Homily of H.E. Mons. Claudio Gatti of March 9, 2007

Perhaps you have realized that for a moment I was lost in thought, I was not absent-minded, but just more absorbed than usual because I felt strongly and real, by my side, the presence of the many people who have always given us help, encouragement, support and love.

Now we will do together a meditation that has accompanied me during this day. The human being is a reality composed of a soul and a body, so within us there are two lives: one spiritual and one natural. A person is only realized if both lives are present in him and the wish is that they are always two because, with the spiritual death, man is as if he were divided and split within himself. This is the ugliness of sin that destroys the human being, for it kills the most important reality, the spiritual one.

Natural life has certain connotations: each of us is characterized by a name, a family history and belongs to a community, to a nation. Spiritual life, on the other hand, is nourished by the Eucharist and has a Trinitarian relationship, so the connotations of spiritual life are twofold: the Eucharistic and the Trinitarian realities.

The soul without the Eucharist, which is a source of grace, does not grow, cannot witness to God its loyalty and love and cannot have with God the relationship that the Creator desires to have with every creature.

The Eucharist is also a reality uniting every human being to his brothers and in this union there is no difference of hierarchical roles but of responsibility. Therefore, before God, a simple believer, a consecrated soul, a priest, a bishop or the Pope himself, are different because God calls them to live different missions and not because they occupy a different position in the ecclesiastical hierarchy.

The Eucharist realizes man in his most intimate and spiritual reality. Today we have one more reason to sing the "Te Deum" as thanksgiving to the Lord. The men of the Church have tried to reduce the Eucharist, action and real presence of God, to a simple memorial of centuries ago. All this would gradually bring man to such a separation from God, origin of life, that he could no longer have a dialogue with Him. God intervened and made sure that the vitality that comes from the Eucharist was not removed, eliminated, but would have returned with greater generosity and love from God.

We Christians have a spiritual life because we are Eucharistic. The expression "Eucharistic woman", given to Our Lady and mentioned in the famous encyclical of John Paul II Ecclesia de Eucharistia, did not please God at all, because it does not suits her and does not show the relationship with the Eucharist. We, on the other hand, about the Eucharist, can say: "The man of the Eucharist, the young man of the Eucharist, the child of the Eucharist, the priest of the Eucharist and the Bishop of the Eucharist". Even my own priestly ordination first, episcopal later, would have no depth and vitality if it were not injected, planted in the Eucharist; thanks to it I received that strength which has served me and I have transmitted to you.

I can make my own the words of St. Paul: "Follow my example, just like I follow Christ’s" (1 Cor 11:1), so if the Eucharist is present in the spiritual being of a soul, then there is life, grace and love. Thus man is able to respond to God and begin with Him a relationship, a dialogue, a Trinitarian and Eucharistic relationship.

Since we were children, we have been educated to turn to Christ and so the Sacraments, prayers and the words of the Gospel had a finality that was strictly limited to the relationship with Christ. Instead we must have a living relationship with the whole Trinity, not only with God the Son, but also with God the Father and God the Holy Spirit. Here it is another reason to cry out our "Te Deum". Thanks to our loyalty to God, to the messages He has given us, to the dialogues that allowed the Bishop and the Seer to have with Him, now, in the Church, we have launched a new seed, which leads us to discover the Love of God the Father.

Until recently, in our prayers, God the Father was present in a modest and poor way. The Churches dedicated to Jesus, to his mysteries and to his titles, are much more numerous than those dedicated to God the Father, there is a huge, immense and unjustifiable imbalance. God the Father is the source of divinity, God the Father generates the Son and the Holy Spirit proceeds from God the Father. On the few occasions when we turned to God or heard about it, we were presented as somebody inaccessible and distant. We turned to Him with fear and reverence mixed with fear, but the Lord does not want this, for this reason He showed for what He is. You must know that, in Heaven, God the Father is joking and playing with the souls and also with those present. Are you amazed by this? It is the truth. Only those who have been in Heaven and have experienced these realities can testify to the authenticity of all this, the others must be silent and listen. God is the Father coming to meet his children and is rejoicing. Sometimes He can even reproach them, but He loves us with a high and incomprehensible love.

