What were the names of Saint Joseph's parents?
- Main Category: Spirituality
edited by Gabriele Cantaluppi
The Gospels do not give much information about Saint Joseph, limiting themselves to recording his silent and concrete contribution to the beginnings of the great mystery of the Incarnation of the Son of God, until he reached the age of twelve. After the discovery of Jesus in the temple of Jerusalem, while he was conversing with the doctors, Joseph is barely mentioned when Jesus is referred to as "the carpenter's son" (Mc 6, 3; Mt 13, 55).
The heart is the guide of the mind and of the steps towards the next
- Main Category: Spirituality
edited by Gabriele Cantaluppi
The month of June is traditionally dedicated to devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, also because it is the month in which the liturgical feast is celebrated, on Friday eight days after the feast of the Corpus Christi.
Devotion to the Heart of Jesus had a great increase thanks to the revelations received from Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque, in the seventeenth century, and to the apostolate of the Jesuits and managed to establish itself against the opposition of the Jansenist current.
The object of worship is the physical Heart of Jesus. Pius XII in the encyclical You will draw the waters teaches that «in the devotion to the Heart of Jesus it is his divine Person who is adored, his Person who has assumed a human nature and therefore also a human heart. Whoever loved with that Heart was not a human person, but a divine one".
With his usual clarity, St. Thomas Aquinas affirmed that «to adore the humanity of Christ is the same as to adore the Incarnate Word of God, as to honor the robe of a king is to honor the king who wears it. From this point of view, the cult rendered to humanity by Christ is a cult of adoration".
According to Pius XI, devotion to the Heart of Jesus is «the whole substance of religion and especially the norm of a more perfect life, as that which guides minds by an easier way to know Jesus Christ intimately and induces hearts to love him more ardently and more generously to imitate him" (Encyclical Most merciful God, May 8, 1928).
Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, thus presented the association of the Apostleship of Prayer, linked to the cult of the Sacred Heart: «Many simple people can find in the Apostleship of Prayer help to live Christianity in an authentic way. It reminds us of St. Paul's invitation: “I therefore urge you, brothers, by the mercy of God, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God; this is your spiritual worship”» (Rom 12:1).
With regard to the practice of the nine first Fridays of the month, the Directory on popular piety and liturgy of the Vatican dicastery for divine worship and the discipline of the sacraments writes:
«In our time the devotion of the first Fridays of the month, if practiced in a correct pastoral way, can still bear undoubted spiritual fruits. However, it is necessary that the faithful be properly educated".
With his unconditional promise of mercy, Jesus wanted to induce us to place all our confidence in him, making himself the guarantor of our salvation through the merits of his most loving Heart.
However, it does not in any way favor the presumption of being saved on the cheap: sincerely devout souls know very well that no one can be saved without their own free correspondence to God's grace, as summarized by Saint Augustine: «Whoever created you without you , will not save you without you."
Paul VI in the document Searchable riches of Christ, of February 6, 1969, on the occasion of the bicentenary of the establishment of the liturgical feast of the Sacred Heart, indicated the point of arrival of this devotion: «…through a more intense participation in the Sacrament of the altar, may the Heart of Jesus, whose greatest gift is precisely the Eucharist», the greatest love in which all the loves of Jesus for us are summed up.
Baptism anyway?
- Main Category: Spirituality
Rev. Director,
I read and reread the article by Gabriele Cantaluppi in issue no. 2/2019 entitled Baptism yes, baptism no....
The article shows that baptism requires the presence of a godfather who has the task of...