A reading from the Acts of the Apostles Acts 10:25-26, 34-35, 44-48
When Peter entered, Cornelius met him and, falling at his feet, paid him homage. Peter, however, raised him up, saying, “Get up. I myself am also a human being.”
Then Peter proceeded to speak and said, “In truth, I see that God shows no partiality. Rather, in every nation whoever fears him and acts uprightly is acceptable to him.”
While Peter was still speaking these things, the Holy Spirit fell upon all who were listening to the word. The circumcised believers who had accompanied Peter were astounded that the gift of the Holy Spirit should have been poured out on the Gentiles also, for they could hear them speaking in tongues and glorifying God. Then Peter responded, “Can anyone withhold the water for baptizing these people, who have received the Holy Spirit even as we have?” He ordered them to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ.
PSALM 98 ALLELUJA ALLELUJA! Oh, sing to the Lord a new song! For He has done marvelous things; His right hand and His holy arm have gained Him the victory. 2 The Lord has made known His salvation; His righteousness He has revealed in the sight of the [a]nations. 3 He has remembered His mercy and His faithfulness to the house of Israel; All the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of our God.
4 Shout joyfully to the Lord, all the earth; Break forth in song, rejoice, and sing praises. 5 Sing to the Lord with the harp, With the harp and the sound of a psalm, 6 With trumpets and the sound of a horn; Shout joyfully before the Lord, the King.
Second reading from the First Letter of John 1 Jn 4:7-10
Beloved, let us love one another, because love is of God; everyone who loves is begotten by God and knows God. Whoever is without love does not know God, for God is love. In this way the love of God was revealed to us: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might have life through him. In this is love: not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as expiation for our sins.
GOSPEL OF THE DAY From the Gospel according to John Jn 15:9-17
Jesus said to his disciples: “As the Father loves me, so I also love you. Remain in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and remain in his love.
“I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and your joy might be complete. This is my commandment: love one another as I love you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. I no longer call you slaves, because a slave does not know what his master is doing. I have called you friends, because I have told you everything I have heard from my Father. It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit that will remain, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name he may give you. This I command you: love one another.”
WORDS OF THE HOLY FATHER He fell in love with our littleness and he chose us because of that. And he chooses the little ones, not those who are great, the little ones. And he reveals himself to the little ones: “You have hidden these things from the learned and the wise and have revealed them to little ones”. His reveals himself to the little ones: if you want to understand something about Jesus’s mystery, humble yourself: make yourself little. Recognize your nothingness. He chooses the little ones, he reveals himself to the little ones and calls the little ones. But he does not call the great ones? Their hearts are open, but the great ones do not hear his voice because they are full of themselves. To listen to the Lord’s voice, you need to make yourself little. (Homily, Santa Marta, 23 June 2017)
FAUSTI - We are dizzily taken up in the Love of the Father and the Son, sharers in the Trinitarian Life. We are called to dwell in His Love for us , which is the same that the Father has for Him and for us. This is our true home, where we can live and rediscover our identity as sons and brothers. The one love between the Father and the Son circulates in us and makes us stay in the Son as the Son in the Father. "You will remain in my Love" Jesus makes it clear that, in order to remain in His Love, it is necessary not only that His Words remain in us, but also that we observe His commands. These commands, which cause us to walk as He walked, are actually one command. As His Word is one and multiple, so His commandments are multiple and one: it is the command of Love that moves and orders all our actions. Whoever