Homilies
Part I
----------
It is pleasant to feel encouraged
The phenomenon of having many catechists is not new, but joyful. And it will be more joyful if catechists have the required skills. First, clean and splendid life of goodness. Saint Paul and Manzoni have always impressed me. The first one wrote: "You teach the others but, do you teach yourself?" (cfr. Rm 2, 21). The second one writes, after having explained very beautiful things on Religion: "Thinking about too much evil I have been and the little good I still am, I am ashamed often and perhaps it causes me a remorse to arrogate me that I know how to celebrate religion".
In religion, it is teached, in fact, specially, what one oneself is. Another gift is to know well. And it is not enough to have studied; it is necessary to keep updated: if one does not study, the notions go away, swept by the wind, by strange ideas and worries. Saint Bernardino of Siena said: "... if I had not learned, you would not hear the word I preach you: that only due to study it has come". But the same he also wanted that things were said clearly. And he told about two friars: one was an excellent preacher, who "spoke so subtly, that it was wonderful"; the other one "so heavy". The first one made the speech; the second one listened to it and magnified it to the fellow friars. And this one: "Say what he said". And he: "You have lost the most beautiful speech than you had ever been able to hear ... He spoke so high that I did not understand anything".
But not even clearness is enough, if it is not accompanied by love, the passion of the transmitted ideas. They are, in fact, ideas that are useful for life and must end in good works. Now, between ideas and work, there are obligatory stages to cover: I do not undertake a work, if I do not want it before; I do not want it, if I don' t wish it before; I don' t wish it, if anybody has not introduced it before as desirable and likeable. It is necessary, then, to fill of affection the transmitted ideas, so that they can lit strong desires and start moving the listeners' will. Pope John said: "The truth of Christ, introduced without kindness, sweetness and humility, risks to be rejected".
Pius IX has proclaimed Saint Francis of Sales as Doctor of the Church mainly because "he knew how to adapt the Saints' doctrine to all the situations of the faithful sapienter et leniter, with wisdom and slightness". That Saint has taught and written much, saying briefly: "The way to Paradise is narrow, traveling towards there requires fatigue, yes, but the landscape, the surroundings, are beautiful, pleasant and it is God who gives a hand".
He always shows things from the best side, with a graceful and seductive tone: He shows devotion kindly to make it accessible; he removes neither the thorns, but nor a single rose. "Those who wanted to dissuade the Hebrews - he writes - from going to the Promised Land, said that there was a country that ate up the inhabitants... but Joshua and Caleb declared that the Promised Land was not only good and beautiful, but in such a way that its possession made it sweet and pleasant ... So, the Holy Spirit and Jesus... They assure us that the devotee life is a sweet life, pleasant, happy". He tried to follow the method of the Holy Spirit and Jesus.
To Santa Joanna of Chantal, a little scrupulous, he writes: "I would wish you had the skin of your heart a little tougher and you did not stop sleeping by any small flea". And to another one: "Stop giving pecks on your poor conscience". And to a third one: "Hey, my God... powder your hair, too... pheasants also polish their feathers... by fearing the lice nest". The San Bernardino mentioned above was made of the same gracefully catechistic paste, who said regarding vain people: "If you see one (male) and to another one (female) with these fancies or with the strawberries or with the traps (n. d. t. In Italian, it is a play on words: strawberries = fragole, traps = trapole), think that in that way their heads are shining... And as well as you see madnesses in clothes worn outwardly, think that inside their heart it is plenty of cock-a-doodle-doo.
The catechist, who exposed the hard truth of Hell, imitated these Saints in this way: "¿Hell? Yes, it exists, but you must know that God puts Himself in the middle of our way to stop us and to prevent us from falling inside. And if someone arrives, it is a sign that he himself has wanted to go there against the thousand efforts of God, Who respects his freedom, but tries to take him to Paradise in every possible way. The same Judas would have been saved, if he had had confidence. That day, he went the wrong tree. If he had gone to the tree of the cross, had jumped on dying Jesus' neck, he would be a Saint of Paradise, today".
