Meditation

Today, we find a solid basis for trust in the Gospel: “I pray not only for them, but also for those who will believe in me through their word...” (Jn 17, 20). It is Jesus' heart, which, in the intimacy of Jesus with his disciples, opens up the inexhaustible treasures of His Love. 

Today, we live in a world which does not know how to be truly happy with the happiness of Jesus, a world which seeks the happiness of Jesus in all the wrong places and in the wrong ways. Seeking happiness without Jesus only leads to deeper unhappiness. Just look at the soaps on TV, there is always somebody in trouble. 
 

Today, we contemplate the Virgin Mary's Visitation to her cousin Elizabeth. As soon as she was told she had been chosen by God the Father to be the Mother of the Son of God, and that her cousin Elizabeth had also received the gift of motherhood, she decidedly set out for the hills to congratulate her cousin...

Jesus' words inspire confidence: "Courage! I have overcome the world" (Jn 16, 33), that is, through his Passion, Death and Resurrection, He has attained the eternal life, life with nothing to stop it, a limitless life because it has overcome all limits and all difficulties.
 

On the Ascension of our Lord, we once more remember the “mission” that we have been entrusted with: “You are witnesses of these things”. God's Word is still alive today: “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, throughout Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth”. 

Today, vigil of our Lord's Ascension into Heaven, the Gospel leaves us with some very fond farewell words. Jesus let us share his most precious mystery; God Father is his origin and, at the same time, his destination: “I came from the Father and have come into the world. Now I am leaving the world and going back to the Father.” 
 

We begin the Decade of the Holy Spirit. Reliving the memory of the Cenacle, we see the Virgin Mary, Mother of God, Mother of Good Counsel, talking with the Apostles. What a warm and abounding conversation! Recalling all the joys they shared with their Master: The Paschal days, the Ascension and Jesus' promises. 

We again contemplate the Word of God with the help of Evangelist John. In these final days of Easter we feel an especial uneasiness to make God's Word ours and be able to understand it. The very uneasiness shared by the first disciples. 

Today is a special day! Imagine the typical day when you are with your family or friends, and you have many things to tell them. Maybe you haven't seen them for a long time or you've come from a great trip or, simply, you've had a day full of experiences. You want to explain everything, but you don't have enough time. 
 

Our hope is in Jesus Christ; His conquest of death gave us the life that death can never destroy, His Life. His resurrection is the verification that the spiritual is real. Nothing can separate us from the love of God. Nothing can diminish our hope. The negatives of the world cannot destroy the positive of Jesus Christ.
 

Today in the Gospel, Jesus announces and promises the coming of the Holy Spirit: "When the Paraclete comes…that proceeds from the Father, he will testify to me" (Jn 15, 26). "Paraclete" literally means "the one who is called near to one", and is usually translated as "Comforter". 

In these last days of Easter let us beg to open up to the Holy Spirit; we received it when we were baptized and confirmed, but now we must —as a last gift— make the Spirit to spring up from within us to take us where we would not have dared by ourselves.
 

Today, the Gospel opposes the world to Christ's followers. The world represents whatever sinful there may be in our existence. Consequently, one of the main characteristics of Christ's followers is fighting all evil and sin to be found in the world and inside every man. 
 

Today, our Lord exhorts us to fraternal love: "Love one another as I have loved you" (Jn 15, 12), that is to say, as you have seen me loving and you will still see me love. Jesus speaks to you as a friend, for He has told you that his Father calls you, that He wants you to become an apostle, and that He expects you to bear fruit,...

Jesus has replied, “Abbà”, Pater! Now He reveals us, “As the Father loves me, so I also love you.” And what shall we do? To stay indeed by his love, to abide by his commandments, to love His Father's Will. Is not this the example He gives us? "I always keep my Father's commandments and remain in his love".
 

Today, once more, we may see Jesus surrounded by the Apostles in an atmosphere of especial intimacy. He is giving them what we could consider as his final recommendations: what is normally said in the last moment, in the last farewell; that which has an especial force, as if it would be the last will.
 

Today, Jesus speaks to us indirectly of the cross: He will give us the peace, but at the cost of his painful “departure” of this world. Today, we read those words He said before the sacrifice on the Cross but that were written after his Resurrection. With his death on the Cross, He defeats both death and fear. 

“God is with you. The Blessed Trinity dwells in your soul in grace —that is why, in spite of your wretchedness, you can and should keep up a continuous conversation with the Lord” (Saint Josemaria Escrivá).
 

Today, Jesus invites us to love one another. In our complex world, too. Complex because good and evil are being mixed and mingled together. We often feel tempted to look at our world as our misfortune, as a piece of bad news, whereas we Christians, instead, are responsible for bringing out,...

Romano Guardini wrote: “The source of joy is to be found in a person's deeper intimacy… It is there where God resides. Then, joy widens and makes us glitter. And all that is beautiful can be perceived by us in all its brilliance.” 

Today, on this Friday 4th of Easter, Jesus invites us to stay calm. Serenity and joy flow smoothly like a river of peace from his resurrected Heart towards ours, dazed and restless, so often shaken by an activity as hectic as it is futile.
 

Today, as with those movies that, at the beginning, take us back in time, our liturgy remembers a passage that belongs to the Holy Thursday: Jesus washes the feet of his disciples. Thus, this gesture —read from the Easter perspective— recovers a perennial validity.
 

To accept Jesus is to believe in, see and listen to the Father, not to be in darkness, to obey the command of eternal life. We certainly deserve Saint John of the Cross' rebuke: "[The Father] with this Word said everything in one go (...). 

Saint Thomas Aquinas comments on this passage of the Gospel by saying: "I can see thanks to the sunlight, but if I close my eyes, I cannot see; but this is not the fault of the sun, but mine".
 

We keep mulling over one of the most beautiful and well known images of Jesus' preaching: the Good Shepherd, his sheep and the gate. We all keep in our memory the figurines of that good Shepherd we were able to look at, as children.

Faith enter us through the ears, by listening to he Word of the Lord, and the greater risk we run is our own deafness, to miss the Good Shepherd's voice, because our head is full of noise and other dissonant voices. 

We have just read in the Gospel Jesus' allocution about the Bread of Life, which is Himself, offering us his body as nurture for our souls and for our Christian life. And, as it usually happens, we have to contemplate two different —if not opposite— reactions, from those who are listening to him.

We Catholics are not always up to the level the Eucharist requires: at times, we try “to live” without the living conditions set up by Jesus and, yet, as John Paul II has written "Eucharist is too big a gift to admit any ambiguities and reductions".
 

The living bread is Jesus. It is not nourishment we assimilate for us but that assimilates us. It makes us feel hungry for God, thirsty for listening to his Word, which is, our heart's rejoicing and joy. 

But what thirst and hunger are these? Ultimately it is the hunger and thirst for “eternal life”. Physical hunger and thirst is only a pale reflection of a deep desire each man has for a divine life that only Christ can give us. "This is the will of the Father, that whoever sees the Son and believes in him shall live with eternal life" (Jn 6, 39).