The “7” like the musical notes for the harmony of perfection
A tradition to be revived
by Angelo Forti
The number "seven" and its multiples are part of the musical pentagram of symbolic numbers in the Bible. There are seven days of creation and this week makes the number seven the root of every perfect reality. In fact, on the seventh day God was pleased with creation, he found it "very good". We see in number seven the figure of forgiveness for Cain after the killing of his brother Abel. God orders Noah to bring "seven pairs of animals" into the Ark. There are seven lamps that must burn in the first sanctuary built in honor of Jaweh.
A silent agony of the Christian community
Presence of the Pious Union in Aleppo
by Gabriele Cantaluppi
"Daesh" is an Arabic acronym, which defines the fundamentalist Islamic state, and is the great fear of Syrians, especially Christians. Everyone remembers the purge carried out in Mosul in Iraq in June last year, when ISIS emptied the city of Christians and, unfortunately, irreparably destroyed historical, architectural and literary memories. “We are not leaving, we remain alongside the weakest, the poor, the old who do not have the money or the physical strength to leave Aleppo” are the resolute words with which Boutros Marayati, archbishop of the Coptic Armenians of Aleppo, confirms the presence of a Christian community that did not want to emigrate from a tormented city.
The apocryphal gospels sparks of light in popular tradition
2015 Calendar of the Pious Union of Transit
by Franco Cardini
Each month the 2016 calendar is accompanied by episodes from the life of Jesus told by the "apocryphal gospels", almost underground rivers that supported the popular faith of the first Christians. The professor. Franco Cardini, professor of Church history, illustrates these "hidden good news" which are not part of the Church's canon. In the next issue, the watercolors illustrating the individual episodes will be illustrated.
The Greek word apokryphos means "hidden": this was how the Christian Churches of the 1st-2nd centuries indicated those Jewish-Christian evangelical texts that were kept secret and which it was deemed appropriate not to divulge. It is obvious that they became, over time, a matter of initiatory tradition and that some considered them bearers of higher and deeper truths, to be drawn from an esoteric level, that is, reserved for those who had access to higher levels of theological or mystical.