lived
the head of the tax collectors, who, on hearing that Jesus was passing by, ran to become
the first in the crowd seeking to see who Jesus was. He was a Jew, as can be seen from his
Hebrew name Zakkai, which means pure, just; as a Jew, he too, hoped for the coming of
the Messiah. He wanted to see Jesus, therefore, not for mere curiosity, but to see who
Jesus was, that is to see if there was something extraordinary about Him that could make
Him recognizable as the promised Messiah.
Zacchaeus was the head of the customs officers or publicans, who were a greedy
group that collected the imposed Roman taxes, and thus abused the people in myriad
ways; thus Zaccheus was regarded as a sinner more than others. Small in stature, he had to
be very clever and intelligent to have such a position of high responsibility that also had
its risks because he could be attacked by the people he harassed and had to have a steady
hand to keep his subordinates in order. However he had to have had a good sense of
righteousness, as it appears from the way in which he received the grace of God, and also
a simple soul, as it appears by what he did to see Jesus.
He was small in stature but nimble and in the fullness of his strength, as can be
inferred by his actions. Since he could not in any way make his way through the crowd,

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nor could he see Jesus from the distance, as the practical man that he was, he had a
brilliant idea: he would run ahead to a spot where Jesus would have to pass and climb a
sycamore tree that he spotted. From there he could comfortably observe the divine
Master.
The sycamore lent itself to his plan as his observation point, because it has
branches that are nearly horizontal and the tree itself is not very tall, so he easily found the
support he needed from the branches and waited. He noted the burgeoning crowd below
and from on high position perhaps the misery of the oppressed people did not escape him;
it is possible to suppose this from the resolution he took, under the influence of grace, to
give half of all his goods to the poor.
Grace never operates just by sudden surges in our soul, and so it may have made
use of the view of that crowd of people that Zacchaeus had while on the top of the tree.
As Jesus went by, He raised His eyes and saw Zacchaeus. He stopped and invited
him to come down, telling him that He needed to stop at his house. Zacchaeus overjoyed
receiving this wonderful honor hurried down quickly and welcomed Him with great joy.
His home must not have be too far away and the people, seeing that Jesus went to the
house of a sinful man, began to murmur about it. The people instead should have praised
Jesus and thanked Him, because the conversion of Zacchaeus resulted in an immediate
benefit for the poor and for all those who had been bullied and intimidated by him. It is
clear that Jesus went to this sinner to convert him, and He said for today I must stay at
your house, because He wanted motivate him to repair the injustices he had committed.
Jesus did not need to talk to him, it was enough to visit him and since Zacchaeus
had accepted His first invitation, he promptly also received the invitation for his soul, and
said "Behold, half of my possessions, Lord, I shall give to the poor, and if I have extorted
anything from anyone I shall repay it four times over." Coming in contact with Jesus he
had a great feeling of charity for the poor, and because Jesus had come to him to plead the
cause of the under-privileged and the oppressed, in his heart he felt the warmth of that
flame of goodness that transformed him completely. He became lavish in charity and
exuberant in justice; he gave half of what belonged to him and gave back four times what
he had defrauded.
With these actions Zacchaeus not only showed that he had repented of his sins
against justice, but also of all those he had committed; by his example he brought his
whole family to follow Jesus, recognized in Him the Messiah, and accepted the salvation
that came from Him. This is the reason why Jesus said, in a tone of great satisfaction that
salvation had come to this house, forming this family head into a true son of Abraham. He
had come to seek and to save what was lost, and his divine Heart exulted with joy granting
salvation to his entire family.

Oppressed by the world, we are powerless

to see heavenly things.

Jesus passed through Jericho, a commercial city, and the man who represented, so
to speak, the locus of all its business transactions, as the head of the customs officers, was
too short and could not see Him because of the crowd. We can say that the focusing on
earnings and temporal affairs, without considering our ultimate goal in life, makes us
small in spiritual stature, incapable of rising to heavenly things, and as oppressed by the

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multitude of material considerations as by a tumultuous mob. It is not possible to see Jesus
from this lamentable standpoint, and one must ascend higher up, making an effort to break
away from earthly things. A first act of virtue, a renunciation, a little sacrificial act,
however small, offered to God, can raise our spiritual stature all of a sudden, show us
Jesus, place us under His gaze and obtain from Him grace and mercy.
Jesus invites us to receive Him in our house, through Sacramental Communion. He
then comes to us bringing us salvation and sanctification. With infinite love He invites us
from the Holy Tabernacle, and being there as food and drink, He really says to us: today I
must stay at your house. Let us quickly descend from the heights of our poor earthly life
and come to Jesus, receiving Him with joy, as our only good and our only life. Let us open
our hearts to charity that the goodness of God may fill us with graces, and let us repair the
faults we have committed, so that His goodness may embrace us.

3. The parable of the coins and the manifestation of the Kingdom of God.

Jesus went to Zacchaeus house together with his disciples and where many other
people had gathered. His face was shining with joy for the conversion of this family and in
His features He evinced something immensely noble and regal. Since in the conversation
he had with Zacchaeus He openly made allusions to the Kingdom of God, the people
assembled there thought that He was going to Jerusalem to triumph and to open a new era
of prosperity and political independence.
The thought of the beginning of the temporal kingdom of the Messiah was all the
more longed for and compelling in the people because the tyranny of their oppressors was
so great, especially that of Herod Archelaus and the Romans, and thus Jesus used the
remembrance they had of the investiture of this tyrant and the violence of his feuds and
vendettas, to clarify the situation with the idea of a similar kingdom and the Messiah, with
one of his parables.
Archelaus had gone to Rome—off to a distant country—to get himself appointed
king and the Jews who knew his treachery and that of his father had sent an ambassador to
Augustus begging him not to appoint him king. Archelaus returned from Rome confirmed
in his appointment, but only with the title of ethnarch, and thus he took bitter revenge
upon his enemies.
Jesus, therefore, said: “A nobleman went off to a distant country to obtain the
kingship for himself and then to return.” The man, noble by the divine nobility of the Son
of God, was He himself, who in order to take possession of his kingdom, had first of all to
go very far away—that is to die, and then to return on earth to judge everyone and usher in
His true Kingdom. Therefore His departure from earth was imminent, but not his triumph.
A nobleman does not depart to a distant country without leaving in his land a sign
of his dominion for the people over whom he would receive an appointment, and so he
called to himself ten servants, that is, ten important people of the kingdom, and gave each
of them a coin, equivalent to about $300 in today’s currency, to trade with it. It was very
little, but in his generosity he only wanted from the servants a sign of loyalty—a token, to
be able to reward them abundantly on his return.
Jesus Christ, ascending to heaven to prepare the triumph of his kingdom, calls his
servants, the faithful and priests, and gives them special graces, so that through their
response they may increase them and sanctify themselves, so as to merit a special place in

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his glorious kingdom.
Graces are real treasures of God Who gives them equally to everyone with no
preference. Those who respond and apply them more, increase their graces and those who
respond less gain less benefit. The supreme judge comes then, to consider the merits or
demerits of each person, and depending on their response rewards them accordingly.
The nobleman, having received the investiture of the kingdom, returned and called
his servants to see what gain they had made.
The first brought ten coins more, the second five, and each received the
administration of ten and five cities respectively. The third servant presented to him the
coin he had received saying that, fearing the greed of the master, he had kept it in a
handkerchief in order not to lose it.
Essentially, it was fear that had made him idle, and notwithstanding having
brought back what he had received, he was given a severe judgment and was deprived of
the coin he had received, which was given to the one who had gained ten.
Those who go before God with an open heart, with deep love and active zeal,
increase the graces received and deserve in proportion a greater glory in heaven. Those
who have a less open heart, make the graces they receive less fruitful and correspondingly
receive a more limited glory. Those who let themselves be dominated by a spirit of fear
and thus keep God’s gifts to them hidden and idle—making them unfruitful—deserve to
be punished. These summarize the three ways in which souls walk in their earthly
pilgrimage: the way of fervor and full trust and confidence, the way of caution and
reserve, and the way of servile fear and complete inertia. Those who trust in God receive
an abundance of graces and for this reason it is foolish to choose to serve the Lord on a
different path.
It is evident from the parable of Jesus that the manifestation of the kingdom of
God will be between these two extremes: souls who respond to the graces received and
have a great exuberance of gifts, and souls who let themselves caught by a spirit of fear,
form a false concept of God, and do not know how to produce anything. Today we are in
precisely these conditions, because to souls full of love and zeal, there are in opposition
dead souls, who do not care for God's interests or their own. Let us embrace the path of
trust and let not be like those who will be slain in the judgment, that is condemned to
eternal damnation for having renounced the kingdom of God.

4. The entry of Jesus into Jerusalem, and the expulsion of the moneylenders from the
temple.

Once having clarified, through the parable of the coins, that the glorious
manifestation of the Kingdom of God was not imminent as the people believed, Jesus
Christ moved on to Jerusalem ahead of everyone. He went toward the climax and the
epilogue of his life, moving ahead of everyone, because actually He went before mankind
to lay out for them their way toward the heavenly Jerusalem, which was first the way of
the cross and afterward the triumph and the resurrection.
When He approached Bethphage, a village not far from Bethany, on the eastern
slope of Mount of Olives, about half an hour from Jerusalem, He sent two of his disciples
to Bethphage which was opposite Bethany, telling them to take a small colt that was
tethered to its mother and bring them to Him for his entry into Jerusalem. Since He had to

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enter the city as a king, although in a humble fashion, He acted as the master of all things
and asserted His royal rights by taking possession of a colt without asking the owner’s
permission. It was He who gave permission to His two Apostles to act and anticipated the
opposition that they would receive from the owner, telling them to say that the Master had
need of them.
The apostles did as Jesus said, and brought the colt on which no one had ever
ridden, bringing also, as it is written in St. Matthew (Mt 21:7), the donkey that was
inseparable from her colt. They laid their cloaks on the colt and some of them, as noted in
St. Matthew, put cloaks also on the donkey, because they were not sure which of the two
animals Jesus wanted to ride.
He mounted the colt accompanied by the donkey, and started to move forward.
His sweetness and majesty were such that people in order to do Him honor began
to spread their cloaks on the road like carpets, and remembering the miracles He had done,
visible signs of his Divinity, began to praise God for them, exclaiming, full of joy:
"Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord. Peace in heaven and glory in the
highest." When He was born on earth, the Angels sang: Glory to God in the highest and
peace on earth to people of good will; as he approached Jerusalem to accomplish his
sacrifice of Redemption, the people cried loudly: Peace in heaven and glory in the
highest. Without realizing it, the people felt that the restoration of peace between earth
and Heaven already had begun because of the Redemption, and that the salvation of men
gave great glory to the Lord.
The shouts of the people were a clear acknowledgment of Jesus as the Messiah,
and because it was accompanied by the glorification of the miracles He had done, it was a
solemn affirmation against the envious intrigues of the scribes and of the Pharisees; so
they angrily told him: “Teacher, rebuke your disciples.” They did not dare oppose
directly the popular enthusiasm and wished that Jesus himself would do it, starting by
rebuking the disciples who were close to Him. But Jesus replied: “I tell you, if they keep
silent, the stones will cry out!” He meant to say that they were crying out the truth and if
they would have been silent, the very stones of the holy city would have cried out the
fulfillment of the promises, as witnesses of the plan of God becoming true.

Jesus weeps over Jerusalem

The hostility of the Pharisees in the midst of the enthusiasm of the people was an
indication of the deplorable state of Jerusalem, and therefore Jesus approaching and
contemplating from above the holy city, wept over her, exclaiming: "O if you only knew,
and in this day, what makes for thy peace!
He cried aloud, sobbing, as the Greek text says, because He saw the ruin toward
which the ungrateful city was moving, for not having accepted the immense grace for
which they had been waiting for so many centuries. Their shortsighted policy would land
them in the hands of the Romans who in turn would, with a brutal siege, destroy the city
along with its inhabitants. The prophecy that Jesus made weeping and sobbing shows the
distress of His loving heart. What love He had for His people and how great was His
mercy in visiting them! In spite of it they ungratefully repudiated Him, indeed preparing
to crucify Him! It is horrible to think that after forty centuries of waiting, the chosen
people had to fall into such an abyss as to deny Him who was the reason of their existence

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and their history! It is alarming to contemplate that they would place themselves at the
mercy of their enemies, denying their own Savior!

Jerusalem as the nations of today

And yet this is the sad story of many apostate nations and many ungrateful souls:
Jesus comes with great meekness to call them to life and always chooses a humble
instrument to approach them, just as He chose a little donkey to enter the holy City. The
Priest brings Jesus in the trappings of sweetness and goodness; he does not storm into
souls, he pleads with them; he does not threaten them, but offers forgiveness; he never
ceases to call them, but continues to invite them even when they reject Him.
Jesus enters in general amid the applause and the blessings of the faithful because
the apparatus of the life of the Church, which is itself an ongoing applause and song of
praise for Him, can impress and conquer them. On the other hand, as for the Pharisees,
many grow irritated with the praises to the Lord and rather would do away with Him from
so-called daily life.
The goal of the modern nations which are apostate from God is to silence the
voices that applaud Jesus Christ as disturbing noises, and as a consequence, public
religious manifestations were gradually eliminated in them and an effort was made to
silence everything that could be considered a call to faith.
The Pope, Bishops and Priests are chastised and told to remain silent, or at least
that their voices be relegated to the sacristy, where it is known that the people, in need of
their king, do not come. And then the stones speak, the majestic cathedrals, and the
monuments to faith and charity—and yet modern barbarism goes so far as even to
demolish these, that they may not speak of Jesus.
This is the way that many thankless souls become apostate and reject Jesus, and let
Him sob over them and over the ungrateful and wicked nations!
As it was for Jerusalem, so too for these nations a terrible punishment is in store,
and the alarming beginnings of destructive wars are already being seen. Nations are
surrounded by barriers and trenches, because militarism has changed them into forts and
barracks; already they are subjected to an oppressive regime with the complete restriction
of freedom, and when they shall hurl themselves against each other, because of the
devastation, not a stone upon the other will remain of the great works of civilization.
It is most painful to note the indifference with which the people consider the
catastrophe that threatens them: they go on playing, gossiping, having fun and sinning;
they sin as never before, while walking on a tightrope over the abyss. To see the modern
cities on the brink of war, one looks with horror at the reckless way that they consider the
punishment of God and their complete deafness to the appeals of the Church.*

----------------------------------------------------------------
* Several times the Popes, not only through diplomatic channels—that is through the Nuncios and Apostolic
Delegate—but also in their speeches have wanted to call the nations to make plans of peace and settle their
differences on the basis of negotiation. The prophetic statement of Pius XII is well known: “With peace
everything can be preserved, with war all can be lost,” presaging what happened with the Nazi invaders of
Europe. Strong words that do not spare anyone. With strong links to Gospel messages and with the freedom
of the children of God, Don Dolindo writes to everyone, including the members of the Church.

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 The situation continues to be even worse than at the time of the Flood, because it is
believed to be patriotic to conceal the scourge of God under the orgies of nationalism, and
the trappings of pride, almost as if this could save the nation from ruin.
Jesus Christ, as soon as He entered Jerusalem, went to the Temple and chased
away from the holy place those who were profaning it, making it into a market. With this
He clearly wanted to show that the desecration of the House of prayer was the cause of the
ruin of Jerusalem. The suffering that made Him sob over the ungrateful city urged him to
eliminate the defilement of the Temple, and the love He had for souls led him to teach
them every day to guide them in the way of conversion. The authorities, the priests and
the scribes instead met this act of great mercy with such hostility that they wanted to kill
Jesus, while not knowing how to do it because the people clung to His every word.
We see this today as well. One of the most serious causes of God’s scourges is the
desecration of the Churches, both by the people and by some unworthy ministers of the
Sanctuary. Impurity has reached the house of God in a blatant and shameless way and it is
often reduced to a market. There is in the faithful a sheer, reckless lack of respect for their
duty in the presence of God, and also in the priests, many times, there is an apathy to
correct what is wrong or too much concern for material issues. There is a desire not to
offend the sentiment of people in order not to lose the material and temporal advantages
they can provide, thus essentially reducing the House of God to a market.
There is the need for a sincere and complete repentance to God if we are to have
hope of escaping the divine scourges; it is indispensable that Priests, in imitation of Jesus,
teach every day in the Temple, because the faithful are so extremely ignorant.
Modern civilization, in its arrogance, believes itself to be a giant and instead has a
stature smaller than that of Zacchaeus; it believes itself to be altruistic but is instead
fiercely selfish; it believes itself to be fair and instead it is a bully without restraint. It
needs to rise, like Zacchaeus; it must receive Jesus and must return to justice and true
charity, as did Zacchaeus. Only by receiving Jesus with joy, that is with a sincere heart and
with true faith can we find salvation. Everything that God has given to us must be put at
the service of His love and for His glory. Nobody is master of the gifts received from God,
but one must give an accounting of them on judgment day.
From his Tabernacle of love Jesus weeps over our ruin and we must not let His cry
be in vain. Let us be converted to God and welcome the visit of His graces, corresponding
to His love. How many souls let the encounter with God pass by without noticing it;
they despise His inner calls thus making their own resurrection impossible! It is necessary
to accept these loving calls if we do not want the enemy to besiege us and lead us toward
our own ruin.
Come Jesus, into our souls, come into the world as King; come and reconcile us
with God once again, through the Church; grant us peace and change us into new
creatures! Overcome the hardness of our souls, O Lord, come, triumphant, and reign over
a renewed humanity.

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 Chapter 20
1. The authority of Jesus questioned. The parable of the tenant farmers. Paying the
tax to Caesar. The Sadducees and the resurrection. The Messiah son of David. The
hypocrisy of the scribes.

1 And it happened that, on one of the days when he was teaching the people in the temple
and preaching the Gospel, the leaders of the priests, and the scribes, gathered together
with the elders, 2 and they spoke to him, saying: “Tell us, by what authority do you do
these things? Or, who is it that has given you this authority?” 3 And in response, Jesus
said to them: “I will also question you about one word. Respond to me: 4 The baptism of
John, was it from heaven, or of men?” 5 So they discussed it among themselves, saying:
“If we say, ‘From heaven,’ he will say, ‘Then why did you not believe him?’ 6 But if we
say, ‘Of men,’ the whole people will stone us. For they are certain that John was a
prophet.” 7 And so they responded that they did not know where it was from. 8 And Jesus
said to them, “Neither will I tell you by what authority I do these things.” 9 Then he
began to tell the people this parable: “A man planted a vineyard, and he loaned it to
settlers, and he was on a sojourn for a long time. 10 And in due time, he sent a servant to
the farmers, so that they would give to him from the fruit of the vineyard. And they beat
him and drove him away, empty-handed. 11 And he continued to send another servant.
But beating him and treating him with contempt, they likewise sent him away, empty-
handed. 12 And he continued to send a third. And wounding him also, they drove him
away. 13 Then the lord of the vineyard said: ‘What shall I do? I will send my beloved son.
Perhaps when they have seen him, they will respect him.’ 14 And when the settlers had
seen him, they discussed it among themselves, saying: ‘This one is the heir. Let us kill him,
so that the inheritance will be ours.’ 15 And forcing him outside of the vineyard, they
killed him. What, then, will the lord of the vineyard do to them?” 16 “He will come and
destroy those settlers, and he will give the vineyard to others.” And upon hearing this,
they said to him, “Let it not be.” 17 Then, gazing at them, he said: “Then what does this
mean, which is written: ‘The stone which the builders have rejected, the same has become
the head of the corner?’ 18 Everyone who falls on that stone will be shattered. And
anyone upon whom it falls will be crushed.” 19 And the leaders of the priests, and the
scribes, were seeking to lay hands on him in that same hour, but they feared the people.
For they realized that he had spoken this parable about them. 20 And being attentive, they
sent traitors, who would pretend that they were just, so that they might catch him in his
words and then hand him over to the power and authority of the procurator. 21 And they
questioned him, saying: “Teacher, we know that you speak and teach correctly, and that
you do not consider anyone’s status, but you teach the way of God in truth. 22 Is it lawful
for us to pay the tribute to Caesar, or not?” 23 But realizing their deceitfulness, he said to
them: “Why do you test me? 24 Show me a denarius. Whose image and inscription does it
have?” In response, they said to him, “Caesar’s.” 25 And so, he said to them: “Then
repay the things that are Caesar’s, to Caesar, and the things that are God’s, to God.” 26
And they were not able to contradict his word before the people. And being amazed at his
answer, they were silent. 27 Now some of the Sadducees, who deny that there is a
resurrection, approached him. And they questioned him, 28 saying: “Teacher, Moses

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wrote for us: If any man’s brother will have died, having a wife, and if he does not have
any children, then his brother should take her as his wife, and he should raise up offspring
for his brother. 29 And so there were seven brothers. And the first took a wife, and he died
without sons. 30 And the next one married her, and he also died without a son. 31 And the
third married her, and similarly all seven, and none of them left behind any offspring, and
they each died. 32 Last of all, the woman also died. 33 In the resurrection, then, whose
wife will she be? For certainly all seven had her as a wife.” 34 And so, Jesus said to
them: “The children of this age marry and are given in marriage. 35 Yet truly, those who
shall be held worthy of that age, and of the resurrection from the dead, will neither be
married, nor take wives. 36 For they can no longer die. For they are equal to the Angels,
and they are children of God, since they are children of the resurrection. 37 For in truth,
the dead do rise again, as Moses also showed beside the bush, when he called the Lord:
‘The God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.’ 38 And so he is not
the God of the dead, but of the living. For all are alive to him.” 39 Then some of the
scribes, in response, said to him, “Teacher, you have spoken well.” 40 And they no longer
dared to question him about anything. 41 But he said to them: “How can they say that the
Christ is the son of David? 42 Even David himself says, in the book of Psalms: ‘The Lord
said to my Lord, sit at my right hand, 43 until I set your enemies as your footstool.’ 44
Therefore, David calls him Lord. So how can he be his son?” 45 Now in the hearing of all
the people, he said to his disciples: 46 “Be cautious of the scribes, who choose to walk in
long robes, and who love greetings in the marketplace, and the first chairs in the
synagogues, and the first places at table during feasts, 47 who devour the houses of
widows, feigning long prayers. These will receive the greater damnation.”
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2. Confusion of humanly constituted authority before the divine authority of Jesus.
Jesus Christ taught in the Temple with great authority, as one who could make
pronouncements as he pleased, and the people followed Him with enthusiasm, conquered
by His words.
This could not please the chief priests, scribes and elders who were in charge;
therefore, since they did not dare block Him outright, they confronted Him before the
people, hoping to confuse Him. They asked Him to explain Himself, saying, "Tell us, by
what authority are you doing these things? Or who is the one who gave you this
authority? With these words they protested that they had not given him any permission to
teach or work and thereby making Jesus appear to be an intruder and a rebel; at the same
time they were hoping that He would confess to have received this authority from the
Father thus giving them the reason to condemn him as a blasphemer. They did not
question Him in order to learn the truth, but rather, to stifle it, and Jesus, with divine
charity, brought to their consciences a very important issue to help them to reflect on their
hostility.
He asked: Was John’s baptism of heavenly or of human origin? John, in fact, had
not sought any authorization to accomplish his apostolate, and they had not prevented
him, thus recognizing the fact that John was working like the Prophets, with a direct
mandate from God. Moreover, they knew that they did not prevent John because they
feared the people, for if they could have, they would have silenced him; therefore they had
to confess to themselves that either they had disregarded a Prophet sent by God, or if they
believed him to be a fraud, that they had failed in their duty to silence him.

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 Jesus Christ wanted them to consider their consciences so that they might
recognize the truth in themselves, but their only concern was to not make a bad
impression before the people and so they thought: “If we say that the Baptism of John was
from heaven, He will reprove us because we did not believe him; if we say that it was of
men, then all the people will stone us because they are persuaded that John was a
prophet.” Therefore, they answered that they did not to know where the origin of John’s
baptism came from.
It would have been a very public confession of their inability to recognize the way
of the Lord, and their incompetence to judge, considering how Jesus would have answered
their question, and above all it was a manifestation of their bad faith. Hence why would
the Redeemer have given the right answer to those who specifically and in bad faith
sought to negate it?
Therefore Jesus replied flatly: “Neither shall I tell you by what authority I do these
things.” It was not a spiteful retort, as it might first appear; He affirmed solemnly that in
his ministry He was not dependent on their authority. He had always shown the greatest
respect for that authority, in the capacities in which it represented God; and if now He
refused to answer them, He clearly showed His superiority over it so that now it could be
said that their authority had come to an end, because God rejected them for their infidelity.
What ended their authority was their systematic and criminal hostility towards the awaited
Messiah; and their refusal to accept Him was grounds for their final condemnation, as
even there before their very eyes all the prophecies of the prophets were being fulfilled.