does not love does not dwell in Love. We can love because He was the first to love us; we can observe His command because He has observed the command of the Father, Who has sent Him to witness His Love for us. Jesus is the first man who dwells in the Love of the Father; He is the Son who fulfills His will because He loves His brothers. We too dwell in Him, in His Love, if we love each other as He has loved us. In order to dwell in His Love, we must observe His commands which are reduced to One: brotherly love, which is halved until it is mutual. The Love that Jesus showed us on the Cross is the source of our love towards others: one can love if and as one is loved. As Jesus dwelt in the Love of the Father by loving his brothers and sisters, so we dwell in His Love as Son by doing the same. The command to love God becomes a command to love man. In fact, love for God and love for man are a single reality, just as the Son's love for the Father and for us is the same as the Father's love for the Son and for us. Love is One; it is God. And it places everyone in communion. Jesus is always and in any case our friend. In our turn, we too are His friends, if we respond to His love by doing as He did. I no longer call you servants": "Servant" is an honorific title. Servants of the king are the great ones of the court, servants of God are the prophets and the righteous. The servant executes the will of his Lord, but with a relationship of subjection, not of equality. Jesus does not want us to be servants, but friends, equal to Him. In fact, we are not subjects of the Law, but we live in the freedom of beloved children. If Moses gave us the Law, from the fullness of the Word become flesh, we receive grace upon grace; the grace of the truth of the Son, which brings us into communion with the Father. Origin of the choice is His free love for us . "The Lord has bound Himself to you and chosen you, not because you are more numerous than all the other peoples-you are in fact the smallest of all peoples-but because the Lord loves you" (Deut. 7:7). We have been chosen not to be servants, but friends of God, united to Him in the one Love. Our vocation is sure, because it is "His", it is He who chooses us and calls us. And His choice is irrevocable, resistant to betrayal and denial. We are not speaking here of the choice of the twelve and of their being sent on mission, but of the present and future disciples, who must go where Jesus Himself went: towards the fullness of the Father's Love, loving their brothers and sisters to the point of laying down their lives in their service. This is the much fruit that glorifies the Father. It is that "much fruit" which the Son Himself will bear when, by giving His life for His brothers and sisters, He will draw all to Himself. This is the fundamental mission of the Church, the salt of the earth, the light of the world (Mt 5:13), and the fragrance of Christ for all (2:14). and the fragrance of Christ for all (2 Cor 2:14). Seeing how the disciples live, all find what they desire in their hearts: the beauty of the Love that saves the world.
->The mission is not advertising, but the radiance of mutual love, which attracts everyone to itself. That God whom no one has ever seen, we have seen in the face of the Son, who said: "Whoever has seen me has seen the Father". The others see Him in our face of brothers. This fruit makes us dwell in the Son and in the Father as it makes the Son and the Father dwell in us. If we are in the Son we know that the Father always listens to us as He listens to Him. This is why we ask Him for everything we need to live as children. This is what we ask of the Father in the name of the Son: His own love for our brothers and sisters. Beyond this love there is nothing, except still Love, which is infinite. For "God is Love", and "He who abides in love abides in God and God abides in him" (1 Jn 4:16).
Diac. Giarlotto Lodovico 1st Reading. Peter had always avoided contact with impure foreigners and scrupulously observed the prescriptions of the rabbis. However, a doubt tormented him: were the discriminations, imposed in the name of God, truly willed by God? The Holy Spirit disrupted the schemes dictated by alleged racial privileges and showed that He could descend upon the Gentiles even before they were baptized. The embrace between Peter's Jews and Cornelius' family members is a sign of the new world in which all discrimination will disappear.