Our relationship must be Trinitarian: if Christ is present, the Father is also present and we do not forget the Third Person, the Holy Spirit, probably the most neglected. Without His power there is no Eucharist, only by the power of the Holy Spirit the Eucharistic mystery is present, present every time, in every century, in every moment of the history of the Church. Grace, the remission of sins, is given to us by the outpouring of the Holy Spirit making us powerful witnesses of the truth and eager to defend it and bear witness. We must not forget the Trinity!

There is no true Christianity, no real Christian life or an authentic spiritual life if we do not have a continuous and firm relationship with God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. These three mysteries, these three realities are not contradicting each other, but they amalgamate to become the same reality. Our mother and teacher, the Mother of the Eucharist, has taught us, even catching theologians, that in the Eucharist there is the real presence of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. From this evening I would like an improvement: when we pray together let us raise our mind, our faith and our love to God the Father, God the Son and to God the Holy Spirit; also the sign of the Cross must remind us of this.

When we enter a Church and kneel before the tabernacle where the Eucharist is present, we kneel before God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit; likewise when we receive the Eucharist, the Most Holy Trinity is within us. For this reason there can be no true Christian life and an authentic spiritual life if the Eucharist and the Trinity are not present within us. This concept has never been told or taught, but the time has come to give the Church this truth that was already present but not yet discovered. It was necessary for someone to remove the veil that covered it in order to offer it to the faithful and to all the Christian people.

We cannot disregard the Eucharist, we cannot neglect the Most Holy Trinity. It is present and working within us, this is a certainty that must be preserved, jealously guarded and offered to others.

Today there are many reasons to thank God! How many graces He has given us, how much good did we do! And then, when the same Daddy God turns to us and says: "Thank you for everything you have done for the Church", with humility but with sincerity, we must be conscious and say: "Yes, great things we have accomplished because You Lord called us to do them, and you gave us the grace to do them." We must be grateful to God for all this and sincere with ourselves.

The Church is changing: when the cornfield needs to be plowed, the plow drawn by the oxen must open the furrows. At this moment, I feel like an ox, and I say it with respect, precisely because in the field of God I worked to dig these furrows where we threw the seed that has already produced some lush plants. In this field, representing the Church, new plants will grow equally strong and prosperous. God is jealous of his field, He defends and protects it.

The time has come, and I hope this will happen soon, when the unfaithful shepherds and mercenaries, will be disavowed and denounced. This is another task that God has reserved for our community, the Bishop and the Seer.

The shepherds must resemble Christ the good shepherd as written in the Gospel of John: "I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep" (Jn 10:11). Every priest or bishop must be the good shepherd for the souls God has entrusted to him.

Jesus said: "I am the gate; whoever enters through me will be saved. They will come in and go out, and find pasture" (Jn 10:9) and is through the priest, the bishop, good shepherd, that the souls must enter the fold where they will find warmth, protection and the necessary food to feed and grow.

Here we have many reasons to raise this "Te Deum" to God, which began on the evening of March 8, 1963, when, in the dim light of the chapel dedicated to Our Lady with the title "Our Lady of trust", I deeply prayed to God so that, thanks to Mary’s intercession, He may put in my heart a great love towards the Eucharist and an absolute loyalty to His Word.

After forty-four years of priesthood I believe I can say: "Yes, my Lord, I have been faithful, I loved you in the Eucharist, I believed in the Trinitarian mystery, I made you known and loved by presenting Your Word to my brothers. I was the good shepherd for all the souls God has entrusted to me". I want to say and sing this thanksgiving hymn to God, together with you who were closer to me in the hardest, most painful and excruciating years of this priesthood and in these first nine years of episcopate.

How many years of priesthood and episcopate will I still have to exercise? God knows, what counts is that every moment, short or long, concerning my story, is lived with the same enthusiasm of my twenty-four years, when, at the foot of the altar, before receiving the Priesthood, I consecrated my life to You God, One and Triune.

To God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit really present in the Eucharist goes our praise, honor and glory.

Amen.