However, those, who always prefer the negative side to the positive one, make the opposite way. Once, I saw an illustration that depicted the landlady with a friend visiting her in the sitting room. There were selected furniture, but, on them, there were so many advertisements. "Do not touch the porcelain set", "Do not to walk on the polished floor without slippers", "Do not throw ashes on the floor", "Beware of the carpet". Under the illustration, the writing: "Yes, I have a wonderful sitting room - said the landlady - but, I don' t know why my husband avoids it". And her friend: "Put new prohibitive advertisements: guaranteed, your husband will hate this sitting room".
We are made like this: the multiplied No seem straightjackets to us; we get angry when others suppose we are bad or unwilling. We like, instead, to feel encouraged and led, like authentic brave ones, to new conquests of good.
Unpublished 1972
from "Humilitas", November 1988
A little bell and a very big bell
Every year, few days before the Newspaper Day is celebrated, you read or listen to my letter that it is read in the church. Instead, this year I want you to listen to some recent Pope Paul VI' s thoughts on the subject.
A month ago, to all Italian Bishops gathered together with him, he has talked on "the Catholic press". We are far - he has made us understand - from what it is necessary, because the Catholic press - they are his textual words - is "still in need of unity, support, strength, spread"; its problem - he added - is "one of the most serious and urgent problems of the Catholic life".
A few days ago, he even spoke stronger to seven thousand Catholics of Piemonte. First, he warned not to subvalue the strength and the influence of the newspaper, by saying: "It is a formidable phenomenon. It plays on the spiritual luck of people. It decides yeas and nays of the Kingdom of God in our society!"
Considering this, he declared: "It is not nowadays the Catholic newspaper neither a superfluous luxury nor a facultative devotion, it is a necessary instrument to be inserted in the circulation of those ideas that our faith feeds and, at the same time, makes a service to the profession of our faith. It is not allowed, nowadays, to live without having a thought continuously fed and updated on the history we are living and preparing; it is not possible to have such a thought, aligned in the Christian principles, without the supplying, the suggestion, the incentive of the Catholic newspaper".
Finally, he emphasized that to read or support Catholic newspaper is "an obligation of every Catholic person, of every Christian family, at least".
* * *
These, the Pope' s words. If they are true (and they are!), if they are said seriously (and they are said seriously but with anxiety and worry), the consequences are:
First. I do not fulfill my duties as a Christian if I don' t make the Catholic newspaper enter at home for me and my family.
Second. If I have the possibility and if, at least, someone from home is accustomed or prefers to read daily, or has the necessity of reading (in the sense that every day he is in touch with whom is telling the fact in his own way) the Catholic newspaper that enters in family, it is necessary to become the daily Catholic paper!
Third. When I am going to confess, I must make the examination of conscience and turn over a new leaf on this point. It can be sin of omission. It would be blindness or myopia to stir upon the own soul with the little light to see if there is still some impatience or gossip to find out and not to realize of this is: 1) negligence in nourishing the own soul and updating it in the religious problems. 2) insensibility and lack of interest regarding the Church and the great battles it is fighting every day in tens of fronts. 3) lack of solidarity with the Catholic brothers who, often, are left alone and weak to face expenses and impossible fatigues.
Dear diocesans!
I ask you to reflect on the Pope' s statements. What I said in other years was a little bell that rang as a claim, as a modest invitation. What the Pope says, is a true ring of a big bell, that does not let sleep and puts each conscience in front of the own duty!
Think on it since now and on Sunday May 31st, take your responsible decision!
I bless you from my heart.
Vittorio Veneto, May 11th, 1964
From "Humilitas", February 1989
----------
I don' t start by the Gospel or by the Council, but by Sophie Arnould, a French singer. She has defined divorce: the sacrament of adultery. Alcibiade, one of the most intelligent and outlandish men that the old Greece has ever had, hasn' t wanted to accept such a sacrament. His wife Ipparata, afflicted by his little flying visits, went and saw the judge to ask the divorce. But Alcibiade, advised, arrived to the magistrate at the same time than his wife; without letting her speak, he took her up, carried her on his shoulder and took her home, by saying: "Without you, we can live neither me nor our children".
