S canning the Scriptures, the modalities of God in the care, custody, guidance, and sanctification of man; emerge. From the day of creation to the vocation of Moses in the desert, the Lord was the one to intervene and put himself in relationship with every single person. This modality occurred with Adam, Eve, the serpent, Cain, Noah, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
Throughout Genesis there is no direct mediation; that is, an action of a person, who in the name and authority of God, speaks, acts, operates on behalf of others. However, there is a nascent, almost hidden, invisible mediation. Noah builds the ark for the salvation of humanity. Abraham is called for in his progeny all the tribes of the earth are blessed. Melchizedek greets Abraham calling upon him the blessing of God Almighty. An indirect mediation is also the blessing of Isaac for Jacob and of the latter for his twelve children. Finally we can talk about incomplete, imperfect mediation, also in prayer. Particular is the one made by Abraham in favor of Sodom, so that the city were not destroyed.
With the Exodus everything changes, we enter a new relationship of man with his God. The prophetic mediation sees its light. The people of God with the covenant at Sinai starts, but even before with the manifestation of the Lord of wanting to save the children of Israel, freeing them from the cruel bondage, from the forced lavour they are subjected to in Egypt. The Lord calls Moses whom he constitutes his prophet. God speaks to only one person, so that this refers to all the people. All the people talk to this only person so that he goes tp the Lord to tell him everything. Who reads Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy discovers that all the life of the people of the Lord is governed in all things by the divine will manifested to Moses. He also sees that all matters of the people are brought the Lord always through Moses, who is declared by God the man of trust in all his house.
The mediation that starts with Moses is not a purely external fact of function, a time lived ministry, at one’s liking, at the pleasure of the person called to live this very high mission. It is of life, essence, nature. In the person of the mediator it is as if God and man came to "incarnate" themselves. Moses carries on his shoulders the full weight of God and the weight of his people. In him it is as if God and the people became one only thing. The light of the divine word and the darkness of human nature in him are incorporated. He is called upon to illuminate the darkness of man with the truth of heaven, so that darkness is defeated and the radiant light of God shines upon all the people.
Moses is called to carry in his body, on his shoulders all the greatness of God and all the misery of his people, all the needs of the divine holiness and all the ugliness of the sin of man, that always denies, betrays, abandons his Lord by

building himself a golden calf, and continuing with endless grumbling against every prescription the Lord gives wanting him to reach the region of Canaan, the land where milk and honey flow, which he prepared and which he gives them wih a promise made to Abraham.
If there is not this "identification" with God and the people, the prophetic mediation will always be conducted in a superficial way, without obligation, by office, never because it is a reality that belongs to us, which is ours, which is our very life. God and the people live due to the mediator. God and the people meet in the mediator and in his person there is this powerful exchange of life. The people give their death to the Lord. The Lord gives his life to the people. He gives it in his word, which is word of life and salvation. The people give their life to their God which is a life of death and destruction of their own nature through the obedience they promise to their mediator.
The mediator is one who listens to God and the people. He refers to the people the words of God, and refers to God the words of the people. This means that he, the mediator must be a powerfully taken, seized, captured person, full of the Holy Spirit of God. If the mediator is without the Spirit of the Lord, because he does not invoke him, does not put himself in humility before his presence; if he is with a proud, unclean, idolatrous heart, if he does everything encompassing all in his will or in his desires; he immediately ceases to be a mediator, and becomes an author with the result of no longer being either mediator of God, and or mediator of the people.
He does not put God in communion with the people because he does not give the people the truth of God, but his thoughts, his desires, his fantasies, his dreams. He does not put the people in communion with God, because without the Spirit of the Lord he is unable to read the concrete history of the people. He confuses sin with obedience, he sees obedience as sin, he considers ritualism as a true sacrifice, he abhors the true sacrifice. The mediator always betrays God and his people when he walks with his will and no longer with the Holy Spirit. The life of a people starts when the light of God encounters the truth of misery of the people and every other spiritual and material needs or necessity. In the New Testament the true mediation is the gift of the Holy Spirit that the mediator pours on every person that hears the true Word of God.
Virgin Mary, Mother of the Redemption, you lived a wonderful work of mediation when you brought the Holy Spirit and Jesus Christ into the house of Zechariah. For you, for your work, that house was filled with the Spirit of the Lord. Help us, today lost, confused, uncertain, deniers of the same mediation; understand that without this essential ministry there is no full communion between God and man and this remains in his death.

