Earthquake in the Abruzzi Region: Passion of Man, Passion of Christ

EARTHQUAKE IN THE ABRUZZI REGION
Passion of Man, Passion of Christ

Another upsetting event has saddened us deeply. It is so upsetting as to
make it difficult for us to escape the question about its meaning, while
we can hardly comprehend it.

This issue is as radical as uncomfortable. We cannot try to settle it in a
hurry, or want to turn the page as soon as possible to forget about it. It
is not reasonable to remain prisoners of emotions that suffocate us, and
even less to shift our attention to any possible responsible parties.

The boundless acts of charity that have been spontaneously demon-
strated in the last few days, and that will be even more necessary in the
next few months, indicate that forgetting about upsetting events is not
the only way. Yet, not even these initiatives can exhaust the urgency of
the question raised by our experienced impotence facing the earthquake.

Events like these place us in front of the mystery of existence, by pro-
voking our reason and freedom as men. By wasting an opportunity to
face this mystery, we would be left even more lost and skeptical. But in
order to stay in front of the mystery of existence, we need something
more than our solidarity, as just as it may be. We cannot do it on our
own.

The company of Christ – which is at the origin of our people’s love for
man – is once more decisive in our history: a company that gives sense
to life and death, to victims, to survivors, and to us. It sustains our hope.

This coming Easter, then, acquires new light. «He who did not spare His
own Son, but handed Him over for us all, how will He not also give us
everything else along with Him?» (Rm 8,32).

Communion and Liberation

April 2009

Synod Intervention by Archbishop Pezzi, Moscow

Most Rev. Paolo Pezzi, F.S.C.B., Archbishop of God Mother's in Moscow

In this historical moment, the Word of God cannot be separated from the event of Jesus Christ. He is the Logos (Word), the Father's communication, His face (cf. Col 1,15). At the same time, we cannot forget that the words and deeds of Jesus were handed down through the work and suggestion (inspiration) of the Holy Spirit Himself. His life was transmitted and such transmission continues until our days. In this sense the words of Benedict XVI, at the beginning of his encyclical letter on charity are decisive: "Being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction".

In present relativism, which leans to level off any differences, so that all words are valid and none is more valid than the other, where all is reduced to a game of opinions, the Biblical word must incarnate itself in the beauty of its witnesses, if it wants to draw the world towards the truth. In Instrumentum Laboris (48), it is cleverly pointed out that "Making the Word of God and the Sacred Scriptures the soul of his pastoral activity, the bishop is capable of bringing the faithful to encounter Christ" [...] "so that, through their own experience, the faithful will see that the words of Jesus are spirit and life (cf. Jn 6:63) [...]".

The announcement of the Word of God, should therefore have as its scope making persons, so to speak, that they are in the presence of the living Person: be witnesses of the Person of Jesus Christ, the Logos became flesh. Or according to Saint Paul's splendid words: it should be "a clear picture of Jesus Christ crucified, right in front of your eyes". The Word of God is a source of an evermore deep and authentic knowledge of Christ, of "the knowledge of God's glory, the glory on the face of Christ" (2 Cor 4:6). Such glory of Christ kindles a fire in us, becomes a desire to witness Him. It is said in Instrumentum Laboris (54) that "listening to the Word of God is a priority for our ecumenical commitment". It is necessary to renew among Christians the tension towards the person of Christ Himself, the desire to understand and know more deeply His mystery. Through the encounter with the Word made flesh, made possible by the Spirit, we rediscover communion with Him: it is the force of the Spirit of the Risen Christ that attracts the scattered people towards His only body.

at The Meeting for Friendship Among Peoples, Rimini

Burundi "Angel" Tells of Rescuing Children

African Testimonies Impact Rimini Meeting

By Antonio Gaspari

RIMINI, Italy, AUG. 28, 2008 (Zenit.org).- The hope-filled eyes of children helped the "angel of Burundi" find God in the midst of Burundi's civil war that cost some 200,000 lives over nearly a dozen years.

Marguerite Barankitse was one of three African women who gave their testimonies at the Rimini meeting organized by the Catholic lay Communion and Liberation movement. The annual meeting is under way through Saturday.

Barankitse saved thousand of people, both Hutus and Tutsis, during the country's civil war.

She explained that her humanitarian work began when she took refuge with Hutu and Tutsi children, and Hutu families in the bishop's residence in Ruygi. The residence was attacked and the refugees were killed before her eyes.

"They were my friends; people I wanted to save. They left me alive because I am Tutsi, but they beat me violently as a traitor," she explained.

When the assailants readied to kill the 25 or so children in the house, Barankitse offered them all her money so they would spare them; the assailants accepted.

So began what today is known as the "Shalom Home," in which over these years Barankitse has taken in some 10,000 children. Today many of them are married and are professionals who continue to cooperate with the mission.

Barankitse has been awarded several international prizes for her work, but she said that in Burundi, many call her the "madwoman."

"But I say this is the fruit of love," she said.

Barankitse affirmed that at first, she wondered why the God of love would allow such things.

"I saw in the eyes of children a hope that was not extinguished and began to understand that God was answering me through their gaze," she said.