The parable of the tenant farmers

In expressing this very important and crucial thought, Jesus, however, did not want
to scandalize the people, and so He told the parable of the evil tenant farmers to illustrate
the infidelity that those in authority have always had toward those who had been sent by
God to Israel to gather the fruits of goodness and virtue.
A man planted a vineyard, leased it to tenant farmers, and then went on a journey
for a long time. God himself established the Jewish nation as His chosen vineyard,
entrusting its governance and administration to its leaders so that they would produce a
great deal of goodness. From time to time, to collect this goodness, He sent special
messengers—the Prophets—whom, through their extraordinary ministry would get the
fruits that the master expected. Clearly these messengers sent by the Master had from Him
the mandate and the authority, and they came more to judge than to be judged by the
tenant farmers; but instead the disloyal and rebellious farmers, far from accommodating
the messengers and facilitating the harvesting of the fruit, beat them, accused them of
false offenses as if they were intruders, and sent them away empty handed.
Jesus noted that three times the master sent his messengers and three times they
were sent away, adding that on the last occasion the tenant farmers who apparently had
had enough, beat them even more severely causing significant wounds.
This was the story of an ungrateful and wicked nation, led by its rulers, that had
rejected the Prophets, abused them, injured and killed them, rendering useless that
extraordinary ministry that was a singular mercy of God. The master then sent his own
son to the vineyard hoping that the farmers would respect him; but when the farmers saw

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the son they conspired together against him, and in order to become themselves the
absolute masters of the vineyard, cast him out and killed him.
This was what the Priests, the scribes, and the elders were preparing to do to Him,
the Son of God, sent by the Father to gather the fruits of the history of Israel and save the
chosen nation from their ultimate ruin.
It was Holy Tuesday when Jesus spoke, as is clear from the Gospel of St. Mark
(Mk 11:27) and the leaders of Israel, far from accepting Jesus as the true Son of God and
the true Messiah, were already plotting to kill him in order not to see their authority
diminish. They pretended that they themselves were the absolute masters of the vineyard,
forgetting that God alone could do what He wished with the vineyard and had the right to
demand its fruits. Making the perversity of the unfaithful tenants very clear, Jesus added:
What will the owner of the vineyard do to them? Then He himself answered, as St. Luke
says, and together with the listening crowd in chorus, as St. Matthew relates it (Mt
21:42)—since the answer to this question would come spontaneously due to the extreme
perversity of the tenants—: He will come and put those tenant farmers to death and turn
over the vineyard to others.
The leaders of the people realized that this parable was aimed at them, and so
before such a decisive judgment in which Jesus made known His majesty as eternal Judge,
they, frightened and angry, replied, “Let it not be so!” and wanted to say: let not our fate
ever be so terrible, and let it never be that we reject the true Messiah. We shall never
reject him, but we reject you, whom we do not recognize as such. They wanted to justify
themselves by expressing their firm hope in the Messiah, and they wanted to assert that
they would never repudiate him.
But Jesus looked gravely at them, and in an extreme act of mercy toward the
hardness of their hearts, He wanted to disenchant them of their illusion; He wanted to let
them reflect on the true character of the Messiah, as it had been described by the Prophets:
it would be precisely that the Messiah would be rejected and put to death, because He
would have been like the stone rejected by the builders.
Their own hostile position and their conspiracies, in addition to the prophecies
already fulfilled brought a new note of truth to His mission. Take heed, however, that it
was not enough to say, as they said, “Let it not be so!” to escape the harsh judgment that
awaited them, because if it was written that the stone would have been rejected by the
builders, it was also written that it would become the cornerstone, and that it would smash
and crush those who would claim to demolish it, to ruin the new building, of which this
stone was the foundation and thus its strength and stability.

And us?

Unfortunately, we have the same attitude that the chief Priests, scribes, elders and
the wicked tenant farmers had when the grace of God visits us. Our will, almost the ruler
of our power, hears the call of the Divine Will but does not receive it, pretending to be
unsure about it. It does not recognize the voice of God in His Ministers and does not
recognize the voice of its conscience, only accepting what it likes and what it wants.
Our ideas, moreover, and our poor wisdom, which are like the scribes of the soul,
claim to impose themselves over God’s ideas, rejecting the light and the inspirations the
Lord wishes to impart to us; finally our ingrained habits, the recalcitrant old man within

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us—the real elder in our life—, refuses the invitation to conversion that comes from grace
and evades its action, quibbling over the inspiration received.
We are not the masters of ourselves, we are as God’s tenant farmers in our lives;
we refuse to give Him the fruits that He demands from our hearts, and many times we
abuse his Ministers rejecting their ministry, and thus we sin thereby killing Jesus Christ in
ourselves, crucifying Him to our passions.
The world itself has the same attitude, and in fact reaches even graver excesses of
infidelity and rebellion: its leaders, its pseudo-intellectualism and its cultural ideals
become factors and pretexts of apostasy and rebellion. World leaders do not recognize the
authority of the Church; the scientists and intellectuals—the real scribes of the poor
human intellect, reject her doctrines, and the elders of the world are those who presume to
restore the opprobrium of paganism or the idolatry of barbarism to the nations; they reject
the new and divine life which Jesus Christ gives us, and instead live on old rubbish and
bask in the ruins and re-enactments of their primitive barbarism.
It is very sorrowful to think that man, placed on the earth by God to produce fruits
of love and goodness, believes himself to be so much the master of his own life that he
refuses God’s Law, and chooses to live in such great disorder remaining deaf to the Lord’s
every call.
The persecutions against the Church, which have never ceased century after
century, and each time with a renewed and greater ferocity, are the answers that the world
gives to the Priests of the Eternal God, when they ask in His name for the fruits of our
earthly lives; and the last persecution of the antichrist will be the diabolical attempt to kill
even the very idea of God, and to completely destroy the Church.
We are already spectators of these ill-fated times and see the first signs of the even
more serious times that will follow, after a period of triumph for the Church, at the end of
the world.

Painful statistics

Let us not be unfaithful to God’s calls, that the Lord may not become tired of us,
and deprive us of His graces and the very gift of Faith.
Some modern nations are concerned about the declining birth rate, and yet they
keep no statistics that make them worry about the loss of Faith, which is the wretched
decline of the life in the spirit. Besides, we Catholics are too accustomed to consider the
statistics of what is good, allowing us to rejoice, but we do not consider the statistics of
evil, the only ones that could give us a measure of our misery. If it is comforting to know
that a hundred people go to Church, we should also consider that a thousand, two
thousand, or ten thousands do not attend Church; if it is wonderful that ten people are
converted, it is most sorrowful to think that there are a hundred, or a thousand people who
have strayed and lost their Faith.
We barely notice how the Faith is gradually, but steadily—and at an increasing
pace—eroding in Europe and being planted in Africa and Asia; it is the fulfillment of the
warning of the Lord: He will turn over the vineyard to others*. The loss of the Faith
damages a nation immensely: it portends its return to barbarism; it marks the end of
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*A very timely reflection that is increasingly coming true today.

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civilization for thousands of years, and finally its extermination, because a nation’s return
to pagan impiety always brings a frightening punishment of God.
The stone rejected by those who build a nation will be set as the cornerstone of
another, and those that fall upon this stone or are bumped by it, will be smashed or
crushed. Jesus speaks of builders—masons—who reject the cornerstone; and in fact, we
can see such individuals in the shameless Freemasons, enemies of the Church of Jesus
Christ and of humanity, who take glory in being called precisely free masons, and have as
their emblem the trowel, the square and the compass.
They are called masons because they have the pretense to build a new world, and
in making it, they want to reject Jesus Christ, the cornerstone of the Church and of all
social goodness; they do not realize that what they do instead is to demolish all good and
become the real cause of clashes and conflicts due precisely to their denial of Christian
principles and precepts*. Let us be very careful to not lose the grace and the friendship of
God and to pray with all our hearts that the Lord will preserve our Faith and the wings of
our souls that they may not be miserably clipped.
It is most sorrowful to think that the world believes it has gained its wings just
when it has lost them, and that in flying in the skies of materialism, it is really wriggling
like a snake in the swamp of error and passions. That airmail stamp which depicts two
strong wings set on the globe† is truly ironic, because in reality the world is swallowed up
by the tempests of materialism, apostasy and evil! The world had its wings given to it by
the Redeemer but it has sorrowfully torn them off and put on the miserable wings of a
civilization apostate from God; they are like the wings of Icarus that melt away miserably
by the heat of passions resulting in a plunge towards ruin and death.

3. The tribute to Caesar

The chief priests, the scribes, and the elders, who were confused and angered by
the answer of Jesus, continued to observe Him closely but dared not lay a hand on Him;
they sent some cunning people, righteous and God-fearing in appearance, to try to trip
Him up so that He would compromise Himself with the Roman authorities, and thus
would then be condemned by the Governor. These treacherous people were sent to try to
tempt Him on an issue that would either make Him unpopular with the populace or would
compromise Him before the authorities; they would either damage His popularity or make
it impossible for Him to operate.
With sugary and flattering words, they hoped to induce Him to admit more easily
that He was against the oppression of the Romans. So they began by telling him that his
way of speaking and teaching were righteous, without partiality towards anyone, and that
he was teaching the truth of God. They hoped their obsequious words would cause Him to
lower His guard and compromise himself. They were calculating their strategy from their
weak human minds, without thinking that the one they were interrogating was God. They
considered that flattering a man as to the strength of his character and sincerity, it would
be easier to bring Him to imprudent excesses, and they hoped that He would be overcome

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*Freemasons, both old and new style
†
Translator’s note: The image refers to an Italian airmail stamp of the late 1935.

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by touching this delicate chord. They asked Him therefore a firm question that demanded
a straight answer: Is it lawful for us to pay tribute to Caesar or not? They said for us to
link what they were saying to the issue of Jewish nationalism as opposed to the Roman
tyranny, and to make the matter a case of conscience. The Jews in fact, the chosen people,
should not to submit to a pagan dominion.
Jesus, as God, looking into their hearts, knew their cunning minds; thus before
answering He wanted to begin to confuse them showing that He had searched their hearts.
He exclaimed, Why do you tempt me?—Meaning to say: you are not sincere, you are not
asking this question out of love for the people nor out of servile deference to the Romans;
you are only questioning me with an ill will, only to tempt me. This question in fact was
not an easy one, because the Romans were not the legal owners of Palestine and the
people suffered a tyrannical act; however, having accepted the Roman currency, according
to the rabbinic theory, they were required to submit to their dominion.
Besides, the question of paying the tribute to a conqueror was not a question of
whether it was legal or not; it was a obligation, because also an unjust ruler receives
tributes in order to contribute to the public administration and whoever submits to it does
not do an action against the law by giving the tribute, but rather one does what one is
obliged to do, even when forced. The question, then, was this: who actually ruled the land
of Israel? And who by ruling over it provided for its administration? The Romans did. So
therefore the tribute was due to the Romans. The taxes were paid in Roman currency and
the contribution to the Temple were paid in the currency of holy donations†; however the
Roman coins given as tax were after all part of the coins put in circulation by the same
people who ruled; thus in paying, the Roman Empire received its due and the holy
donations given to the Temple were given to God as He had ordained as a recognition of
His ownership.
Referring to these high principles, and to make His answer very clear, Jesus asked
to see a coin, which was the currency for the taxes, and said, whose image and name does
it bear? They answered, Caesar’s. At this He added, Then repay to Caesar what belongs
to Caesar and to God what belongs to God."
Jesus did not want to create a duality between Caesar and God, much less put
Caesar on a par with God; it would be an immensely foolish to suppose this; He just
wanted to say that it was necessary to render to Caesar the administrative tax for the sake
of social justice, and to give to God the sacred tribute to the Temple, as the duty for the
administration of religious worship; Caesar is not a power beyond God, nor can anything
be such that has a relation with the State. Everything is subjected to the Lord, King of
Heaven and earth, and it is subjected to the Church, which represents His authority; no
government can dare look upon itself beyond the truth or the morality that the Church
teaches or else believe the Church to be inferior to itself in all its manifestations of civic
life*. Hence all governments are called to obey the teachings of the Church as all
-----------------------------------------------------------
†
Translator’s note: For the Temple in Jerusalem were paid in shekels
*As previously noted, the State has the duty to promote justice and the moral good, and not just material
well-being. In this sense, the State is subject to the teaching of the Church, and the Church carries out this
service according to God’s Will for civil society. When the Church reminds everyone (even States) that
violence, torture, and oppression are not licit, it carries out a mission also for the State, promoting the good
of the State and of the citizenry. Hence, keeping God’s commandments also benefits the State.

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Christians are, and all acts of public management cannot, must not conflict, with the wise
directives of the Church.

The aberrations of state-worshippers

To believe that the State is everything enslaves individuals and to consider the
Church as just a very low servant is an error loaded with disastrous consequences for the
world and for its very temporal prosperity. The nations can be considered childish in their
activities; they pass with the greatest ease from friendship to hatred, from harmony to war,
from mutual praise to insults, and they get carried away by the opportunity of the moment;
they have no wisdom, stability, or common sense and go from one extreme to the other
according to the needs of that most filthy thing called politics. Therefore they cannot be
unconditionally trusted or idolized, because their material strength becomes hateful
oppression of the conscience, thought and freedom, leading one to sure ruin.
It is right to pay to Caesar what is Caesar’s but only after we give to God what is
God’s, because it is impossible to consider Caesar as an independent and absolute king, as
he also is a son of the Church. When the Church does not rule the nations with her
maternal influence, they fall into the state in which we see them today, a state of abjection
that turns them into tyrants toward their subjects and bullies toward other states, as they
begin sorrowful wars, of which we are now spectators and victims.

Is it lawful to give tribute… to our temporal nature?

We must consider that we have a duality in us: our nature draws us downward, and
grace wants us to rise up. We can also ask ourselves: is it lawful to give a tribute to our
nature or not? The answer is found in the same words of the Redeemer: which is the
image upon ourselves—that is, in whose image are we made? We are made in the image
of God and marked by the Blood of Redemption, and God has given all that we have to
us. Thus we cannot submit ourselves to our disordered nature. Our duty is love, and this
must be given entirely back to God, because the love of God has created us and has
redeemed us.
However, we do also have legitimate natural needs and so to these we can give the
right compensation, but this cannot be independent from the love that we owe to God, this
being our first duty to do everything for the glory of God. It would be a most serious error
to believe the life of the spirit as being separate from the life of the body or vice versa;
body and soul, we belong entirely to God, and so we must be totally with God.

4. The resurrection and the eternal life.

Jesus’s response to the question of the tribute left everyone, including his
opponents in admiration, who, confused, fell silent. Some Sadducees, however, noting the
embarrassment of the scribes and Pharisees believed that they could prevail over Jesus and
came forward to propose a question to which they were certain He could not answer.
This attempt by the Sadducees had profound implications: they did not believe in
the resurrection and represented the materialists of the time. As materialists they deeply

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despised the teaching of Jesus and looked condescendingly on everyone with an attitude
of unscrupulous supermen.
This is the attitude of all those who have little intellect but presume to have it in
abundance.
Hence the Sadducees, seeing the scribes’ and the Pharisees’ confusion before
Jesus, believed, as the third-rate supermen that they were, that they would be able to
confuse Him; and so with arrogance, as can be seen from the context, they proposed the
case of a woman who had successively had seven husbands.
In the resurrection, they exclaimed with brash confidence, to which of the seven
will she be the wife? Judging materially, they supposed that the resurrection was to simply
return to earthly life with all its miseries and all its demands, and as they had never seen a
dead person rise from the grave, they denied that the resurrection could take place in the
future or that the soul could survive the body. So Jesus in answering them, made a
distinction between those living in the current age and those in the next by saying: The
children of this age marry and remarry because, being mortal, they want to perpetuate
their species; but when they pass into the other life and are judged worthy of Heaven and
of their final glorious resurrection, they do not marry and remarry because they are
immortal. Living gloriously in Heaven they are like Angels, and are adopted children of
God, which means, children of the One who shall rise from the dead and shall give to the
faithful, incorporated in Him, the grace of a glorious resurrection.
Jesus makes a hidden reference to Himself in these words: the resurrected are
children of the resurrection; in fact He was the resurrection and the life, and his faithful
had to receive from Him the glorious resurrection. Jesus did not say anything of the
resurrection of lost souls, which will also take place, because it represents for them a
second death, one more terrible than the first, because they will go to perdition with their
bodies as well. He then replied directly to the scenario proposed by the Sadducees; and as
it alluded to God-fearing people—those who made it their duty to observe His precepts,
He, of course, spoke only of the resurrection of the righteous.
Moreover, if it were absurd to think that men could marry in the eternal joy of
heaven, it would be even more absurd to suggest that they could do so in the eternal
torment of damnation, where there is only pain and despair. Those who are judged worthy
of the other age and the resurrection from death, the true resurrection that relieves the
body from the clutches of death and gives it back to life, are like Angels of God and are
children of God, being children of the resurrection. This means since they are children of
the Redeemer they are incorporated in Him and for Him become adopted children of God,
and sharers in His own resurrection.
Jesus’ reasoning was beautiful to all the people to whom He was speaking, but
Jesus wanted to bring another argument directly against the Sadducees, to move them
away from their fatal mistake. They had appealed, when raising their objection, to the Law
proclaimed by Moses; Jesus in his answer used the same wording in which God had
proclaimed the Law, calling himself God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. He called himself
their God using the present, while if they were dead with no life any more, He should have
said He was their God. He is the God of the living and not of those who do not have life,
as is the case of animals after death; He is God and gives life, supports and blesses it, as
the souls are immortal because of His grace and mercy.

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 To the very foolish Sadducees and to those who unfortunately follow them, Jesus
manifested the true nature of our lives: we are of God and God is ours; He gives us life
and calls us to life; He does not only give us life in this present age but continues to give
us life in eternity; in our eternity, life is all spiritual, it is an angelic life of spiritual joy,
and knowing God we delight in Him and owning Him we love Him.

Christ, the son of David

Some of the scribes found Jesus’s answer very beautiful—indeed riveting—and

because they were acknowledged enemies of the Sadducees they approached Jesus and
said to Him: “you have answered well”. They willingly admitted what was in line with
their thinking but did not realize that they themselves had a terrible darkness in their souls,
in not recognizing in Jesus Christ the Messiah; they praised his precise response, but they
were far from recognizing that it was a divine answer, and therefore Jesus, to illuminate
and bring them out of their blindness, proposed another question and revealed to them the
reason why they did not accept the truth.
It was not out of spite, much less impetuosity that Jesus engaged them thusly, but
rather, as an act of mercy. He would never reply sternly or severely to an act of kindness
offered by the scribes in praising His answer, even if they deserved it; His heart was too
divinely delicate to do that; He spoke out of extreme love to warn souls against the pride
of the scribes that they may not be imitated, thus separating themselves from the truth.
Therefore, in answering the scribes He asked them: “How is it that they claim the
Messiah to be the Son of David? For David himself says in the Book of Psalms: ‘The Lord
said to my Lord: Sit at my right hand till I make your enemies your footstool.’ David,
therefore, calls him ‘Lord,’ so how can He then be his son?”
The argument was much stronger than it may seem at a first: Jesus Christ was in
fact the only direct descendant of the family of David, and being a recognized virgin
before all, He could have no offspring; as consequence He was the son of David
proclaimed and prophesied. Besides, if David in spirit calls him Lord, he recognizes in
Him a superior being, that is God himself, because he used an expression that was said
only in reference to God, and if he recognizes Him as God, and there were no more of his
descendants in Judah, Jesus, obviously had to be the predicted son of David as man, and
his Lord as God.
The scribes had no answer to this argument, but did not take it into consideration
nor confessed it to be true, as they should have done. They must have had an interior flash
of its truth and been deeply shocked by it, but their pride took over and they shut off that
light of grace that momentarily illuminated them. For this reason Jesus turned to His
disciples and to all the people present and put them on guard against the scandal they were
witnessing from the scribes. He addressed His disciples because they were those against
whom most of the snares of His enemies were aiming, but he wanted to be heard by
everyone so that they would not take the occasion of the scandal given by their chief
priests and scribes and deny the truth.
Beware of the scribes, Jesus said, because they want to walk in long robes, love to
be greeted in the streets, want to sit in the first rows in synagogues, and to take the first
places in banquets; and also, under the pretense of long prayers, they devour the houses of
widows; thus they will incur a more rigorous sentence.

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 That was the real reason why the scribes opposed the truth: they loved to keep the
prestige they thought to have with the people and shunned whoever could overshadow it;
they wished to receive honor and to occupy the places of honor in feasts, and therefore
they made war with the One whose splendor obscured their claimed glory, while His
humility threw them into confusion; they had firmly at heart their own interests to the
point of even making a market of their prayers, overtaking the good faith of the widows in
order to get money out of them.
Thus the obstacles preventing those poor souls from recognizing the truth and
embracing it were vanity, pride and self-interest; and Jesus in his immense love wanted
them to amend their ways and give to them as well the eternal life He had come to bring to
all.

But do we believe in eternal life?

How many times do we say that we believe in the resurrection of the dead and in
eternal life and yet we live as if everything were to simply end with the decomposition of
the body—and not with the prospect of going towards a new one! We care so much about
material things of a life that we shall leave, and do not worry about those things that are
everlasting! How carefully, for example, do we keep our money and how attentively do
we monitor it—that thieves not rob us—while on the other hand we expose the treasures
of our souls, namely, grace, faith, purity, fear of God and virtue, to every danger and with
shocking irresponsibility. Don’t we realize that everything will pass away and end, but our
own eternity will not?
Among the Jewish people, if a man dies leaving no children, his brother must
marry the widow that she may give him descendants. We must do the same when we see
spiritually barren souls that produce nothing for God; we should do them kindness by
making up their failure with our love for God, that our activity may be beneficial to their
soul and may glorify God.
The children of this world marry and are given in marriage said Jesus, but the
souls consecrated to God, who live spiritually as if they were not on this earth, are like
Angels of God. Blessed are those souls that in their present lives can live this great ideal
and can be children of the resurrection, living in perfect conformity to the will of God.
He is not God of the dead, but of the living, Jesus said, with reference to the
scriptural expression that calls the Lord the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Thus we
need to meditate on these words, especially when we feel tempted by Satan and we are in
danger of falling into mortal sin. God is our Creator and our Father, but if we sin we
become unworthy of Him, and we find ourselves abandoned by his love, since he is not
the God of the dead.
Let us humble ourselves in the presence of God and let us flee the senseless vanity
of the earth. What is the use for us to wear a religious robe if the purpose is vain
ostentation? And what good is the praise and approval of others if we have a bad heart?
Let us look at the true good and to the glory of God, and let us remember that
earthly creatures will not judge us, but rather the Supreme Lord will, who with justice will
take into account how we operate in His presence.

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 Let us fear the condemnation of God and live in a way that in His mercy He will
receive us with Him in glory on the last day. O Lord, keep our souls in your grace, and do
not allow us to be separated from You. Amen.

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 Chapter 21
1. The poor widow’s contribution. The foretelling of the destruction of the Temple.
Persecution that the Church will have to bear until the end of the world. The Ruin of
Jerusalem. Signs of the second coming of the Redeemer. Be vigilant and pray.

1 And looking around, he saw the wealthy putting their donations into the offertory. 2
Then he also saw a certain widow, a pauper, putting in two small brass coins. 3 And he
said: “Truly, I say to you, that this poor widow has put in more than all the others. 4 For
all these, out of their abundance, have added to the gifts for God. But she, out of what she
needed, has put in all that she had to live on.” 5 And when some of them were saying,
about the temple, that it was adorned with excellent stones and gifts, he said, 6 “These
things that you see, the days will arrive when there will not be left behind stone upon
stone, which is not thrown down.” 7 Then they questioned him, saying: “Teacher, when
will these things be? And what will be the sign when these things will happen?” 8 And he
said: “Be cautious, lest you be seduced. For many will come in my name, saying: ‘For I
am he,’ and, ‘The time has drawn near.’ And so, do not choose to go after them. 9 And
when you will have heard of battles and seditions, do not be terrified. These things must
happen first. But the end is not so soon.”10 Then he said to them: “People will rise up
against people, and kingdom against kingdom. 11 And there will be great earthquakes in
various places, and pestilences, and famines, and terrors from heaven; and there will be
great signs. 12 But before all these things, they will lay their hands on you and persecute
you, handing you over to synagogues and into custody, dragging you before kings and
governors, because of my name. 13 And this will be an opportunity for you to give
testimony. 14 Therefore, set this in your hearts: that you should not consider in advance
how you might respond. 15 For I will give to you a mouth and wisdom, which all your
adversaries will not be able to resist or contradict 16 And you will be handed over by
your parents, and brothers, and relatives, and friends. And they will bring about the death
of some of you. 17 And you will be hated by all because of my name. 18 And yet, not a
hair of your head will perish. 19 By your patience, you shall possess your souls. 20 Then,
when you will have seen Jerusalem encircled by an army, know then that its desolation
has drawn near. 21 Then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains, and those who
are in its midst withdraw, and those who are in the countryside not enter into it. 22 For
these are the days of retribution, so that all things may be fulfilled, which have been
written. 23 Then woe to those who are pregnant or nursing in those days. For there will
be great distress upon the land and great wrath upon this people. 24 And they will fall by
the edge of the sword. And they will be led away as captives into all nations. And
Jerusalem will be trampled by the Gentiles, until the times of the nations are fulfilled. 25
And there will be signs in the sun and the moon and the stars. And there will be, on earth,
distress among the Gentiles, out of confusion at the roaring of the sea and of the waves:
26 men withering away out of fear and out of apprehension over the things that will
overwhelm the whole world. For the powers of the heavens will be moved. 27 And then
they will see the Son of man coming on a cloud, with great power and majesty. 28 But
when these things begin to happen, lift up your heads and look around you, because your
redemption draws near.” 29 And he told them a comparison: “Take notice of the fig tree

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and of all the trees. 30 When presently they produce fruit from themselves, you know that
summer is near. 31 So you also, when you will have seen these things happen, know that
the kingdom of God is near. 32 Amen I say to you, this lineage shall not pass away, until
all these things happen. 33 Heaven and earth shall pass away. But my words shall not
pass away. 34 But be attentive to yourselves, lest perhaps your hearts may be weighed
down by self-indulgence and inebriation and the cares of this life. And then that day may
overwhelm you suddenly. 35 For like a snare it will overwhelm all those who sit upon the
face of the entire earth. 36 And so, be vigilant, praying at all times, so that you may be
held worthy to escape from all these things, which are in the future, and to stand before
the Son of man.” 37 Now in the daytime, he was teaching in the temple. But truly,
departing in the evening, he lodged on the mount that is called Olivet. 38 And all the
people arrived in the morning to listen to him in the temple.
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2. The poor widow’s contribution at the temple.

In the enclosure of the Temple, near the atrium of the women, there was the
gazofilacium, which was the offertory box used to collect the donations that were to be
used to support worship; Jesus was there and noticed some rich people who threw coins in
it. They tossed in their money with a gesture of indifference and superficiality, as those
who give away some superfluous thing that is not needed. Those gestures were done
without love for God; those people happened to go by through the atrium of the women
and seeing the thirteen openings of the gazofilacium, carelessly threw in a coin. At that
moment arrived a poor widow who had come with the specific purpose of giving her
offering, as can be noted from the text. Her attitude was one of great devotion with a
loving heart. She took from her pocket two small copper coins that she had carefully
saved, and placed them in the opening with the serene satisfaction of one who gives
everything that one has.
Her heart, at the same time, gave to God a gift of fervent love and then, assuming
she was unnoticed, much less noticed by the Eternal Judge, she left.
It is likely that somebody noticed how miserable her offering had been, and for
that this poor woman was despised, because Jesus spoke with the tone of one who wants
to defend a person and said solemnly: “I tell you truly, this poor widow put in more than
all the rest.” This statement in its abruptness might have seemed absurd, but Jesus
immediately added the reason for it saying that the offering of the others had come from
their surplus, while the poor widow had given all she had to live on.

