It is always pleasant to meet with Radio Mater listeners, especially at the beginning of the year to exchange good wishes and invoke, through the intercession of Mary and Saint Joseph, abundant blessings on our future.
We closed 2018 with solemn thanksgiving with the singing or recitation of the Te Deum, in which we expressed our gratitude for a year of life, woven with fragile and luminous webs that have marked the steps of our life.
We asked the Holy Family of Nazareth to act as intermediaries to lift our hearts above our human poverty and our frailties to let our eyes be invaded by the power of God's love, the source of our life.
Only by making our prayers flow with the same feelings as Mary and Joseph, can we make our love towards the Father authentic, thus freeing prayer from excessively human desires such as, for example, the desire to possess and excel, instead of being servants of physical and spiritual well-being of those who live next to us in the family and in the life of the parish community or in spirituality groups or in associations or in the world of work.
The other evening in that solemn praise of thanks we asked to give to our homes the harmony experienced in the house of Nazareth.
For this reason we want to begin this moment of spirituality in honor of Saint Joseph, asking the Holy Spirit for the gift of a supplement of soul on our actions in this year 2019.
And then we say:
Come, O Creator Spirit,
visit our minds,
fill with your grace
the hearts you created.
O sweet comforter,
gift from the Most High Father,
living water, fire, love,
holy chrism of the soul.
Finger of the hand of God,
promised by the Savior,
radiate your seven gifts,
inspires the word in us.
Be light to the intellect,
burning flame in the heart;
heal our wounds
with the balm of your love.
Defend us from the enemy,
brings the gift of peace,
your invincible guide
protect us from evil.
Light of eternal wisdom,
reveal to us the great mystery
of God the Father and the Son
united in one Love.
Glory be to God the Father,
to the Son, who rose from the dead
and to the Holy Spirit
for all ages.
Amen.
In this moment of prayer, we are not alone, but we are the voice of a universal choir of men, women and angels who express in solidarity the praise of thanksgiving to the Father, God the Creator. We want to involve everyone with the song that the angels made the shepherds hear on that singular night:
Canto Come faithfully
At the dawn of a new year, the liturgy introduces us into the space of life, guiding us with a bright star that shines in our eyes and echoes with joy in our hearts: it is the same Word of God that has a human face: Jesus.
With this Word at the beginning of yesterday's mass, January 1st, we opened the panorama of our future with the desire that God, the giver of all life, can bless us, protect us and that the joyful light of his face can illuminate the our journey.
We all have in our hearts the awareness that the beginning of each year is a treasure chest full of aspirations.
However, we know every fragment of our existence is marked by a big question mark. But we know that this unknown, this question mark is reversed towards the sky, because only in Heaven's notebook are the answers written with words embroidered with divine light which becomes a promise of blessing, of affectionate custody and the light of perennial and constant resurrection.
We mentioned earlier that we closed last year 2018 with a blessing to God as thanks for his gifts enjoyed over the past 365 days and now we begin a new time of grace by asking divine goodness for his blessing, that is, to prepare in his goodness a flat, serene, peaceful path in which its presence is always constant even in dark, difficult and tiring moments.
Living in time with faith in eternity means dwelling in our time as apprentices available to collaborate with Jesus to build a society, dreamed of and planned by God since forever. A society that could host the Messiah Jesus in an atmosphere of shared joy. For this reason, in the fullness of time, the heavens opened and God was able to give birth among us to the awaited Messiah.
Our life as Christians is a progression through history, in a way substantially similar to all the inhabitants of the world; in fact, similar are the affections, the work, the aspirations, the desire for good health, the escape from illness, the experiencing of joy, the being consoled at the inevitable moment of tears. For us disciples of Jesus, in the fabric of daily life, there is a watermark of spirituality that offers our time of living with a supplement of grace and divine energy.
Jesus never leaves us alone, he walks with us cultivating the personalized project he dreamed of at the moment of our birth.
Don Guanella let this expression cultivated in his heart flourish on his lips: "It is God who does": his is the project, his is the construction site in which we work and live. It is up to us to be willing to let ourselves be shaped like clay that is shaped by the artist's hands.
In recent days we have all knelt before the nativity scene.
At that stop in front we are invaded by a delicate feeling of amazement. The amazement that led the Magi to Bethlehem continues to provoke our conscience even in this era of great and whirlwind changes.
In this age-old tradition of the nativity scene, once upon a time, during the Christmas season, it was cultivated in all our homes. Now the nativity scene in our homes has lost some of its joyful charm, it seems to have lost its original soul. In our lives, in this society of images, there is little room left for amazement. Everything seems usual to us, something "already seen": the wonder has lost the freshness of surprising us and the few remaining fragments overlook only the street lights and the tree of our houses.
However, thinking about the encounter of the Infinite God with the finite child born in Bethlehem, our faith is rekindled and our memory is filled with a human history that becomes salvation.