Psalm. The 1st verse consists of a hearty invitation from the psalmist to the assembly to raise universal praise to God. The reason for the praise is given by the victorious interventions of Yahweh (exodus from Egypt, return from Babylon) in favor of His people. In the 2nd verse, it is acknowledged to God His saving justice. At the basis of this action of Yahweh are placed three His qualities: the ever-present recall, His love and His faithfulness. The 3rd strophe is an invitation to praise Yahweh Saviour and His love without preference and without limits. 2nd Reading. In the first part of the passage (vv.7-8) the Apostle John takes up the image of sonship (everyone who loves is begotten by God) to indicate the origin of the commandment of love. Love is the life of God and it is this love that he communicates to his children. Whoever loves, even if he or she does not belong to the Church, has the life of God in him or her; he or she is his or her child. In the second part (vv. 9-10) he explains what it means to love. God loved us not because we were good, but he made us good by loving us. The presence of this love reveals sonship. Gospel. After the allegory of the vine and the branches (last Sunday), Jesus presents his love as a life that continues in his disciples who, in baptism, were inserted into him, becoming his branches. Thus it is he who acts in them. The fruit of this union with Jesus is the fullness of joy (v.11). Jesus proposes authentic joy, that which comes from union with him and with the Father. This joy can be obtained only by passing through pain: "You will be afflicted, but your affliction will be changed into joy" (Jn 16:20). Jesus then proposes his commandment: "...that you love one another as I have loved you" (v.12). There are many commandments, but they are all expressions of a single commandment: love for man, because it is the only way we have to show God our love. In fact: "Whoever does not love his brother whom he sees, cannot love God whom he does not see" (1Jn 4:20) and "whoever loves his brother has fulfilled the whole law" (Gal 5:14; Rom 13:8-10). The measure of love for one's neighbor is no longer that indicated in the Old Testament: "as yourself" (Lev 19:8) but "as I have loved you" and, with this expression, Jesus refers to the supreme love that he manifested on the cross. Only those who are always ready to give their lives remain in him. Jesus does not call his disciples servants but friends (vv. 14-15). Jesus himself, however, is indicated by the Father with the words: "This is my servant whom I have chosen" (Mt 12:18) and Paul recalls that he "took on the condition of a servant" (Phil 2:7). Hence the exhortation to become servants to one another (Mk 9:35). Jesus explains why he calls his disciples friends and not servants. The servant is only externally involved in the master's project, he is an executor of orders while the friend is a confidant, the one with whom one cultivates a communion of life. Jesus calls his disciples friends because he has revealed the Father's project to them (v.15) and has called them to collaborate with him in its realization. The Christian community is made up of "friends", but only a community whose members have a living and profound experience of acceptance, forbearance, forgiveness, mutual service and sharing of goods can effectively announce fraternity and peace to the world.
A reading from the Acts of the Apostles
RispondiEliminaActs 10:25-26, 34-35, 44-48
When Peter entered, Cornelius met him
and, falling at his feet, paid him homage.
Peter, however, raised him up, saying,
“Get up. I myself am also a human being.”
Then Peter proceeded to speak and said,
“In truth, I see that God shows no partiality.
Rather, in every nation whoever fears him and acts uprightly
is acceptable to him.”
While Peter was still speaking these things,
the Holy Spirit fell upon all who were listening to the word.
The circumcised believers who had accompanied Peter
were astounded that the gift of the Holy Spirit
should have been poured out on the Gentiles also,
for they could hear them speaking in tongues and glorifying God.
Then Peter responded,
“Can anyone withhold the water for baptizing these people,
who have received the Holy Spirit even as we have?”
He ordered them to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ.
PSALM 98
ALLELUJA ALLELUJA!
Oh, sing to the Lord a new song!
For He has done marvelous things;
His right hand and His holy arm have gained Him the victory.
2 The Lord has made known His salvation;
His righteousness He has revealed in the sight of the [a]nations.
3 He has remembered His mercy and His faithfulness to the house of Israel;
All the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of our God.
4 Shout joyfully to the Lord, all the earth;
Break forth in song, rejoice, and sing praises.
5 Sing to the Lord with the harp,
With the harp and the sound of a psalm,
6 With trumpets and the sound of a horn;
Shout joyfully before the Lord, the King.
Second reading from the First Letter of John
1 Jn 4:7-10
Beloved, let us love one another,
because love is of God;
everyone who loves is begotten by God and knows God.
Whoever is without love does not know God, for God is love.
In this way the love of God was revealed to us:
God sent his only Son into the world
so that we might have life through him.
In this is love:
not that we have loved God, but that he loved us
and sent his Son as expiation for our sins.
GOSPEL OF THE DAY
From the Gospel according to John
Jn 15:9-17
Jesus said to his disciples:
“As the Father loves me, so I also love you.
Remain in my love.
If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love,
just as I have kept my Father’s commandments
and remain in his love.
“I have told you this so that my joy may be in you
and your joy might be complete.
This is my commandment: love one another as I love you.
No one has greater love than this,
to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.
You are my friends if you do what I command you.
I no longer call you slaves,
because a slave does not know what his master is doing.