What we offer to God.

The observation of Jesus on the almsgiving of the poor woman is enlightening. He

gave us the measure of the offering that we owe to God, and gave us the poor widow as an
example. In fact we are very used to giving to the Lord just a little bit of our surplus and to
give it without generosity or true love. If we made an account of what we give to
ourselves and to others and what we give to God, a great imbalance would be evident.
As we go through our day we forget God almost completely, and if we happen to
think of Him we give Him only a small fraction of our time. Even this seems excessive to

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us, and every day we shorten it further, even though it should be our supreme happiness to
speak to the Lord.
A typical example of this spirit of avarice that we exhibit in dealing with God can
be seen in our rude manners in which we always put Him in the last place when compared
to others. Laws, customs of the world, and even our own habits are full of these terrible
injustices.
For example if we talk to someone and another interrupts us, we do not answer the
interrupter without ending the conversation with the first person; however, when it comes
to God, we stop our interaction with Him for the most trivial reason and listen to others at
once. This rudeness is so common! We do not fail to adhere to a fashion or a law of the
world, even if it is inconvenient or evil, but when it comes to God we act always at the
expense of His law or His honor.
It is awful, for example, that a lady of high society can believe it to be her duty to
go to the theater and various receptions dressed immodestly and that it is right for her to
follow the fashion of the time instead of observing the law of God, or that she believes
that it is more important to impress the eye of the vain or corrupted person rather than the
eye of God.
The socialite woman haphazardly gives God the smallest portion from what is
superfluous to her; yet instead gives her whole self to the world, and nobody finds any
problem with this; in fact many times she receives even accolades and the approval of
good people who see heroism in her submitting to the world, without thinking that it is
more heroic not to submit to it.
It is sorrowful to realize this, but unfortunately, this terrible mentality has
frequently confused even good people. If it is against the law of God to dress immodestly,
how could it be possible to reconcile the law of God with a woman’s “need” to dress
immodestly due to her social status?
And if it is forbidden for Christian people to watch immoral shows and
performances, why should this be tolerated for those who occupy high positions, and who
should be setting an example for other Christians? Rulers, the powerful and the wealthy
give to God only a small part of what for them is superfluous, and this is very sorrowful
and cannot be excused by any human social convention.
We must give to God all that we have to live, although before Him we are like the
two coins of the poor widow; we need to give on Him all our life and should stop this
strange mixture of piety and worldliness, modesty and immodesty, humility and pride,
selfishness and charity, none of which brings us to sanctity but rather, undermines
Christianity. It is necessary to consider that we are indebted primarily and solely to God
and that any false human social convention is for Him a serious sacrilege and for us an act
of apostasy.

3.The ruin of Jerusalem, the Kingdom of God on earth and the end of the world.

Jesus Christ taught every day in the Temple and the disciples had occasion to
observe the magnificence of the Temple building. At the beginning they did not pay too
much attention to it because they were attracted by the words of the divine Master; but
seeing the majestic building over and over again, and of course, on occasion being a little

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distracted from the divine Word due to listening to it every day, they noticed the beauty of
the Temple and mentioned it to the Master with that natural sense of satisfaction and pride
we all have for national treasures.
Jesus Christ far from discussing the magnificence of the building, with His divine
insight saw the destruction and ruin that would ravage the people due to their sins and the
terrible crime of deicide that was on the verge of consummation. He saw in the Temple
the image of his Body, which would be destroyed in a violent death, and saw the
punishment that would befall the people with the ruin of their city and of this grandiose
Temple building; in that upcoming ruin, He saw also the character and image of the
catastrophic end of the world, caused by the crimes committed throughout the centuries
against God, His Christ and the Church, His Mystical Body, and answered by announcing
these two disasters and exhorting the disciples and all people about what to do during
those immense calamities. Starting by announcing the destruction of the Temple and
subsequently the ruin of Jerusalem, He exclaimed: the days will come when there will not
be left a stone upon another stone that will not be thrown down.
He said these words with such gravity and truthful candor that none of those who
were listening dared to doubt Him, and therefore they asked when such a calamities would
occur and what signs would precede them. In asking this question they subconsciously
wanted to know if they would be among those that would be affected by those disasters
and hoped to not have to witness them. They loved very much their motherland and the
Temple and considered it a supreme misfortune to see its ruin. Jesus answered this interior
preoccupation of theirs, to clarify the situation for the disciples as well as for those who
would come after them, because the Church He was founding would always be exposed to
persecution and violence would always be present in the world in every age.
To think of avoiding moments of upheaval was an impossible hope for those who
would advance just causes amidst adversity; those who fight for good would always be
confronted with disseminators of errors who are the true and immediate cause of
persecution and punishment that follow as a consequence.
For this reason in his divinely succinct way He answered, See that you not be
deceived, for many will come in my name, as a messiah and as creators of universal
renewal and will say I am he, and the time has come.
Many false prophets will believe themselves to be those destined to rule over the
world and will announce a time of prosperity for all, and also many peoples, facing the
plagues and disasters that occur in every age and time, will believe themselves to be near
to the coming of the end of the world. But they shall be mistaken and will only be
heralding errors.
Both the Kingdom of God and the end of the world will be preceded by wars and
revolutions, but these will not be imminent signs of either the end of the predominance of
evildoers or of the end of the world. They will only be a preparation, and they will come
in order to cleanse the earth and gather the elect.
They will not be exclusive signs of these two greatest events in the history of the world,
because in any time there are wars and insurrections. The wars and revolutions that will
precede the time of the Kingdom of God and the end of the world will be characterized by
a universally destructive nature and accompanied by pestilence, famine, fearful signs in
the sky, and great wonders on earth, that is, probably, some great inventions that will
astonish the world. For this reason Jesus, after saying that there will always be wars and

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rebellions throughout the ages, notes specifically the characteristics of those events that
shall forewarn on the end of the iniquity and the end of the world: Nation will rise against
nation, and kingdom against kingdom, which means there will be a global conflagration, a
global war, with the distinctive characteristic of the simultaneous deployment of groups of
nations against nations, groups of kingdoms against kingdoms, involving therefore
republics and monarchies.
Great earthquakes will accompany this social cataclysm, as will plagues and
famines. In every age there have been earthquakes, famines and plagues to be sure but
these scourges in the great conflagration occur simultaneously to the frightening universal
war.
The true end time should not be confused with the usual perturbations of the
world, and it will be such of magnitude as to make it clear that something exceptional is
coming upon earth.
Jesus further explains the nature of these two final conflagrations, announcing the
great persecution against His Church and the great harvest of Martyrs. Since He spoke to
his Apostles and disciples who would be the first to encounter the persecution and be
brought before Synagogues and the leaders of the Gentiles, Jesus urges them not to be
afraid and to trust completely in the Holy Spirit in the disputes that they would face in the
courts and tribunals.
Jesus Christ promises them special assistance particularly when they have been
falsely accused and have to defend themselves—assistance that has always been seen in
the passion of the Martyrs from the very earliest times to the present glorious Martyrs who
were killed in Spain†, of which, we can say, we ourselves have been witnesses.
Jesus Christ told them of the persecution that his followers would have to suffer
even at the hands of their dearest family, parents, brothers, relatives and friends because of
His Name, but He adds that not a hair on your head will be destroyed.
This expression at first seems to contradict what He says at verse 16, because it is
obvious that if they were to be killed, all their bodily life would perish. What Jesus meant,
however, was that every torment would produce the fruits of eternal life, and that not a
hair of their heads would perish in vain. The Martyrs therefore would regain their bodies
in the resurrection, and would recover all that they lost to testify to the truth, thus Jesus
added by your perseverance you will secure your lives. The perseverance in suffering for
God, patience in suffering, the generous sacrifice of what they had most dear, would give
them eternal joy in Heaven and then all the pain suffered would seem like nothing and
everything that seemed lost would appear to be an invaluable gain.

Are we in the historical period foretold by Jesus?

This is what Jesus promised to his followers and yet, despite having raised the
bloody standard of the Cross, He had an immense number of followers, which is a
characteristic of those who are truthful. False leaders either arouse fanaticism or promise

_____________________________
†
Translator’s note: Don Dolindo refers to the martyrs during the Red Terror in Spain in which tens of thousands of
people including 6,832 members of the Catholic clergy were killed in the summer of 1936.

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glory and earthly gains; Jesus Christ instead proposes a path full of thorns and sacrifices to
his people, but surrounded by great peace and serenity, they walk a painful path not only
without complaining, but also without having to worry about what to say to those who
persecute them.
It is the characteristic of those who peacefully trust in God without being rash or arrogant;
they are conscious of their own weaknesses and they surrender themselves to the mercy of
God with the supernatural force that comes to them from the Holy Spirit. Can we believe
that we are already in the historical period of the life of the Church foretold by Jesus? It
seems possible to assume it, because among these wars and revolutions of peoples, we
have witnessed and we are witnessing a great number of heroic Martyrs. Also, much to
our sorrow, the war that broke out on September 3, 1939, already begins to show that it
has a universal character, and the way in which wars are waged today, unfortunately, is
precisely one of nation against nation, and kingdom against kingdom.
Not only are armies storming into battle, but also entire peoples and whole nations
are being transformed into battlefields and theaters of war. By the very way that wars are
waged today, a global war will necessarily have as a consequence the outbreak of famine
and infectious diseases, because today we have come to the unprecedented barbarism of
poisoning cities with toxic gas and rain down upon them balloons full of pestilential
microbes from airplanes. Also, when the conflagration will be fully underway, every
business will close down and hunger will be very widespread throughout earth. It will not
be a usual famine, but rather it will be a time of general hunger, because a universal war
will destroy production and wealth everywhere*. It is necessary to pray and pray, and if
we were to get to the end of these tribulations, we must raise our eyes to God alone,
sincerely implore His forgiveness, and beg for our eternal life.

The end of Jerusalem

After referring to the terrible time of conflagration that will precede the kingdom
of God, Jesus spoke clearly of the impending doom of Jerusalem to exhort his disciples to
save themselves and also to note that its ruin was a presage of the destruction that will
occur in the end times. So he added: When you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, know
that its desolation is at hand. Then those in Judea must flee to the mountains. Let those
within the city escape from it, and let those in the countryside not enter the city, for these
days are the time of punishment when all the scriptures are fulfilled.
In fact, the destruction of Jerusalem happened in that very way: the Romans
surrounded the city with soldiers, and the disciples of Jesus running away from the city
saved themselves, while the Jews perished. Also the exodus by part of the population from
the city was a portent of the mass emigrations of the populations living in big cities that
we ourselves witness today; and the words of Jesus seem almost the same as the orders
that today are given to the people living in big metropolitan centers: move out of your
house, take shelter in the mountains or in the countryside, and those already away should
not return.**

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Alludes to germ warfare and other weapons of mass destruction that were subsequently widely used in the last world
war, including the atomic bombs.
†
Translator’s note: that is, during the time when Don Dolindo was writing this book, at the onset of World War II.

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 Jesus added: Woe to pregnant women and nursing mothers in those days, for a
terrible calamity will come upon the earth and a wrathful judgment upon this people.
They will fall by the edge of the sword and be taken as captives to all the Gentiles; and
Jerusalem will be trampled underfoot by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are
fulfilled. During the terrible tribulation that struck Jerusalem, those who suffered the most
were pregnant women and those who were breastfeeding, as they would have been unable
to escape easily and worried about their tender offspring. For men or single women it was
easier to escape the fury of the battle and endure the tribulations caused by the terrible
siege. The holy city, in fact, was surrounded on all sides without the possibility of escape,
and so the ensuing famine decimated its inhabitants. The end of the war also occurred as
Jesus predicted as many of the inhabitants were killed and others were sold as slaves
among the nations of the Gentiles.
Jerusalem was destroyed—not one stone upon another remained; and since then
the Jews have never dominated it again, nor will it ever be until the times of the Gentiles
are fulfilled, that is until the end of time. In the course of about twenty centuries, every
time the Jews have tried to repossess Jerusalem, they have been sharply driven away, and
even today the Zionist attempt† supported by armed forces from England, has failed
miserably among the massacres that still cause bloodshed in the unfortunate city.

The end of the world

After the announcement of the impending destruction of Jerusalem, Jesus spoke

about the end of the world and of the universal judgment. He said, Jerusalem will be
trampled underfoot by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled, which
meant up to the time when the Gentiles would also be punished because of their iniquity;
now since this will happen at the end of the world, He immediately touched upon the
specific signs and characteristics that would be presage it. In fact, in addition to a new and
more dreadful conflagration of nations that will ravage earth, there will be signs in the
sun, the moon, and the stars, which means, as St. Matthew (Mt 24:29) and St. Mark (Mk
13:14) write, the sun will darken, and consequently the moon will appear a bloody red,
and the universe will be shaken and disturbed. On earth there will be extremely violent
earthquakes, tsunamis and atmospheric shock waves, and people will be terrified, not
knowing what will happen in the midst of the thundering power of heaven.
With the frightening upheaval of all the forces of creation, the earth will be
destroyed and all the works made by man will perish since he moved away from God in
his miserable pride. Then Jesus Christ will appear on a cloud of heaven—that is, in radiant
glory, and with great power and majesty; He will come to judge all men and give each one
what he has deserved. The dead will rise again with their own bodies, the righteous in
glory and the wicked in darkness, and appear before the Eternal Judge.

---------------------------------------------------
†
Translator’s note: At the time of Don Dolindo’s writing, the State of Israel had not yet been established. It was
established in 1948. This was the current interpretation of his words during that time period; but prophecies always have
a mysterious side. In our times, Jerusalem is capital of the Jewish State of Israel.

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 After man’s enormous desecration of the divine glory on earth, and after so many
tears shed for this reason by righteous people, it will be a great act of justice to restore the
will of God, the truth and the good. Then everyone shall see that in reality the wicked did
not prosper, and the terrible problem of evil’s seeming triumph over good will have its
clear resolution. The empty vanity of the temporal triumphs of the wicked will appear
before the awestruck world, and the hunger and thirst for righteousness that the righteous
had throughout their lives will be truly satisfied.
Who in loving the Lord and following His Law is not troubled and consumed by
seeing the injustices of the present life?
Who does not question the Lord, in the depths of his soul, and in sorrow says: why
my God, do You let this happen? Well, if He answered: be at peace, because in the
evening you will see the justice and glory of God, one would find peace in waiting. The
time needed to arrive to the judgment of God is shorter than a day or even than an hour,
and because the Lord, in His mercy, wants to harvest as much as possible from his field,
down to the last cluster of grapes, He makes his righteous wait until the completion of the
times of the evildoers. In this way they will not have any excuse for their doom and shall
reap during their lives those wretched moments of transient satisfaction, the only reward
that justice gives to them because of some minimal natural good deed that even the most
perverse people have done during their lifetimes.
In the Last Judgment the centuries will appear what they are, a fleeting moment,
and the triumph of the good will appear as the true triumph. It takes a little patience,
because the wait is not long, and the merciful Lord has us falling asleep in death, after a
few years of life, because in sleeping we are not aware of the length of time that elapses,
that for us would seem endless. Let us rest in God, abandoning ourselves to Him, trusting
in His justice and goodness and during the hours of tribulation let us look forward to His
hour.

4. What this means for us who await the great tribulation, the Kingdom of God and
the Universal Judgment.

After His unsettling declaration of the destruction of Jerusalem and the end of the
world, Jesus turns to his followers and to all mankind to indicate what attitude they should
have during the great tribulation that they will witness. The first thing they will do will be
to raise their eyes to heaven and to trust in God, expecting his spiritual mercies: Stand
erect and raise your heads because your redemption is at hand. Every punishment has a
merciful purpose in the ways God operates and the final punishment will herald the Lord’s
kingdom and the full triumph of the Church; finally when the divine words of Jesus begin
to take place, the soul must find comfort and hope in the kingdom of God.
When the fig tree germinates and produces its fruits and when the trees are laden
with their fruit, we understand that summer is close; thus when the predicted great
tribulation comes to the earth it will be a sign of the approaching kingdom of God.
The destruction of Jerusalem was the prelude to the spread of the Gospel in the
world, the first stage of the kingdom of God; the terrible tribulations of the universal
conflagration are the prelude to the triumphant reign of God over the nations; the
tribulations of the end of the world will be the prelude to the glorious and eternal kingdom

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of God with his elect in Paradise.
Jesus Christ spoke to all in every time period of these three great events in the
history of redemption, but because He addressed His words to the Jews, His words had a
particular importance to them. The destruction of Jerusalem was for His disciples a
terrible disaster, that filled them with immense bitterness, and therefore Jesus comforted
them, saying it was not the destruction of the Jewish nation, but the beginning of its
redemption, that is, their salvation in the incorporation of the Church and their share in the
fruits of redemption.
However in order that they might believe that what He said about Jerusalem was not a
distant event, he added, alluding just to the ruin of the holy city: Amen, I say to you, this
generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place.
It would have been very pernicious for his disciples to believe that the event be far
away, because it would not have occurred to them to seek safety in time, as He had
suggested, and therefore He added with more emphasis: Heaven and earth will pass away,
but my words will not pass away. There was, therefore, no way to be deceived; what He
was announcing about Jerusalem would have taken place soon, and at the first warnings of
the upcoming event they should have to look promptly for safety.
Afterwards, addressing specifically to what men would suffer in the great
tribulations of the world, and for those who would live in the end times before the final
judgment, but also talking to the Jews who were listening to him, Jesus added, Beware
that your hearts do not become drowsy from carousing and drunkenness and the anxieties
of daily life, and that day catch you by surprise like a trap. For that day will assault
everyone who lives on the face of the earth.
In fact, it will be common during the times prior to the great tribulation that the
search for pleasure and the relentless concerns of daily life will become all-consuming,
which we already see in our generation. The world has become a bar, a theater and a
workplace; people seek the pleasure of the senses more intensely than ever; they are
distracted by the array of delights brought to their homes by radio, television and the
media; and people work unceasingly and assiduously for their present, material lives to
the point that they forget their spiritual lives completely. For all those who live in this
unworthy manner the tribulation will come as a surprise, similar to the surprise birds
experience when ensnared in a net.
People will not think that it is the voice of God, nor will they think of having to
change their lives, believing the upheavals of nature to be due purely to natural causes.
Yet those times must be times of intense vigilance and prayer, because they will
not be common tribulations, but rather exceptional disasters from which only prayer can
offer us a way out, and the tribulations of the end times are cataclysms presaging the final
judgment. How can those who think that they will have to appear before the eternal Judge
live with such superficiality given these terrible phenomena that are heralding His
coming? And how can anyone run the risk of going unprepared before His presence?
Jesus Christ Himself wanted to give us an example of this vigilance in prayer and
the concern for matters of the spirit, and therefore the Sacred Text adds, not without
special reason, that Jesus was teaching during the day in the temple area, to guide the
souls in their attainment of eternal goods but at night he would leave and stay at the place
called the Mount of Olives. His concern for educating the people and his divine Word
therefore attracted very large crowds that went to the temple early every morning to listen

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to Him.
This must be our life during the time of the great tribulations already incumbent
upon the earth and which will continue until the end times: we must raise our eyes to God,
yearning for his kingdom; we must be zealous for the Glory of the Lord and the goodness
of souls and, without being carried away by our senses, we must mortify ourselves and
pray. We cannot remain indifferent when God calls us, and if Jesus said that it is
necessary to pray always, during the time of tribulation we must do it unceasingly for our
own good and that of others.
Jesus said be vigilant at all times and pray that you have the strength to escape the
tribulations that are imminent; therefore, certain hardships can be avoided or at least
mitigated through prayer.
If during the times of upheaval the nations would decide to promote public prayer,
how much more would this benefit the people rather than their material possessions, their
weapons and their tyrannical discipline!
And if the souls consecrated to God would especially consider the responsibility
they bear toward the people, how much more care would they have to preserve themselves
in sanctity, with mortifications and unceasing prayer!
It is not possible to promote the common good through idle chatter, but rather we
should be raising our hands in supplication and imploring God’s mercy*.

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* These are simple and yet profound reflections that could be very fruitful in our days if heeded by rulers
and consecrated souls.

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 Chapter 22
1. Conspiracy of the Sanhedrin and betrayal of Judas. The last supper and the
Institution of the Eucharist. The traitor revealed. The last admonitions of Jesus. At
Gethsemane. Betrayal and arrest of Jesus. Denial of Peter. Jesus mocked before the
Sanhedrin.

1 Now the days of the Feast of Unleavened Bread, which is called Passover, were
approaching. 2 And the leaders of the priests, and the scribes, were seeking a way to
execute Jesus. Yet truly, they were afraid of the people. 3 Then Satan entered into Judas,
who was surnamed Iscariot, one of the twelve. 4 And he went out and was speaking with
the leaders of the priests, and the magistrates, as to how he might hand him over to them.
5 And they were glad, and so they made an agreement to give him money. 6 And he made
a promise. And he was seeking an opportunity to hand him over, apart from the crowds. 7
Then the day of Unleavened Bread arrived, on which it was necessary to kill the Pascal
lamb. 8 And he sent Peter and John, saying, “Go out, and prepare the Passover for us, so
that we may eat.” 9 But they said, “Where do you want us to prepare it?” 10 And he said
to them: “Behold, as you are entering into the city, a certain man will meet you, carrying
a pitcher of water. Follow him to the house into which he enters. 11 And you shall say to
the father of the household: ‘The Teacher says to you: Where is the guestroom, where I
may eat the Passover with my disciples?’ 12 And he will show you a large cenacle, fully
furnished. And so, prepare it there.” 13 And going out, they found it to be just as he had
told them. And they prepared the Passover. 14 And when the hour had arrived, he sat
down at table, and the twelve Apostles with him. 15 And he said to them: “With longing
have I desired to eat this Passover with you, before I suffer. 16 For I say to you, that from
this time, I will not eat it, until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God.” 17 And having taken
the chalice, he gave thanks, and he said: “Take this and share it among yourselves. 18
For I say to you, that I will not drink from the fruit of the vine, until the kingdom of God
arrives.” 19 And taking bread, he gave thanks and broke it and gave it to them, saying:
“This is my body, which is given for you. Do this as a commemoration of me.” 20
Similarly also, he took the chalice, after he had eaten the meal, saying: “This chalice is
the new covenant in my blood, which will be shed for you. 21 But in truth, behold, the
hand of my betrayer is with me at table. 22 And indeed, the Son of man goes according to
what has been determined. And yet, woe to that man by whom he will be betrayed.” 23
And they began to inquire among themselves, as to which of them might do this. 24 Now
there was also a contention among them, as to which of them seemed to be the greater. 25
And he said to them: “The kings of the Gentiles dominate them; and those who hold
authority over them are called beneficent. 26 But it must not be so with you. Instead,
whoever is greater among you, let him become the lesser. And whoever is the leader, let
him become the server. 27 For who is greater: he who sits at table, or he who serves? Is
not he who sits at table? Yet I am in your midst as one who serves. 28 But you are those
who have remained with me during my trials. 29 And I dispose to you, just as my Father
has disposed to me, a kingdom, 30 so that you may eat and drink at my table in my
kingdom, and so that you may sit upon thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.” 31
And the Lord said: “Simon, Simon! Behold, Satan has asked for you, so that he may sift

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you like wheat. 32 But I have prayed for you, so that your faith may not fail, and so that
you, once converted, may confirm your brothers.” 33 And he said to him, “Lord, I am
prepared to go with you, even to prison and to death.” 34 And he said, “I say to you,
Peter, the rooster will not crow this day, until you have three times denied that you know
me.” And he said to them, 35 “When I sent you without money or provisions or shoes, did
you lack anything?” 36 And they said, “Nothing.” Then he said to them: “But now, let
whoever has money take it, and likewise with provisions. And whoever does not have
these, let him sell his coat and buy a sword. 37 For I say to you, that what has been
written must still be fulfilled in me: ‘And he was esteemed with the wicked.’ Yet even these
things about me have an end.” 38 So they said, “Lord, behold, there are two swords
here.” But he said to them, “It is sufficient.” 39 And departing, he went out, according to
his custom, to the Mount of Olives. And his disciples also followed him. 40 And when he
had arrived at the place, he said to them: “Pray, lest you enter into temptation.” 41 And
he was separated from them by about a stone’s throw. And kneeling down, he prayed, 42
saying: “Father, if you are willing, take this chalice away from me. Yet truly, let not my
will, but yours, be done.” 43 Then an Angel appeared to him from heaven, strengthening
him. And being in agony, he prayed more intensely; 44 and so his sweat became like
drops of blood, running down to the ground. 45 And when he had risen up from prayer
and had gone to his disciples, he found them sleeping out of sorrow. 46 And he said to
them: “Why are you sleeping? Rise up, pray, lest you enter into temptation.” 47 While he
was still speaking, behold, a crowd arrived. And he who is called Judas, one of the twelve,
went ahead of them and approached Jesus, in order to kiss him. 48 And Jesus said to him,
“Judas, do you betray the Son of man with a kiss? 49 Then those who were around him,
realizing what was about to happen, said to him: “Lord, shall we strike with the sword?”
50 And one of them struck the servant of the high priest and cut off his right ear. 51 But in
response, Jesus said, “Permit even this.” And when he had touched his ear, he healed
him. 52 Then Jesus said to the leaders of the priests, and the magistrates of the temple,
and the elders, who had come to him: “Have you gone out, as if against a thief, with
swords and clubs? 53 When I was with you each day in the temple, you did not extend
your hands against me. But this is your hour and that of the power of darkness.” 54 And
apprehending him, they led him to the house of the high priest. Yet truly, Peter followed at
a distance. 55 Now as they were sitting around a fire, which had been kindled in the
middle of the atrium, Peter was in their midst. 56 And when a certain woman servant had
seen him sitting in its light, and had looked at him intently, she said, “This one was also
with him.” 57 But he denied him by saying, “Woman, I do not know him.” 58 And after a
little while, another one, seeing him, said, “You also are one of them.” Yet Peter said, “O
man, I am not.” 59 And after the interval of about one hour had passed, someone else
affirmed it, saying: “Truly, this one also was with him. For he is also a Galilean.” 60 And
Peter said: “Man, I do not know what you are saying.” And at once, while he was still
speaking, the rooster crowed. 61 And the Lord turned around and looked at Peter. And
Peter remembered the word of the Lord that he had said: “For before the rooster crows,
you will deny me three times.” 62 And going out, Peter wept bitterly. 63 And the men who
were holding him ridiculed him and beat him. 64 And they blindfolded him and repeatedly
struck his face. And they questioned him, saying: “Prophesy! Who is it that struck you?”
65 And blaspheming in many other ways, they spoke against him. 66 And when it was
daytime, the elders of the people, and the leaders of the priests, and the scribes convened.