To begin humanity the Creator started with a little mud. A mud that becomes flesh in Adam and God from that human flesh shapes the flesh for Eve's body.
At Christmas, without any human intervention, God decides to take flesh from the flesh of a woman and let his Son inhabit it. In that moment the Creator becomes a creature.
In this singular story, Mary becomes a disciple and collaborator of God in helping our human condition to dream of a human race enlivened by the Spirit.
That same Spirit, which yesterday fertilized Mary's womb, now continues to make divine seeds flow into human feelings. For those who have faith every day is Christmas: God is born in our flesh and becomes energy and strength in our arms to build a world constantly visited by the presence of the Spirit.
At Christmas the gaze was entirely on Jesus, the other day the liturgy had the holy family of Nazareth at its centre, yesterday the liturgy sang the divine motherhood of Mary.
The great motherhood that embraces heaven and earth. The infinite God shrank in the womb and was given to us for our hope of salvation. With Mary we can resume our journey at the beginning of this new year of grace.
This year, like the beginning of every year, offers us a great promise, a renewed hope. Just as the child runs safely into the arms of the mother who awaits him, so God allows us to start again, to overcome the hardships of life with our eyes fixed on the goal and with the hope in our soul of reaching the goal of blessed immortality.
I sing to the virgin Young woman
We do not want to move away from the holy house of Nazareth, where 55 years ago, as in these times (it was January 5, 1964), Paul VI was a pilgrim in the health center of the Annunciation in Nazareth and gave a memorable speech.
In those words of Paul VI, the house of Nazareth had become and still is the obligatory training ground for an authentically Christian life.
In it all the feelings of our humanity came together in a wonderful way.
We enter this sanitary of the earthly trinity, almost holding our breath so as not to miss any fragment of these masterful indications to live a beautiful and joyful life as a reflection of that of Joseph, Mary next to Jesus.
Let us prepare ourselves for this meeting in a climate of renewed affection and pray as the liturgy on the feast of the Holy Family invited us to pray with these same words:
Holy and sweet abode,
where baby Jesus
hid his glory!
Joseph trains the humble
carpenter's art
the Son of the Most High.
Next to him Mary
makes his home happy
of a clear joy.
The hand of the Lord
he guides them and protects them
on the days of the test.
O family of Nazareth,
expert in suffering,
give the world peace.
Praise be to you, O Christ,
to the Father and the Spirit
forever and ever. Amen.
On that occasion, Paul VI began his speech by making a fresco of this school of humanity, saying verbatim: «The house of Nazareth is the school where we began to understand the life of Jesus, that is, the school of the Gospel. Here you learn to observe, to listen, to meditate, to penetrate the profound and mysterious meaning of this simple, humble and beautiful manifestation of the Son of God. Perhaps we also learn, almost without realizing it, to imitate.
Here we learn the method that will allow us to know who Christ is. Here we discover the need to observe the picture of his stay among us: that is, the places, the times, the customs, the language, the sacred rites, in short, everything that Jesus used to reveal himself to the world.
Here everything has a voice, everything has a meaning.
Here, at this school, we certainly understand why we must maintain spiritual discipline if we want to follow the doctrine of the Gospel and become disciples of Christ.
Oh! how gladly we would like to return to being children and attend this humble and sublime school of Nazareth! How ardently we would like to begin again, close to Mary, to learn the true science of life and the superior wisdom of divine truths! But we are only passing through and it is necessary for us to lay aside the desire to continue to learn, in this house, the never completed formation in the understanding of the Gospel. However, we will not leave this place without having collected, almost furtively, some brief warnings from the house of Nazareth.
In the first place it teaches us silence. Oh! if the esteem of silence was reborn in us, an admirable and indispensable atmosphere of the spirit: while we are stunned by so many din, noises and sensational voices in the agitated and tumultuous life of our time. Oh! silence of Nazareth, teach us to be firm in good thoughts, intent on inner life, ready to hear well the secret inspirations of God and the exhortations of true teachers. Teach us how important and necessary the preparation work, the study, the meditation, the interiority of life, the prayer, which God alone sees in secret.
Here we understand the way of living in the family. Nazareth reminds us what the family is, what the communion of love is, its austere and simple beauty, its sacred and inviolable character; show us how sweet and irreplaceable family education is, teach us its natural function in the social order. Finally we learn the lesson of work.
