Rimini, 21st August 2015 \u2013 With a long-lasting, touched applause the people of has greeted, at the end of his report, father Mauro Giuseppe Lepori, abbot general of the Cistercian order. The auditorium B3 was absurdly overcrowded. In order to display the theme of the 36th edition (Luzi\u2019s verse, the word \u201clack\u201d), Lepori has got a constant incitement in it. One cannot escape from lack, for it is \u201ca slow, muddy river that slows up to the sea without realizing\u201d. The poet is a prophet and incites us to go out of ourselves. Lack, heart, fullness: these are the poet\u2019s words that the Meeting has wanted as its plan. For this reason \u2013 Lepori adds \u2013 the heart can never lie but instead recognize the \u201cfullness of its lack\u201d.
\nHow is it possible to become aware of this lack in which the heart languishes? asks the lecturer. There is that \u201ctrait\u201d \u2013 a call, a lightning in the night, a face \u2013 that doesn\u2019t depend on us, like an arrow that, all of a sudden, pierces through the heart and reawakens it. This is that story of the Rich Young Ruler saying \u201cwhat else am I missing?\u201d, and the \u201cfollow Me\u201d of the Lord: \u201cHere, that day, that blurry disquiet is in front of a look which brings it express \u2013 or maybe, to simply betray \u2013 all the abyss of the lack that fills as a question to Who, on His own, can respond to the yearning of the heart. I don\u2019t know if there is in the Gospel \u2013 and then, in all human history \u2013 a more basic example of the religious sense of a man, expressed to Christ\u2019s face. So much so that it never told again, for anybody else: Jesus felt a love for him\u201d.
\n\u201cFollow Me\u201d added the religious \u201cmeans that what is missing it\u2019s me, because you only miss me\u201d. These days, underlined father Lepori, the charismatics created by the Holy Spirit are those who permit the reproducing of this experience of lack and fullness. However, there is a big temptation to who the devil presents to Christ\u2019s heart: \u201cYou can forgive and die for men but you don\u2019t really miss them\u2026\u201d Just like in the episode of Capernaum: without His fullness life is empty, meaningless, without joy, so they leaved. But, to this temptation it\u2019s Peter himself \u2013 therefore men\u2019s heart \u2013 who replies: \u201cLord, how could we part from You? If You miss, it is life that is missing!\u201d Peter will betray, disavow, sin, but he will never failt to the confession of this desire of fullness. And that defeats the sumpreme temptation against the Christian event.
\n\u201cI miss you!\u201d, father Lepori observed, is a dramatic refrain which recurs repeatedly in literature, in music, in cinematography. A big grief in men\u2019s hearts, for they has been created to be fulfilled by relationship, by friendship. Ma the most sensation discovery is that Christ the Lord has revealed to the whole humankind that \u201cthe Father misses men infinitely more than men miss the Father\u201d. In this we find also the meaning of mercy: \u201cMercy is because the Father misses us\u201d, because in God\u2019s heart there is always a place for us. Indeed, reaffrirms the lecturer, \u201cGod misses us way more than we miss Him\u201d.
\nAt this point of Lepori\u2019s lecture some themes (precious to Pope Francis) come to light: \u201cChrist\u2019s mission \u2013 the spread of His Kingdom \u2013 is cross and resurrection, because He shares the Father\u2019s worry to find what is missing, and yet They wait to celebrate its recovery. But if we start our mission by letting Him find us, it is like there is nothing but a celebration to broadcast, to show, to share with everybody\u201d. Here the discovery that even the last of the fallens, actually, \u201cthe last of the fallen above all, has in God\u2019s heart an endless space of wait, desire, an abyss of merciful love which is aflame to embrace, to kiss, who is lost\u201d.
\nThe term \u201ckiss\u201d isn\u2019t used here casually. Jesus told to the Samaritan that God looks for worshippers. Lepori observes how the Italian word for \u201cworship\u201d, adorare, comes from the Latin ad os, which means \u201c<\/p>\n
so it implies the idea of kissing too. Actually, Christian worshipping is precisely \u201cstaying in the hug and the kiss of a God to whom one always come back\u201d. But beware; that is not a sentence linked to a spiritual world ditched from everyday reality. Differently, it determines a precise model: \u201cWhat new culture, what new world, what solution different from the many tragic problems of the world of today would spread if we learned, from God\u2019s hug, to go towards everybody, and welcome everybody, with the awareness \u2013 then the proof \u2013 that God is missing every human being, with His hug and His kiss, communicating Himself as Love, as Mercy! What a revolution with every struggle for liberty, justice, and peace!\u201d It is not about optimism: it is about a tenacious diligence to change oneself \u2013 and, first of all, it is about to stay and live with Him. Jesus was looking for that when he called the Rich Young Ruler by saying \u201cFollow Me!\u201d. \u201cHe didn\u2019t asked him to \u201cchange his life\u201d explains father Mauro \u201cbut rather to live with Him, because this is what really change life, the true life\u201d.
\nThat is how the Christian life is always about mission, \u201cbecause it is life with Christ that saves \u2013 the communion with Him\u201d. \u201cSo our real life, our human life, our humble everyday life, becomes an explicit drama, the mystery revealed, mystery of the communion with Him, in everything, with everyone, forever. With Him to follow, with Him that is given and yet is missed, like as every step was a breath, a heartbeat that recreates life\u201d.<\/p>\n
(A.Cap., Ant.C., E.A.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Rimini, 21st August 2015 \u2013 With a long-lasting, touched applause the people of has greeted, at the end of his report, father Mauro Giuseppe Lepori, abbot general of the Cistercian … <\/p>\n