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And they led him into their council, saying, “If you are the Christ, tell us.” 67 And he said
to them: “If I tell you, you will not believe me. 68 And if I also question you, you will not
answer me. Neither will you release me. 69 But from this time, the Son of man will be
sitting at the right hand of the power of God.” 70 Then they all said, “So you are the Son
of God?” And he said. “You are saying that I am.” 71 And they said: “Why do we still
require testimony? For we have heard it ourselves, from his own mouth.”
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2. The betrayal of Judas and the psychology of his betrayal.

The feast of the Passover was approaching and as it is written in St. Matthew (Mt
26:2) and in St. Mark (Mk 14:1) it would be celebrated in two days time. The chief priests
and the scribes, noticing that the crowd of people that would come to listen to Jesus teach
in the Temple was becoming larger and larger as the flow of pilgrims coming to celebrate
the solemnity in Jerusalem increased, became worried and had a meeting to decide how
they would kill the Redeemer without causing an uproar among the people. They had not
believed that Jesus was so popular and that His words could attract the people so much;
they became convinced of this, however, when they saw that the pilgrims coming into
Jerusalem also crowded the Temple to listen to Him, and so they decided that this
movement had to be crushed at all costs, as news of Him was also spreading to other
regions. However as the participation of the people increased, the less courage they had to
act openly against Jesus and for this reason they were looking for the best opportunity to
kill Him.
The opportunity came to them from one whom they would have least expected—
from Judas Iscariot, one of the Apostles.
For long time Judas had followed Jesus with a false and hostile mind; he was
among His disciples in body but not in spirit, and indeed his attitude was actually secretly
hostile. He was almost obsessed about his future, and because the life he was leading,
going from place to place in poverty, did not give him any assurance for his future well
being, and having been put in charge of keeping the alms that were given to them, he had
begun to take some surreptitiously for himself.
He had started to follow Jesus with the enthusiasm of those who seek great
triumphs and great temporal advantages; he had seen these illusions fade, and indeed also
the pressure of the persecution against the divine Rabbi had persuaded him that he had run
into a false prophet. He lost that little faith, more natural than supernatural, that he had had
before, and had become a merciless critic in his heart of all the actions of Jesus and that
was much more dangerous because he kept these ideas to himself.
The Sacred Text says that Satan entered into Judas, not to make him obsessed or
irresponsible, but to instill in him a spirit that was distrustful, critical, suspicious and
capricious and to give him an increasing obsession with his material situation. Judas
wanted at all costs to create a strong position for himself and maybe in the beginning he
also had the illusion of being able to make the situation less precarious for the others; he
had not accepted the choice of voluntary poverty, he had no trust in God, and when he
believed that the time had come for him to make a good profit, he did not hesitate to throw
himself into the abyss of treason.
In a sly and dishonest way he was certainly in contact with the priests of the
temple and the scribes; they had become aware of his doubts and tried to separate him

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from Jesus; in the beginning Satan deceived him making him believe that after all it was
the authority of the Sanhedrin that disapproved of the Rabbi. When he knew that they
were plotting against Him, Satan put in his heart the possibility of making a lavish gain by
betraying Him, and without any further hesitation he went to the High Priests to negotiate
the betrayal. Maybe he was deceived and tried to justify himself in his own conscience
thinking to get rid of an impostor; it is possible to suppose this from the desperate sorrow
he felt when he realized that Jesus was a just man seeing His patience during the Passion
and hearing Pilate proclaiming His innocence.
He had not asked a fixed price for his treachery but relied on the Priests precisely
because he hoped to make a good profit. However since he had given him away as an
impostor, in order not to appear before the Priests as a traitor, he had to accept the thirty
pieces of silver they offered him that at the time was the price of a slave. He certainly was
greatly disappointed for this paltry sum, but he did not show it, and maybe it was one of
the reasons why when he went to give the money back he threw it on the ground, not so
much because he felt sorry for his betrayal but for the anger of having received so little for
it. Had he truly repented, even a little bit, God would have given him the grace to truly
repent.

The act of Judas is repeated every day.

Sorrowfully, the act of Judas is repeated every day, because every day there are
many souls who in their hearts betray Jesus and hand Him over to His enemies. Satan
enters in these individuals with the same temptation he used with Adam and Judas: the
desire to achieve a greater good. If a soul is spiritual, Satan does not attack immediately
with material illusion, but tries to distort his conscience and his ways; if a soul is only
interested in material goods, Satan shows him the benefits, earnings and entertainment
that he can find in the evil. It is necessary to be vigilant and to pray in order not to fall into
these temptations and betray Jesus in our heart.
Judas went to the Priests; but he went with a false heart, he did not turn to their authority
but to their malice and thus found in this the help for his own ruin.
The same thing can happen to souls who are already being taken by Satan because
of a disordered passion, an aberration, or by moving far away from the divine Will: they
go to the Priests, but they go with a false heart and so find darkness, confusion and
sometimes their own ruin. Moreover, if they have the misfortune of going to a bad Priest,
who already betrays Jesus with his disorderly life, they go to offer him the way to kill
Jesus all over again, and so together they fall into an abyss of death for the most vile price
of a material pleasure or a false and wicked ideal.
How many souls, deluded by Satan, move away from the Divine Will, remove
themselves from the salvific actions of Jesus, and go to the Priests to find confirmation
and encouragement to their delusions!
How many souls, instead of seeking direction, presume to direct the Priests, and
push them to erring as Eve pushed Adam to ruin!
Hence it is not right simply to say: I asked the advice of a Priest, to justify one’s
delusions and miseries, because it is necessary to see in what way the advice of the
Minister of God is requested and to which Minister of God a person goes. In a special
situation, for example, that goes beyond ordinary spiritual providence it is not enough to

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go to any Priest, but rather it requires a particularly enlightened and saintly Priest; a
mystic soul, for instance, cannot be guided by just any Priest; much less by one who is
sorrowfully diametrically opposed to sublime elevation.
There is no doubt that God gives light to the righteous Priest and even to a not so
righteous Priest when a soul goes to him in all sincerity, trusting in God.
In ordinary Providence, spiritual direction can be seen as a beam of light that
depends on two vertices that must meet: the Confessor and the penitent, and the current of
grace that flows through them; when one vertex is not aligned with the other, the current
cannot flow and instead of having light there is darkness.

3. Preparation for the Passover supper and Institution of the Eucharist.

On the day of Unleavened Bread, that is the first of the seven days of the Passover
festival, during which only unleavened bread was eaten, Jesus sent Peter and John to
prepare what was needed for their ritual supper. He did not have a house—let alone a
room big enough to celebrate it—and so he called upon the hospitality of a friend.
It was common, in those times, to host pilgrims who came to Jerusalem who did
not have a place in which to gather together.
Judas, after making his pact with the Chief Priests, was more suspicious and
careful than ever; watching every move the Master made in order to find the opportunity
to betray Him; as consequence Jesus, having asked Nicodemus or someone related to the
Sanhedrin most likely to host them, did not want to expose this host to reprisals, and
especially he did not want Judas to do his betrayal at the Last Supper; thus he spoke to
Peter and John in veiled way in order that they would be able to find his friend and Judas
would not know where, until the start of the Last Supper.
With his divine foreknowledge Jesus knew everything and for this reason he gave
precise directives to his two Apostles on how to find the friend who would give them
hospitality: on entering the city they would meet a man who was carrying a jug of water;
they would have to follow him to the house that he was going to enter which was the
house of his friend, and ask him for his hospitality in the Master’s name; there they were
to prepare what was necessary for the Passover meal. Judas must have been very
displeased from the Master’s distrustful act because it was he that, being in charge of the
alms purse, was taking care of all their material expenses; but he could not show his
discontentment for fear of revealing himself. Further, he had to give money from the purse
for the necessary expenses, and must have irritated him greatly, because in trying to derive
a profit from his betrayal, he avariciously considered every additional expense
unnecessary at this point.
Peter and John found everything as Jesus had told them and prepared for the
supper, and Jesus with the other apostles went to the house where they sat down for the
meal.
From the narrative of St. Luke it is evident that Judas was also present and
participated in the dinner, but one can only imagine in what mood he had had to be in!
Already a traitor, with the price of his treachery in his pocket, without faith, in a spirit full
of hatred towards the Master and everyone else, he saw everything in a sinister light, and
the outpouring of the infinite love of Jesus only increased his resentment and animosity
against Him.

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 Everything that was occurring was getting on his nerves; it seemed arbitrary,
stupid, contrary to the Law, and more and more the idea of putting an end to what for him
looked like a boisterous gathering of fanatic and spirited souls became rooted in his mind.
He was terribly out of place in that great manifestation of love and yet he was not able to
prevent its effusiveness. He certainly weighed like a deadly nightmare on the Heart of
Jesus and cast on the others a sense of darkness and gloom, but nevertheless he could not
cancel the shining light of that ineffable moment.
Jesus was seated at the center of the table; He had an otherworldly, divine
appearance. His beautiful face radiated majesty, love, goodness and peace and also a
gentle and profound sadness, which gave a shadow to that awesome sight and made it
more beautiful.
His Divinity, concealed by his most holy humanity, emanated from those
mysteriously sculpted and beautiful features; his eyes shone and reflected Heaven, His
cheeks were ruddy and His blonde beard gave a golden aura to the splendor of His
goodness. That face reflected His Heart and in His composure and full modesty there was
something maternal, something immensely maternal.
He was the bridegroom of the Canticles that was giving himself in that moment;
and in that moment the door of his charity opened, exuding essences of love embracing
the souls of all the centuries, embracing His Church and giving to Her His life.
He looked around at His disciples and with His eyes wrapped all of them up with
love as the rising sun envelops a cold, bleak rock.
The disciples were narrow-minded and poor in spirit and did not even understand
what He was going to do, but they were His own and He loved them immensely. He had
come to earth to sustain human infirmity and gave Himself to sustain their life; the very
narrow minds of his Apostles increased his feelings of tenderness and so He exclaimed: I
have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer; and to make it more
clear to them that He now was leaving them, added: for, I tell you, I shall not eat it (again)
until there is fulfillment in the kingdom of God.
He therefore was celebrating the last supper with his dear disciples; being with
them once more for a supper full of love when the gift He was to give to them, in that
moment would be fulfilled in the kingdom of God, with the complete manifestation of His
love in the eternal glory. However, as He was now offering himself to remain with them
on earth, that family intimacy of the last Supper, in which He gave himself
unconditionally and without consideration for the lack of preparation and unworthiness of
those to whom he gave Himself, would only be renewed and accomplished in the kingdom
of God, that is, in the triumph of His love on earth once more, when He would give
Himself again in a great Eucharistic effusiveness.
Jesus, therefore, with a single expression, touched upon the two fulfillments of His
mystery of love: the fulfillment that would occur in the end times with the triumph of the
Church, when the growth of His love in the world would be so great that He would feel to
be almost at table with His children, and the fulfillment of love that would occur in the
Eternal Kingdom, where He would be and will be food of eternal happiness for His
triumphant Church.
The Apostles did not understand his words, nor did they want to understand them,
because they did not want to accept that He was leaving them; they believed that he was
talking about the temporal, imminent triumph that they were awaiting, therefore Jesus

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persisted in this vein with a more overt action: He took the cup of wine that the head of
the family used to drink and distribute to diners at the beginning of the Passover meal, and
after blessing it, he gave to his dear disciples saying: Take this and share it with each
other, for I tell you (that) from now on I shall not drink of the fruit of the vine until the
Kingdom of God comes.
He did not yet give them the Eucharistic cup, but that of the supper, and He gave it
to announce again His death and the accomplishment of the meal of love in the triumph of
the Church and the Eternal Kingdom.
It was a solemn moment, and the Angels descended from Heaven to contemplate
it. At that moment the greatest miracle of God was going to be accomplished, and it was
accomplished in that moment by only one word of the Humanized Word.
The Lord himself wanted to give us an idea of the magnitude of that instantaneous
miracle of love that would transubstantiate the bread and wine into the Body and Blood of
the Redeemer, by showing us that the material that he would transform at the most
fundamental level came from transformations of matter over many millions of years and
centuries! In the beginning He created the heavens and the earth, but those heavens are
still evolving in their marvelous order, and earth is still changing in its structure.
Jesus Christ with one word of omnipotent love was going to accomplish something
far, far greater.
He was already as if transfigured, but He was now going transfigure himself even
further… His face was mysterious, very sweet, pensive, deep in thought, ... it was like the
face of God: powerful, wise and loving. He had the assurance of someone who can do
everything, the brightness of one who knows all things and accomplishes all things with
wisdom, and the sweetness of one who gives Himself to pure love. The Angels nearly
suspended their actions completely, and the heavens nearly stopped their harmonious
motion. Jesus took the bread, raised His eyes to heaven, gave thanks, which means He
prayed ardently thanking the Father for the great gift He gave to mankind; broke the bread
distributed it to His Apostles, and exclaimed with a peaceful loving voice, at which the
laws of creation halted in adoration and obedience, nearly disappearing before Him: This
is my body, which will be given for you; do this in memory of me. The substance of the
bread was as if it had been struck by the almighty word and vanished, yielding to the
substance of the Body of the Redeemer; and because He had not pronounced His almighty
word on a specific quantity of bread, it, together with all its pieces, hung like a veil of that
divine substance.
It was the Ark of the new covenant hidden in mystery and concealed by veils; an
ark of shining gold for the Divinity of the Redeemer, true manna from heaven, bread of
life, law of a new love, admirable sacrifice of the Eternal Priest. The bread was no longer
bread, it was Him; He truly lived both in the dimension of his Body and in the dimension
of the bread; and as He could not divide His dimensional body to give to all, He divided
the bread; but because these two dimensions were fortuitous and in both the substance of
His Body was totally given, each part of the bread contained Him as He is, complete, in
body, blood, soul and Divinity. What a profound mystery!
He paused a moment; the Apostles were eating the bread of life; He was in them
and vivified them. His love had reached the apex of His dedication, no human love could
go so far, because if one could ever attempt to do what He did, he would die, and would
be unable to give any life-giving love to the soul or heart, and at the very most become a

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source of “food” that, at the very most, could sustain temporarily the physical life of the
body. The Apostles almost did not notice this divine gift; they felt in themselves a new
life but did not know yet how to discern it. As for Jesus, He was rejoicing in His love,
penetrating them, enveloping, kissing them in the depths of their inner being, and going
through them as current of infinite charity.
But He was not yet satisfied: He had given Himself to them as food, but He also
wanted to give Himself as drink; He had given His entire body and wanted to give His
Blood, sacrificing Himself for love. He wanted to separate it from His Body at all costs, to
anticipate and perpetuate its outpouring through the centuries until the end of the times.
Thus, He took the cup filled with wine, gave it to his beloved ones and exclaimed the
same omnipotent and transubstantiating words: This cup is the new Covenant in my Blood,
which will be shed for you. He did not shed it, but He gave it sacramentally, separate from
the Body; He gave it as a sacrifice of love; it was His very Blood, not a symbol; it was the
same that would soon be shed and not figuratively; it was the Blood of the sacrifice of the
Cross that would shortly be consummated in the betrayal of Judas, and for this reason
Jesus to remove any doubt added: behold, the hand of the one who is to betray me is with
me on the table*.

4. Jesus announces the betrayal and Peter’s denial

The divine face radiating immense love darkened and became contracted in an
expression of agony, in proportion to the love with which He had given Himself: He
sacrificed Himself for love, and one of His beloved ones was going to sacrifice Him for
hate, He gave His whole Self, an immeasurable treasure, and the ungrateful Apostle would
barter Him for thirty wretched coins; He gave to save, and the unfaithful Apostle would
sell Him to lose his own self! What an excruciating pain for Jesus! He therefore added: for
the Son of Man indeed goes as it has been determined; but woe to that man by whom he is
betrayed.
He would sacrifice Himself by leaving this earth, undergoing death; he would even
use the betrayal of the unfaithful Apostle and let death snatch Him, but this would not
minimize the awful crime of the traitor, for which he would suffer eternal ruin.
At the words of Jesus the Apostles were dismayed, and they began to ask one
another, before asking the Divine Master who among them would commit so great a
crime. However their hearts were not yet mature, and they did not have a deep
understanding of the words of Jesus; it seemed impossible that one of them would betray
Him and so after a moment of astonishment, they returned to their mentality: hoping in the
temporal realm of the Master, and hoping to have high places in this realm, questioning
even then which one of them would be considered the first.
Jesus Christ did not deny that they would have had places of responsibility in His
spiritual kingdom, because in truth, He came to build His Church as a perfect society; but
He also did determine the real nature of the power that He would confer upon them and
what their practical duties would be.

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*A very clear explanation that reminds us of the great mystery. The Eucharist contains two great signs for
the sacrifice in which the consecrated bread and the consecrated wine are required: true food and true drink.

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 The kings of the Gentiles, He said, lord it over the people and those who are in
authority over them are addressed as benefactors. They govern as dictators, that is
without charity, and through the use of force; but nevertheless they are called benefactors
because by dominating their subjects, they demand to be honored at all costs.
Authority in the world at that time (and today) meant being in command, and those
who were high up demanded honor and money; the Apostles and their successors, on the
other hand, were not to be like that; they were ministers of goodness and servants of God;
they had to be like the least among their subjects, with loving charity, and had to be like
servants of souls.
With a delicate act of humility and explaining his teaching with an example, Jesus
added, For who is greater: the one seated at table or the one who serves? Is it not the one
seated at table? I am among you as the one who serves. He did not clearly say that He was
the very supreme majesty, but was humbly vague, almost as if it repulsed Him to say more
at that time.
He was the first among all people in every century, and yet He reduced Himself to
be as a servant among all of them and a servant of all souls, offering Himself to them as
food and very soon as victim. This was the character of the power that He would establish
in His Kingdom.
The Apostles were waiting for His kingdom, but they conceived it in a completely
natural sense; Jesus did not deny that He would establish a kingdom in which they would
have great power, and lovingly He told them that He had prepared it for them because
they had been with Him through His trials; He prepared it as a recompense for their
fidelity, but He added that it would be similar to the kingdom that His Father had given
Him. They would have to, as He did, announce the truth and, like himself, they would
have to suffer and to crown their lives with martyrdom, as He would shortly crown His
own with His immolation on Calvary, but afterwards they would receive the eternal prize
of eternal happiness, almost a banquet of eternal life, and would be exalted on the Day of
Judgment as judges of the world.
With immense delicacy, Jesus did not say anything about the pains they would
have to suffer, but mentioned only the prize they would have. He essentially stopped
Himself from going further: after speaking in veiled terms about the kingdom that would
be theirs, just as my Father has conferred one on me, He only mentioned the eternal
nature of this kingdom. It was too painful for Him at that time to tell them of the future
pains that they would have to endure.
However, He wanted to alert them to the events that were about to unfold, since
the hour was approaching; He did so with great charity, little by little, turning first to
Peter, who one day as head of the Church would have to strengthen the faith and courage
of his companions and of all the faithful. Jesus called him two times, as a sign of loving
affection because of the danger that loomed over him and over all the Apostles and said,
Simon, Simon, behold Satan has demanded to sift all of you like wheat, meaning to
torment and to confuse you, shaking you as grain through a sieve, but I have prayed that
your own faith may not fail; and once you have turned back, you must strengthen your
brothers.
It was the announcement of a big storm, and Peter understood that He spoke of the
imminent persecution that would be unleashed against the Master, according to what He
had already said beforehand; however, he did not like this veiled but accurate prediction

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of his fall that he believed impossible, and therefore he said that he felt that in his soul he
had the love to follow Him to prison or even to death. But Jesus sorrowfully replied: I tell
you, Peter, before the cock crows this day, you will deny three times that you know me.
And He meant to say: Before the new day begins, or as St. Mark notes explicitly: before
the cock crows the second time (Mk 14:30), at dawn, you will deny three times that you
know me. Not only he would not go with Him to prison or to death, he would even deny
knowing him.
The infallibility of the Pope

Jesus Christ had promised the Apostles a kingdom similar to the one that His
Father had prepared for Him, and this kingdom was the Church. Of course this kingdom
could not be without a head and Jesus turned to Peter, designating him as such, and
enjoined: you must strengthen your brothers in the faith. He could not have confirmed
them without having the authority and the grace and Jesus gave him the authority in that
command; He had already obtained the necessary grace for him, by praying for him that
his faith might not fail.
It is evident that Jesus spoke on the infallibility of Peter’s faith in being able to
confirm the others, that is from the teaching authority that He conferred upon him; it is
very clear that He spoke not only for that sorrowful time but for all times and for all souls,
thus for every successor that Peter would have in the supremacy conferred upon him. It is
also very clear, from the context, that Jesus Christ was not talking about the personal
infallibility of Peter in his life, which meant that he would be without faults, because
immediately afterward he foretold him that he would deny him three times.
The marvelous dogma of the supremacy and infallibility of the Pope was all in the
divine words of Jesus: the Pope cannot err in confirming others by a special grace
received from the prayer of Jesus; he can err in his life, as Peter erred, and may need
conversion, just as Peter did convert after denying his Master. Jesus prayed that Peter’s
faith in Him would not fail and in fact, despite the denial, he never quite lost it in the
privacy of his heart, so to speak, and especially he never lost his faith, according to the
prayer of Jesus, after his repentance; that faith bright and infallible, a special gift of the
Holy Spirit and a light of teaching for the whole Church.
Jesus prayed for Peter and was heard (Jn 11:42); thus it follows that since He
prayed for him as head of the kingdom which He established—that is, the Church, He
obviously also prayed for his successors, united to him in unbroken authority that will last
until the end of the time. This argument is so clear that it became the basis of the
definition of the infallibility of the Pope at the (ed. First) Vatican Council (see First
Dogmatic Constitution on the Church of Christ, Chapter 4)*.
Jesus Christ, after giving Peter the command to confirm his brothers and having
predicted to him how he would soon deny Him, continued with care to alert his dear ones
in advance of the imminent dangers and sorrows lying ahead. Satan was seeking them, or
--------------------------------------------------
* Both the mission of the supreme leader of the Church, and the infallibility in continuing to carry on this guidance for the direction of
the truth of the faith (in which Peter is called to confirm his brothers) are not gifts for the benefit or personal prestige of Peter or the
Pope, his successor, but are a guarantee for the people of God; otherwise among the thousands of individual interpretations of the word
of God, nobody would ever know where the truth can be found; therefore the infallibility in teaching does not involve any personal
privilege (and much less the impossibility to sin: Peter and all Popes can sin as any other man can), but serves only as a divine
assistance for those who believe.

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according to the Greek text, had obtained with his insistence from God the permission to
sift all of you like wheat as one day he did with Job and was already lying in wait to attack
them with the strongest storm of trouble. Jesus had put his ardent prayer for Peter in
opposition to Satan’s cruel insistence to God and had gotten for Peter and for all men, the
marvelous gift of the infallible faith, capable of withstanding the strongest storms;
however the storm would be severe and terrible, and so Jesus warns the Apostles, and with
them also warns the Church.
However, He did so indirectly in order to not worry them too much, and He also
wished they would understand it on their own. Therefore, He said to them: When I sent
you forth without a moneybag or a sack or sandals, were you in need of anything? And
they answered: No, nothing. Up to then He had provided them with great providence and
had defended them; but soon He would not be there with them anymore, and they would
have to provide and defend themselves.
With these words Jesus announced his death and predicted to them the hostility
they would encounter: when He sent them to preach, He sent them without provisions,
because they would always find generous families to give them hospitality as His
disciples; however, after his death, everyone would be against them and they would have
to not only provide for themselves, but to watch out and defend themselves from mortal
dangers. Jesus told them clearly the gravity of the dangers to which they would be
exposed with an allegory. He said: one who does not have a sword should sell his cloak
and buy one. For I tell you that this scripture must be fulfilled in me, namely, He was
counted among the wicked. With these words He wanted to say: I will be taken and put to
death; in fact, to be counted among the wicked meant just that, indeed it was an allusion
to his crucifixion, because only the most wicked were condemned to that infamous death.
The Apostles believed that He was referring to His being assaulted by thieves in
the night, and as they appeared to have two swords at hand in the banquet hall, pointed to
these possibly to get permission to bring them along, saying: Lord, look, there are two
swords here. But Jesus answered: It is enough! It is possible to believe that the Apostles
understood that two swords would be enough to defend themselves and took them with
them.
In fact, we find out later that Peter, in the Garden of Olives, was in possession of a
sword, and that he used it against the servants of the Chief Priest; it is difficult to imagine,
if not impossible, that Peter, a poor and peaceful fisherman would have had a sword, and
it is even more unbelievable that he had gone armed to the Passover meal; he most likely
found it in the house that had hosted them and since they had taken the donkey for the
entry of Jesus into Jerusalem without the permission of the owner, he probably believed to
be authorized by the words of the Master to take the swords and return them later.