I have called you friends,
because I have told you everything I have heard from my Father.
It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you
and appointed you to go and bear fruit that will remain,
so that whatever you ask the Father in my name he may give you.
This I command you: love one another.”
WORDS OF THE HOLY FATHER
He fell in love with our littleness and he chose us because of that. And he chooses the little ones, not those who are great, the little ones. And he reveals himself to the little ones: “You have hidden these things from the learned and the wise and have revealed them to little ones”. His reveals himself to the little ones: if you want to understand something about Jesus’s mystery, humble yourself: make yourself little. Recognize your nothingness. He chooses the little ones, he reveals himself to the little ones and calls the little ones. But he does not call the great ones? Their hearts are open, but the great ones do not hear his voice because they are full of themselves. To listen to the Lord’s voice, you need to make yourself little. (Homily, Santa Marta, 23 June 2017)
FAUSTI - We are dizzily taken up in the Love of the Father and the Son, sharers in the Trinitarian Life.
RispondiEliminaWe are called to dwell in His Love for us ,
which is the same that the Father has for Him and for us.
This is our true home, where we can live and rediscover our identity as sons and brothers.
The one love between the Father and the Son circulates in us and makes us stay in the Son as the Son in the Father.
"You will remain in my Love" Jesus makes it clear that, in order to remain in His Love, it is necessary not only that His Words remain in us, but also that we observe His commands.
These commands, which cause us to walk as He walked, are actually one command.
As His Word is one and multiple, so His commandments are multiple and one: it is the command of Love that moves and orders all our actions.
Whoever does not love does not dwell in Love. We can love because He was the first to love us; we can observe His command because He has observed the command of the Father, Who has sent Him to witness His Love for us.
Jesus is the first man who dwells in the Love of the Father; He is the Son who fulfills His will because He loves His brothers.
We too dwell in Him, in His Love, if we love each other as He has loved us.
In order to dwell in His Love, we must observe His commands which are reduced to
One: brotherly love, which is halved until it is mutual.
The Love that Jesus showed us on the Cross is the source of our love towards others: one can love if and as one is loved.
As Jesus dwelt in the Love of the Father by loving his brothers and sisters, so we dwell in His Love as Son by doing the same.
The command to love God becomes a command to love man. In fact, love for God and love for man are a single reality, just as the Son's love for the Father and for us is the same as the Father's love for the Son and for us.
Love is One; it is God. And it places everyone in communion. Jesus is always and in any case our friend.
In our turn, we too are His friends, if we respond to His love by doing as He did. I no longer call you servants": "Servant" is an honorific title.
Servants of the king are the great ones of the court, servants of God are the prophets and the righteous.
The servant executes the will of his Lord, but with a relationship of subjection, not of equality.
Jesus does not want us to be servants, but friends, equal to Him.
In fact, we are not subjects of the Law, but we live in the freedom of beloved children.
If Moses gave us the Law, from the fullness of the Word become flesh, we receive grace upon grace;
the grace of the truth of the Son, which brings us into communion with the Father. Origin of the choice is His free love for us . "The Lord has bound Himself to you and chosen you, not because you are more numerous than all the other peoples-you are in fact the smallest of all peoples-but because the Lord loves you" (Deut. 7:7).
We have been chosen not to be servants, but friends of God, united to Him in the one Love.
Our vocation is sure, because it is "His", it is He who chooses us and calls us.
And His choice is irrevocable, resistant to betrayal and denial.
We are not speaking here of the choice of the twelve and of their being sent on mission, but of the present and future disciples, who must go where Jesus Himself went: towards the fullness of the Father's Love, loving their brothers and sisters to the point of laying down their lives in their service.
This is the much fruit that glorifies the Father.
It is that "much fruit" which the Son Himself will bear when, by giving His life for His brothers and sisters,
He will draw all to Himself.
This is the fundamental mission of the Church, the salt of the earth, the light of the world (Mt 5:13), and the fragrance of Christ for all (2:14).
and the fragrance of Christ for all (2 Cor 2:14).
