Church of Jesus Christ of the Universe

by Mauro

(translated audio)

20.4.2024

Third Week of Easter

Acts 9: 31-42; Ps 115; Jn 6: 60-69

The Acts of the Apostles of these days narrate the martyrdom of St Stephen¹ and the conversion of St Paul². Today they present the Church at peace, Peter visiting the Church and performing a few miracles, and the people believing precisely because they see these miracles³. In the Gospel instead, the whole Capernaum discourse: the Eucharist⁴.

I would like to look together with you at this dimension of St Paul’s conversion, to make a comparison with us as well and to reiterate again with respect to the Capernaum discourse – I know I have said this on other occasions – this simple concept Jesus speaks of but which I believe is not simple for any of us to understand inside: «Whoever does not eat my Flesh and drink my Blood cannot partake of me»⁵. It is not just the Eucharist: the Flesh and Blood, it is His Body. A simple concept but I do not think, I repeat, that it is so clear among Christians, otherwise the world would not be as it is. Simple but shocking as it was for those in Capernaum. And they were not all bad! «This discourse is hard»⁶. How can we eat His Flesh?

St Paul. All the Apostles, except St Paul, were instructed for three years by Jesus, lived with Him, were with Him forty days after He rose and were instructed on everything. They received the Holy Spirit together with Mary, in the cenacle⁷. Jesus opened their minds to the Scriptures. And despite this we know from all of them how difficult it was for them to believe fully in the resurrection, even after they had seen Him risen: «Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put…» ⁸.

And instead, Saint Paul, who killed so many saints – he did not kill just any people, but he killed saints, not criminals but saints, like Saint Stephen – he simply heard a voice, fell off his horse and changed. And now let us not stand here and say: “Peter is greater, Paul is…”, everyone has his own, however I think the greatness of St Paul is known universally.

What happened? What must happen to each of us: to accept God’s forgiveness, without if and buts. Falling off the horse, asking «Who are you?» and hearing «I am Jesus whom you persecute», St Paul’s passage was: “If the One I persecute – I know what I have done, I know who I am – loves me so much, than He is worth offering my life”. He accepted forgiveness.

This passage of accepting forgiveness, let us see it on each one of us: we are not at St Paul’s level, but each one of us has our own sins. If we do not accept forgiveness as he did, we will not be able to understand God’s love either. If we think that we receive God’s love only on the basis of good works and good behaviour, we will see that this is too short-sighted. Any positive attitude that must emerge in us, must emerge because we have touched this love of God. And when do we really touch it? St John the Apostle also describes it well: «He loved us first, he loved us when we were still sinners»⁹.

We have to experience this love, feeling loved when… we know that we do not deserve it, we know that we are wrong, we know that we are limited, we know that we are nothing, but we know that God loves us. It is that love that allows us to live an offered life. If we do not touch this love, the offering is just theory. It is an act of force, it is a forcing of our will. At least we want it, we desire it, we seek it – this is beautiful, this is not to be neglected but to reach the level of Paul…

That love no longer binds us, it frees us in everything, it takes away all fear, all guilt, it only leaves us with Life inside. That love has overcome the world¹⁰ because it has overcome it in us, not because someone told us that this love has overcome the world in him, that this love has done a miracle, (which is good, OK), but this love has overcome the world in me. We experience God, we meet God. Same for the Eucharist: if we do not eat that love, we do not encounter it – aware that we are eating the Heart of Christ, aware that it is an act of love – it will sooner or later become a ritual.

This action that I am describing, both of the Eucharist and of forgiveness, is the action of grace. It is that action where man has nothing to do with it, it has nothing to do with actions that man might do, with prayers, with charity, not even with the best of the good, none of this. It is an action of God; it is an action of grace. Because if we think we get forgiveness because we are good, we have not met that love which loves us first, which loves us when we are sinners – not just when we are good. The actions of kindness arise because that love loves us, because we can only return such a love, or we can deny it.

So, what does man do? What he is doing from the moment of conception onwards: he chooses, between life and death, between accepting that love or accepting the spirit of the world. He can do it totally: “I choose the world or I choose God”, or he can do it like most do in the middle: some twenty, some thirty, some forty percent; a weak yes, a weak no, in the middle: “I welcome it but not completely”. Then there they go, “every now and then I pray, I ask, I do”, because we have not accepted that love, it has not changed us, it has not knocked us off our horses.

We have said that Trinitarian action is at work in this time. Or better: Trinitarian action has always been present but in this time it is enhanced, is at work in a special way, just as much and even more than in the time of Jesus, now that He is alive and present as He was then. But the action of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit is at work continuously. The Mass is an example of that action; that action that continuously creates us, forgives us and sanctifies us, according to our participation.