The Church in her fights

In announcing to the Apostles the dangers which they were to encounter in the
apostolate and telling them to His Church, Jesus Christ recommended that they take care
in providing for themselves for their necessities and to buy a sword selling the cloak; with
these words He meant to say that the Church would have to procure what was necessary to
fulfill its mission as well as providing for its defense with the sword of the temporal
kingdoms when in danger from the threat of evildoers. To claim that the Church should

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not possess anything and that life in the apostolic manner is to possess absolutely nothing
is a utopian fantasy, because life on earth has essential temporal needs.
The Church lives amidst the world and therefore cannot eliminate its temporal
needs, especially in those places where the people’s lack of faith, or even the wickedness
of men forces Her to live as someone who is abandoned or persecuted. She cannot do
without the sword, which can include political support among the nations, without which
life among human beings would be impossible.
During major political crises of nations or during times of outright persecution She is
forced to sell the cloak to buy the sword, that is to even renounce to some external rights,
to a few prerogatives that do not affect Her in essence in order to obtain the sword, the
means to protect Her existence among the nations. Those who complain of the diplomatic
attitudes of the Church and presume to dictate to Her the rules of life show very clearly
that they do not understand that She is guided by the Holy Spirit and She knows better
than anyone else what She must do to live on earth*.
The Church is essentially peaceful, and by the example of Her Divine Master is
more willing to suffer than to react. However, there are terrible moments in the history of
the nations when the Church is counted among the wicked and thus persecuted—sought
after by evildoers to be put to death violently and diabolically by opportunists who usurp
the power of the state declaring themselves the established authority, while in reality they
are only imposters acting as leaders; in these cases the Church can also have the sword, in
order to drive out violence with violence, and to affirm, even by force, the rights of a
Catholic state, seized by a few self-imposed autocrats. This happened in Mexico, for
example, when Catholics formed the armies of Christ the King to fight the wicked
government controlled by Masons and atheists; it also happened in Spain at the time of the
Bolshevik revolution, which tried in every way to destroy the Faith. In these cases not
only does She have a right to take the sword but also a grave duty, because the protection
of the Faith against organized violence, which has the audacity to take possession of the
very organization of a Catholic state, includes the duty for the protection of souls and for
the very honor of God.
Whatever modern troublemakers think and whatever they say, claiming to reduce
the Church to a sect, She is and will always be the mother of the nations and the authentic
representation of God over all people on earth; thus she can and must protect the people
against the oppression of the wicked. When a Pope, Julius II, personally brandished the
sword and went up the battlements of the walls to free the people from a foreign invader,
he did not represent a conqueror, but an avenger of justice, trying to bring peace for the
salvation of souls. The pygmies look from the valley at certain historical situations, while

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* After the Ecumenical Council especially, there have been many discussions on whether or not the
Church—for her free and divine ministry—should have the aid of civil power. It is now believed that the
Church should not in any way have the care and protection of political power. This is why She does not ask
for privileges, but She demands that She be guaranteed full freedom to teach the Gospel, administer the
sacraments, and to be able to freely minister to believers all over the world.
The cooperation of States to enact good, just and honest laws, which increase brotherhood among the
people, is certainly humanly consistent and useful to the mission of the Church.

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they should look at them from above.*
The conflicts promoted many times by the Popes against the Turks was a fight for
true Christian freedom, similar to those brought against the heretics and were done in
self-defense of the truth against the propagation of errors. In certain historical events that
relate to the Popes and the Church, it is a thousand times wiser and more prudent not to
risk making judgments, which are almost always wrong, and instead to praise the
provisions and permissions of Providence which knows how to guide the events of the
world in righteousness and truth.

The Adoration on the Mount of Olives and the capture of Jesus.

Jesus Christ regularly went to pray by Himself on the Mount of Olives at night;
but after the meal and the institution of the Eucharist, the Apostles wanted to accompany
Him to the garden where He often prayed. He had spoken about swords, dangers, and
suffering, and they did not have the heart to leave Him alone. Besides, after the Institution
of the Eucharist, Jesus who had just vivified them through Himself, showed them such
kindness and tenderness that they felt an extraordinary attraction to Him. Jesus also,
having become truly one with them, did not wish to leave them; so that, when he departed
from them to go to pray, the Greek text uses an expression that purposely stresses the great
effort—indeed the painfully, wrenching effort—that He had to make in order to depart
from them.
The infinite love which He had already given, was already beginning to succumb
to the full sacrifice that would redeem all things and save; already that divine soul, shining
with infinite bliss, began to darken and the gloomy shadows of sadness were descending
upon that infinite lovable heart; He felt His divine life almost fading behind a tenebrous
curtain of stormy clouds and behind the mass of sins He was taking upon Himself. It
seems almost, using a bold phrase but truly in accordance with his inner pain, that He felt
almost a detachment from the Divinity, He felt Himself to be almost only entirely man,
suspended over an abyss of pain and dreadful anguish, that took His breath away and
made it hesitating; for this reason He desired the company of His beloved Apostles and
had to therefore agonizingly depart from them by as much as a stone's throw.
A deadly tedium assailed Him, a fear for what loomed ahead, an apprehension that
hung over Him entirely, a deep sadness for human ingratitude, and He wanted His dearest
ones to be close, almost to be sustained and helped by them; this is why He recommended
that they pray so as to not fall into temptation, that they not be overpowered by what was
going to happen, but remain faithful to Him and not doubt Him.
He moved away alone, recollected in his mortal anguish, and knelt humbly before
the Father and prayed.
He obviously did not only pray those few words recounted in the Sacred Scripture
- the epilogue of His prayer - but rather made profuse and intense supplications for all
mankind, that it be redeemed, renewed and saved.

------------------------------------------------------------------
*Evidently the modern historical context is far away in time and very different from that of Pope Julius II.
This is the reason why the mission of the Church is limited to teaching all men and to provide
encouragement to all those who pray, work and suffer for the freedom of the oppressed. Pope Paul VI spoke
authoritatively on this point at the United Nations and in Geneva.

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 Three times He prayed, as is recorded in St. Matthew (Mt 26:39-44) and three
times He went to His apostles to wake them up, expressing in His prayer that had become
agony, that is an extreme struggle, not only the immense anguish He was suffering in his
pains, but all that He felt for His Church. He prayed the first time for the Redemption of
all and saw the huge suffering that was to be its cost; his humanity was seized by terror
and asked the Father if it would be possible to remove the bitter cup, while offering
Himself entirely to the Divine Will.
He prayed a second time and asked that the fruits of the Redemption be fulfilled
completely because He saw as if pictured in front of Him the very sad spectacle of human
ingratitude and the apostasies of the last centuries. Upon seeing this vision he was taken
by a mortal tedium, because he did not want to suffer needlessly. However, He unified
Himself to the Divine Will and prayed for the renewal of humanity and the complete
triumph of God.
He prayed the third time imploring for the salvation of all souls, that is to say that
they be collected from all over the earth and brought into Paradise. He prayed in this way
for the three major stages, so to speak, of His work: the Redemption of all, the renewal of
the Kingdom of God, and the final epilogue which is the definitive collection of all people
into the eternal kingdom after the end of the world and the final judgment.
Each of His prayers culminated in an act of unity with the divine Will, and an
appeal to the Apostles to give Him comfort; but He found them asleep in their great
sadness. Jesus Christ, in fact, almost always finds asleep those who should comfort Him
and zealously honor Him for the salvation of souls. In the midst of conflicts faced by the
Church that have been started by wretched unbelievers, often His faithful are asleep,
indeed weighed down by sleep, and so do very little to console Him. Also it must be noted
that it was no accident that Jesus turned in particular to Peter as he slept; He looked into
the future, to those times of moral and spiritual lassitude in which Peter himself and the
Shepherds of the Church may fall asleep. Those few Popes that did not respond to their
high mission were asleep, and to them Jesus said: Watch and pray; could you not keep
watch for one hour? (Mk 37:38). Get up and pray that you may not undergo the test.
Instead those that were asleep did not wake up, and Jesus did not receive comfort when
the world rebelled and tried to erase His memory from the earth!... Therefore, it is
incumbent upon us in our times that we watch and pray fervently to console the agonizing
Jesus in His Mystical Body that is continuously assaulted and persecuted!
While Jesus was in the most severe moment of His agony, an angel appeared to
Him to comfort Him; the Apostles were asleep, Peter was weighed down by sleep, and the
Angel comforted Him to sustain His failing forces, as if His Divinity was being eclipsed.
He was comforted by the fact that He could to offer Himself to suffer and die
before the defilement of the Divine Glory, but this caused him such personal anguish that
he was overcome with agony and for the excruciating nature of His pains He began to
sweat blood so profusely that the ground became wet.
Science has frequently noted and explained the condition of sweating blood by
certain sick individuals, a condition called diapedesis; but the sweat of Jesus was
exceptional and extraordinary because it was a flood of blood; his suffering did not have
nor will ever have an analogue again on earth.

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 St. Luke, as a physician, noted this singular circumstance of Jesus’s agony that he
knew from the three Apostles that accompanied the Lord; they were asleep, in fact, but
Jesus went and awakened them three separate times so they could not miss to see Him
bloodied. St. Luke summarizes the three prayers of the Redeemer, maybe because he was
attracted by this phenomenon of sweating blood, and he tells of the last time that He went
to the Apostles and found them asleep.
Why are you sleeping? He said to them; get up and pray that you may not undergo
the test; but they woke up for a moment and then fell back into a deep sleep.
O my Jesus, why do we sleep when the world prepares snares for souls who are
part of your Mystical Body? Why do we not pray in those moments of great temptation
for the world? The Church cries out and we sleep? Why do we love You so little? Wake
us up, Lord, wake us up at least into a true and worthy apostolate of prayer. It is not an
apostolate to recite almost mechanically a few prayers, but rather enable us to deepen our
souls before God in the company of the agonizing Jesus, to fight against the snares of the
devil and cooperate for the salvation of souls and the triumph of God.
The spirit of prayer is essential, not simply some prayers; it is necessary that the
soul is filled completely with the agony of Jesus in His Church, and that it feels the need
to be, in the silence of its heart, with the agonizing Jesus in order to truly cooperate in the
glory of God and the salvation of poor sinners.
The agony of Jesus has not ended, because He still suffers in the Eucharist on our
Altars. There is the agony of the silent and abandoned Tabernacles. Jesus is there to offer
Himself and to have company in His prayers that He unceasingly raises to His Father; He
wakes us up with the holy calls of the Church, but do we leave him alone? What a
suffering must it have been for Jesus to see so many souls far from Him, immersed in the
vanity of life, asleep in their miseries! Let us console Him, let us respond to His invitation
and come to His Tabernacles, let us watch and pray!

6. Jesus Christ is captured.

While Jesus was waking the Apostles from their sleep the third time, an unusual
noise was heard in the garden; it was the crowd of those who had been sent by the High
Priests to capture Him, and leading them was Judas Iscariot.
In the night the soldiers, unfamiliar with how Jesus Christ looked, could not
possibly have recognized Him; for this reason Judas would identify Him to them by
giving Him a kiss. His conscience had darkened, and so he did not ponder the horror of
betraying his divine Master with a kiss, and so pretended to greet Him with a loving
gesture when instead he was handing Him over to thugs.
Thus he moved slightly ahead of the mob, went to Jesus and greeted Him with a
kiss. The Redeemer did not speak to him harshly as the reprobate deserved, but instead
refused to kiss him and seized with horror and with His Heart injured more acutely than
being struck by lightning, made it clear to him with ineffable sweetness what he was
doing and said: Judas, with a kiss you betray the Son of Man!
The moment was tragic; the Apostles had gathered around the Master and upon
seeing the mob that at Judas’s sign were already getting closer to capture Him, asked
Jesus if they should use the sword to defend Him. Uncertain because of the divine

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Master’s calm, they did not dare to act violently without his permission; Peter, however,
seeing that one of the servants of the chief priests was advancing menacingly and was
already hurling himself toward Jesus, perhaps so that he could brag about capturing Him
later with the priest, raised his sword and cut off the servant’s right ear. But Jesus
immediately turned to the Apostles saying: Stop, no more of this; and in His exceeding
goodness toward the wounded man, and also to not compromise Peter, touched the man’s
ear healing him instantly.
At that miracle both the servant and the others should have changed their minds
and asked Jesus for forgiveness; but instead they became more insolent and rushed to
capture him.
St. John’s Gospel notes the way in which Jesus showed those reprobates His
divine Power, and that it was He who gave Himself into their hands; but also in the brief
account of St. Luke it is noted that He spoke with immense majesty.
In fact, He moved forward to meet the chief priests, the temple guards—the leaders
of the Levites appointed to be custodians of the Sacred Place—and the elders who had
also come to capture Him. Venal as they were, having paid Judas the price of the betrayal,
they also wanted to make sure that they had not been duped. Their faces flushed, and they
felt they were in the presence of an extraordinary being, having been given direct proof;
but nevertheless they continued to advance threateningly, armed and resolved to
accomplish their wretched plan.
With divine calm Jesus made them note that their apparatus of force showed their
weakness, and it was only God who permitted them to do it. They had come against Him
armed with swords and clubs almost as if He were a thief; and yet they could have much
more easily just seized Him in the Temple, where he went every day to teach; but this is
their hour, the time for the power of darkness. With those words Jesus not only pointed
out a fact, but gave permission to the iniquities and the powers of evil to rage against Him.
In the very act in which He was taken, He stated his absolute mastership and had them
note that if they did not capture Him while He was in the Temple, it was not because they
were afraid of Him, but because He did not give them permission to do so.
Only God could speak with so much peace, dignity and majesty.
Criminals or false prophets, in fact, are either violent or disheartened when they
find themselves in front of an opposing force. They try to defend themselves and when
they cannot they go from boldness to cowardice. Jesus Christ, instead, met His enemies
with such great, amazing dignity, and spoke to them with calm majesty, without arrogance
or fear.
He was in charge of the events, and showed again to be in full control.
He could have disappeared, as He had done other times, He could have gotten rid
of them with one word, as He did show them, but He gave himself up voluntarily into
their hands because the time in which He had decreed to give His life for the salvation of
all had come.
As soon as those wretches felt to be masters of the situation, they threw themselves
on Jesus and after binding him firmly, took him that same night to the house of the high
Priest. They brought him to Annas (Jn 18:12), who was the high priest elected for life and
after him to Caiaphas (Mt 26:57, Mk 14:53 and following) who was the high priest for
that year, and immediately there was a trial that could be called informative in nature. St.
Luke barely mentions this trial in which they ridiculed Jesus, maybe because being done

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during the night, it did not have legal value and thus the evangelist recounts in more detail
the one done in the morning, which was a legal epilogue to the nightly event.

Peter denies Jesus

With its usual brevity, the Gospel barely mentions the mistreatments suffered by
Jesus during the night; but they were exceedingly cruel and humiliating. He was in a place
with people that were viciously hostile to Him; those around Him believed Him to be a
dangerous agitator and wanted to get rid of Him at all costs; therefore they raged against
Him and subjected Him to all sorts of mockery. Jesus remained silent and prayed. Only
one person could have been a witness in His favor, but not only did He not speak out but
denied Him!
Peter, after the arrest of the divine Master fled like the others; but the love he felt
for Him compelled him to follow Him; however, not having the courage to follow the
wretched crowd, he stood in the distance to see how things would end. Peter followed at a
distance, that is true, because his heart was no longer close to the Lord. That mixture of
fear, doubt and discouragement had begun to take root that would lead him to his denials.
More than following Jesus with a sincere heart, he was following Him in the anxiety of his
own human concern to see what would happen to Him. Indeed he was very far from Him!
When the crowd entered the building of the High Priest, Peter was admitted as
well, but he was very careful not to show who he was, and mingled among the others that
were in the courtyard, hoping to not be noticed. Weak as he was, unprepared for the
ordeal, because instead of praying in the Garden he had gone to sleep, he exposed himself
to this great temptation from which he came out vanquished and battered. In order for
Peter to enter the courtyard, John had spoken to the gatekeeper on his behalf (Jn 18:17).
The woman who was the gatekeeper had let him in but, attentive in her work, had noticed
that something about his expression was amiss, and that he had an upset look which made
her suspicious. Then, when a fire was lit in the courtyard due to the cold, and Peter, to
pretend and blend in further, went with others around the fire, the woman, who had not
lost sight of him, found him in the firelight and could thus see him better. Looking him
over from head to toe, with cunning persistence, said with great self-confidence to the
bystanders: This man too was with him. Naturally all the eyes of the bystanders turned to
Peter who, pretending indifference answered: Woman, I do not know him. Shortly after
that another person, coming closer to the fire, upon seeing him thought to recognize him,
and to make certain said: You too are one of them. Peter, again pretending indifference in
order not to give himself away, answered: My friend, I am not.
However both the man and the woman were not convinced and discussed their
suspicion with the others; therefore about an hour later, another man, attracted by
curiosity, looking at him intently, insisted with all the people present saying: Assuredly,
this man too was with him, for he is also a Galilean. Peter replied confused and showed
himself bored: My friend, I do not know what you are talking about. But seeing that he
had been discovered, in the hope of saving himself, started swearing and cursing,
affirming flatly that he had never known Him (Mt 27:74).

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 In that moment the cock crowed; it had already crowed before (Mk 14:68), but
Peter had not noticed it, because he did not remember the words of Jesus; maybe he had
misinterpreted them as a simple call to tell him that before dawn he would deny him.
The second time, however, that the cock crowed, Jesus Christ, who from the
palace of the High Priest had been taken into the courtyard to be mocked, turned to him
and looked at him. How ineffable was that look and how it would have deeply wounded
the heart of the unfaithful Apostle!
It was a look that said everything, a look of suffering and mercy, a look of
reproach and forgiveness.
Peter then remembered the words that Jesus had told him and unable to restrain his
sorrow went outside to weep bitterly.

How many times do we also betray

and deny Jesus!

Judas betrayed Jesus with a kiss, transforming a sign of love into a sign of hate;
and how many times do we offend God with our sins, changing those activities that He
has given us to glorify Him into serious injuries to Him! We consider heinous and
cowardly the act of Judas but how base do our own actions seem to us? When we turn
away from God and put our trust in people, we give Him a kiss of betrayal through these
people and give Him up to death in our soul!
Peter, wanting to defend Jesus, raised the sword and cut the ear of the High
Priest’s servant, and then fled; but wanting to follow Jesus, kept far from Him, in order
not to compromise himself. This is the living image of the short-lived loyalty of some
souls: they fight against passions for but a short time and are pleased with small
achievements; but they run away from situations that may place their human standing
among their peers in jeopardy, and are thus pleased to follow Jesus at a distance, without
being compromised before the world. But to defend and follow Jesus in this way is the
same as delivering Him to death. If we love Jesus, how can we succumb to that cursed
human dignity and pretend to not know him? Every day sorrowfully we renew the denial
of Peter when we misuse our faith and our mercy and show us to be ashamed of our
faithfulness to the God’s Law.
In front of those who, seeing us a little more morally upright, question us with evil
and mocking eyes: are you one of the servants of God? We answer by joining into the
activities of the others around us and descending into sin, that we do not even know Him!
Every time “the crock crows” we should also remember the many times we have
disowned Jesus in our life, encounter his passionate gaze, step out from the courtyards of
the world and weep bitterly over our faults!
Let us console Jesus at least with a sincere repentance, and let us make amends of
our infidelity to His love with bitter tears. Peter went out and began to weep bitterly. If we
do not go out from the everyday settings of the world how can we cry? Also our
repentance and reparation, sadly, are mixed with human dignity, and do not come forth
from our heart if we do not move away from the occasions of sin and remain alone with
God.

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7. Jesus is mocked and condemned by the Sanhedrin.

Jesus Christ underwent a first trial during the night before the Sanhedrin and the
High Priest; however St. Luke does not mention this trial. Having been done during the
night, this trial had no legal value, and so the holy Evangelist does not mention it, being
rather brief in his narrative.
The Passion of Jesus was the event most prominently on the minds of Christians
and a few words were enough to renew its memory. Perhaps there were also some
psychological reasons or some special circumstances that made him to write about it more
briefly and succinctly, wanting to come to the end of the story. Usually when something
has been worked on for a long period of time, what comes at the end is shortened; God in
His goodness follows His creatures in these special circumstances and does not force
them. Besides He does not do unnecessary work, and since the narrative of the first trial
had already been written (Mt 26:59 and following; Mk 14:55 and following) He did not
have St. Luke write about it.
After the first trial, in which Jesus solemnly proclaimed His Divinity, the ruffians
and among them also members of the Sanhedrin, having to wait until morning to ratify the
death sentence which was recklessly handed down against Him, pushed Him outside the
atrium to wreak havoc upon Him. The spectacular condemnation of the High Priest, who
had torn his robes and proclaimed Him a blasphemer, had left in the heart of everybody a
great contempt towards Him, and since now he was sentenced, instead of respecting his
suffering, they began to rail against him, abusing and beating him.
He had proclaimed to be the Son of God, therefore more than a Prophet, and they
blindfolded Him, and beating Him they mocked Him by asking Him to identify who had
beaten Him.
How many mysteries of immense pain there are in those brief words of the text
and how much psychological pain!
For the mob, Jesus was not a man anymore, He was a worm; the contempt they
had for Him was very deep and the depth of His patience did not have any value for them.
They were mocking Him in the hopes that He would react so that they could seize the
opportunity to humiliate Him further!
Who can count all the insults, the spitting, the beatings, and the instances of
mockery that was inflicted upon Him that night? He remained silent, making reparation
for the sins and prayed.
In Him there was all mankind even those very ones that were reviling Him; He
was carrying on His shoulders the weight of our pride and our vanity; bore the
blasphemous claims of the pride of the world’s great ones, who believe themselves to be a
little less than God, and the vanity of charlatans who have their eyes blindfolded and
proclaim themselves the spirit seers!
O my Jesus how painful it is to think that in that awful night I burdened your Heart
with my sins and have offended you so much! Do not allow me to be blindfolded, let me
see my extreme misery and let me appreciate your love!
As soon as it was dawn the Sanhedrin assembled again and had Jesus brought into
their presence. During the night they were looking for false testimony against Him, but in
the morning this was not necessary; the charge was well determined and sufficient to
condemn him to death; it was only necessary to confirm it. Therefore, all of them, one
after another in an uproar, asked him if He was the Christ. They did not ask this to know

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the truth but rather to suppress it, not for justice but to trample justice; thus Jesus
answered: If I tell you, you will not believe, and if I question, you will not respond nor will
you release me. But from this time on, that is after this time of humiliation, after His death
and resurrection, the Son of Man will be seated at the right hand of the power of God. He
called Himself as He always did Son of Man, which means the Messiah; therefore, the Son
of God; His expression far from excluding that He was God; He declared it solemnly once
more. The Sanhedrin interpreted this the same way, and together, in a single voice they
asked: Are you then the Son of God?
They were afraid that He would contradict His assertion during the night, and they
did not want to start a process of testimonies again, because they were anxious to go to
Pilate; therefore they were full of satanic joy when they saw that He did not deny it. They
shouted in the frenzy of their malice; they shouted because each one, for their own
reasons, wanted to snatch from Him the coveted statement. They were after Him like a
menacing ocean wave that breaks and stops an instant before crashing down; they were
waiting on His answer to drown Him in a paroxysm of hate, but temporarily held back
their intense hatred to give the proceeding a semblance of legality.
It was a moment of suspense for souls, a moment in which hell itself was waiting
to vomit its hate and to push those wretched ministers of Satan to deny the Son of God.
Jesus answered with great calm and majesty: You say that I am. He meant: just as you
think that I will state it, in the same sense that you give your question, I am. They in
reality did not say this of Him, but they believed Him to be a blasphemous plotter;
however their question was clearly stated and they, without realizing it, were saying the
truth: You say that I am. Jesus gave to His declaration the tone of definitive truth that
admits no doubt: I am.
If those wretched people had considered for a moment His divine face, if they had
searched for the truth on the basis of God’s testimonies, and not on the basis of those
erroneous ones they had frantically searched for beforehand that night, they would have
seen the truth. But as Jesus had said, they were not willing to reason: if I question, you will
not respond, therefore they exclaimed: What further need have we for testimony? We have
heard it from his own mouth.
They did not believe even remotely that He could be the promised Messiah, even
though they themselves were precisely bringing to pass in Him the more distinctive
predictions that had been heralded of Him; they started from the preconception, full of
blind hatred, that He was an agitator and a dangerous plotter, and before investigating the
truth, they had already condemned Him.
These are the “investigations” that the unbelievers and the wretched undertake
against our Savior and His Church; they do not reason in order to know the truth but to
reject it; they do not inquire into science and history to prove anything but to condemn;
their conclusions are always negative because they do not look for truth but rather seek the
isolated fragments that appear to support what they believe.
Today, as the world resounds with lurid claims of foolish unbelievers, let us raise
the voice of our faith and let us shout to Jesus with St. Peter: You are Christ, the Son of
the living God! Let us show our faith to the world in what we do, because if we contradict
ourselves with our life, we condemn Jesus to death in our heart.

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 Chapter 23
1 Jesus before Pilate and Herod. Jesus and Barabbas. The Sentence of Death and the
Way of the Cross. The Crucifixion. The Agony and Death of Jesus. The Burial.

