Meeting with Jesus
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The sacrament of reconciliation
by Gabriele Cantaluppi
In 1989, with the letter Aspects of Christian Meditation, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith warned of the difficulty of standardizing Christian and non-Christian styles of meditation. Again in 2003, in A Christian reflection on the “New Age”, the Pontifical Council for Culture recalled that «the Church avoids any concept that is similar to those of the New Age». Ultimately, you warn yourself against the temptation, however tempting, to go directly to God, giving yourself spiritual journey programs in a purely subjective way, without comparing yourself with anyone. The individual claims to be a priest of himself, to have knowledge that he has of God and to save himself by dint of concentration, rituals and good feelings. Saint Paul had already had to remind the Christians of the Colossi community on this aspect, in the letter written during his imprisonment in Rome. Even writing to Timothy "There is only one God, and there is only one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus", he states categorically, definitively setting aside any mythical conception of religion.
The consecrated: Sons in the Son
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At the conclusion of the Year of Consecrated Life
Consecrated life is one of the fruits that best highlights the fruitfulness and beauty of the great tree onto which we are grafted through the sacraments of Christian initiation. The grace of Baptism gives us divine filiation and this regenerating experience is preserved and nourished through Confirmation and the Eucharist, sacraments which mark a conscious and ever-growing existential experience of this baptismal filiation. When there is a call to a form of life of special consecration, this grace can and must produce "one hundredfold" (cf. Mt 13,8). The prophet says well: "The Lord called me from my mother's womb, from my mother's womb he called my name" (Is 49,1:XNUMX). Even more properly this can be said by referring to the maternal womb of the Church which generates us to life in Christ, nourishes us with Him and fills us with His Spirit.
Favorable time of mercy
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Lent
by Angelo Forti
Mercy: it is the word that reveals the mystery of the SS. Trinity. Mercy: it is the final and supreme act with which God comes to meet us. Mercy: it is the fundamental law that lives in the heart of every person when he looks with sincere eyes at the brother he meets on the journey of life. Mercy: it is the way that unites God and man, because it opens the heart to the hope of being loved forever despite the limitations of our sin." The Lenten journey is the search for the face of God which, too often, the cataract of our pride prevents us from seeing; in fact, Lent is a sacrament that spans forty days in which everything that Jesus accomplished in his earthly life passes through osmosis, like a transfusion into our life. The sacrament is a visible sign in which we can experience the concrete presence of Christ Jesus who heals, forgives, nourishes us, strengthens our lives and above all makes us capable of loving.