At every Mass we pray “Our Father in heaven… your kingdom come”: it never seems to come. We are praying for peace: wars break out. But what does this tell us? I think what it tells us is: man prays for “your kingdom come” but he already has his own ideas of what His kingdom is like, he already has his own ideas of what God’s kingdom is like. He prays for peace, but he wants peace – which is right, and woe betide us if we do not pray for peace – not to change according to God’s thinking, but to live according to his own thinking.

That is why peace does not come, because God does not give us what hurts us. If we want an example that confirms this, take the pandemic. Has anything changed since the pandemic? Man has returned to life as before. Did anyone go looking for God during or after the pandemic? They were sorry – we were sorry – because we could not live as we lived before but we do not change our life. No one asked: what does God want to tell me? What does He want? Why did He allow it?

St Paul by accepting that love, that forgiveness, changed his life, but this applies to everyone. Sometimes I believe that we do not welcome that forgiveness precisely because, as for God’s will, as for peace, when we say “your kingdom come”, our cunning soul knows that if we welcome all this, we have to change, we have to let go of things; that if we accept all this, we have lost.

While I was reflecting about this, I asked myself: how can we pray for peace? The Lord is clear, is He not? After the Lord’s Prayer, the priest prays to God the Father and then to Jesus for peace. He prays to the Father saying: “Turn away all evil from us”, and why does it not turn away? Again, as we said, Evil turns away, but man calls it back. When we baptise and send evil to hell, to the sulphur pond, all evil goes there, but then man calls it back. The demons, the evil, the disintegrating energy is in the world because man calls it back. He invokes evil, not because he makes black masses or does who knows what, but simply because he chooses to live according to the world, according to the spirit of the world, and then who represents the spirit of the world shows up: evil shows up.

When we pray for peace, the first prayer for peace should be for peace within ourselves, for peace that overcomes my worries, for peace that overcomes my questions, so that they disappear. Then I can pray for peace in the world, that peace would overcome the world in me. Then we can together raise a voice, and it will also be an authoritarian prayer like the one the Apostles raised and then the Earth shook: “Everyone here wants to destroy us. Either help us or the Church is already as good as finished”. It was not really like that but… the Earth shook and the Church got started¹¹. But they were people who had chosen that, in truth.

But if, on the other hand, I pray for peace, but while I am praying, I already pray for God’s will inside me and I already want peace inside me because then I will grow well, I will be well, I continue to work, I continue to live, I continue to do: I have already gone against Jesus’ prayer: “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives.” ¹², He says. We have to find out how He gives it to us. We cannot tell Him how to give it to us, “not as the world give”.

I see atheist people – or at least they define them so – at peace, they seem to me beautiful, positive people, at peace more than many Christians, sorry. I asked myself: why? Because for what they believe, for what they live, they have found an inner balance, a peace, they have an ideal and for that ideal they give their lives, they give their lives for that ideal. The most striking case is Gandhi: he gave his life for an ideal, he was at peace. But we who have met God, or say we have met God, what does it mean to be at peace? It will be something beyond: we have to become like Jesus Christ, like the One who offers life and pays for peace; we have to become an immolated lamb, to take a piece of the cross and walk forward. We must put Christ at the centre and leave all initiative to Him, accepting that love as I said before.

We are in particular times – we have told this, I have said it many times – but not because they are bad times; they are particular because there are so many graces, particular because this experience of Saul becoming Paul is within everyone’s reach. Because all it takes is a small opening, a small desire towards God, willing to change one’s life, and God breaks down the door. He stands at the door and knocks¹³. In these times, if someone approaches the door even without opening it, the door will be smashed down. It is He that knocks it down, because He comes in. You just have to show some desire and willingness. Peculiar for that. It is harder to lose oneself than to save oneself. But, as at conception, we always have to choose between the Spirit of God or the spirit of the world. This is the only thing man has to do, this choice, then leave it to God’s action. And He knows who to throw off the horse, who to catch by showing him a miracle, who to catch by caressing him, who to catch by kicking him in the butt, He knows, but let Him do it.

And I wish to thank You, O Lord, for these times, thank You for the graces that are numerous. I wish to entrust to You all the little ones, the simple ones, all those who are immersed in whirlwinds that are greater than themselves, in situations greater than themselves, especially those who have not yet known You. I entrust to You those who in every religion still seek Life with a capital letter, seek the meaning of Life. I entrust to you the aborted children. I entrust to you all those rejected in every way. And I wish, together with Mary Most Holy, to ask You for a special blessing for those who said yes to You in the moment of conception, for those who are called to open a way: that they may rejoice in this call, awaken and truly accept – like Saint Paul – that they must suffer for Your name’s sake; that they may accept, wherever He sends them, all the way there together with Saint Paul, and to thank the power, the breadth and the greatness of God’s love, in the name of the Father, of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.