1 And the entire multitude of them, rising up, led him to Pilate. 2 Then they began to
accuse him, saying, “We found this one subverting our nation, and prohibiting giving
tribute to Caesar, and saying that he is Christ the king.” 3 And Pilate questioned him,
saying: “You are the king of the Jews?” But in response, he said: “You are saying it.” 4
Then Pilate said to the leaders of the priests and to the crowds, “I find no case against
this man.” 5 But they continued more intensely, saying: “He has stirred up the people,
teaching throughout all of Judea, beginning from Galilee, even to this place.” 6 But
Pilate, upon hearing Galilee, asked if the man were of Galilee. 7 And when he realized
that he was under Herod’s jurisdiction, he sent him away to Herod, who was himself also
at Jerusalem in those days. 8 Then Herod, upon seeing Jesus, was very glad. For he had
been wanting to see him for a long time, because he had heard so many things about him,
3and he was hoping to see some kind of sign wrought by him. 9 Then he questioned him
with many words. But he gave him no response at all. 10 And the leaders of the priests,
and the scribes, stood firm in persistently accusing him. 11 Then Herod, with his soldiers,
scorned him. And he ridiculed him, clothing him in a white garment. And he sent him back
to Pilate. 12 And Herod and Pilate became friends on that day. For previously they were
enemies to one another. 13 And Pilate, calling together the leaders of the priests, and the
magistrates, and the people, 14 said to them: “You have brought before me this man, as
one who disturbs the people. And behold, having questioned him before you, I find no case
against this man, in those things about which you accuse him. 15 And neither did Herod.
For I sent you all to him, and behold, nothing deserving of death was recorded about him.
16 Therefore, I will chastise him and release him.” 17 Now he was required to release
one person for them on the feast day. 18 But the entire crowd exclaimed together, saying:
“Take this one, and release to us Barabbas!” 19 Now he had been cast into prison
because of a certain sedition that occurred in the city and for murder. 20 Then Pilate
spoke to them again, wanting to release Jesus. 21 But they shouted in response, saying:
“Crucify him! Crucify him!” 22 Then he said to them a third time: “Why? What evil has
he done? I find no case against him for death. Therefore, I will chastise him and release
him.” 23 But they persisted, with loud voices, in demanding that he be crucified. And their
voices increased in intensity. 24 And so Pilate issued a judgment granting their petition.
25 Then he released for them the one who had been cast into prison for murder and
sedition, whom they were requesting. Yet truly, Jesus he handed over to their will. 26 And
as they were leading him away, they apprehended a certain one, Simon of Cyrene, as he
was returning from the countryside. And they imposed the cross on him to carry after
Jesus. 27 Then a great crowd of people followed him, with women who were mourning
and lamenting him. 28 But Jesus, turning to them, said: “Daughters of Jerusalem, do not
weep over me. Instead, weep over yourselves and over your children. 29 For behold, the
days will arrive in which they will say, ‘Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that have
not borne, and the breasts that have not nursed.’ 30 Then they will begin to say to the
mountains, ‘Fall over us,’ and to the hills, ‘Cover us.’ 31 For if they do these things with

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green wood, what will be done with the dry?” 32 Now they also led out two other
criminals with him, in order to execute them. 33 And when they arrived at the place that is
called Calvary, they crucified him there, with the robbers, one to the right and the other to
the left. 34 Then Jesus said, “Father, forgive them. For they know not what they do.” And
truly, dividing his garments, they cast lots. 35 And people were standing near, watching.
And the leaders among them derided him, saying: “He saved others. Let him save himself,
if this one is the Christ, the elect of God.” 36 And the soldiers also ridiculed him,
approaching him and offering him vinegar, 37 and saying, “If you are the king of the
Jews, save yourself.” 38 Now there was also an inscription written over him in letters of
Greek, and Latin, and Hebrew: THIS IS THE KING OF THE JEWS. 39 And one of those
robbers who were hanging blasphemed him, saying, “If you are the Christ, save yourself
and us.” 40 But the other responded by rebuking him, saying: “Do you have no fear of
God, since you are under the same condemnation? 41 And indeed, it is just for us. For we
are receiving what our deeds deserve. But truly, this one has done nothing wrong.” 42
And he said to Jesus, “Lord, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” 43 And
Jesus said to him, “Amen I say to you, this day you shall be with me in Paradise.” 44 Now
it was nearly the sixth hour, and a darkness occurred over the entire earth, until the ninth
hour. 45 And the sun was obscured. And the veil of the temple was torn down the middle.
46 And Jesus, crying out with a loud voice, said: “Father, into your hands I commend my
spirit.” And upon saying this, he expired. 47 Now, the centurion, seeing what had
happened, glorified God, saying, “Truly, this man was the Just One.” 48 And the entire
crowd of those who came together to see this spectacle also saw what had happened, and
they returned, striking their breasts. 49 Now all those who knew him, and the women who
had followed him from Galilee, were standing at a distance, watching these things. 50
And behold, there was a man named Joseph, who was a councilman, a good and just man,
51 (for he had not consented to their decision or their actions). He was from Arimathea, a
city of Judea. And he was himself also anticipating the kingdom of God. 52 This man
approached Pilate and petitioned for the body of Jesus. 53 And taking him down, he
wrapped him in a fine linen cloth, and he placed him in a tomb hewn from rock, in which
no one had ever been placed. 54 And it was the day of Preparation, and the Sabbath was
drawing near. 55 Now the women who had come with him from Galilee, by following, saw
the tomb and the manner in which his body was placed. 56 And upon returning, they
prepared aromatic spices and ointments. But on the Sabbath, indeed, they rested,
according to the commandment.
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2. The trial of Jesus before Pilate and before Herod.
In the early morning hours, after the summary trial to which the Sanhedrin
subjected Jesus was over and after condemning Him to death, the whole assembly took
Him to Pilate to ratify their sentence since they could not execute anyone without the
consent of the Roman governor. They went together in a large group to impress Pilate
more, and were very careful not to mention the religious reason for which they had
condemned Him. They were sure that the governor would not have agreed with them on
that matter and so they viciously devised a politically based accusation.
It was a threefold accusation, and concerned what would be more directly injurious
to the Roman rule in Judea; and hence they said: He incites the people, by moving them to
revolt; He opposes paying the tribute to Caesar, thus hurting the Roman rule where it

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would most affect it; and finally He declares Himself to be Christ the King, thus making
Him seem like a dangerous revolutionary with many and a growing body of followers.
This accusation could not have been more vicious and misleading.
Pilate already knew that Jesus was brought before him out of envy and malice and
so began to question Him benevolently. It is possible that the two thieves that were
crucified with Jesus had been dragged there together with Jesus by the same Jews to have
the governor utter one only sentence over all three of them. They were hoping that in front
of the sure guilt of the two thieves the governor would simply assume that Jesus was
guilty as well, thus eliminating the suspicion that they were acting out of passion. But
their shouts, their anger, the bitterness with which they were accusing Him, and the very
condition to which they had reduced the Redeemer during the night, confirmed to Pilate
what he already knew: that they wanted to condemn an innocent man to death at all
costs.*
To Pilate their zeal for the authority of Caesar seemed quite suspicious, knowing
how much they were adverse to him; therefore, as he was already eager to free the
Redeemer, he did it in a way to stir up in the mob a sense of their own nationalism, and so
he asked: Are you the king of the Jews? As an agent of the Roman rule, he must have
already had forensic knowledge of those in the region that might cause problems and
incite rebellion; getting information on potential threats is an elementary precaution that
every ruling authority does when it is called to maintain rule over occupied territory;
Pilate, thus, already knew that Jesus was a descendant of the royal family of David and
when He answered that He was the King of the Jews, with the expression You say so, that
is, you say it and you already know it, he showed himself to be satisfied with the answer,
knowing that He did not conspire against the Roman power.
If it were not so, his unambiguous pronouncement I find this man not guilty would
seem strange after just this one question.
Besides, the very way that Jesus answered, his face radiating peace and
truthfulness, made him understand that His response was accurate and thus without any
hesitation said that he did not find Him guilty of any crime.
It might have been strange to hear a sitting Roman governor admit and accept that
the accused man before him was truly the King of the Jews; but he was hoping that the
people, for national pride, would not have followed their leaders in their envy and hate
against Jesus and would instead ask for His freedom. As an experienced politician he
knew that the people shouted against Jesus because they were compelled to come by the
High Priests; he was hoping to arouse in them their patriotism and put them against their
leaders’ request. However, this time he had not taken into account the extent of human
malice and ingratitude, both of which were beyond all imagination!
The High Priests, upon hearing that Pilate did not find any crime in Jesus, insisted
maliciously, and presented Him as being particularly dangerous to the Roman rule: He is
inciting the people with his teaching throughout all Judea, from Galilee where he began
even to here.
They meant to say that this was not just a local movement, but rather a vicious and
organized insurrection; it was aiming to unify the nation against the foreign power; it
started from the farthest places of Galilee and had now arrived even here at the capital.
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* This is only speculation because it is not directly supported by the Gospel text.

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 Jesus before Herod

Pilate began to worry, not so much for the alleged charges that he knew to be false,
but for the consequences that he would have to face for freeing a man explicitly accused
of plotting against Caesar by the local religious leaders. It was clear from the way they
were talking, that the High Priests were willing to denounce him to Rome, if he did not
ratify the death sentence.
Therefore, upon hearing “Galilee”, Pilate asked if Him if He was a Galilean, and
knowing that even if He were not born in Galilee but had lived there He would have been
under Herod’s jurisdiction, and so he sent Him to Herod, who was in Jerusalem for the
Passover. Herod, the son of Herod called the great, was Tetrarch of Galilee and Perea; he
too was subject to Roman rule, but he was empowered to hold judgment over the local
affairs of his own jurisdiction; thus in so doing Pilate hoped escape this thorny situation
which trapped him. Besides, in sending Jesus to Herod, he flattered him very much by
recognizing his power and asking him to exercise it in the capital; although Herod was his
enemy Pilate had to fear his intrigues with Rome and thought this would be a good
opportunity to make a friend of him, as in fact happened.
Herod, as the head of Galilee, had heard many impressive accounts about Jesus
and for a long time had desired to see Him up close, hoping to be present at one of His
miracles. He was, therefore, very glad to see Him, and above all was delighted that He
was completely under his control. He believed in his foolishness that he would easily
obtain some miracles from Him at his whim and demand, and so he asked Him many
questions. Jesus, however, answered none of them.
How strange! He questioned Him not as a criminal but as a magician and in that
moment gave Him all the necessary respect, hoping to induce Him to work some
marvelous things! The Priests and the scribes were bewildered, fearing subconsciously
that He really would work a miracle, but at the same time they despised Him as a fraud,
having duped even the cruel Herod; for this reason they continued to accuse him with
insistence to counteract any good impression Herod could have of Him.
In the meantime Jesus was silent, motionless, with his eyes to the ground, and
silent. He could not talk to that hardened heart.
Herod in his pride believed that He did not understand him, He seemed to him as a
dreamer, but looking at Him could not help but feel His awesome majesty. He was
embarrassed because he could not force Him to speak, and he did not want to appear weak
in front of his court; he could have condemned Him, but the memory of John the Baptist
flashed before him, and Jesus’ continued silence made him recall the silent head of the
Herald of the Lord on the plate; he became afraid, but wanted to conceal his fear, and
smart as he was, he had recourse to an expedient, and began to mock him with a pitying
tone, as if He were a poor fool. The Greek text says that he reduced Him to nothing,
meaning that he treated Him like he was completely insignificant.
His embarrassment did not escape his soldiers, and when he began to mock Him
they joined in to help Herod save face; in a short time the whole court resounded with
jeers, and Herod, to show in a tangible way that he had not been made the loser, and to
quash any rumors that might start that the Nazarene had the had no reason to fear him, he

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dressed Him in a white tunic—the Greek text says in shining white, in a tunic that kings
would wear during solemn festivities; then he sent Him back to Pilate. He believed to
affirm the splendor of his dignity by mocking Him as a false King, and yet, in spite of
himself, he did not realize that he actually presented Him as King.
It always happens this way: Jesus Christ does not rule by the pomp of human
glory, but in the shame of the Passion. What could earthly glory give Him? He had come
to seek us out, to save us; He wanted to come closer to us, and He can only do this
through shame and suffering, rousing in us compassion, and with compassion, love.
Herod was very happy to see Jesus, but what was this joy of his? It was just the
fruit of miserable curiosity!

For souls who

constantly seek thrills.

How many souls desire to see Jesus in the same way, out of curiosity and out of a
desire to be present at extraordinary events? They do not think at all to improve
themselves interiorly by seeking Him in their own hearts! Jesus never answers these souls,
because they really do not love Him. They may say in so many words that they want Him
as their King, but the kingship they give Him is not dissimilar to the white robe that Herod
made Jesus wear. What is the use of cloaking Him in regal attire and not letting Him reign
in one’s soul? Is it not mocking Him to call Him King and then let the world and Satan
reign in one’s soul instead?
It can also happen to those of us who serve the Lord to be mocked as fools before
the courts of the people of the world who, like Herod, have no ideals in their life save the
pleasure of their senses and fleeting temporal glory. But what does the judgment of the
world matter to us? Let them ridicule us and let us go directly to God, because at
Judgment Day things will be reversed. How could we ever worry about a passing insult
and expose ourselves to the danger of eternal insults and mockery? Let us be happy to
resemble the loving Jesus, because there is no more beautiful glory for us than to share in
His humiliation and His sufferings.

3. Jesus is sentenced to death in place of Barabbas.

The manner in which Herod sent Jesus back to Pilate did not imply a conviction;
but rather revealed in the Tetrarch a sense of contempt for the accused, and it would have
been equivalent to think of Him, at a minimum, as a deluded seeker of royalty and a
fanatic—a harmless fanatic, however, to be derided, and exposed to the ridicule that
would paralyze his prestige.
Pilate welcomed Herod’s insinuation and, while he had believed until then that
Jesus was completely innocent, seeing him dressed in regal white, he agreed that He had a
craze for kingship that could be corrected with a punishment. He did not want, that is, to
overturn his first judgment, and repeated that he had not found Him guilty of any of the
charges for which He was accused, but, with political tact, immediately added that not
even Herod had found anything resembling a capital crime. So with this political
maneuvering he gave value to his prior proclamation on Jesus’ innocence, and yet without
showing a change of mind, justified his latest decision to inflict a punishment upon Him.

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Besides, as he was now back on good terms with Herod, he wanted to show Herod that he
took into account the judgment he had pronounced punishing the Redeemer for His
attitude toward the Tetrarch.
The divine calm of Jesus struck him, as did the wretched faces of His accusers; to
punish this innocent man before him now seemed like a bad idea, and since he did not
believe that the people were stirred up to the extent that they were, and having to free a
prisoner to them for the Passover solemnities according to custom, proposed that he free
Jesus instead of a thief and murder, Barabbas. He was sure that given a choice between a
hardened criminal and someone who had been good towards everyone, the people would
not hesitate in their choice; instead, incited by the High Priests, the scribes and the
Pharisees, all together they started shouting: Away with this man! Release Barabbas to us.
Pilate was bewildered by those shouts, and when the turmoil calmed down a little
desiring to free Jesus, he asked them again, but everybody once more shouted, Crucify
him! Crucify him! And for a third time he asked the crowd: What evil has this man done? I
found him guilty of no capital crime. Therefore I shall have him flogged and then release
him. Pilate did not realize that having already conceded that Jesus had a culpability worthy
of a punishment—even if he believed the opposite to be true in his heart—he had thus put
himself at the mercy of the people, showing himself to be incapable, hesitant and weak.
Besides, the High Priests, the scribes and the Pharisees continued to incite the crowd
against Jesus, and therefore the tumult became frightening. Pilate feared a riot and, to
appease the multitude, pronounced the sentenced to be carried out according to their
demands.
He sat down and pronounced the sentence before the people, which to be legal and
not invalid, had to be motivated truly by what he had repeatedly recognized as false and
groundless. He thus released Barabbas instead who was seditious, riotous, a thief and a
recognized murderer, and left Jesus to the will of the mob.

Pilate, in the centuries

During those horrible and terrible moments that even today can enrage us for their
inequity, the Redeemer atoned for human injustice silently, like a tree of life dripping a
balm of comfort for all those who would one day suffer the brunt of human injustice.
For two thousand years now the shameful scene of Pilate and the rioting crowd
have been repeated a countless number of times, because of the multitude of innocent
people that have been unjustly sentenced, not only by the courts but also in the disputes of
family life.
Nothing affects us more and pains us than injustice and seeing things done in bad
faith.
It is not easy to fight injustice, as it is not easy to defend against it. Most of the
time one is compelled to remain in silence, bow one’s head and take up one’s Cross.
It is then of supreme comfort for a soul to see the innocent Savior condemned and
likewise leave to God the judgment of one’s own innocence. If He who is the essence of
holiness suffered such injustice, how can I, a sinner, complain? And since He, condemned
and crucified, subsequently rose from the dead in a blaze of glory, I also hope to have
justice from the Lord here on earth and certainly in Heaven.

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4. The way of the cross and the weeping women of Jerusalem.

The Gospel is very terse in its descriptions and hardly mentions the pains that our
Redeemer suffered. We, however, can imagine them if we meditate upon this passage.
The Priests, the scribes, the Pharisees and the angry mob did impose on themselves a
certain restraint toward Jesus in the court, because the Romans treated convicted persons
according to certain rules, but when they had Him at their mercy, as they had Him during
the night, their brutality knew no limits. St. Luke did not keep a record of the scourging
and the crowning with thorns, but these awful cruelties were indeed done to Him when
He, innocent and unjustly condemned, was somehow under the aegis of the law; however,
after His conviction, when He was left to the mercy of His enemies and of the soldiers, He
suffered additional injuries, abuses and sufferings that are impossible to imagine.
The fact that on the way to Calvary they had to find a man to help Him carry the
Cross is very telling in making us understand the extent to which He had been reduced by
the relentless brutality inflicted on Him.
It was certainly not an act of mercy; on the contrary it was a refinement of their
barbarism, because they feared He would not arrive alive to Calvary. For the Priests,
especially, it was of the utmost importance that He would die on the Cross, because they
wanted to nullify with a demeaning torture any prestige that He could still have among the
people.
When a man from Cyrene went by, strong and vigorous, returning from the fields,
they promptly stopped him and forced him to carry the Cross alongside Jesus. He certainly
must have strongly resisted, because the cross at that time was a cursed and shameful sign;
but in the face of violent opposition, he relented and carried the infamous instrument of
torture.
What a sight that was, and how representative it was of God’s plan for all future
centuries! Jesus went ahead followed by the Cyrenian who represented mankind itself.
Jesus carried the Cross to save us, but it was also necessary for man to carry it after Him,
to participate in the salvation that He gave us; Simon in that moment represented all men
who are burdened by the weight of life, and who suffer their own pains for what they lack
of the Passion of Jesus Christ.
Jesus left to the mercy of the perfidy of the Jews, suffered carrying the Cross, and
Simon denying his own will, even though he was compelled, followed him. The
perfidious will was bringing Jesus to death, and the will that denied itself, helped and
comforted him on the way.
It was a compendium of what would happen and in fact happens in the spirit.
He who follows his own will and not God’s, brings Jesus to Calvary and crucifies
Him in his heart and in his own senses.
Every time that one’s human will is in opposition to God’s, Jesus is left to undergo
the Cross; and whenever one’s will, even painfully or with difficulty, submits to the will
of God, he lightens Jesus’ burden and walks after Him on the narrow road that loads to
glory.
Who would dare oppose the divine Will and leave Jesus under the weight of the
Cross He carried for the love of all of us?
A great crowd of people including many women who cried and lamented over Him

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followed Jesus. These women were not the holy women that followed Him in the
apostolate, but women of the city, attracted by their curiosity and compassion. It is natural
for a crowd of people to form spontaneously when a condemned man is led to death; but
for Jesus, who was well known for His miracles, the crowd that formed was immense. The
women, who were more sensitive and prone to pity, wept bitterly, empathizing with his
suffering and his fate.
From the words Jesus used in addressing them it can be noted that in their
compassion, which was entirely natural, there was also at least a subconscious feeling of
disapproval because the goodness of His apostolate had brought upon Him such an
incredible amount of pain and suffering. In their loving compassion they would have
preferred that He would have been spared such a tragic epilogue to his life, and therefore,
weeping, they lamented Him.
However Jesus alerted them to their reality, exclaiming: Daughters of Jerusalem,
do not weep for me; weep instead for yourselves and for your children; and announcing
the terrible days of the end of Jerusalem, added: if these things are done when the wood is
green what will happen when it is dry? Jesus Christ wanted to call them to consider the
sole great evil, which was sin, and not to cry upon His suffering, but rather over the crime
that was presently being committed, imploring God’s forgiveness.
That crime would have catastrophic consequences for Jerusalem and the whole
nation, and their crying over it could mitigate these consequences. And in order that they
may not have illusions, He showed them the consequences of sin through Himself: He was
innocent like a green shrub, rich in leaves and fruits because he was righteous, and only
because He was covered by the sins of all humanity was He now immersed in that awful
pain; what would happen to those, covered by thousands sins, similar to dry wood which
very easily burns when lit?
We can hear in the words of Jesus all His regret as well as the excruciating pain He
felt in going to Calvary as a criminal.
The women that were crying over Him actually considered Him a wrongdoer; their
compassion was entirely a natural reaction to seeing Him in such pain and agony. He was
completely covered with the sins of all of us sinners; in fact St. Luke, in saying two other
criminals were dragged along with Him to be executed, uses this expression: two others,
both criminals, were led away with him to be executed; by grouping Him with the two
other actual criminals, St. Luke almost says He was one of them; but even if He were
under the guise of a criminal as it appeared, he could not allow Himself to be considered
as such—being innocence itself—and for this reason he exhorted the women to weep
instead for yourselves, to repent of their sins and for the sins of their children, thinking of
the punishments that would strike the city and the nation. After those tears that were shed
for His apparent guilt, would follow the tears of a nation that would prove His
righteousness.
The divine justice, not leaving that crime unpunished, would show in the same
awful punishment the innocence of the One that had been treated as criminal. This was a
requirement of His righteousness, claimed by the people themselves when they shouted:
His Blood be upon us and upon our children; it was a brilliant proof that He was truly the
Son of God.
An injustice committed against a righteous man or against an innocent king has
never had such an aftermath of chastisement; only for the crime committed against Jesus,

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the deicide, was the punishment of the people so terrible and lasting—even to this day—a
clear sign that He was not only man, but he was also the true God*. Jesus Christ in
walking along the way to Calvary has traced for us the way of salvation and goodness.

The Way of the Cross in our life

Our life is a Way of the Cross, from the first to the last station.
We are sinners and are chastised for the original sin.
Jesus was condemned, because He asserted that he was the Son of God; man was
condemned because he wanted to be similar to God. Jesus, true Son of God, thus atoned
for man who claimed to be like God.
Jesus, innocent and holy, was burdened with the Cross, and we, although reborn
and innocent because of Baptism, are burdened with the cross from the very beginning of
our life.
We are mistreated and overwhelmed by events, and so we fall under the weight of
the cross, just as Jesus fell on his way to Calvary; but we have the Blessed Virgin Mary to
comfort us and Jesus himself helps us rise again and continue.
He wanted to be helped by Simon the Cyrenian in order to help us and repay all
men for the charity received. Simon means the one who listens and obeys: the one who
listens to God and obeys Him, doing His Will; he helps Jesus to carry the Cross and Jesus
comforts the soul who carries its cross, giving the union to His divine Will. “Cyrenian”
can also mean encountering with reluctance and coldness; as we approach and do the
divine Will with extreme coldness; we go to meet the Lord like Simon, coerced and
reluctant.
Jesus, however, helps us by inflaming us with love and gives us the sweetness of
the Cross itself. He impresses His face on the marks of our sufferings, as He imprinted it
on the cloth of St. Veronica, and falling in His love He raises us, giving us the
understanding of our sins through His own suffering.
It is not possible to believe that committing a sin is something trivial when we see
Jesus fall under the weight of the Cross; nor can we consider minor the miseries of the
flesh, seeing him stripped, scourged and thrust upon the Cross.
During the course of our lives, there are those who sneer at us, strike us and strip
us of our dignity, and our day is an unending way to Calvary; but we need to console
ourselves in Him who wanted to take our sins upon Himself, and so willingly endure the
crosses before arriving to glory.

5. The crucifixion, agony, death and burial of Jesus.

Having finally reached Mount Calvary and Golgotha, which means skull in
Hebrew, the chosen executioners crucified Jesus and the two thieves raising one on His

-------------------------------------------------------
* A brilliant and perhaps original interpretation.

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right and the other on His left. Using these extremely concise words, the Evangelist
describes the awful scene of that terrible torture. They crucified Jesus piercing each of His
hands with a long nail, and His overlapped feet with a longer nail. It is not possible to
imagine the spasms of pain that those nails gave to our beloved Redeemer. Today medical
science can study the signs of these wounds on the holy Shroud of Turin, which is the
sheet that wrapped His dead body. As He pushed his body backward into the Cross as a
reaction to the nails, this sharp movement resulting in driving the crown of thorns even
further into his head and neck. The pain was excruciating, but in His mercy He cared for
those who were causing it, and turning to the Father exclaiming: Father, forgive them,
they know not what they do. He did not need to forgive them, because He was giving His
life for them, but He had the need to implore mercy from the Father, because of the
ghastliness of their crime. Did the Father answer His prayer?
Apparently it would not seem so, because Jerusalem was destroyed, and the people
were slaughtered or taken into captivity; but Jesus prayed for the souls of those who had
contributed to His crucifixion and especially for the Jews, and this makes us understand
that with His divine prayer He gathered those souls responsible for His suffering. How
could He pray for their temporal salvation if that would only make them even more
obstinate in their sin? Even in the case of the good thief, in fact, Jesus granted him eternal
salvation but did not remove him from the cross, because the torments he suffered were in
atonement for the crimes he had committed.
Jesus suffered and forgave and those people that were present at his death and who
mocked and insulted him!
The soldiers at the beginning were simply worried about how to divide his
garments, hoping to make a big gain reselling them to the disciples of the Crucified, and
since the tunic was a single piece of fabric they drew lots for it; afterward they joined
those who insulted Him. The High Priests more than the others and the scribes were eager
to dispel his prestige before the people and with their insults wanted to emphasize His
helplessness: He saved others, let him save himself if he is the chosen one, the Messiah of
God. The soldiers echoed their words, for after seeing the inscription put on the Cross by
Pilate, they said: If you are King of the Jews, save yourself. They said this to not only
mock Him who had declared Himself King before Pilate, but also to insult all the Jewish
people through Him.
Since Pilate had put that in writing, it was evident to them that the Crucified was
really the deposed King; hence, with their insults and challenge to His power, they wanted
to emphasize to the Jews that they were reduced to a state of complete subjugation in
which their King was ignominiously hung on the Cross without them saying a single word
of protest, even approving of His condemnation and death.
Those sinister Priests of the Temple did not realize that with that dreadful crime
they had tightened their chains of slavery to Rome.