Father Costantino Di Bruno

The Holy Father Benedict XVI's visit to the Pontifical Institute on Marriage and the Family has offered a line of work: knowing how to combine the theology of love with the theology of the body to find the unity of the human journey.
We know from the Sacred Revelation that the human body is not simply a container in which the soul is poured. The body and soul are, to quote St. Thomas Aquinas, a substantial unity. They form the only human person. Through the sacrament of Baptism, the body becomes the home and dwelling of the Trinity, an instrument of sanctification, and redemption. In fact, we read in Paul: " Do you not know that your body is a temple of the holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you have been purchased at a price. Therefore, glorify God in your body".(1 Corinthians 6: 19-20).
The price at which we were bought is the blood of Christ offered to the Father in our ransom and the fact that this cost was very high, unlimited, infinite, not only the soul but also the redeemed body is a vehicle of glorification to God. We also know from the Revelation that our humanity (soul, spirit, body) has been wounded by sin; it is lustful, tending to evil, but not intrinsically destroyed by it (cf. Gen 3). In the garden of Eden, before the great emancipation from the Creator, man and woman walked naked in front of one another without shame or hesitation of any kind. The language of love, even corporal, was genuine. After the redemption accomplished by Christ and with the effusion of his Holy Spirit, the body is also called through a long process of conversion and growth in the grace to get transformed from body of flesh into a spiritual body in the image of the glorious body of Christ: the perfect man.
"We can affirm that the body, in revealing our origin to us, bears within itself a filial significance because it reminds us that we are generated, and leads us back, through our parents who passed on life to us, to God the Creator. Only when he recognizes the originating love which has given this life can the human person accept himself, be reconciled with nature and with the world" (Speech).
The body is given to us by God through the love between man and woman, that, in the unitive and procreative act become co-creator, that is they share in a mysterious way in the creative work of God. Consequently it is not a bundle or inert matter, but a gift and an instrument of love because willed by the personal Love of the Father. The memory of such original process arranges for man to accept himself with dignity and to recover the true and authentic relationship with nature and the world.
What was the original plan of God on man and woman? that they in perfect, heart, spirit and body harmony were one only flesh (cf. Gen 2.18 to 24). The primordial language between Adam and Eve was a language of love that is mutually given to give a new life. Sin also hurt this radical relation. Christ healed, saved and sanctified by elevating it to a sacrament. Both bodies, the male and female, walk together in reciprocal respect that knows how to speak the language of love, which certainly cannot be only the result of emotion or sensuality. It is a love that does not take refuge in narcissistic circle but that opens to the gift of human life. "In this light the virtue of chastity takes on new meaning. It is not a “no” to the pleasures and joys of life, but a great “yes” to love as a profound communication between persons, a communication that requires time and respect as they

journey together towards fullness and as a love that becomes capable of generating life and of generously welcoming the new life that is born" (Speech).
True love, Christian love is sacrificial. It gives, communicates, participates itself to person of another in a temperate, respectful, non-invasive and intrusive way. Lived like this, it becomes creating love, open to budding life. As a fact, the divine truth on Christian marriage tells us that there is no mystery of one only flesh if there is the exclusion of life. Children are a gift of God but also the fruit of marital love between man and woman united in holy bond of marriage. It is sealed that Alliance between Christ the Bridegroom and the Church his Bride (Ephesians 5: 31-33). In it soul, heart and body of man and woman become linked in an indissoluble unity. The very body language that takes place in the sacrament becomes a sacred act. In the gift of the body, man and woman recognize and accept themselves as a donation and acceptance, as full and final communion. This donation is complete and embraces all the dimensions of the person: physical, mental, affective and spiritual.
"The family: this is the place where the theology of the body and the theology of love are interwoven. Here we learn the goodness of the body, its witness to a good origin, in the experience of the love we receive from our parents. Here lives the self-giving in a single flesh, in the conjugal charity that unites the spouses. Here we experience that the fruitfulness of love and life is interwoven with that of other generations. It is in the family that the human person discovers that he or she is not in a relationship as an autonomous person, but as a child, spouse or parent, whose identity is founded in being called to love, to receive from others and to give him or herself to others" (Speech).
The natural place where love and the body set out on that journey of maturity and fullness of being a person is the family. The Christian family is the first teacher of love. No entity, organization, human institution can replace it; nor can the family as such delegate his or get out of this specific responsibility. It is from the renewal of the family that the renewal of the social fabric starts. It is the very Word of God that, assuming our flesh, wanted to dwell in the space of a real family, thus consecrating the natural order of things, and elevating it to a supernatural order.
And the same invisible Word hypostatically joining our humanity, gave to the human body an admirable dignity not only in its earthly life, but also and above all in anticipation of its resurrection and ascension into heaven, where the true body of Christ is glorified and spiritual, first fruits of our ultimate lot. After a life of obedience in the faith to the Word of God, even our bodies will be glorified forever. Therefore, the theology of the body not only affects our earthly human dimension, but it must be also read in an eschatological key. Our mortal body configured to Christ and consumed in the authentic love in the breach of history is called back to life in the final judgement to live eternally in the Trinitarian love.
May the Virgin Mary Mother of the Redemption, who first lived the theology of the body in her most pure and immaculate flesh so as to have the privilege of being assumed with body and soul into heaven; watch over us. May a greater and greater will inspire us so that our bodies can also express the love of her Son Jesus in every state of our married, sinble or consecrated life.