Meditation after the apparition of March 9, 2007

Today you have dedicated this day to my priesthood, to my episcopate and I thank you because, although I have always had support and help from God, never as in this moment I feel the need to always be able to count on your participation, even psychologically. Feeling alone in the struggle makes you sick, but being able to share and know that there are so many people, not only you in this place, but also others in the whole world praying for the Bishop ordained by God, gives me the strength to move forward. Sometimes it is tempting to desist because human frailty prevails, weakness and fatigue are felt, above all from a physical, natural point of view and the words that Jesus said to the apostles resound: "pray that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak". The spirit is strong because it feeds and is sustained by the power of God, with His power, as it happened during the long and affectionate conversation with God the Father, a conversation between father and children. I felt daddy talking, in my mind the images of these forty-four years were flowing fast and I was surprised, now more than ever, I saw and remembered everything that was done, first by myself and then, since the mission began, with Marisa; we really did great, huge, immense things. For the first time, when I paused to see the greatness of what was accomplished, I thought of Jesus' words: "You will do things greater than I did". God has overturned the situation where they were trying to silence the Eucharist and He brought back to the Church the centrality of faith, love for the Eucharist, the strength to fight openly and without backing away from the arrogance of high characters who even felt omnipotent. God has given us the perseverance to pass through all the Stations of the Cross, I hope I have reached the last one or at least the last but one, for we have journeyed a lot in these thirty-six years of mission and I have journeyed a lot in my forty-four years of priesthood. The clarity and lucidity with which I addressed the big men of the Church and of the Earth made me understand that God was totally on our side. How could a simple creature have this perseverance, this courage, this resolute force that is not human? However, I must admit that there are many moments of weakness, but they are necessary in order not to grow proud because, and I will talk about this during the homily, the revelation on God’s fatherhood is a gift that the Lord makes to His Church through two humble creatures. We must see things through the eyes of God. The same reality, the same person can be seen by God in one way and by men in another. God is saying to two creatures: "You are mine, I have chosen you, you are my apostles, my prophets, saints I have rendered such with My grace". Instead, about these two creatures, men say: "You are rebellious, indocile, you have broken the Church, you are the ruin of the Church"; the one who has this responsibility is not me, but another person: just a word to the wise.

