Homily of H.E. Mons. Claudio Gatti of February 11, 2007
1st reading: Jer 17:5-8; Psalm 1; 2nd reading: 1 Cor 15, 12:16-20; Gospel: Lk 6, 17:20-26
God always intervenes in a simply and familiar way, so that there is no excuse or pretext for not understanding His intervention and His word. God is extremely simple, He loves simplicity, men are the ones who in order to demonstrate their power and authority, try to put themselves in high positions from where they can receive respect from their subjects. He is not like that; the greatest interventions in the Church history took place in a simple and understandable way; He always chose weak and ineffective instruments in the eyes of men to carry out His works. I say this with all the simplicity I am capable at this moment: today, for the Church, it is a very important day and not because of the recurrence of the feast of Our Lady of Lourdes where millions of sick people look with the hope of being healed, but there is a higher motivation because it concerns God and comes from God. Today we simply disseminate a seed that must grow and reach every corner of the Church, the seed that must highlight to men the greatness, the importance, fondness and fatherhood of God the Father. It is absurd, and we realize it only when our conscience shows us certain limits, that after two thousand years of Christianity, we find ourselves in an embarrassing situation. If you scroll through the pages of the missal where the votive Masses are reported, you will find Masses for the Most Holy Eucharist, in honor of Jesus’ name, of His Precious Blood, of His most Sacred Heart, of the Holy Spirit, and I restrict myself to the divine persons, but there is no thanksgiving feast to the Father. How come that after twenty centuries nobody has paid attention to the centrality of God the Father, source of divinity, first person of the Trinity? It was hidden, misunderstood and men were prevented from having a relationship with Him, a true filial relationship. For twenty centuries we have made men orphans of God the Father, and this absurd concept must absolutely be taken up, enlarged and given to the whole Church.
God is manifesting all the time, yet men do not adhere to His messages, His invitations, do not accept His presence and reject His Word. What is God doing? Does He look for revenge? Does He react with power? No, on the contrary, He waits for the time to be ripe for a just and intelligent understanding that highlights the relationship between God the Father on one side and the human creature, the son, on the other. This is the moment! We must recover twenty centuries, we must get rid of conventional, empty, rhetorical images. God is not the One who has been shown as inaccessible, far and distant from man, He is not the One who is outside men and every single man’s history; God is at the center of history, He is in the heart of every man, even those who do not know and do not appreciate Him. God continues to give us gifts and to grant us graces, He is bestowing gifts that men do not accept. Yet, He operated many of them in this place: 185 Eucharistic miracles, apparitions of the Mother of the Eucharist that have reached and exceeded thousands of times, the gift of the Holy Door, the gift of the episcopate made to a creature directly from Him, conversions and healings of souls and bodies. Instead of finding joy and satisfaction in all this, men tried to turn their backs and put themselves in the situation mentioned by Jeremiah when he asserts with strong words: "Cursed is the one who trusts in man, who draws strength from mere flesh and whose heart turns away from the Lord" (Jer 17:5). It's time to change style and life behavior. If you receive, as a gift, a precious object, a golden ring where a pearl or brilliant is set, if you receive a necklace of precious pearls or a gold pendant and show others these gifts that have been given to you and the others do not appreciate them, does the gift lose its preciousness and its importance? The gift is precious in itself and for itself, not for the recognition of men. We are in the same situation: the gifts that I have listed above have been given to this small, simple, weak and mistreated community but they are precious and important because they come from God; we did not save them for ourselves, we did not make them our own, but we tried to offer and share them with others. Conditions are not fulfilled as yet, but slowly and inevitably, God will have His works and His interventions gloriously recognized in the Church. The last gift that God the Father has given us was to really see Him as Dad; only Jesus, His only begotten and beloved Son, until today, had turned to God the Father calling him "Abba", "Dad". None of us, in our prayers, has ever turned to God calling Him "Dad". God said instead to call Him "Dad", in order to rediscover His love. God uses instruments, that are men, to manifest himself and to make His will and thoughts understood because it is not possible to have direct access to Him, as long as we are on Earth. Only in Heaven we will see Him as He is. In the Old Testament, God would show to Moses and a few other men in the form of a cloud, a fire and a burning bush; instead, in the New Testament He would show to a simple creature in the form of a flower or stars, through her, the sensitive, lived and participated love of God reached us. March 9 is an emblematic and significant date; it is the Feast of priesthood, not only of my priestly ordination. On that day we will give you a great gift, we will give you the talking that in the summer time God the Father had with me and Marisa. He allowed us to ask Him questions and ask about certain things. You will savor the affectionate paternity, sometimes even with a slight rebuke to encourage us, but in most cases you will discover such great and beautiful affection that you too will be moved. It is a beautiful and precious gift for which I ask you to get prepared with prayers, to welcome Him in the best way. "Oh, Daddy God, why did we take so long to recognize your paternity?" Because the amount of love was not enough within us. It is only with love that we understand something about God. Without love we cannot understand God, without love, how can we turn to God and call him Dad? You will also have noticed the patience with which God, in all these years of public messages where Our Lady revealed herself to Marisa, has educated us to love and understand the importance of love. From the understanding of love came a great knowledge of the Eucharistic mystery, of the mystery of grace, of the mystery of the Church and finally, in a temporal order, but not of importance, the mystery concerning life in God and the participation of divine life in each of us. I entrust to you with the task of beginning to spread, to talk about, to present God as He wishes to be presented. God is the sovereign, the All, in front of Him Our Lady too bows and kneels in reverent adoration, but He is also the one who knows how to smile, play and joke, who kisses and caresses His own children even if they are not aware of it. The distant and inaccessible God must now give way to the present and affectionate God. This concept must come into the Church and be sure that it will come. Others have taken possession of many initiatives, missions and crusades that started here, making them their own and showing them as part of their teaching and their own preaching, but we are not jealous of this, we do not care to know who is sowing the seed. We care that the seed takes root in the earth, in the garden of God, in the Church of God and bears the fruits that God wants. Be assured that when the truth is known in all its facets, God will also let us know who was the instrument He used to make Himself known, to speak to men, to make Himself loved as Dad by all men. Here, my dear, is the reason why today, 11th February 2007, is a historical date for the Church and must be remembered. In order not to grow proud, I say it again, let's look around and recognize our smallness, fragility and weakness. The greatness of God is shining, sparkling in a clear and precise way before the weak man. The weaker the man, the more powerful the action of God is, the more is man neglected, the more God must be highlighted. My dear, let us raise our eyes to Heaven, let us open our hearts to feel, strong and clear this word of God, thus encouraging us to begin, to carry forward and to conclude this mission with the same results and effects as all other missions. All this to His glory and praise and not to our glory or to our praise.
Praised be Jesus Christ.