Father Nicola De Luca

THEY PUT WHAT IS GOOD INTO BUCKETS
(XVII Sunday of O.T Year A)

GIVE YOUR SERVANT AN UNDERSTANDING (1Kings 3,5.7-12)

Solomon is a King of Israel. He sees himself inexperienced, uncertain, almost unable to carry out according to truth and justice this responsibility that rests upon his shoulders. The Lord decides to come to his help, he appears to him in a dream at night and invites him to ask him anything and he would have granted it to him. Solomon asks what he needs to be a true king: "An understanding heart to judge your people and to distinguish right from wrong". The Lord's answer is immediate: "I do as you requested. I give you a heart so wise and understanding that there has never been anyone like you up to now, and after you there will come no one to equal you." Who governs the people of God, must always guide them in the name of the Lord, according to his will, his desires. It is necessary to divest himself of his own will and for this it is necessary that he lets hiimself always be guided by the wisdom of God. Wisdom to us must always be a present gift that God must grant from time to time and from circumstance to circumstance, through our uninterrupted prayer.

CONFORMED TO THE IMAGE OF HIS SON (Rm 8,28-30)

Jesus Christ is the eternal image of the Father. He is his Only Son, generated by him before all ages. He is also a true human image, because his divine person, in the truth of his flesh, manifested, revealed all the light of his Father who is utmost charity, compassion, piety, holiness, mercy, justice. We were created by God in his image; however, we are not his image because we were not generated by him. In baptism, by the work of the Holy Spirit, generated as true adoptive sons of God, we are made to share in his divine nature and made in accordance with the image of Jesus, who is the true Son of God, true image of the Father. By a sacramental generation we were made true image of God and called to be conformed to the eternal image of the Father that is his only Son. Since we were incorporated in Christ and we became one body with Him, always by Sacrament we are true image of Christ, called to realize it all in our history. It is the image of truth, charity, moral perfection, perfect obedience to the Father, holy mediation.

BOTH THE NEW AND THE OLD (Mt 13,44-52)

HIS HEART WAS MOVED WITH PITY FOR THEM
(XVIII Sunday of O.T Year A)

COME TO ME HEEDFULLY, LISTEN (Is 55,1-3)

Man lives a double foolishness: he rejects the invitation on the part of the Lord who offers him free all abundance; he spends all his patrimony for what does not satiate, does not quench the thirst, does not cover, does not give health, does not heal, does not cure. Faced with such a great good and what is more free, why does he persist on running through ways of total impoverishment and above all of death? Man wants the goods, looks for them; however, he does not want the Word. He does not receive them, because God grants them to those who live in the hinges of his Covenant, which is essentially based on listening to His divine will. When one return to the Covenant and one lives in obedience to every Word that comes out of the mouth of God, the Lord always fills to the brim with all good, he gives life. Every gift of God is turned into life by our obedience. It becomes an instrument of death, if welocomed and lived with no loyalty to his Commandments. The separation of divine will and grace, of truth and life in favor of grace and life by excluding divine will and truth, is the great dark evil of our faith. It is the cancer that devours every form of life.

WHAT WILL SEPARATE US FROM THE LOVE OF CHRIST? (Rm 8,35.37-39)

Without the historical memory the faith becomes a noble philosophy, one of man’s sublime thoughts on his God, but without no effect in our lives, especially when it is wrapped in tribulation, physical and moral pain. Our faith is an event, a fact, a happening. It is, above all, a gift. It is the gift the Father gave us of his Son Jesus Christ, who, when we were still sinners; came to help us out of the abyss in which we had fallen. The Father is the one that every moment of our lives gives us Jesus Christ as our Redeemer, Savior, Deliverer. From this historical, present, as always truth, nobody ever can separate us from the love of Jesus Christ. Only we can separate us, if we fall from the faith in this gift. Tribulation, anguish, persecution, hunger, nakedness, danger, sword have this one, single purpose: to make us become aware in the faith that Jesus Christ is our salvation. He is everything for us. The greatest miracle of the Father was the one of keeping Jesus Christ in the highest holiness throughout all the passion.

GIVE THEM SOME FOOD YOURSELVES (Mt 14,13-21)