Seeing how the disciples live, all find what they desire in their hearts:
the beauty of the Love that saves the world.
->The mission is not advertising, but the radiance of mutual love, which attracts everyone to itself.
RispondiEliminaThat God whom no one has ever seen, we have seen in the face of the Son, who said: "Whoever has seen me has seen the Father". The others see Him in our face of brothers.
This fruit makes us dwell in the Son and in the Father as it makes the Son and the Father dwell in us.
If we are in the Son we know that the Father always listens to us as He listens to Him. This is why we ask Him for everything we need to live as children.
This is what we ask of the Father in the name of the Son: His own love for our brothers and sisters.
Beyond this love there is nothing, except still Love, which is infinite.
For "God is Love", and "He who abides in love abides in God and God abides in him" (1 Jn 4:16).
Diac. Giarlotto Lodovico 1st Reading. Peter had always avoided contact with impure foreigners and scrupulously observed the prescriptions of the rabbis. However, a doubt tormented him: were the discriminations, imposed in the name of God, truly willed by God? The Holy Spirit disrupted the schemes dictated by alleged racial privileges and showed that He could descend upon the Gentiles even before they were baptized. The embrace between Peter's Jews and Cornelius' family members is a sign of the new world in which all discrimination will disappear.
RispondiEliminaPsalm. The 1st verse consists of a hearty invitation from the psalmist to the assembly to raise universal praise to God. The reason for the praise is given by the victorious interventions of Yahweh (exodus from Egypt, return from Babylon) in favor of His people. In the 2nd verse, it is acknowledged to God His saving justice. At the basis of this action of Yahweh are placed three His qualities: the ever-present recall, His love and His faithfulness. The 3rd strophe is an invitation to praise Yahweh Saviour and His love without preference and without limits.
2nd Reading. In the first part of the passage (vv.7-8) the Apostle John takes up the image of sonship (everyone who loves is begotten by God) to indicate the origin of the commandment of love. Love is the life of God and it is this love that he communicates to his children. Whoever loves, even if he or she does not belong to the Church, has the life of God in him or her; he or she is his or her child. In the second part (vv. 9-10) he explains what it means to love. God loved us not because we were good, but he made us good by loving us. The presence of this love reveals sonship.
Gospel. After the allegory of the vine and the branches (last Sunday), Jesus presents his love as a life that continues in his disciples who, in baptism, were inserted into him, becoming his branches. Thus it is he who acts in them. The fruit of this union with Jesus is the fullness of joy (v.11). Jesus proposes authentic joy, that which comes from union with him and with the Father. This joy can be obtained only by passing through pain: "You will be afflicted, but your affliction will be changed into joy" (Jn 16:20).
Jesus then proposes his commandment: "...that you love one another as I have loved you" (v.12). There are many commandments, but they are all expressions of a single commandment: love for man, because it is the only way we have to show God our love. In fact: "Whoever does not love his brother whom he sees, cannot love God whom he does not see" (1Jn 4:20) and "whoever loves his brother has fulfilled the whole law" (Gal 5:14; Rom 13:8-10). The measure of love for one's neighbor is no longer that indicated in the Old Testament: "as yourself" (Lev 19:8) but "as I have loved you" and, with this expression, Jesus refers to the supreme love that he manifested on the cross. Only those who are always ready to give their lives remain in him.
Jesus does not call his disciples servants but friends (vv. 14-15). Jesus himself, however, is indicated by the Father with the words: "This is my servant whom I have chosen" (Mt 12:18) and Paul recalls that he "took on the condition of a servant" (Phil 2:7). Hence the exhortation to become servants to one another (Mk 9:35). Jesus explains why he calls his disciples friends and not servants. The servant is only externally involved in the master's project, he is an executor of orders while the friend is a confidant, the one with whom one cultivates a communion of life. Jesus calls his disciples friends because he has revealed the Father's project to them (v.15) and has called them to collaborate with him in its realization. The Christian community is made up of "friends", but only a community whose members have a living and profound experience of acceptance, forbearance, forgiveness, mutual service and sharing of goods can effectively announce fraternity and peace to the world.