Fr. Carlo Di Sopra sx
Reflection on the Mass readings of the 2nd Sunday of ADVENT Year B
These are the first words we hear in the liturgy today. Console my people, console them! Well-timed and appropriate words. Truly in need of them!
I have been slowly reading FRATELLI TUTTI by Pope Francis. In the first chapter we can find a long list of wrong attitudes and facts that prevent this consolation to be real. Situations we all know, starting from wars, barriers of any kind, manipulations, lack of consideration for the poor and those who are not productive like the elderly and the unborn, a culture that unifies the world and makes us neighbours but not brothers. A very long and real list of painful situations in which human beings are suffering, agonizing and many times succumbing. And the pandemic on top of that.
Console my people, console them!
There is another word that calls my attention in today’s liturgy. It says: A VOICE CRIES in the wilderness, prepare a way for the Lord.
When we say that somebody cries in the desert we can mean two things, first that nobody listens, it is a voice wasted, a voice that the wind blows away and so denies any effect whatsoever on anybody. This is oftentimes true. With so many messages and shallow news, if not fake, with a frenzy typing or communicating by emoticons, who has time to write something really personal and deep, and who has time to listen, to read anyway? Voices in the desert.
The other way we can understand this crying in the wilderness, and I think it is more in line with the Gospel and with the liturgy today, is to consider the desert a place of silence where we can reach our own interiority. A place where we can stand still, free for a while from the noise all round us, and discern the voice of the Lord and the real call from our brothers and sisters. There, in honesty, we can make straight the ways that have gone so contorted and unfriendly, obstacles to FRATERNITY, and so they may truly become paths of encounter and consolation.
I came across this invitation that Angela Merkel addressed to young people on the day they graduated, and I found it interesting.
She said: I have learned that we can find good answers, even to difficult questions, if we always try to view the world through the eyes of others, if we respect other people’s history, traditions, religion and identity, if we hold fast to ourselves and we act in accordance with them. And we do not act on our own first impulses, even when there is pressure to make a snap decision. But instead we take a moment to stop, be still, think, pause.... it takes courage to be honest with ourselves...
Yes, it takes courage to listen to that VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS, but from it we can draw for us and for others the real CONSOLATION we all need.
Reflection on the Mass readings of the 2nd Sunday of ADVENT Year B
These are the first words we hear in the liturgy today. Console my people, console them! Well-timed and appropriate words. Truly in need of them!
I have been slowly reading FRATELLI TUTTI by Pope Francis. In the first chapter we can find a long list of wrong attitudes and facts that prevent this consolation to be real. Situations we all know, starting from wars, barriers of any kind, manipulations, lack of consideration for the poor and those who are not productive like the elderly and the unborn, a culture that unifies the world and makes us neighbours but not brothers. A very long and real list of painful situations in which human beings are suffering, agonizing and many times succumbing. And the pandemic on top of that.
Console my people, console them!
There is another word that calls my attention in today’s liturgy. It says: A VOICE CRIES in the wilderness, prepare a way for the Lord.
When we say that somebody cries in the desert we can mean two things, first that nobody listens, it is a voice wasted, a voice that the wind blows away and so denies any effect whatsoever on anybody. This is oftentimes true. With so many messages and shallow news, if not fake, with a frenzy typing or communicating by emoticons, who has time to write something really personal and deep, and who has time to listen, to read anyway? Voices in the desert.
The other way we can understand this crying in the wilderness, and I think it is more in line with the Gospel and with the liturgy today, is to consider the desert a place of silence where we can reach our own interiority. A place where we can stand still, free for a while from the noise all round us, and discern the voice of the Lord and the real call from our brothers and sisters. There, in honesty, we can make straight the ways that have gone so contorted and unfriendly, obstacles to FRATERNITY, and so they may truly become paths of encounter and consolation.
I came across this invitation that Angela Merkel addressed to young people on the day they graduated, and I found it interesting.
She said: I have learned that we can find good answers, even to difficult questions, if we always try to view the world through the eyes of others, if we respect other people’s history, traditions, religion and identity, if we hold fast to ourselves and we act in accordance with them. And we do not act on our own first impulses, even when there is pressure to make a snap decision. But instead we take a moment to stop, be still, think, pause.... it takes courage to be honest with ourselves...
Yes, it takes courage to listen to that VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS, but from it we can draw for us and for others the real CONSOLATION we all need.