Love is not a market commodity but always a free gift
- Parent Categories: Spirituality
by Ottavio De Bertolis sj
We have already mentioned the profound meaning of the sixth commandment, which is not to repress, but to free our affectivity and our sexuality itself. In fact, it is evident that these impulses can be disordered and be experienced in a destructive way, that is, not human, but simply animal: experienced in this way, they are not even satisfying, precisely because love is not a simple mechanics of organs, but an agreement of souls. , or, if you prefer, of hearts. Each of us, married or not, lay person or priest, is marked by the profound need to love and be loved: if we thought that chastity consists in suppressing this, we would be completely off track. In this sense, as we mentioned, the sixth commandment does not teach us to repress, but to integrate and live more fully the world of our affections, because it is instead possible to live them badly or "less".
A "father" God attentive to the affairs of his children
- Parent Categories: Spirituality
by Gianni Gennari
Let's start again with Abraham, the founder of the Jewish-Christian faith. He is the one who "believed" in a word of God the creator and left, leaving everything, towards an unknown reality, strong in listening to the call as a secure basis and foundation (the first sense of "believing", batàh) and confident in the confident momentum that pushed him forward (the second sense of believing, aman), as we saw in previous meetings.
The father of the faith of the great religions of the one God
- Parent Categories: Spirituality
by Enrico Ghezzi
In the letters addressed to the Romans and the Galatians, Saint Paul, regarding the very polemical comparison with the Jewish world (from which Paul came and in which he had been severely educated), insists on the relationship between the Law and faith in God who "justifies ”.
The apostle bases his doctrine of 'justification' (= being freed from sin and participating in the inheritance of the children of God), by resorting to the faith of Abraham, the father of the Jewish people: Paul states that in him, in Abraham, also the pagan peoples (the object of his tireless preaching), despite not yet knowing God, are called, since the Lord had already 'blessed all the nations' (Gal 3,8; cf. Gen 12,3); and since Abraham's 'faith' was 'credited to him as righteousness' (Rom 4,8), Abraham can be recognized as 'father of us all' (4,16): hence, Paul's solemn proclamation: 'of consequently those who come by faith are blessed together with Abraham, who believed' (Gal 3,9:XNUMX).
The harsh experience of war: high school
- Parent Categories: Spirituality
by Mother Anna Maria Cánopi, osb
On June 10, 1940, while I was next to my mother who was sitting in front of the house under the lime tree, breastfeeding her last little brother, a woman arrived shouting: «The war has broken out! The Duce proclaimed on the radio that Italy too had allied itself with Germany and entered the war! My mother gasped and held her baby close as if to protect him: «Mercy, Lord! What will happen to all of us?".
The first consequence was the call of men - young and old - to the army. I was nine years old; I didn't yet know what a world war was, but I understood its gravity from the dismay I saw on the faces of the two mothers. In fact, our life underwent an abrupt change.