Master·evangeli.net
Today's Gospel + short theological explanation
Liturgy: "Sancta sancte tractanda"
EDITORIAL TEAM evangeli.net (based on texts by Benedict XVI) (Città del Vaticano, Vatican)Today, the Lord is dogmatic: "Holy things must be treated holily" ("Sancta sancte tractanda", said the classics). We need a new liturgical education! In the Catholic Church the worship is peculiar and holy: it is “liturgy”, it is Word, action of Christ upon us and with us (It is Jesus Christ who feeds me with His Body in the Eucharist, etc). We must receive gently this acting of God Himself.
Liturgy is “work of God”, in which He acts Himself first and we are redeemed by His action. We must show proper disposition, by keeping an attitude of prayer, with discipline, peace (no hurries) and reverence: We are in God's presence! We must be grateful to the divine eyes, even in our body posture and voice emission (the respectful tend to pray with "shy" words, because God doesn't need to be waken up with shouting).
—Jesus, Instill in me an intimate comprehension of the sacred and make me attracted to You. Everything else is secondary!
The ecology: we must consider creation as a gift
EDITORIAL TEAM evangeli.net (based on texts by Benedict XVI) (Città del Vaticano, Vatican)Today, we remember that the world does not exist by itself; it is brought into being by the creative Spirit of God, by the creative Word of God. For this reason Pentecost also mirrors God's wisdom. In its breadth and in the omni-comprehensive logic of its laws, God's wisdom permits us to glimpse something of his Creator Spirit. It elicits reverential awe.
Those very people who, as Christians, believe in the Creator Spirit become aware of the fact that we cannot use and abuse the world and matter merely as material for our actions and desires; that we must consider creation a gift that has not been given to us to be destroyed, but to become God's garden, hence, a garden for men and women.
—In the face of the many forms of abuse of the earth that we see today, let us listen, as it were, to the groaning of creation of which St Paul speaks (Rom 8:22); let us begin by understanding the Apostle's words, that creation waits with impatience for the revelation that we are children of God, to be set free from bondage and obtain his splendour.