The good thief

The two thieves that were crucified with Jesus initially both joined the chorus of
those who insulted Him (Mt 27:44); but after a while, one of them realized that his
companion was relentlessly provoking the Lord, trying to get Him to show His power and
dignity by freeing Himself and them from their crosses, and noticing His divine patience,

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felt compassion for Him, and began to scold his companion.
This was his first response to grace that would take him to Paradise. He too was
suffering excruciating pain and it bothered him to hear the voices of the Redeemer’s
enemies; his nerves were tense and frayed; he thought how terrible it had to be for the
Lord to endure that chorus of insults and savage ironies considering His present state. Not
daring to reproach the Priests, the scribes and the Pharisees, he shouted to his companion
Have you no fear of God, for you are subject to the same condemnation? By which he
meant: have you no compassion for His pains, even though you yourself are suffering the
same pain, and yet continue to provoke and insult Him? And remembering the sins he
committed, seeing his own sinful self as if reflected in the figure of his companion, felt a
deep regret for them in his heart, because he saw and felt how Jesus was innocent, and so
exclaimed: And indeed, we have been condemned justly, for the sentence we received
corresponds to our crimes, but this man has done nothing criminal.
In saying these words he looked at Him.
The compassion he had for His pains had become a proclamation of His innocence
and, looking at Him in this new light, he felt that His innocence was not human, just as the
patience He showed was not human. He fixed his eyes on Him, and a great peace
pervaded his heart; he looked at Him again and Jesus too must have looked back at him
and relieved his pains. Looking at Him intently, he saw the placid majesty of His face, and
from His face his gaze spontaneously went on to read the inscription Jesus the Nazorean,
the King of the Jews. Jesus truly had the aspect of a King; He evinced majesty, He evinced
an admirable physical presence even being so battered; indeed He was a King, but He
could not be one of this world. Perhaps beforehand he had heard
Him saying to Pilate solemnly: My kingdom is not of this world, and now those words
were coming back into his mind. His faith in the Messiah renewed his soul; he looked at
Him again, he felt that He was the one and thus believed, hoped, and trusted, and in
abandoning himself to Him exclaimed: Jesus, remember me when you come into your
kingdom. His faith was full and unreserved; he had confessed his sins and grace enveloped
and vivified him; he had repented, he loved his Redeemer, he had accepted as expiation
the pain he was suffering, and Jesus forgiving him exclaimed, Amen, I say to you, today
you will be with me in Paradise. This day, you will be with me, because Jesus would
precede him in death, and in dying would redeem him, restoring him as an adoptive son of
God, and giving him possession of eternal happiness.
It was an act of immense mercy, to which the Blessed Virgin Mary was no
stranger. In her maternal mercy, She prayed for everybody, and prayed even more for
those who were crucified with her divine Son.
She prayed, and the less obstinate sinner gathered the fruits of her prayer for his
feelings of compassion for Jesus and for repenting of his sins. What flood of mercy would
have descended on all the executioners on Calvary if only they would have had a moment
of repentance? The good thief opened the stream of sinners who would find light, mercy
and peace at the foot of the Crucifix, and he was the first who would receive the comfort
and tranquility that spreads from the Cross.
How many times his brief prayer would be repeated throughout the ages by sinners
afflicted by tribulations: It is right, Lord, that I get what I deserve for my sins, but
remember me! And how many times has Jesus answered into the depths of the repented
heart, giving peace back to sinners and promising them eternal life! I am a sinner, Lord, I

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confess it, and all the suffering of my life is an act of justice, I agree; but your mercy has
open arms to welcome me and I find refuge in your heart in saying remember me. You
know well what I am, and if you would remember my sins you would depart from me; but
your remembrance is mercy and You look at me to forgive me and save me.

Jesus dies on the Cross

It was about the sixth hour, which is about noon, and it became dark over all the
earth until the ninth hour, that is three in the afternoon. St. Luke writes that the sun had
darkened†; thus it was not a phenomenon due to fog or mist, nor could it have been an
eclipse, because there was full moon. To point out that the darkening of the sun was not
due to natural causes, the Evangelist also notes that the veil of the Temple was torn in the
middle; it was torn after the death of Jesus, but St. Luke anticipates it happening to show
that the Lord gave unequivocal proofs that He was truly the Son of God and the promised
Messiah.
In this darkness a great silence descended suddenly on Calvary, and no matter how
much they tried to believe the phenomenon was due to natural causes, they were all
terrified.
Jesus in that silence gave out a great cry, which showed that He had mastery over
His life since in his current state of intense, crippling agony He could not have spoken in a
loud voice. And yet He cried loudly: Father, into your hands I commend my spirit. After
saying these words, He expired. What a solemn moment! Expired and that breath of love
gave new life to all people, like the breath that God had given to the clay molded in Eden.
He expired, and that last breath was like a defeating whirlwind for Hell. He
expired and remained motionless with great solemnity, as can be seen even today in the
Holy Shroud preserved at Turin, Italy.
The earth trembled, as if frightened by the murderous crime consummated at the
hands of the Jews and the veil of the Temple was torn, because the old covenant was now
finished and the new covenant had begun.
The Centurion that was on guard on Calvary, seeing all that was happening,
recognized the truth and glorifying God exclaimed: This man was innocent beyond doubt
or as St. Matthew (Mt 27:54) and St. Mark (Mk 15:39) record: Truly, this was the Son of
God. Thus he was the first pagan to recognize Jesus Christ as the Messiah and to proclaim
it publicly.

------------------------------------------
†
Lk 23:45 as translated in the Italian Bible and some English language versions (such as the one used in this
translation) notes only that the sun darkened, but not due to an eclipse of the sun. It should be noted that
since the Crucifixion took place during Passover (which always occurs during a full moon) an eclipse of the
sun would have been impossible, as it requires a new moon.

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 The crowd that had been drawn to Calvary for that unusual sight descended from
that deadly mountain beating their breasts as sign of repentance and fear; instead the
disciples and the holy women, who had followed Him from Galilee, were watching in the
distance, for fear of being harassed by the enemies of the Crucified.
How sorrowful it is to think that His friends were in the distance and that His
enemies were right on Calvary.
How feeble is our love for Jesus when we are ashamed of Him and for vile human
reasons we live far away from Him! How many follow Jesus but do not want to commit
themselves to Him and keep away even if not facing any real danger, but only an illusion
on of such, and thus join the ranks of the wicked!
When we see that Jesus is scorned and condemned by the world, it is then that we
must show ourselves to be more faithful to Him and need to cling to the Roman Catholic
Apostolic Church to confess Him to be true God and true man, and to spread the good
news of His kingdom.

The burial

After a brief time a member of the Sanhedrin named Joseph, from the city of
Arimethea, ascended to the top of Mt. Calvary. He was a virtuous and righteous man, who
had not consented to the death sentence of Jesus. Having been told that Jesus was dead, he
went to Pilate to obtain permission to take His body and bury it.
It was already evening, and since the Sabbath was the next day, Joseph hastened to
bury Him. He removed the Lord’s body from the Cross, wrapped it in a burial cloth with a
hasty embalming of aromatic resins, and he laid the body in a new tomb excavated from
the rock where no one had yet been buried. The pious women observed everything,
because they had in mind to attend more fully to the Body of the Lord as soon as the
Sabbath was over. In fact, they prepared the aromatic resins and ointments and waited
anxiously for the first day after the Sabbath to complete their merciful office.
The Liturgy of the Church regarding the burial of Jesus has a character of
profound peace gathering all men in the hope of the resurrection, and still keeping the soul
immersed in the suffering of the Redeemer. He descended, in fact, into the tomb not as
one vanquished by death but as a conqueror, and He permitted Himself to be enclosed in
the tomb in order to open its doors, as the divine first fruit of the deceased. He slept and
rested to transform the horror of our tombs into a place of sleep and rest. He slept after the
crucifixion as we sleep when the crucifixions of our lives are consummated. He wanted to
be similar to us in everything, that we might be similar to Him in everything. He poured
out onto our afflictions the balm of his Blood and his peace. We must keep our eyes fixed
on Him crucified, to follow Him in our sorrowful way of the cross, and in dying we must
look at his tomb as the sure sign of our resurrection: In pace in idipsum dormiam et
requiescam. (In peace and into the same I shall sleep and rest).
Once Jesus was buried the Jews believed to have triumphed over Him once and for
all, but instead in His very death was His triumph, and God, mocking the vain designs of
men, used that evil to accomplish His purposes. The Cross, chosen purposely as the
infamous instrument of torture to destroy every bit of credibility of the Redeemer, instead
has become throughout the centuries the throne of His immense love; and that tomb in
which he was sealed so that none would ever speak of Him again became the pedestal of

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His glory forever, because Jesus in rising confirmed His divine mission and gave the
irrefutable proof of His Divinity and His true humanity.
Let us adore God’s plan, and recognizing in the Crucified our King who died for
our sins, let us beat our breasts and say tearfully: Have mercy on me, Lord, for I am a poor
sinner.

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 Chapter 24

1. The Resurrection of Jesus. The disciples of Emmaus. Jesus appears to the

Apostles. The last instructions He gives to them. The Ascension into Heaven.

1 Then, on the first Sabbath, at very first light, they went to the tomb, carrying the
aromatic spices that they had prepared. 2 And they found the stone rolled back from the
tomb. 3 And upon entering, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. 4 And it
happened that, while their minds were still confused about this, behold, two men stood
beside them, in shining apparel. 5 Then, since they were afraid and were turning their
faces toward the ground, these two said to them: “Why do you seek the living with the
dead? 6 He is not here, for he has risen. Recall how he spoke to you, when he was still in
Galilee, 7 saying: ‘For the Son of man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and
be crucified, and on the third day rise again.’ ” 8 And they called to mind his words. 9
And returning from the tomb, they reported all these things to the eleven, and to all the
others. 10 Now it was Mary Magdalene, and Joanna, and Mary of James, and the other
women who were with them, who told these things to the Apostles. 11 But these words
seemed to them a delusion. And so they did not believe them. 12 But Peter, rising up, ran
to the tomb. And stooping down, he saw the linen cloths positioned alone, and he went
away wondering to himself about what had happened. 13 And behold, two of them went
out, on the same day, to a town named Emmaus, which was the distance of sixty stadia
from Jerusalem. 14 And they spoke to one another about all of these things that had
occurred. 15 And it happened that, while they were speculating and questioning within
themselves, Jesus himself, drawing near, traveled with them. 16 But their eyes were
restrained, so that they would not recognize him. 17 And he said to them, “What are these
words, which you are discussing with one another, as you walk and are sad?” 18 And one
of them, whose name was Cleopas, responded by saying to him, “Are you the only one
visiting Jerusalem who does not know the things that have happened there in these days?”
19 And he said to them, “What things?” And they said, “About Jesus of Nazareth, who
was a noble prophet, powerful in works and in words, before God and all the people. 20
And how our high priests and leaders handed him over to be condemned to death. And
they crucified him. 21 But we were hoping that he would be the Redeemer of Israel. And
now, on top of all this, today is the third day since these things have happened. 22 Then,
too, certain women from among us terrified us. For before daytime, they were at the tomb,
23 and, having not found his body, they returned, saying that they had even seen a vision
of Angels, who said that he is alive. 24 And some of us went out to the tomb. And they
found it just as the women had said. But truly, they did not find him.” 25 And he said to
them: “How foolish and reluctant in heart you are, to believe everything that has been
spoken by the Prophets! 26 Was not the Christ required to suffer these things, and so
enter into his glory?” 27 And beginning from Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted
for them, in all the Scriptures, the things that were about him. 28 And they drew near to
the town where they were going. And he conducted himself so as to go on further. 29 But
they were insistent with him, saying, “Remain with us, because it is toward evening and
now daylight is declining.” And so he entered with them. 30 And it happened that, while
he was at table with them, he took bread, and he blessed and broke it, and he extended it

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to them. 31 And their eyes were opened, and they recognized him. And he vanished from
their eyes. 32 And they said to one another, “Was not our heart burning within us, while
he was speaking on the way, and when he opened the Scriptures to us?” 33 And rising up
at that same hour, they returned to Jerusalem. And they found the eleven gathered
together, and those who were with them, 34 saying: “In truth, the Lord has risen, and he
has appeared to Simon.” 35 And they explained the things that were done on the way, and
how they had recognized him at the breaking of the bread. 36 Then, while they were
talking about these things, Jesus stood in their midst, And he said to them: “Peace be with
you. It is I. Do not be afraid.” 37 Yet truly, they were very disturbed and terrified,
supposing that they saw a spirit. 38 And he said to them: “Why are you disturbed, and
why do these thoughts rise up in your hearts? 39 See my hands and feet, that it is I myself.
Look and touch. For a spirit does not have flesh and bones, as you see that I have.” 40
And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and feet. 41 Then, while they were
still in disbelief and in wonder out of joy, he said, “Do you have anything here to eat?” 42
And they offered him a piece of roasted fish and a honeycomb. 43 And when he had eaten
these in their sight, taking up what was left, he gave it to them. 44 And he said to them:
“These are the words that I spoke to you when I was still with you, because all things
must be fulfilled which are written in the law of Moses, and in the Prophets, and in the
Psalms about me.” 45 Then he opened their mind, so that they might understand the
Scriptures. 46 And he said to them: “For so it is written, and so it was necessary, for the
Christ to suffer and to rise up from the dead on the third day, 47 and, in his name, for
repentance and the remission of sins to be preached, among all the nations, beginning at
Jerusalem. 48 And you are witnesses of these things. 49 And I am sending the Promise of
my Father upon you. But you must stay in the city, until such time as you are clothed with
power from on high.” 50 Then he led them out as far as Bethania. And lifting up his
hands, he blessed them. 51 And it happened that, while he was blessing them, he withdrew
from them, and he was carried up into heaven. 52 And worshiping, they returned to
Jerusalem with great joy. 53 And they were always in the temple, praising and blessing
God. Amen.

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2. The conqueror of death.

The Gospel does not directly describe what happened at the moment of the
resurrection of Jesus, but this follows directly from the same context; it is not reticence on
the part of the author, but rather it is a sublime manner of expressing oneself; we can
imagine it ourselves by going in spirit to the tomb.*
* The Resurrection: the fact and the way it occurred. Compare for instance, the case of the man born blind: “How he did
it I do not know, I only know one thing, before I was blind and now I see”.
- He died and now He is alive
- How can you pretend to understand God’s plan in its entirety? …you would need to be as almighty as
God Himself….but this was the temptation of Lucifer.
- Do you not agree that God can do more than men?
- Do you not agree that He can do anything He wishes without asking permission, counsel or obtain any
consensus with the so-called theologians… who improvise, who do not want theology to advance…but
put their superficiality in desiring at any cost….they live in the past…. as without knowing why, to give
themselves airs ... to delude themselves…. that if only they understood .... and that all others who do not
think as they do, do not understand anything.

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Behold the tomb: the very heavy stone that had served to seal it is overturned, the linens
that had wrapped Jesus are folded and put away in a corner, two shining Angels of light
watch over the burial site.
One of them, as in St. Matthew’s account (Mt 28:2), overturned the stone and sat
on it, terrorizing those who guarded the tomb, and then later entered the tomb and stayed
there to worship with the other Angel, as is mentioned in St. Luke’s Gospel.
Only they (the Angels) witnessed that solemn moment, which was not at all an
outburst; they shook the earth only by the power of their spirit. It was the dawn of the day
after the Sabbath: Jesus was still asleep in death, but the divine Person had not abandoned
his uncorrupted Body. He was truly dead, but it could not be said He was a corpse
overcome by corruption; He was waiting for the time set by the Father to reconcile the
divine Body and revive it.*
Jesus’ soul came close to the Body, gloriously filled with divine power sublimated
by the Will of God that He had perfectly accomplished. He looked at the lifeless and
wounded Body and loved it because it had been the holocaust filled with love offered for
the divine glory. He desired it, because He could not leave this most innocent and holy
Body to corruption. He saw the Blood that still covered it and the Blood that was shed,
and then put His Body and Blood back together, because the divine Person was still joined
to it, being a unity. It could not be separated anymore from that unity, because the divine
Person attracted the soul to the Body and Blood, and the Body and Blood to the soul. It
was like a consecration: the soul said: This is my body, this is my blood, and the body did
not change in substance but in form, recovered immediately, and from a corpse became a
sleeping man, with the Blood already flowing back into the heart and in the veins,
awaiting the pulse of life to circulate. It took an instant; the soul entered the Body once
again informing it, communicating to it the glory that enveloped it, and the Body, as if it
had vanished in a large flame, became completely spiritual. The Body was enveloped in
linen; the Heart began to pulsate lovingly and like a joyful wave the Blood poured through
the veins and reached the brain that re-opened praising the Father, like a flower opens
again in the early morning sun and gives out its fragrance.
The Body slipped through the linen, passing through it in an instant, almost as if
the Body were a cloud of light or a shining beam of rays. He rose adoring, and all His
being sang like a harp with shining gold strings; He sang thanking the Father for His
victory.
The Angel, like lightening, came down from Heaven, and with Him a joyful host;
with an act of will he turned towards earth and it trembled; he turned towards the stone
and it flipped over like a twig carried by the wind, breaking the seals.
Jesus already had passed through the stone. Glancing about the cave, He gave it a
blessing so that from that point on it would be glorious, and in so doing He blessed the
tombs of all men, because one day, as wheat, their lives would bloom once again.
He was the first fruit of those asleep in death; He resurrected to give us our
resurrection, as He died to give us life.

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*The person of the Word that keeps dominion over Himself (as we do on our body and soul).

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 It was dawn, and the darkness lifted like a drape wrapping itself up; the earth spun,
spun around, turning on its axis, advancing so that the sun would bathe it with joy; it had a
thrill of new life, because Life had smashed death and had extinguished it.
Death fled… in that hour its kingdom ended; Life was rising, beaming in the ray of
glory, and engulfing the paths of empty death, and the author of mercy: Vitam habeant
(May thou have life) opposed the condemnation of Eden: Morte morieris (Thou shalt
surely die).
A hymn rose from the Heavens, a hymn of joy to the Conqueror of death: Exultet
iam angelica turba caelorum, exultent divina mysteria, et pro tanti Regis victoria tuba
insonet salutaris. (Rejoice, heavenly powers! Sing, choirs of angels! Exult, all creation
Exult, all creation around God’s throne! Jesus Christ, our King, is risen! Sound the
trumpet of salvation!) (Transaltor’s note. Easter proclamation – Exsultet).
Legions of angels descended and rejoiced like blazing bolts of lightning around the
tomb of the great triumph and sang again: Glory to God in the highest and peace to men of
good will as they did in Bethlehem.

The holy women go to the tomb

The earth was asleep and still enveloped by the shroud of night. The fields were
silent amidst the splendor of an invisible joy; the guards of the tomb were silent transfixed
by fear; the far off, deserted streets were silent as were the ancient trees, like disheveled
giants, steeped in sleep.
In the distance a group of women were advancing; they too were silent and in pain,
carrying big bundles filled with funerary aromatics; they were advancing in sorrow,
without becoming aware of the joy of that hour that was enveloping them; only a wave of
peace pierced through their hearts. They were alone but not afraid, going to a tomb and
yet had no fear, going to embalm a corpse, yet without feeling discomfort. Their only
concern was the heaviness of the boulder that sealed the tomb, hoping to find someone
who could help them. They moved quickly, in a hurry to arrive... At last they reached the
cliff and the cave, whose location was marked indelibly in their minds on that Friday
evening... Their hearts were making efforts to rally, and yet a breath of peacefulness was
spreading over their hearts as if they had been defrosted; they were warm with love, their
heart beats were increasing, and their breaths became shorter...
The Rabbi is there, they were thinking, reclined, buried; yet they could not think of
Him as dead, because an aura of life enveloped them even though they were not aware of
it.
That place exuded life; the tomb was a monument of victory over death; there
could not be a dead man there, although that was what they still thought; they felt in their
hearts a new sun of love slowly rising from the mists of the morning. They walked
quickly… the cliff loomed… they advanced, they fixed their eyes upon it and were
startled. The sealing boulder had been flipped aside, as if a giant hand had seized and
tossed it.
The cave entrance was no longer blocked; they entered with the anxiety of those
who fear a sad surprise, but that anxiety was love. The cave was empty. The Body of the
Lord was not there. It was a moment of tremendous anguish. Had someone removed It?
Had they stolen It? Had they desecrated It? Their faith was still in darkness, and they did

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not think of what had happened; they were dismayed, motionless with eyes that wanted to
cry but their tear ducts were closed because of an invisible joy that was already rising up
from the same cave as a scent of love.
Suddenly, a blaze dazzled them, two figures shining like suns approached them;
they were men but their clothes had the brilliance of the sky at noon. The women lowered
their eyes frightened, shaken…who were they? While they were thinking, one of them
spoke, his voice was suave and powerful, “Why do you seek the living one among the
dead? He is not here, but he has been raised. Remember what he said to you while he was
still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners and be crucified, and
rise on the third day.” At these words they woke up as from a deep sleep; they
remembered that Jesus had said that, and they were bewildered for not remembering it.
But as the terrible storm of the Passion broke, they had remained disconcerted,
considering only what was happening before their eyes. Hope had faded from their hearts.
And now instead it lived again and changed into certainty, but they still had doubts, and as
it is written in St. Mark (Mk 16:8) they were taken by fright: they were at a tomb still
darkened by funereal shadows and although the light had dazzled them, they began to flee
very frightened, and were almost eager to leave the place behind and return to the land of
the living.
Consider the psychology of the situation: the supernatural vision had placed them
in front of a certainty; but as soon as they were a short distance from the tomb the thought
that it was a tomb dawned on them as did the terror of the inexorable mystery of death;
suspecting that they were witnesses to one of many terrifying tomb-related events, they
fled frightened, without having at that moment the courage to talk of their experience to
anyone.
But having placed enough distance between themselves and the burial area, that
natural fear one has of tombs and death disappeared from them and joy revived them, the
shadows disappeared from their spirit and they went to the eleven Apostles and those
gathered with them, to tell them what they had seen and heard.
The Sacred Text notes that the women who announced these things to the Apostles
were Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary mother of James and some others. The women had
been more faithful to Jesus and so they had the joy of being the first ones to know of His
resurrection.
God confounds human wisdom and human prudence that would have believed that
this great news would have been better communicated to representative men.
He chose women to be the first witnesses of the grandiose event because they had
been the most faithful; moreover, there was nothing to oppose their testimony because a
woman by her nature is an accurate and profound observer and critic of things truly
supernatural. With the practical intuition that she has, she immediately sees through any
obfuscation or deception and so it is difficult for her to believe what is truly supernatural,
because she sees it with the natural light of her intuition and so does not readily accept
profound truth casually at first sight.
It is an irresponsible slander to believe the woman to be an inferior being,
especially regarding her intelligence and will. The only ones who say such things are
those who treat her as an object of lust, or know very little of her true nature.

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 The woman has a sharp intelligence and a very strong will, and certainly God had
a profound reason to choose her as first witness of the resurrection of Jesus, the key truth
of our faith.*
They were not believed…

The Apostles, according to the common prejudice against women, which was even
stronger among the Jews, believed the holy women were delirious and did not believe
them. The women were certainly excited and maybe even shaken, and of course they
could not relate the facts as if they were describing some ordinary event; so this only
contributed to the belief the Apostles had that the women were delirious. Peter, however,
as head of the Apostles, having still a great love for Jesus, ran to the tomb to ascertain
what had happened, and entering he saw the linen cloths placed to one side which clearly
showed that the body had not been stolen; but his faith hadn’t solidified, and he returned
wondering about what he saw, without being able to explain it.
As it appears from the return of the disciples from Emmaus that their faith in the
divine reality of Jesus Christ had been an illusion, and therefore, far from waking up to the
reality of the happening, it surprised them as inexplicable things can surprise.
This is what happens to our reason when it is overcome by unbelief: it regards as
fantastical the great events that confirm the Faith believing them to be delirium, rather
than considering them as a reason to believe.
The unbelievers receive the announcement of the admirable truth of the Faith from
the Church, Mistress and Teacher of peoples, exalted over by all the nations: which can be
represented by the witness of Mary Magdalene; they receive it internally by the merciful
grace of the Lord: which can be associated with Joanna; and they feel in themselves the
certainty, because in the bitterness of life, Faith supplants the constructs of all
philosophers and is the only reality that comforts pain: which we can associate with Mary
the mother of James; but despite these valid testimonies the unbelievers refuse to believe.
Sometimes unbelievers even want to examine and study the Faith, and they run to the
tomb, like Peter, because they study Faith not as life, but as one examines relics from the
past or the burial cloths—that is, the vestiges of dead things.
Thus it is evident that in their souls the light of truth cannot shine, and at most they
are left with a sterile amazement that keeps them in the same darkness in which they were.
The holy women went to the tomb with a feeling of love, even if not perfect, and
they found light; if only poor unbelievers, instead of obsessing over trifles and too much
study would humbly offer the Lord a small pledge of love, they would see the light more
easily.
Reason, alas, comes up short before the heights of Faith and if it does not at least
find a way, with a small offering of spiritual love, to take a leap and fly above the heavy
atmosphere of the material world, it will never reach the limits of the divine grace that
enlightens and carries it to the sublime heights of eternal truth.

--------------------------------------------------
* Today people are talking a lot about women and their role in the world. It is a good idea to remember these important
facts in the Sacred Scripture: the Son of God came on Earth through a Woman. Women positively announced the
Resurrection. The Apostles, as good workers and fishermen, were practical men, they would not let themselves be
driven by emotion; but they would believe… after a personal assessment of the situation. They want to verify the claim
and so Peter and John go to the Tomb.

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3. The tender and wonderful story of the disciples of Emmaus.