Going beyond Alcibiade, I think that the married love is donation of himself to the other, but so intimate and noble, so ideal and reliable that, from one part, it wants everything, from the other one, excludes everybody. That love is a decapitated love if it admits reserves, provisionality and cancellation. So divorce is a Damocle' s sword on the spouses' love : it generates uncertainty, fear, suspiction. "Perhaps tomorrow he will leave me! Perhaps he will go with that one who is his secretary today, so young, so pretty, so instructed!" The same living together is not more a reliable abandonment and quiet donation of themselves, but fear, instinctive defense, preparation to a different morning. Maternity also provokes fears ("Why to bring children to the world if tomorrow we will separate?). Even the moments of privacy are wrinkled of sad omens ("And if tomorrow another one learns, making fun of me, what is happening between us?").
Divorce takes out helps and necessary shelters for our weakness. We, in fact, are not angels; also in the most lucky couples, difficulties are inevitable: small crises, misunderstandings, litigations, disagreements, explosions of mood, words that come out from a tired and susceptible wife. If there is no divorce in perspective, it is necessary to surpass these moments of tense situation and to avoid them in the future. "I like that woman, but it is necessary she retains me; I am tied for ever". "I would flirt with that man, but he is married; it would be just an irregular and dishonourable relationship; better to forget it".
I try to explain myself better. It can happen that a husband or a wife - still being good - can be unexpectedly and inexplicably taken by a vehement passion. Which is the strength in that moment of crisis? This one: to know that kind of temptations are not even discussed, but that they must be cut with a clear cut, immediately. Which is, however, the weakness? This one : to be able to say to themselves that, finally, by making concessions, they set themselves aside the law before God, but it exists the means to keep the head high before the men.
Civil divorce is exactly this: the means offered by the law to keep the head high before society, despite in conscience one is out of place. "Sacrament of adultery". Sophie Arnould was right. At least, in certain cases.
More than man, in divorce, woman is the victim. He, even if he is fifty years old, specially if he is well provided of money, meets a young, pleasant woman easily, with whom "re-start his life". But her? Specially if she is a little spoiled because she has given everything to her husband, to her work, to her children, who wants her? Here she is, thrown away like a squeezed lemon, destined almost always or to a loneliness full of sadness or to a life of nongood habits.
"But nowadays woman has more independence, I have heard, she works out of home with insurance and perspective of retirement. If innocent, she has also her former husband' s cheque". All that you want, but one does not only live on bread, specially when one was dedicated to an ideal with all the own being, that it is identified with a person. I have recently seen the tribulation of a mother separated from her husband, to whom was granted to have her fifteen years old son for only two hours a week. She really does not give any envy!
I have mentioned the children. The tragedy. The chick, when it is mature, breaks the egg shell with the beak and jumps outwards. It is already dressed; after a few days, it eats by itself, looks for food; and it can make its way by its own, independently of the broody one that has brooded it and taken care of it. Not like this our children. The son was not even born, and his mother already works hard and his parents begin spending in the small layette. Once born, they continue spending for him: small clothes, small socks, very small shoes, underwear... Then, toys and books are coming. At fourteen years old, the son is still going to the secondary school and his parents spend for school and repetitions. And money is still the less: worries increase as time goes by; and the examinations, and the job, and the success in the studies, and the standard of life, and the marriage. The son is often 25 years old and he is still falling on the parents' shoulders who pay his studies at the university.
I have said "the parents". I mean, both; I mean, his parents. I mean that he, not only needs a family, but his family.
Let us suppose now that the family breaks: father here, mother there. Whom will the son be going with? With the father? And then, also with a pseudo-stepmother: but he will not be able to forget the true mother and will immediately begin to judge the father. At fourteen years, with the words or the attitude, he will tell him: "Why is this one here? What have you done with my mother?". In this situation, how is it possible the father can have prestige before his son? Instead, is he going with his mother? If she stays alone, will she be capable of taking care, without her husband, of the education of a boy who is becoming a man? If there are a pseudo-stepfather and stepbrothers next to her, we are coming back to the situation mentioned before: an intimate drama and a way to a tormented life.
