March 2011 (3)
A thousand best wishes in the firmament of affection
by Giosy Cento
I have always liked an apocryphal Gospel, I don't remember the name, in which a Roman soldier, meeting Jesus as a child in Nazareth, asks him: "Whose son are you?". The dialogue that occurs is very curious. Jesus would have replied: "I call someone who is not my dad dad, because my real father is Another." The soldier is curious and thinks that the child has no clear ideas: "Explain better." And he: «Yes, because you must know that I have a father who can be seen and a Father who cannot be seen». «So you have two dads?». «But no - Jesus replies - my true Father is a very powerful one, the other is someone who works here in Nazareth». The soldier, impatient, leaves.
by Don Mario Carrera
The words of Paul VI pronounced in Nazareth on the occasion of his visit to the Holy Land have always had great fascination for me. On that occasion the wise teacher appealed to his childhood years and, without any shame, the Pope said: "Oh, how we would like to go back to being children and go to this sublime school in Nazareth." In that little village, in that holy family, as in a treasure chest, God had placed the treasures of creativity: the loving obedience of Joseph, the willingness of Mary to pronounce her yes and the great masterpiece of humanity that was Jesus. It was precisely in the shadow of Joseph and Mary that, in that house, Jesus learned to be man.
The first day of every year is like a blank page to be filled with dreams, wishes, wishes and blessings. On a page of poetry there are a few words that float like water lilies in a sea of white. The white of the page helps the reader to give flesh to the feelings of the poem, the flesh of life. In this period the liturgy exhorts us to give a soul to time, to recognize the signs that God traces in the sky of time. Understanding time is understanding God's intentions. Divine Providence guides all centuries and asks each of us to write a new page in his plan. We must, therefore, be very attentive to this plan, attentive to the call that God addresses to us in our time, because it is for this time that he calls us to be protagonists of a personal story set in the great mosaic of salvation. Discovering divine intentions in our existence means encountering the source of serenity and joy. In the Holy Gospel, Jesus gives us the license of experts and capable of discerning many things in the material world: «When you see a cloud rising from the west, immediately say: The rain is coming, and so it happens. And when the sirocco blows, you say: It will be hot, and so it happens." Why does Jesus say that we are experts in these things? Because these things are there