And they call it "peace"
- Main Category: spirituality of Saint Joseph
The Book of Lamentations is a painful elegy on Jerusalem, on its sorrows, on the misfortunes caused by the war. A tremendously current resonance, just as the invocation for peace is current
by Rosanna Virgili
«Desertum fairunt et pacem appellaverunt», which translated is: «They made a desert and called it peace». Thus Tacitus writes in De Agricola, with words that describe the tragically current reality of various cities around the world, still destroyed by wars today. What is striking - today more than yesterday - when faced with the damage of human wickedness, is the justification given with academic cynicism: "War must be waged to achieve peace".
Against false prophets
- Main Category: spirituality of Saint Joseph
The prophet Jeremiah is instructed by God to threaten misfortune, while the people only want good news. To his contemporaries, and to us, he announces that peace will never come from war
by Rosanna Virgili
Jeremiah is an unfortunate prophet: he is called by God to go to the "nations" to announce the sword, famine, plague. He must warn Jerusalem that war would soon attack her and that it would be a miracle to escape it. In the story of his vocation it is said that the Lord showed him a pot tilted from the north, whose caustic liquid would have fatally spilled on the City of David (see Jer 1, 13). It was a metaphor for the ruin that would fall on it, violating the lives of its inhabitants.
He went to the Jordan to John to be baptized
- Main Category: Spirituality
Primo Mystery of light: Baptism di Jesus
of p. Ottavio De Bertolis sj
While we retrace the ten Hail Marys with our lips, we follow with the eyes of our hearts this mystery, which marks the beginning of the public life of Jesus. We contemplate it together with that sorrowful crowd of sinners, those in trouble, "beggars of God" who goes to be baptized.
There is a lack of wise and just guides
- Main Category: spirituality of Saint Joseph
Today the devastation of
Jerusalem, over which Isaiah weeps. Image of a world where relationships are upset, where young people ask for authoritative teachers, but find none
by Rosanna Virgili
Nn the book of the prophet Isaiah, a period of power vacuum in Jerusalem is portrayed, a condition of anarchy that upsets the city, extending its devastating effects throughout Judea. The strong colors of a society now completely destructured and enervated reach their expressive peak in a scene of desperation: «Seven women will grab a single man, on that day, and will say: We will feed on our own bread and wear our own clothes; only, let us bear your name. Take away our shame" (Is 4, 1).