All sentimental reasons are also compassionate and dramatic cases, that are taken to legitimize divorce. Of course, these cases exist and deserve so much understanding. However, they remain as exceptional cases and it is not convenient that a State law, to solve exceptions, jeopardizes all a community. It is the thesis of the novel A divorce, by Paul Bourget. Cholera broke out on the ship and the Port Authorities prevent all the passengers from disembarking. But one of these takes the step ahead: "Mister Captain, I have ashore my dad who is about to die; he called me from America by telegram, let me get down!". "It hurts me so much, replies the Captain, but I cannot: I mustn' t expose a whole city to the danger of infection to help you!". In the divorcist States it has happened. "It is only a small opening". Instead, nobody else has been capable of closing the door and curbing the spread divorce. Obligatorily: once the divorcist habit is induced, to make divorce is like having a glass of water.
I have written, I repeat it: not at the light of the Gospel or at the Council' s one, but - I think - at that one of the common sense.
April 12th, 1974
From "Humilitas", November 1989
----------
A plentiful supply of meekness
Don Bosco is a Saint who has made an incredible quantity of works, using his time with an interest of one hundred percent. What it makes him be loved all over the world, however, is to have been a great young people educator. For forty years, he was in the middle of them as a friend and a father, so to speak, "red-handed".
The educational method used by him and transmitted to his children is a true gift from God to the Church; it must be appreciated mainly nowadays when the problem of young people worries so much. I allow myself to make some brief reference.
Whom Don Bosco, educator, was inspired by?
Mainly by Christ, who, Supreme Master (cfr. Jn. 13, 14), said: "Learn from me, that I am meek and humble of heart" (Tm. 11, 29); by Christ, who applied Himself the words of Isaiah. "His voice will not be heard outside; his shouts will not resound in the squares; he will not break the cane that is broken, and he will not extinguish the wick that is still smoking" (Tm. 12, 20).
Don Bosco' s second point of reference has been Saint Francis of Sales, Saint from which he eagerly read the writings, to whom he dedicated the first oratory for boys, whose name was given to the Pious Society founded by him, on whose life he modeled his own life. Saint Francis of Sales had written: "Make a plentiful supply of meekness and benignancy... by fulfilling all your small and great actions in the sweetest way than it is possible for you" (Filotea, part III, chap. 8). "Believe in me, Filotea. A father' s claims, made with sweetness and softness, have a power on the boy greater than rages and irritations; our heart is like this". (ibid.)
In a letter of May 16th, 1617 he recommended to a Priest: "It is necessary we always fulfill our duty, as a way to serve our sweet and good Master, towards those who are really children in Him and, in each place, when their need demands it, we show them the maternal bosom of our love for their salvation and we give them the milk of the doctrine. I say, 'maternal bosom' because mothers' love for their children is always more tender than fathers' one, perhaps because it is harder for them. We are maternal, the one and the other, because this is the duty the Lord imposed to us". Then, he continued: "... I have really laughed sincerelly when I read... that you were said I had got tremendously angry... I am a miserable man liable to passion; but, by the grace of God, since I am Shepherd, I have never addressed any word dictated by the rage to my congregation...". (All the letters, edit. Paulines, vol. II, p. 922-923).
Don Bosco' s third model was his own mother.
"Mother Margherita", with the example of life and the sweet firmness in the manners, had a decisive influence on the son.
She knew neither to read nor to write, but she knew all the Christian doctrine by heart she put into practice. Calm, sweet, self-possessed, she did not beat her little children, but she did not make concessions to their whims; she closed her eyes in secondary things; she kept them well open and took part when there were less honest tendencies; she threatened punishments, but she bowed to the first sign of repentance.
Once she had prepared a small rod to use in case of faults. Her little John committed a small clumsiness in her absence: when his mother came back home, he took the rod, went to meet her depressed depressed and he gave it to her, offering himself spontaneously to the punishment.
The mother could only smile, more affectionate than before. And it was her who interpreted in the right sense of a future educative mission, the nine years old son' s dream. "It seemed to me - little John told in family - to be in the field behind home in the middle of the boys who gestured, blasphemed, made of all kind of pranks and howled like wolves. I tried first to move them away with good manners, then I tried with my fists. A sweetest voice stopped me. 'No, no by hitting; you have to make them become your friends by sweetness and love '.