Oh! home of Nazareth, home of the carpenter's Son! Here above all we wish to understand and celebrate the law, severe certainly but redemptive of human toil; here to ennoble the dignity of work so that it is felt by all; remember under this roof that work cannot be an end in itself, but that it receives its freedom and excellence, not only from what is called economic value, but also from what turns it towards its noble end; finally here we want to greet the workers of the whole world and show them the great model, their divine brother, the prophet of all the just causes that concern them, that is, Christ our Lord.
singing
On the occasion of that 1964 pilgrimage of the Pope, many faithful from the diocese of Milan where Montini had been archbishop for some years were present in Nazareth, the Pope with a heartfelt accent full of nostalgia for the pastoral season lived in the shadow of the "Madunina ”, addressed these words to the Milanese pilgrims: «Dear Ambrosians, among the beautiful, dear and certainly unforgettable emotions of these days, your presence also represents a very moving note and which adds to the others to make beautiful, I would say ineffable, this spiritual moment and this hour that the Lord lets us live in our short calendars. Thank you so much for your presence. I see from the people I know what the spirit is that moves your pilgrimage, and I imagine that this spirit coincides precisely with the one that moved my steps in coming to the Holy Land."
Pope Montini continued «You know well that (coming on pilgrimage to these places) is like returning to the roots, and feeling like the lifeblood that lives, after so many years and at such a distance, in our spirituality, in our religious life; it is the same as the principles, the sources, the most irrefutable authenticity." A monument of relevance for us now too.
The Pope said to his ancient dioceses: «You too should try to go to these roots, to feel truly taken by the charm not only of the beauty of the places, of the singularity of the moments, but of what they tell us about the Gospel, of the mysteries that we know of Our Lord Jesus Christ, trying to truly adhere to it with all my soul. If we remain in this adherence to these holy places, it is to be hoped, and I know it, that we will then be faithful even far away and in all professions and moments of life."
The liturgy on the feast of the family of Nazareth at vespers made us pray with this hymn that they want to repeat with such fervor and desire for nostalgia.
O family of Nazareth,
living image
of the Church of God!
Within your walls
the angels take turns
in devoted service.
In the divine child
souls join together
in perfect joy.
Your serene quiet
revive in every home
the pact of love.
And reign in all peoples,
from east to west,
harmony and peace.
Praise be to you, Christ,
to the Father and the Spirit,
forever and ever. Amen.
We pray with confidence in the certainty of being heard
O Jesus, our brother and Redeemer by the mystery of your submission to Mary and Joseph
- teach us obedience and respect towards those you have placed at the head of the community.
You, who loved your parents, Mary and Joseph, with filial affection
- guard our families in the bond of charity and peace.
You were ardent with zeal for the things of your Father,
- let God be loved and honored in every family.
After three days of anxious searching, you were found in the temple
- give us your wisdom in seeking above all the kingdom of God.
You have united Mary and Joseph with you in the glory of heaven,
- welcome all the deceased into the family of the blessed.
O God, our Father, who in the Holy Family gave us a true model of life, let the same virtues and the same love flourish in our families, so that gathered together in your house we can enjoy endless joy. By our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who is God, and lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, forever and ever.
We want to make the song of praise of the Magnificat, set to music by maestro Frisina, which the Virgin Mary proclaimed in Ain Karin after her cousin Elizabeth had proclaimed her blessed among all women, echo in our spirit.
In the Gospel of Luke an episode is told in which the family of Nazareth is on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, when Jesus is 12 years old and receives recognition of his maturity at the Temple, he enters society, having to be responsible for his actions for good and evil. badly, he is granted the right to read the Bible in the liturgical services of the synagogue on Saturdays. At that moment new relationships are established within the family too. The boy has grown up and enters life bringing his human and spiritual qualities to the service of others.
It would seem that in that circumstance the relationships deteriorate, almost as if Jesus reproaches his parents: "Don't you know that I must take care of my Father's affairs?".
Joseph already knew that the Father was another and that sooner or later he would leave him to follow the true Father, but hearing it revealed in that way and in that circumstance will certainly have hurt him. It's like when a son asks his father for the keys to the house.
On the other hand, a child must not organize his life according to his parents: it is like blocking history.
Jesus will return to Nazareth, he will also live submissive to Mary and Joseph but it is a sign of how relationships within a family should be lived. Baptism has certainly made us transfigured by the love with which God has invested us through Jesus: human love is brought to experience a new dimension: carrying out the will of the Father, who in Jesus reveals the authentic dimension of this will.
Jesus, Joseph and Mary return to Nazareth more united than before, but in mutual purified love: the love of the life of communion of the Trinity takes hold in that little family: the litmus test for an authentic relationship is given by the level of love that lives in the Trinity.
For years, Jesus in Nazareth grows in age and grace and learns the art of being a just, authentic man, watching his parents live. Who can learn life from Jesus? From those who help him grow in wisdom and grace, that is, open and free to cultivate the capacity for amazement in an infinite way.
We educators and parents must also learn to learn that the true teachers are not those who will put additional constraints or rules on my life, but those who will provide us with additional wings, who will allow us to transform our wings, who will take care of them, lengthen them, they will train an increasingly open ability to fly. To follow the Spirit, the wind of God. The home is the place of the first teaching, where children learn the most important art, the one that will make them happy: the art of loving.
This art of loving is looking for many disciples, eager to meet authentic masters enlightened by the spirit of the family of Nazareth
Children's prayer for parents.