WEDNESDAY 11 JANUARY – I WEEK [A]
They found him and said, “Everyone is looking for you!” He said to them: «Let’s go elsewhere, to the neighboring villages, so that I can preach there too; for this in fact I have come!». And he went throughout all Galilee, preaching in their synagogues and casting out demons.
Compassion is from the Father. In the Holy Spirit Jesus must live all compassion for men always from the will of the Father. Jesus is the minister and steward of his Father’s compassion. Let’s say right away that there are two compassions. The first is natural compassion. The second is supernatural compassion. Natural compassion is seeing a poor man and giving him a loaf of bread. Supernatural compassion is to see man poor in Christ Jesus, poor in the Father and in the Holy Spirit, poor in truth and in grace, poor in light and in eternal life, and to give man these divine and eternal goods which elevate his life and carry it in its truth for both time and eternity. But it is not at all easy to experience supernatural compassion.
Why isn’t it easy at all? Because supernatural compassion can only be lived in the manner of Christ Jesus: by assuming on one’s shoulders every cross fruit of man’s sin and living it in man’s place, instead of him. Christ Jesus came, he took upon himself all the sin of the world, he took upon himself all guilt and all pain and offered his Father, with the holocaust of his body, the sacrifice of atonement. He atoned for us. However, his expiation needs to become the expiation of his whole body which is the Church. Unless every member of Christ’s body imitates Christ Jesus and takes upon himself the sins and guilt of the world for their redemption, Christ’s sacrifice remains in the treasure chests of heaven but bears no fruit on our earth.
Who then is the Christian? He is the one who must give life today in the days of his history to the sacrifice of Christ, becoming in him, with him and for him a single sacrifice of salvation and redemption. How can this happen? Imitating Christ Jesus. As Christ the Lord made himself obedient to his Father to the point of giving his life on the cross, so too the Christian must make himself a gift to Christ by offering his life, without keeping for himself even a single instant. Thoughts, desires, heart, will, soul, spirit, every cell of his body must be delivered to the fulfillment of the will of Christ Jesus. By doing this, he revives the sacrifice of Christ, actualizes it with his body in his body and offers it to the His Father the one and only sacrifice pleasing to Him.
LET’S READ THE TEXT OF Mk 1,19-39
There is an infinite difference between natural compassion and supernatural compassion. If today we have abandoned supernatural compassion to dedicate ourselves to a natural compassion, incapable of giving true salvation to man – because his poverty is poverty of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, it is poverty of grace and of truth, it is of light and love of true salvation – the cause of this fall into temptation is our abandonment of Christ. No one can live Christ’s mission which is of true supernatural compassion if he detaches himself from the source of his vocation and mission.
Today we are dedicating ourselves to natural compassion, leaving supernatural compassion only to the Father’s mercy. Against the eternal decree of the Father who established that today and forever it is man in Christ who experiences supernatural compassion, we have another decree, written however by men, and this decree states that for the Christian only natural compassion must to be lived. There is no more need for any supernatural compassion. Today it is being taught that God has already given salvation to every man. Indeed this God is not the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ. Instead, he is the new God, the unique God invented by the Christian.
However, this one God is not the true God. The true God, who is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, has only one decree, and this decree is eternal and unchangeable. The compassion that He commands us is the gift of Christ Jesus to every heart, however we live the whole Gospel rich in every supernatural or spiritual and even material compassion. As Christ Jesus is the minister and administrator of the Father’s compassion, and today the Father wants Christ Jesus to administer his compassion in other places and with other people, so it is true of the disciple of Jesus.
He, minister and administrator of the compassion of Christ Jesus, must administer the compassion of Christ, not another compassion, always from the will of Christ Jesus and never from his own. For this he must be in constant communion with the Holy Spirit. May the Mother of God obtain for us the grace to be true ministers and administrators of the compassion of Christ Jesus for the salvation of every man
Mons. Costantino Di Bruno – Comment on the Gospel of January 11, 2023 –