In the meantime, the wolves had become lambs; the same sweetest voice ended: 'Take your cane and lead them to the field'. What will it mean?, little John asked at the end. "Perhaps you will become sheep and goats keeper", said his brother Giuseppe. "Or bandits chief", said his brother Antonio by making fun. The grandmother said it was not necessary to pay attention to dreams. The mother, instead, addressed an affectionate look to his son and thought. "Who knows if, some day, little John is going to become a Priest".
Become really a Priest and surrounded by a group of young people, Don Bosco will remember the dream, but also the mother. He will remember how patient she was with her children, how sweet and firm, how smiling even during the practise of her maternal authority.
(Diocesan Magazine -Venice- January 1978)
From "Humilitas", May 1987
----------
I have met him on the train. Seated in front of me, to a certain point, he stopped the reading of his magazine and told me:
- Excuse me, Reverend, I think this Lefebvre is right; the Church has really changed course, it has surrendered when, on the Council, it declared on religious freedom.
I slowly closed the Breviary, that I was praying, and replied:
- Yes, from a certain angle, the Council has changed. It thought on Charles Magnus, who cut the Saxons heads, because they rejected the Baptism; on Bernard Gui, the inquisitor, who charged against the Catars of Southern France; on other similar cases, and it has humbly confessed: in the Church of the past, "sometimes there was a behaviour less according to the evangelical spirit, rather, opposite" (DH 12). The Council, therefore, has admitted a series of not at all praiseworthy facts, it has deplored them, it has said they shouldn't to be repeated; in this sense, it has changed. Regarding the education of the past, however, it has not changed, if it has been able to state: the Church "has always kept and transmitted the Master of the Apostles' doctrine... nobody must be forced to embrace the faith" (DH 12).
- The Master?, my interlocutor continued. But here - and he took a quick look at the magazine - Lefebvre mentions precisely the words of Christ: "Who does not believe in Me, will be condemned".
And I:
- One moment. "He will be condemned". But by God, but after the present life. The Council has never dreamt of saying that we were free before God: all we must, in fact, look for the truth, embrace it as soon as it is known, reply God and His Church, if we have accepted to take part of it. The Council has wanted, however, to speak of its freedom before the State in religious things. The title of the Council document, in fact, talks about "social and civil freedom in religious matter". The political power, Catholic or not, that - according to the Council - neither can force to embrace the religious faith that does not please, nor can prevent from embracing and professing a faith that pleases.
- But you hasn' t let me see how the Council is following Christ and the Apostles, yet!
- If you wish, I' ll try to tell it to you, now. Do you remember the parable of the grain and the bearded darnel? The servants wanted to uproot the bearded darnel from the fields, but the owner: "No, leave the one and the other one grow together in the field until the harvest, that is, until the end of the world. Only then, the separation will be made.
In other words: Jesus, right, wants that "all the men can reach the knowledge of the truth". Jesus has invited so many times his listeners to have faith and on faith and works he will judge us after our death.
But the faith supposes a free consent. And Jesus has never imposed his truths by force when he preached; he has never stopped the opposite opinions propaganda. When James and John proposed to make the fire come down from Heaven over the Samaritans, He reproached them both and said: "You don' t know what kind of spirit you are of".
- Well, but tell me: with certain ideas and certain individuals that are around the world, don' t you think the chaos will come if the State misses everything?
- The Council does not say to miss everything; it indicates, rather, two cases in which the State must take part and limit.
- And which ones?
- First: when religious freedom is used by somebody in such a way to endanger the freedom or the rights of the others.
- And the second case?
- It is regarding the common good and the public order. The State, in fact, must be at the service of all, assuring a real peaceful existence in pluralism.
- So the Council thinks of having disarmed all the Church adversaries with its document on "social freedom in religious things?"
- The Council Fathers knew very well that the Church will have always adversaries. It was urgent for them to let everybody know the Church doesn' t feel as an adversary of anyone; that it wishes to live the spirit of Christ, its Lord, who has declared Himself meek and humble, that He has come not to be served but to serve with the Servant of Jahve' s method: "He will not break the cane that is broken, and he will not extinguish the wick that is still smoking".
From "Gente Veneta", May 1977
reported by "Humilitas", August 1987
GCM 2002