Even what can be humanly despicable, like suffering, can be seen by placing oneself on the side of men or on the side of God; we are talking about a delicate subject, difficult to deal with and above all to understand, for suffering is never understood. We can strive for it, but it is human to wonder when it will end or the reason for so much suffering and why Jesus Christ’s suffering was not enough. One wonders why men are called to drink this cup with Him, but it is Jesus who said to the two brothers: "Can you drink the cup that I am going to drink?" And they replied: "Yes, we can". Then we also say: "Yes, we can drink this cup", but I can assure you, because I have experienced it, that the blood of Jesus is sweet, gentle. When the great miracle of June 11, 2000 took place, I consumed the host from which the blood had come out and I felt its sweetness, gentleness, its perfume, while blood normally arouses a sense of almost revulsion. The blood of Christ flowing to make the desert fertile and luxuriant is more than enough, but He wants our blood to be united with His. Do you know how God recognizes and knows how to distinguish the blood of His Son and the blood of those who are called to cooperate in the passion with the Son? From the color! The blood of Jesus is redder, more vermilion, brighter, more powerful and those who offer to God, through suffering, have a color and intensity gradualness, and a softer perfume. Those who are closer to God have blood more similar to that of Christ, therefore, there is greater closeness. The Lord has spoken of this blood also through the signs: the blood that escaped from the host and Our Lady’s tears; the blood of Mary is the most equal, most resembling and can be almost mistaken with that of Christ and those who were amazed why the statue of the Our Lady spilled out a blood that, after examination, turned out to be male blood, it is because that is the blood of Jesus. The blood of Jesus and the blood of Our Lady are identical, it is the same blood, it could be male or female, so you can understand God’s blood language. God calls those who love more, whose blood is closer to that of His Son, He will never be confused because he knows how to differentiate. It is the resemblance that counts and I say it again, the color, sweetness and perfume depend on the ability to love and the ability to suffer. In this way we are able to understand God more and more. This morning He often told us that He is our dad, but He is asking for suffering, is asking for this blood, He almost begged to allow more time in this hard, violent moment, so dreadful in some aspects, and we give it to Him, sometimes with reluctance, sometimes with fear, but I have always experienced that during the conversations with God I feel stronger. It happens to children who feel protected when they talk to their parents, then when the parents are not there because they work or are absent for other reasons they feel almost confused, uncertain; we would need a continuous presence of God to feel completely at ease, calm and secure and see things as He sees them. The person who, compared to our community, to the rest of the world, to the whole Church has the blood most similar to that of Christ is our sister Marisa who is consummating in a continuous suffering. But God is our dad and if a continuous intervention from God was not there, the suffering would lead her to even more dreadful and dramatic situations. The help is there, if it were not there we would be desperate; not even human care, the most equipped clinic, the advice of the best professors could calm these sufferings; but the logic of God, which is sometimes different from ours, puts us in a situation of confusion. Today it is the feast of the Bishop He ordered and the victim suffered more than the other days; it is a huge suffering. Today God has said that the benefits of Marisa’s suffering and, consequently, the Bishop’s will no longer be in favor of priests and this is a striking decision: those who have not converted can no longer convert and, unfortunately. For them there will be Hell. They can be powerful, they can be people newspapers and television talk about, but if they're not from God, there's no chance for them: it's awful. God has long been patient, but now He has said enough! Above all the big men can still continue to blow hot and cold, to distribute joy and to inflict suffering, but they will pay everything in the judgment of God and after their death there will be no more possibility for them to change, to convert. They hold meetings, conferences, seminars, studies, celebrations, gather people, but never the sick, the poor, the prisoners, the afflicted are participating in these meetings, even ecclesiastic meetings. God's fatherhood, however, turns to the last, the small, the weak ones because our Lord thinks about them, gives His help and asks the good ones to pray and suffer so the situation of these people may change. I also anticipate your question: "Does God need this? Cannot He do it on His own initiative?" He also does it on His own initiative, but His respect for us is unconceivable because He elevates us to the dignity of being His collaborators, this is greatness. Men and women boast of being collaborators of a president, a king, a minister, but we are collaborators of God, have you ever thought about it? You can also put it on the business card and I will do it: God's collaborator. That is why God loves us and respects us and men can do nothing about it. He said: "I give my judgment and I do not care what men think. If I, God, say that two people are holy, even if men think differently I do not care about their judgment because the only one that counts is Mine". Humanly speaking, in recent months I thought and hoped that we would have celebrated this March 9 in a different mood, also because I had reread and heard certain revelations, but when, a few days ago, Marisa revealed to me her secrets concerning the Church and the world I said: "My God, have we come so low?" They are awful! But they do not concern any punishments, for the terrible situations that man has reached requires purification and redemption. These secrets, which we know of, are stripping the flesh and make our heart bleed; some people should be put in the situation of no longer being able to harm. I do not know if God wants them to be revealed and known, but I wish you never know them. It's true, I've already said several times in this circumstance that it is no longer a matter of praying or suffering for priests, but tonight I cannot forget those who were ordained with me back in 1963 because on some of them, as revealed by God the Father, the Lord has a particular plan. So, if only because they share with me the years of formation, of the seminar, I ask you to pray for these priests to whom I have also addressed letters and asked God to give them sufficient light, especially to the good ones, to understand and accept them. To understand them is easy, to accept them is perhaps not as easy, it is much more difficult, so I ask you for prayers for my fellows at the seminary, partly because, some days ago, one of them came to collect these letters and I promised that I would have prayed for them, therefore, I want to keep the commitment. God the Father certainly will not reproach me for this, they are his children and this Holy Mass is a thanksgiving hymn to God, a Te Deum encircling one after the other forty-four years, from March 9, 1963 to March 9, 2007. A long Te Deum, which almost never ends and I would like you to sing it with me, spiritually at least. I do not know if you can find a copy somewhere but, if you succeed, at the end of the Eucharistic celebration I will read it and you will listen to it. It occurred to me now, I did not prepare anything beforehand. Now I have spoken to you from the bottom of my heart, all that I told you this evening came out of my heart, I did not need to reflect on what I would say, I spoke to you with love, heart and even with some suffering. Today our Lord, God, has given me two presents: a dialogue with him and a personal letter: yes, God has written me a personal letter, and I end by repeating a sentence that our Lord has given me: "Show your children that you are happy for me". That's all.