The story of the holy women, far from eliciting faith in the resurrection of Jesus in
the hearts of the Apostles and the disciples, was for some of them the coup de grâce, and
they believed that it was all over, resigning themselves to going back to their respective
occupations and resuming a life without hope of improvement. Two of them, not knowing
anymore what to do in Jerusalem and considering story of the pious women to be pure
fantasy, firmly resolved to go back to their village of Emmaus, which was about sixty
furlongs away from Jerusalem or approximately eleven kilometers (Translaotr’s note:
about seven miles).
When the fundamental idea of a divine plan is discarded and it is claimed that
everything is reduced to one’s own ideas of reality and fantasy, and one believes what has
been prophesied about that divine plan to be false even to the point of swearing that the
words that refer to it were false, any light that may come to confirm its veracity will only
seem to be a bigger illusion, and the mind, concentrated in the disillusionment, does not
admit anything save its own beliefs. This was the state of the disciples of Emmaus, of
which only one name is recorded in the Sacred Text: Cleopas, perhaps because his name
embodied the sentiments of both of them. Cleopas in Greek means every glory and in
Hebrew means changing, or change. Thus they who thirsted earthly for glory and well-
being, had changed their minds, keeping only a simple memory of Jesus as a good man
deluded by His ideologies.
Saddened, they walked on that lonely route, conversing with each other about all
the things that had occurred. They had lived for long time with Jesus and were so filled
with memories of Him that they could not talk of anything else. The story of the holy
women, that should have given them clarity and light, had instead given the final blow to
their faith, as we said before, yet even not believing anymore, they could not ignore what
had happened, nor could they forget it.
While they were discussing the events together, Jesus approached them as a
pilgrim, and walked with them. But their eyes were prevented from recognizing him. They
believed now that Jesus was a man and above all condemned; this notion, devoid of faith,
made them incapable of recognizing Him, especially after the resurrection as His body
had become glorious. They remembered the Redeemer in His mortal flesh, a sorrowful
pilgrim; they still had their minds and hearts full of His Passion and they could not
recognize Him, because for them it was a sure fact beyond any doubt that He was dead
and could not live again.
Jesus, on the other hand, offered them no special light to be recognized, because
He wanted first of all to heal them interiorly in order that they would have the absolute
certainty of having seen Him and talked to Him.
If they recognized Him right away, they would have remained with the doubt of
having spoken to a ghost; instead along the way and in the same house where they showed
him hospitality, they had the absolute certainty of talking to a true and real person.
In any case, He appeared to them as they considered Him in their hearts: to them
He was a common pilgrim and no longer the Messiah, and so He manifested Himself to
them in that fashion. A psychological reason can be added to this: as the two were full of
grief, and subjected to the bitterest of disappointments they would have had no interest in

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knowing more about a random pilgrim who was talking to them; He was for them a
wanderer and that was that. Jesus Christ also made use of this inner state of theirs in order
not to be recognized immediately.
He approached them first as just another person that happened to be walking on
that same road, and so they did not pay attention to him, continuing talking to each other.
Then he gave the impression of taking an interest in what they were saying and asked
them almost out of curiosity, What are you discussing as you walk along, and why are you
downcast? They should have merely answered with the subject about which they were
discussing, but they were so involved in their subject that they reckoned everyone was
aware of it, and marveled that there could be someone that did not know about the
happenings that they were discussing.
In truth they had no reason to answer in that manner, because the pilgrim was just
asking what they were discussing, but their answer shows the deep sorrow they felt and
how much their hearts were involved in those happenings in Jerusalem. Thus to Jesus’
question, Cleopas, one of the two disciples with a sense of surprise and annoyance, said:
Are you the only visitor to Jerusalem who does not know of the things that have taken
place there in these days? And Jesus as if He were completely unaware, replied: What
sort of things? Both of them, then, even more amazed that He could be completely
oblivious to what had happened, added: The things that happened to Jesus the Nazarene,
who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, how our chief
priests and rulers both handed him over to a sentence of death and crucified him. But we
were hoping that he would be the one to redeem Israel; and besides all this, it is now the
third day since this took place. Some women from our group, however, have astounded
us: they were at the tomb early in the morning and did not find his body; they came back
and reported that they had indeed seen a vision of angels who announced that he was
alive. Then some of those with us went to the tomb and found things just as the women had
described, but him they did not see.
The response of the two disciples completely manifests their state of mind: they
talk of Jesus the Nazarene, relating only His earthly origin and not remembering at all that
He was called the Christ. In fact they remember Him as a man and recognize Him as a
Prophet, powerful for the works He did and His teachings to the people; but He was
merely a Prophet. Their faith, therefore, was completely extinguished in them. They
remember His condemnation and His death solely to express the disillusionment that they
had due to that death which had cut off their hopes in the rebuilding of the Kingdom of
Israel. They deny, or more accurately, they do not recognize the redemption and salvation
that come from His Passion and death, showing that their hearts, even before His death,
had solely a human and natural faith in the mission he had come to accomplish. They
observed in particular the fact that that was the third day from the day of His death, but
they did not specify the reason for noting this fact, adding confusedly that for them was
significant. All of this was told to a pilgrim who knew nothing of the events, and who
could not have understood them.
The psychology of this situation is profound: they had waited impatiently for the
third day, for a last spark of faith and hope in the words of the Lord who had promised the
resurrection on the third day; they were waiting not so much for His resurrection but that
of Israel; they dared not openly speak of their hope, so as not to be treated by the pilgrim
as fantastic visionaries.

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 How could it be expected that a dead man on a Cross would rise again after three
days?
And how could they hope that he would reconstitute the kingdom of Israel in one
day?
They thought they had been too naïve to believe such things, and not wanting to
appear like that to the pilgrim, they spoke reticently. On the other hand, even though they
did not believe anymore, the thought of Jesus’ promise was engrained in them, and since
the day was not yet over, hope was reborn in the subconscious of their minds.
This too is deeply psychological: one who has believed with enthusiasm in an
extraordinary deed—though now apparently obviously false and a failure—nevertheless
continues to keep hoping that it is true in the back of one’s mind, not because of faith but
for decorum: not wanting to admit to having been deceived. They did not believe
anymore; however the persistence of the earlier thought still rose in them, the last
remnants of their very imperfect faith, and they still hoped that they had not been
deceived. Therefore, without giving the matter importance, and rather with a tone of
skepticism so not to be considered gullible, they hinted at the vision and the testimony of
the holy women.
They had not believed, indeed they had even decided to go back to Emmaus, not
knowing what to do in Jerusalem any longer; however, that testimony, right on the third
day, had shaken them.
Clearly they had not seen any new political event occur, as they had hoped, but the
fact that the Nazorean was not in the tomb anymore, and the vision that the holy women
had, moved in them at least the suspicion that after all the words of Jesus might be true.
The women’s account had terrified them because it had all the character of truth, and they
had regarded their testimony as a scary burial story; however, from the bottom of their
hearts had come at least the suspicion that it could be true.
This was the state of their soul, and so Jesus reproachfully said: Oh, how foolish
you are! How slow of heart to believe all that the prophets spoke! Was it not necessary
that the Messiah should suffer these things and enter into his glory? He then began to
reveal Himself, because from the uninformed pilgrim that He had appeared to be up to this
point, he spoke with great majesty, as a teacher, and firmly rebuked the disciples, calling
them foolish and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets spoke; foolish for their
thoughts and slow of heart for their lack of faith in the Prophets.
Jesus started from the beginning of their confusion: they had not understood that
Christ had to undergo suffering to enter into His glory, according to the divine plan (Phil
2:8, Heb 2:10), and they had not read in the Prophets the announcement of this mystery;
for this reason He started to explain to them those things in the Scriptures that related to
Him, starting from Moses and continuing through all of the Prophets.
All the Scriptures are full of Him, and He referenced with relevant words and with
great love the main points that relate to the mystery of His Passion and death.
The minds of the disciples were lit, their hearts were glowing, and they relived the
truth without any thought; the darkness of spirit disappeared as shadows disappear at
sunrise, their hearts lit up with unusual joy; the truth shone in their minds and hope was
reborn, no longer in a temporal kingdom of the Messiah, but in the hope of eternal
salvation, and the assurance of not having been deceived in following the Redeemer. Their
souls did not analyze anything at that time, they did not reflect on anything in particular;

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they just lived the joy of the truth and burned with love.
Meanwhile they arrived to the village that was their destination and Jesus gave the
impression that he was going on farther; he did not pretend, but showed what he would
do if they had not said anything further to Him. He went on because He wanted to be
invited by them to stay, He wanted their free will in what He was going to do, and in this
way their charity in giving Him hospitality would also earn them the grace of faith. He
was ready to go farther and in fact he would have gone on, because before feeding them of
Himself and taking them in his Heart, He wished that they would welcome Him into their
home and be charitable to Him.
The two disciples, seeing Him continues on His way, held Him back saying: Stay
with us, for it is nearly evening and the day is almost over.
The sun was going down, the shadows were getting longer and a sense of peace
flooded those two hearts that were coming back to life. They went in. There was silence in
the little house, as no one else was there. Jesus also entered and spread an aura of joy; He
was glorious, even though He did not show it, and His glory filled that house like the
divine glory filled the Temple. The disciples prepared a simple supper and invited Him to
sit down. Jesus then took the bread, blessed it and gave it to them.
It was customary among the Jews that during a banquet when a guest was a doctor
of the Law, he would break the bread and give it to the diners.
Jesus took the bread to initially declare Himself the Teacher.
It was the first sign of recognition He gave to the disciples. But He did not only
make it simply to give the bread. He took it to give of Himself, and in breaking it he
transubstantiated it into His Body and His Blood, as is obvious from the effect that it
produced in the souls of the disciples.
In the act of consecrating it and giving it to them, they recognized Him, their eyes
were opened; they felt His life in their hearts, grace flooded into them; it was their most
sweet Teacher; it was He - immensely more handsome, revived—they touched him, and
they had talked with Him!
Then He disappeared: He had no reason to show himself any longer; He
disappeared into the depths of their souls living in them, and restored to them the faith
they had lost; He disappeared so that their act of faith would be complete. In fact, now
fully believing, they said to each other: Were not our hearts burning (within us) while he
spoke to us on the way and opened the scriptures to us?
Two ardors had inflamed them: his Word in explaining the Scriptures, and the
Bread of life; the two elements of the Christian life without which it is impossible to live
supernaturally; one enlightens the mind, the other strengthens the will; one makes the
heart burn with love for the understanding that it gives of God, and the other opens the
eyes to the eternal reward. Scripture and the Eucharist, the Word of God and food for the
soul are the two sources of nourishment that cannot ever be divided in the formation of a
Christian soul.
The Protestant, even if he could explain the Scriptures according to the truth -
which unfortunately he cannot do being separated from the Church - without the Eucharist
he would still only have a food that cannot be absorbed, being painfully separated from
the Church; the Christians who feed on Jesus in the Eucharist, without forming their souls
with the Word of God in the light of the Holy, Roman, Catholic, Apostolic Church are not
fully united to Jesus, nor have their eyes open to know Him for who He is.

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 Jesus Christ in order to heal the souls of the two unfaithful disciples first asked
them a question, wanting to hear from their lips the confession of the deplorable state of
their souls. Jesus, who knew well what they were saying and searched deep into their
hearts, wanted to appear unaware, in order for them to confess the state of their souls. The
confession ended with a reproach of Jesus: Oh, how foolish you are! How slow of heart to
believe to excite them to repentance; the reproach was followed by the light of truth in the
explanation of the Scriptures, and finally in the food of life that is the Bread that Jesus
broke for them. The Lord appears almost unaware of our actions and wants us to confess
them; this is the foundation of spiritual rebirth.
The disciples confessed to Jesus, but under the guise of a pilgrim; we confess to
Jesus confessing to a Priest, who is the pilgrim that accompanies us on our way of exile.
To claim to confess directly to God is an illusion*, because the Lord shows himself
visibly only through His Ministers. Sin makes us foolish and slow, foolish in the
appreciation of the truth and slow in our will, incapable of orienting ourselves in life
according to the plans of the adorable Will of God. If the soul is not first healed, how can
it be fed?
Thus, preparation is essential to interior formation through the Scriptures, and
confessing our own miseries and obtaining forgiveness are essential to receiving the food
of life.

Charity attracts Jesus to us

Jesus Christ goes on farther and does not stay with us if we are not charitable
toward our neighbors, charity given only for love of Him. The poor are the pilgrims that
conceal Him and make Him manifest; through them He comes close to us concealed, and
through them He manifests himself, because they represent Him. If you do not invite the
pilgrim to benefit from your charity and if through the pilgrim you do not invite Jesus,
your charity is an affectation like any other. It is your personal satisfaction. Jesus moves
on and does not stay with you.
The modern world, in the midst of its display of civil service and social security, is
entirely devoid of charity and for this reason Jesus does not remain with us.
Night is coming; life declines, and is it not a grace to compel Jesus to stay with us
by using charity towards our neighbor for His sake? Charity is not only physical but also
and above all spiritual.

-----------------------------------------
* Also confession remains the sacrament of love and mercy because the Lord is always willing to forgive,
and not only seven times, but seventy times seven times, which means always. He knows, in fact, our
weaknesses, as the Psalmist says. And confession, this spiritual purification in the Blood of Christ is a duty.
All the erroneous and false interpretations of some supposedly “avant-guard” Priests, who say that it is not
necessary to go to confession, is against the true teaching of the Church and the faithful must reject these
sowers of discord, even though they may be part of the clergy.

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 Jesus hidden in the Eucharist

Jesus is invisible in His Church and lives with Her in the Eucharistic Bread; it
would seem that our eyes would recognize Him more easily if He would only show
Himself to us; instead it is in this hiding that He shows Himself to our faith and if He did
not hide, our interior eyes would not see Him. What a gift this Eucharistic hiding of Jesus
is for us and what a light for our faith! It can be said, without exaggeration, that every
truth of faith has its aurora borealis and it is this reflected light that makes its acceptance
more natural; it is only in the Eucharist that reason remains completely separate, like a
handmaid, and faith is complete, just as the mystery itself is complete in its hiddenness.
The disciples, as soon as they recognized Jesus, got up and, notwithstanding that it
was already night, they went back to Jerusalem to announce to the Apostles and to the
other disciples the resurrection of Jesus and what had happened to them. Their reacquired
faith became immediately an apostolate, because a selfish faith would be impossible—one
only seeking its own satisfaction and unconcerned for the spiritual good of the others. Let
us not, therefore, become tired to share with the others the spiritual gifts that we receive
from God and try by every means to rekindle in souls gone astray the light of God.
Joining the Apostles, called by definition the eleven after the betrayal of Judas, the
disciples of Emmaus told them and to the others present what had happened to them along
the way and in their home in the village. One of them, maybe again Cleopas, in entering
said with the enthusiasm and the impetuosity of who is sure of the truth, The Lord has
truly been raised and has appeared to Simon! This exclamation should be seen from its
psychological context: anxious to express the deep emotion that the truth caused him to
experience, the disciple ran since he was more agile and entered first the house where the
Apostles and the disciples were reunited and announced the great news, mentioning not
himself but his companion: The Lord has truly been raised and has appeared to Simon!
Speaking to people who did not believe, he did not say, in that first moment, that
Jesus had appeared to him also—preferring to be the reporter of an extraordinary fact
rather than a witness and participant to the same fact. He knew how the women had been
treated when they had come back from the tomb, and he did not want to be branded a
visionary without explaining himself. This subtle detail, preserved for us in the Sacred
Text, makes us think that the companion of Cleopas was Simon Peter himself, or at least
another who had the same name Simon. It is possible that Peter, after being to the tomb
and being tormented by his anguished thoughts, would accompany Cleopas to his home in
Emmaus, to seek a safer refuge. He might, in his troubled mind, have been afraid that
the Priests and the scribes would blame the Apostles, and therefore, him for the
infringement of the seals of the tomb. It would have been out of place for the disciple of
Emmaus, having given account of the apparition of Jesus to him and his companion, to
have alluded to another apparition to Simon at another time.

4. Jesus appears to all the Apostles. Last instructions. The Ascension into Heaven.

Having recovered a little from the emotional situation, the two disciples told what
had occurred to them on the road to Emmaus and how they had recognized Jesus in the
breaking of the bread. Maybe their story began to arouse suspicion, as often is the case

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when a supernatural fact is described to incredulous people, when suddenly Jesus—the
closed doors notwithstanding—came into their midst and exclaimed: Peace be with you.
It is I, do not fear. His glorious Body, no longer subject to the laws of matter, knew no
obstacles, and much more then an electric wave, it passed through the walls and the
locked door. The people reunited there, already disconcerted by what they heard from the
disciples of Emmaus, were terrified and frightened, believing that they were seeing a
ghost.
If they had believed what the disciples were saying, they would not have thought
they were seeing a ghost. Jesus with very tender care, to remove their anxiety added: Why
are you troubled? And why do questions arise in your hearts? Look at my hands and my
feet, that it is I myself. Touch me and see, because a ghost does not have flesh and bones
as you can see I have. After saying that, He showed them His hands and feet and made
them touch them, but still they not believe, even though they had hearts full of joy at the
divine touch.
This makes us see in just what state of disbelief they still were, and how thick was
the darkness of their spirit. They touched with their hands, they saw with their eyes and
still did not believe. It is terrible! They were more unbelieving than St. Thomas, whose
lack of faith has become proverbial; their intellect was completely obscured, because the
idea that the Master would not be able to rise again continued to remain in them.
Unbelievers with preexisting biases act the same way: they say they are open to
seeing and verifying, and yet when they experience the truth first-hand, they still do not
believe, because their hearts are faulty and confused. They do not seek a reason to believe
but the proof of unbelief; they do not believe in the face of evidence, practically denying
the same foolish positivism because of which they say they do not to believe. If only they
would become humble, acknowledging their ignorance, they would receive the light of
truth and Faith; but they are stubborn and do not want to believe.
In the face of the stubbornness of the Apostles, Jesus, far from abandoning them as
they would have deserved, resorted to another approach. They were beside themselves
with joy, according to the Sacred Text; they did not believe their eyes and their touch; not
out of obstinate malice, but because of the extraordinariness of what they saw, as they
experiencing something outside the reality of life and not knowing how to draw a logical
consequence to what they were seeing. Jesus, therefore, calling them to reality and to
distract them from the astonishment that prevented them to reflect, exclaimed: Have you
anything here to eat? They Him brought a piece of roasted fish and a honeycomb*; Jesus
ate some in their presence and gave them what was left so that they could eat of it and
show it to others as witness of His resurrection.
Jesus Christ, although He was glorious, had a real body and could eat. The food
really entered his stomach and turned directly into substance without the need for
digestion. He allowed Himself to participate in our lives to sanctify them, and while
before His Passion He had eaten the Passover with bitter herbs, symbol of the earthly
pilgrimage, after the resurrection He ate the honeycomb, symbol of the sweetness of
eternal glory.
At the Last Supper he ate the paschal lamb, symbol of Himself immolated, and
after the resurrection He ate roasted fish, symbol of His Eucharistic love; the lamb lives
on earth, a symbol of the pilgrim soul, and the fish in the sea, a symbol of the soul blessed
in the immensity of God’s glory, in which it is submerged for eternal bliss.

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 Seeing the food they gave Him consumed, the Apostles believed, as it is clear from
the dialogue that Jesus had with them; but their spirits were still darkened by the memory
of His Passion and death, and so he dissipated this darkness, calling their attention to the
fulfillment of the prophecies concerning him, as He had already announced before His
suffering. And in order that they could completely understand what was written about
Him in the Law of Moses, in the Prophets, and in the Psalms, that is, in the whole
Scripture, he gave them the intelligence with a special grace, to understand and teach
these things to others, evangelizing all people.
St. Luke summarizes with a few words the recommendations and the instructions
Jesus gave to the Apostles during the forty days in which He remained with them before
leaving and ascending to Heaven. It was at that time that Jesus promised to them the Holy
Spirit and exhorted them to stay in Jerusalem to prepare to receive this great grace that
would change them into messengers of mercy, peace and forgiveness for all the earth.
At the end of the forty days He led them first to Bethany, to say good bye to
Martha, Mary and Lazarus, and from there to the Mount of Olives, where He blessed them
and then ascended, disappearing from their eyes, and rose up to Heaven in glory.
That time was the last and final proof He gave of His Divinity and for this reason
the Apostles and those with them adored Him, recognizing Him to be without any doubt
the Son of God.
They came back to Jerusalem full of joy for the graces received that they now
valued for all their magnificence, and were continually in the temple praising and blessing
God. They, in fact, woke up as from a sleep, and realized now that they had not
sufficiently appreciated the immense gifts they had received from God, and so they tried
to repair their oversights by going to thank Him continually in the Temple.

CONCLUSION

S. Luke contemplates the merciful

love of God.

The Gospel of St. Luke is another brilliant lamp lit by the Holy Spirit in this poor
dark valley, a lamp that dispels the obscuring clouds of our poor reason and guides our
will in the ways of love of the merciful God.
The proud, presumptuous man only needs to be looked upon with compassion and
forgiveness: he needs compassion for the many foolish things he says and needs to be
forgiven for the sins he commits. He has no glory—none at all; if he does a good thing it
is only and completely due to the goodness and mercy of God; by himself can only lie and
do misdeeds. The Lord frees him from deceit and instructs him, and with His forgiveness
frees him from his sins.
These are the foundations of true civilization and true progress.
Human wisdom, without the light of God, is a muddled collection of errors, and
human will without divine grace and the divine law, falls below the level of beasts. It
cannot seek out the truth outside of the Gospel, nor any good outside the law of God.
Civilizations follow civilizations but each time they reveal themselves to be more or less
disguised forms of madness, insanity and criminality.
Only one Law remains unshaken, only one source of wisdom, only one lever for

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holy work: the Gospel.
In the Gospel of St. Luke we also see the way of true life traced for us and we
follow it by throwing ourselves into the arms of divine Mercy; it is a simple life before
which the abstruse ideas of human wisdom are a fog of thick darkness. We are deprived of
all interior fecundity, grown old through evildoing, and the Lord with His grace gives us
back the joy of life, as He gave it back to St. Zechariah and St. Elizabeth, giving them a
son in their old age: John, the grace, the gift, the mercy of God.
Our life becomes a song of magnificent love, when it joins the Divine Will, and
gives us fully the fruit of the grace, as He gave to the Blessed Virgin Mary with her fiat.
The infancy of Jesus casts beams of vivid light on human infancy, which grows in
grace and virtue only with obedience and submission, and interested only in the things of
God. Modern civilization pretends to educate the infant by making it an adult, and
corrupts it into a mess of folly and violence, which can only prepare it for delinquency
early on.
The life of young people, instead, grows and prospers in the temple of God and
their reason develops and is ennobled in the splendor of faith; a young person must be
with Jesus and must be with Him among the Doctors of the Law and deal with the things
of God, to be able to emerge from the concealment of adolescence and accomplish the
mission that God gives him. This is the admirable synthesis of supernatural pedagogy.
The struggles begin as the disagreements, but on the front door of life Jesus marks
the password, the word that must guide one in all disputes: You shall worship only God
and to Him only shall you serve. The holy freedom of the spirit is all in these splendid
words of wisdom and love.
Jesus began his teaching in the synagogues of Galilee, reading and explaining the
Scriptures, and he did this to make us understand how important the Word of God is for
our interior formation and to remove from us the unclean spirits that haunt our intelligence
and our will with their malignant suggestions, and to free us from the fever of passions.
We cannot keep anything in our lives, despite the intense work that we
accomplish; our activities are fruitful only in the name of Jesus, because He is the true
center of our civilization and the well being of the peoples, sailing toward the port of our
eternal homeland. He heals our spiritual wounds, gives back to the soul its purpose, raises
us above all worldly interests, and traces the way of the true beatitudes, overturning the
fleeting concepts of life that the world offers. All miseries are overcome at His feet; all
storms quieted by His presence; He is the giver of peace, He is providence that multiplies
the temporal resources of life, He is light in the night of our exile; He is the good
Samaritan who comforts and heals us when we are wounded by evildoers.
The word of Jesus Christ is divine; it is unparalleled wisdom in its deep simplicity,
the small seed that germinates to become the greatest among the trees; the small measure
of yeast which ferments our entire life, the splendor of the truth that enlightens us, healthy
food that satiates us. His mercy embraces us in our aberrations, his love searches for us
when we are lost, and his mercy forgives us in our infidelity.
He is everything for us: He is our King, our Savior, the victim offered for our sins,
the sweetest food in our exile, the destination on our pilgrimage, the door to enter to our
homeland.
He ascended Calvary burdened with the Cross to trace for us our way of suffering,
ascended to Heaven to open for us the triumphant way of glory, descends onto the Altars

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to give us all His life, and He lives in the Church to envelop all of us in the warmth of His
mercy. Man cannot be apart from him, and each time he abandons Him he sets his house
on the sand, and it falls to pieces at the blowing of the winds and the tumult of the waters.

Come, Lord Jesus!

Come, Lord Jesus, come, now that the world is moving toward catastrophe,
because it has set itself apart from You; come, now that the sins of the nations are beyond
the pale, open your arms of mercy and heal us.
Seek those who are like sheep stranded in error, far from the Church; carefully
search, as for a lost coin, for those beautiful souls who do not yet know you; welcome
those poor souls led astray like children who come back from their aberrations to your
fatherly arms.
We are unfaithful servants, we have squandered your graces and rendered your
mercies useless; give to us the spirit of charity so that we may be able to repair our
wrongdoings. When we forget You when we get caught up in the opulence of material
things, call us back to the reality of life with thoughts of eternal life.
Bring order among our activities with the wisdom of Your proverbs; free us from
the foolishness of the false prophets that infest the world like detritus in the life of the
spirit; free us from the concealed abuses of the law; break the bonds of our slavery, give
us back a true sense of our dignity and of peace.
Enter the world triumphantly, chase the moneylenders out of the Temple; give us
saintly Priests who are not impure traders of your Blood; purify your House from the
worldly garbage that enters it with impunity and puts next to your throne the idols of
vanity and the flesh. Prepare us for the supreme day of Your second coming that we will
not dwell on the things of this world that will burn in the fire, but on our eternity.
Call us to the banquet of love, give life to us, renew us, make us one fold under the
Supreme Pastor and let You alone be the resurrection of this apostate world that apart
from you would fall into the abyss.
Send your Angel to upend the stone of the tomb that has been affixed upon your
mystical body that it may rot and disintegrate!
Come close to us poor pilgrims,
Come with us,
Explain to us the Scriptures with the light that you spread in the Church.
Let us know You,
Let us serve You,
Let us love You,
and make our lives an eternal blessing to the most holy Name of God, One and
Triune.
Amen.

The End

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