Nuova Bussola Quotidiana
September 8, 2017
If Cardinal Caffarra’s death on
one hand leaves a void for those who grew to love and follow him over the
years, on the other hand it calls each and all of us to an even greater
responsibility, for our own and the Church’s benefit.
For “La Giornata della
Bussola”, (on Sunday September 10th) the Cardinal had prepared an
intervention and sent it to us just before his death. In these extracts we publish
now, we are conscious that it is a sort of spiritual testament and that we are
called to continue in this defense of Truth, following the great example of
Cardinal Caffarra.
Sunday’s lesson is divided
into two parts: in the first the Cardinal examines the factors of the destruction
of the human and in the second he explains Who it is that rebuilds the human.
***
Woe to us if the Church should have in Her memory something other than the
Resurrection of Christ
I’ll begin the second part of
my reflection with a metaphor. Two people are walking along the banks of an
overflowing river. One knows how to swim the other doesn’t. The latter slips
and falls into the river, which sweeps him away. There are three
possibilities his friend has: teach him to swim; throw a rope telling him to
hold on tight to it; jump into the river himself, get hold of the drowning man
and bring him back to the shore.
Which of these ways did the Incarnate Verb take, seeing man being swept
away by his own self-destruction? The Pelagians
responded with the first and this corresponds to all those who reduce the
Christian Event to moral exhortations. The Semi- Pelagians responded with the
second, and corresponds to those who see grace and liberty as two forces inversely
proportional. The Church teaches the
third. The Word, not considering His
Divine condition a treasure to guard jealously, threw Himself into the river of
evil in order to get hold of man and bring him to the shore. This is the
Christian Event.”
Let’s ask ourselves: at what depth must the reconstruction of the human
begin? At the point where truth and
liberty meet. The human person’s evil as
such, is moral evil, since it strikes the personal subject. The reconstruction
of the human starts at this level or it will always be mere ‘aesthetic surgery’.
Christ’s redemptive act,
occurring once and for always and operating in the Church, heals specifically the
laceration of the subject through which the devastation of the human has its
origin. And the Church exists for this:
to render present here and now the redemptive act of Christ. “Be mindful that the Lord Jesus Christ is
risen again from the dead” [Tim. 2,8] St. Paul writes to his disciple Timothy.
Woe to us if the memory of the Church has other contents!
H/T: Chiesa e Post Concilio
Translation: Contributer,
Francesca Romana
