Meditation

In all these traits we may discover a fundamental vision of our Christian life: Jesus' desire to remain with us. In the book of Proverbs the Lord says: “Playing over the whole of his earth, having my delight with human beings” (Pr 8, 31). 

Today, Peter's experience reflects situations that, more often than not, we also eventually undergo. Who has never, ever felt, at least once, that the world was crumbling around and then decided to let it all go and surrender to despair? 

Today, once more, Jesus teaches us that miracles are measured by the measure of our faith: “Amen, I say to you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there,' and it will move” (Mt 17, 20).

Before loading with our “cross”, the first thing we must do is to follow Christ. It is not a matter of first suffering and then following Christ... Christ must be followed from our Love, and from there we can then understand the sacrifice, the personal negation: “For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it” (Mt 16, 25).

Today, the Church —through the liturgy of the Eucharist celebrating the Feast of Saint Lawrence, the Roman martyr— reminds us that there is "a consistent witness which all Christians must daily be ready to make, even at the cost of suffering and grave sacrifice." (Saint John Paul II).
 

Faith is not a privilege of a few, nor is it the property of those who think they are so good or of those who have ever been good, and have this social or ecclesial label. God's action precedes any Church's action and the Holy Spirit is already acting upon persons we would have never suspected could bring us a message from God,...
 

Today, we will not see Jesus sleeping on the boat while it sinks, nor rebuking the winds and the waves with a single word, thus causing the amazement of the disciples (cf. Mt 8,23-27). But today's action is also disconcerting, whether for his first disciples or for us as we contemplate it today.
 

A popular saying goes: “He who does not count on God when counting, does not know how to count.” And it is true, the disciples did not know —neither do we— how to count for they forgot, as we often forget, the most important part of the addition: God himself is always amongst us.
 

Today, the Gospel speaks of the Transfiguration of our Lord on Mount Tabor. After Peter's confession, Jesus started to say that it was necessary for the Son of man to be condemned to death and that He would rise on the third day. This passage of the Transfiguration of Jesus has to be placed within this context. 

Today, our liturgy proposes that we contemplate an injustice: the beheading of St. John the Baptist; and, at the same time, to discover in God's Word the need for clear and concrete testimony of our faith in order to fill the world with hope.
 

Today, as in yesteryears, to speak about God to those we know is a difficult thing to do. In a commentary about Jesus, St. John Chrysostom says: “The villagers of Nazareth do admire him, but their admiration does not go to the point of believing in him but, rather, of feeling envious, as if meaning: ‘Why him and not I’.”...
 

“Because we know not when our Judge shall appear, so we should live every day as if it were our last” (St. Jerome). These words are a call to live with intensity and responsibility our Christianity. It is not a matter of being afraid, but of living in the hope this is a time of grace, praise and glory.
 

Today, Matthew places two parables about the Kingdom of Heaven for us to ponder over. The announcement of the Kingdom is of essence in Jesus' preaching and in the hopes of the chosen people. But it is evident the nature of this Kingdom is not understood by the majority.

Today, through the parable of the weeds and the wheat, the Church urges us to ponder over the coexistence of good and evil. Good and evil within our heart; good and evil we may spot on others, good and evil we can see in the world, all around us.
 

Today, the Gospel shows us Jesus preaching to his disciples. He does so in the form of parables, as is His custom, using simple everyday images to explain the great hidden mysteries of His Kingdom. In this way he could be understood by everyone from the most highly educated to the simplest of individuals.
 

The treasure that Jesus proposes is buried deep within our soul, at the very core of our being. It is the Kingdom of God. It consists in lovingly encountering, in a mysterious way, the Source of life, beauty, truth, and goodness, and remaining united to this same Source until, having fulfilled the time of our pilgrimage, and free from all useless trinkets,...

Today, we must also listen to our Lord —even if we are busy by so many things— reminding us that “there is need of only one thing” (Lk 10, 42): love and saintliness. They should be our aim, the horizon we must never lose sight of amidst our daily chores.
 

God is a farmer who knows how to wait. Time belongs to the Father, for He is the only one to know about the day or the hour (cf. Mk 13, 32) of the harvest and threshing. And God waits. And we must also wait while synchronizing the watch of our hopes with God's design of salvation.
 

Today, we remember the “encomium” Jesus Christ addressed to those around him in those days: “Blessed are your eyes, because they see, and your ears, because they hear” (Mt 13, 16). And we wonder: can Jesus' words be also intended for us, or only for those who saw and heard him directly?

“Those who hear the Word with faith”, says the Council. You are used to hearing it, perhaps to reading it and, maybe, to pondering over it. Depending on the depth of your faith through hearing, such will be the fruits the crop will bear. Though, these fruits, somehow, are guaranteed by the vital power of the Word-seed,...
 

We listen to the Lord and follow Him, like the first disciples, but not always do we fully understand his message; we then sometimes follow our personal interests and ambitions within the Church. We forget that when we accept the Lord we have to give ourselves wholly and with full trust in Him; that we cannot think in obtaining the glory without having accepted the cross.

Today, Jesus is tested by “some teachers of the law and Pharisees” (Mt 12, 38), who feel threatened by him, not because of reasons of faith, but of power. Fearing they will lose their influence, they seek to discredit Jesus by provoking Him. At times, we may do this too, when we are led by our selfishness and individual interests;...

Today, Christ. Always, Christ. From Him we come; from Him come all the good seeds sown in our life. The “Kempis” says that God visits us with consolation and desolation, with sweet and bitter taste, with flower and thorn, with cold and heat, with beauty and suffering, with joy and sadness, with courage and fear... 
 

In Mary Magdalene's itinerary, we discover some important aspects of our faith. In the first place, we admire her courage. Though being a gift from God, faith requires courage from the believer. Generally, we tend towards what we can see, what can be seized with our hand. 
 

Today, the Lord is watching what we have sown during our lives, to pick the fruits of sanctity. Will He find charity, love of God and fellow man? Jesus corrects the rabbis' meticulous casuistry making the Sabbath rest law totally unbearable: Will He have to remind us that He is only interested in our heart, in our capacity to love?
 

Today, facing a world which decided to turn its back on God, in front of a world hostile to Christianity and to Christians, to listen to Jesus (who is the One who is talking to us in the liturgy or in the private reading of the Word) brings consolation, joy and hope in the middle of our daily struggles: “Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened…, and you will find rest” (Mt 11,28-29).

An Arab proverb says: “If in a pitch black night a black ant climbs over a black wall, God sees it.” There are neither secrets nor mysteries for God. There are mysteries for us, but not for God, before whom, past, present and future are open and dug into, to the last comma.
 

Nobody enjoys a good scolding. It must however be especially painful to be upbraided by Christ, who loves us with his most merciful heart. There is simply no excuse, no immunity when one is reprimanded by Truth itself. Let us receive humbly and responsibly God's call to conversion each day.
 

Today, Jesus offers us an explosive mixture of recommendations; it is like one of those fashionable banquets where the dishes are just tiny little tasty ‘snacks’. These are profound and hard to take in advice, addressed to his disciples in their mid-missionary preparation and formation process (cf Mt 11, 1). 
 

The message is quite clear: God is generous while sowing, but the very success of his sowing is also contingent —at the same time— on our free response. That the fruit depends upon the soil where the seeds fall is something that our daily experiences already tell us.