True intelligence is not closed in the asphyxiating circle of reality, but instead leaves a window open to the impossible. A person’s happiness does not lie in answers, in contentment–even about the things of God. Instead, it lies in search, in restlessness, in dissatisfaction, because if we think we have found God, if we think… Read more »
Joseph is commanded stop dreaming and wake up: “Get up!” His dream corresponds to the dream of God, which is to awaken human beings from their somnolent state. It is necessary to live life, not just dream about it. Joseph wakes up and responds to the divine summons not with words but with his flesh: with deeds and in truth…
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The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ. Thus begins the Gospel of Matthew. Jesus of Nazareth is pointed out as the new birth of the human being–the re-creation of the entire created world. The long list of names from Abraham to Jesus is divided into three parts, telling us that God was incarnated in… Read more »
In this passage, Joseph is defined as an “upright man.” He was reluctant to take Mary and the child into his home not because he believed his wife to be an adulteress, but because he considered himself upright. The Gospel overturns this mentality, typical of religious people of all times, namely: to consider God’s gift… Read more »
John the Baptist, the greatest of the prophets, has doubts and asks: “Are you the one who is to come?” John, a man of the Old Testament, was formed in that school in which God is not only the God of the living, but also of the dead, in the sense that he can also… Read more »
John the Baptist, the point of transition from the Old to the New Testaments, from religion to faith, invites us to welcome that love which has now become a Presence alongside us, because love–a gift–can only be received. It is not something to be understood, studied or learned. It is a presence to be welcomed… Read more »
They did not know…. Life is a practice of attention. The drama is to live unconsciously–passively, routinely–in such a way that inattentiveness becomes the principal feature of one’s existence. In the end, the “flood”–biological death–will touch everyone and will submerge those who always lived as though dead because while death cannot touch the living, it… Read more »
Hope is the humblest of virtues, for it remains hidden in the recesses of life; yet it is like the yeast that leavens all the dough. We nurture it by reading ever anew the Gospel, “reprinted” in so many editions in the lives of the saints who became icons of God’s love in this world…. Read more »
By virtue of our being created in the image and likeness of God who is communion and communication-of-Self, we carry forever in our hearts the longing for living in communion, for belonging to a community. “Nothing, in fact, is as specific to our nature as entering into a relationship one with another, having need… Read more »
The quality of mercy is not strained. It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven upon the place beneath. It is twice blessed: it blesseth him that gives and him that takes. (The Merchant of Venice, Act IV, Scene I)