Fighting AIDS

The other testimonies were given by two Ugandan women -- Rose Busingye and Vicky Aryenyo, founder and collaborator, respectively, of Kampala's International Meeting Point, an institution that cares for AIDS patients and their families, especially orphaned children.

Busingye, a nurse, explained that she found "in the infinite value of people" the strength to oppose so much evil.

"It is the recognition of the other that creates the reality, and that is present in the company of the Church," she said.

Aryenyo, a volunteer at the Meeting Point, said her life changed when she discovered, during her third pregnancy, that she had contracted AIDS from her husband. She said she wanted to die and rejected all help.

"Rose went to find me to help me and to convince me to be healed," Aryenyo said. "I kept rejecting her, until one day she said to me: 'Give me the child, because he has a life ahead.'

"We know that Lazarus is resurrected. If you haven't seen a miracle, it's here, it is me. It all began with a meeting, and this meeting has resurrected my life. In Christ, Rose has given me a person on whom to lean."

Opposing the dominion of the apparently obvious

What you say reminds me of a note I jotted down at a recent assembly of Communion and Liberation in Rome: "Itis not at all certain that someone who has a particular religious propensity is facilitated [by this propensity] in encountering Christ." This could seem "heretical" to today's mentality. Don't you think so?

GIUSSANI: I do not see anything "heretical" in this statement, because the religious propensity can also work in such a way that one is attached to formulas he made up himself, or to identifications that are moralistic, for example. During Jesus' time, the Pharisees certainly had a pronounced religious propensity and this did not favor at all their acceptance of the Messiah... For accepting Christ requires a forgetting of self that is implied exclusively in the wonder of a recognition. In the instant when one recognizes a presence like this, it is like a baby looking at his father and mother: the first instant, as he holds out his arms, is a forgetting of self in which his true love for himself becomes real. Naturally, it is then necessary for this original purity to be maintained, by constantly opposing a fall into the dominion of one's own reaction, the dominion of the apparently obvious.

-- from an Interview with Lucio Brunelli and Gianni Cardinale, published in 30 Days

La Thuile

Recreation in the mountains:




Photos taken by Stephen Lewis

To Accept God's Initiative

God regenerates our life freely in a thousand ways, in the thousands of circumstances of the personal story of each one of us. The freedom of the human person, freedom in our personal story, is to accept to run the same risk that God runs, to enter into the risk of God made man, in a word, to espouse the reality of the Incarnation God.

The form which is proper to life is not , never making a mistake; the fulfilling of our human history lies not in perfection, but in our own personal initiative to acknowledge and accept God’s initiative in our life and allow precisely this initiative to give it form and fulfilment.

Fr. Massimo Camisasca, "Espousing God's Freedom" (Agenzia Fides)

The Beginning of World Youth Day

The idea to create World Youth Day was conceived in the extraordinary
Holy Year 1983-1984. The Eternal City was invaded by associations,
societies, fraternities and groups of all sorts.


One of the volunteers of the San Lorenzo International Center
(established near the Vatican 25 years ago by Pope John Paul II), Don
Massimo Camisasca of "Communion and Liberation," asked: "In this Holy
Year, why don't we also hold an international meeting of youth?"

Cardinal Paul Josef Cordes

The Desire for Unity in Moscow

Archbishop Paolo Pezzi, recently assigned to the Archdiocese of the Mother of God in Moscow, is a member of CL's Priestly Fraternity of the Missionaries of Saint Charles Borromeo. In an interview with L'Osservatore Romano as reported by ZENIT, he spoke of his desire for unity in his diocese among Catholics and the Russian Orthodox.

Archbishop Paolo Pezzi, in Rome last week to receive the pallium from Benedict XVI, spoke to L'Osservatore Romano about the relations between the two Churches.

He said that "on too many occasions, one perceives the concern to defend one's plot or wanting to maintain a distance."

"Certainly there are some knots that have not managed to be undone, and so are transformed into obstacles," the prelate said. "If there is no real desire to move toward full unity, dialogue becomes difficult. Where there is a real desire, on the contrary, dialogue can be engaged in with honesty, sincerity and always in truth."

Nevertheless, Catholics and Orthodox in Moscow are making efforts to collaborate, he affirmed.

"We try to carry out concrete forms of collaboration between the Churches, but also to engage in sincere friendship. Above all, we try to walk in the same direction," the prelate said.

Archbishop Pezzi affirmed that his relationship with Orthodox Patriarch Alexy II of Moscow is warm and cordial.

"He has invited me to the Orthodox liturgy, both at Christmas and Easter," the archbishop said. "I must say that on all occasions I was warmly received. Patriarch Alexy has always been cordial and warm in his expressions to me.

"I remember, for example, that after the Christmas liturgy -- it isn't a secret -- the patriarch greeted me publicly and stressed our common concern to care for God's flock. These were significant words.

"However, he did not have words for me alone. [He] greeted and raised a prayer for Benedict XVI. In a word, he manifested respect for the Catholic Church. Essentially, I would say that I immediately noted a positive reception."