Dear Brothers and Sisters, Fiat!
This Sunday’s Gospel reading continues the narrative of Jesus’ day in Capernaum, on a Saturday, the Jewish weekly holy day (cf. Mk 1:21-39). This time the Evangelist Mark highlights the relationship between Jesus’ thaumaturgical work and the awakening of faith in the people he meets. Indeed, with the healing signs that he performs on all types of sick people, the Lord wants to arouse faith as a response.
Jesus’ day in Capernaum begins with the healing of Peter’s mother-in-law and ends with the scene of a crowd of townspeople who gathered outside the house where he was staying, to bring all the sick people to him. Marked by physical suffering and by spiritual wretchedness, the crowd comprises, so to speak, “the living environment” in which Jesus’ mission, made up of healing and comforting words and actions, takes place. Jesus did not come to bring salvation in a laboratory; he does not preach from a laboratory, detached from people. He is in the midst of the crowd! In the midst of the people! Just think that most of Jesus’ public ministry took place on the streets, among the people; to preach the Gospel, to heal physical and spiritual wounds. This crowd of which the Gospel often speaks is a humanity marked by suffering. It is a humanity marked by suffering, toil and problems. It is to this poor humanity that Jesus’ powerful, liberating and renewing action is directed. That Saturday ends in this way, in the midst of the crowd until late in the evening. And what does Jesus do after that?
Before dawn the next day, he goes out of the town’s gates unseen and withdraws to a secluded place to pray. Jesus prays. In this way, he removes even himself and his mission from a “triumphalist” view which misunderstands the meaning of miracles and of his charismatic power. Miracles, in fact, are “signs” which encourage faith as a response; signs which are always accompanied by words that enlighten; and, taken together, the signs and words arouse faith and conversion through the divine power of Christ’s grace.
The conclusion of today’s passage (vv. 35-39) shows that Jesus’ proclamation of the Kingdom of God finds its most rightful place on the streets. To the disciples who look for him in order to bring him back to the town — the disciples went to find him where he was praying and they wanted to bring him back to the town — what does Jesus answer? “Let us go on to the next towns, that I may preach there also” (v. 38). This was the journey of the Son of God and this will be the journey of his disciples. And it must be the journey of each Christian. The street, as the place for the Good News of the Gospel, places the mission of the Church under the sign of “going forth”, of journeying, under the sign of “movement”, and never of idleness.
In the passage of 27 January 1928 Jesus tells Luisa that the Kingdom of the Divine Will was enclosed in the Redemption, and there was no act that Jesus did which did not enclose both one and the other; with this difference alone: that what pertained to the Redemption Jesus manifested outside, He made known and He gave as gift, because it was to serve as preparation for the Kingdom of the Divine Will; while what pertained to the Kingdom of the Fiat Jesus withheld within Himself, as though suspended in the Divine Will Itself.
When God decides to issue an act outside of Himself, to do a work, a good, first He chooses the creature in whom to deposit His work, because He does not want that what He does remain in the empty space and without effect, and that no creature should be the depository of His goods. Therefore, God calls at least one of them, so that, if the other creatures, ungrateful, do not want to receive His goods, His works are deposited in this one at least; and when He is sure of this, then He operates. So, in the Redemption, the depository of all Jesus’ acts was the Virgin Mary. It can be said that, as Jesus was about to breathe, to cry, to pray, to suffer, and everything else He did, first He called Her to receive His breaths, His tears, His suffering, in order to deposit them in Her, and then Jesus breathed, cried and prayed. It would be unbearable to Him, and a sorrow which would surpass any other sorrow, if He had not His Mother in whom He could deposit His acts.
Now, since all the acts of the Kingdom of the Divine Will are enclosed in those of Redemption, even from that time Jesus called Luisa; and as He deposited in the Sovereign Queen of Heaven everything that regarded the Kingdom of Redemption, so he deposited in Luisa what regarded the Kingdom of the Supreme Fiat.
This is why Jesus want Luisa to follow Him, step by step; and if Jesus speaks, He wants her near Him to give her the gift of the word of the Divine Will; if He walks, to give Luisa the gift of Its steps; if He works, to endows her with Its works; if He prays, to give her the gift of His prayer, in order to impetrate Its Kingdom for the human family; if He makes miracles, to give her the gift of the great miracle of the Divine Will. And so, if Jesus gives sight to the blind, He removes from Luisa the blindness of her human will to give her the sight of the Divine Will; if He gives hearing to the deaf, He gives her the gift of acquiring the hearing of the Divine Will; if He gives speech to the mute, He loosens her from her muteness in the Divine Will; if He straightens up the lame, He straightens her up in God’s Will; if He calms the storm with His empire, He commands the storm of Luisa’s human will to no longer dare to agitate the pacific sea of His. In sum, there is nothing Jesus does and suffers which He does not give Luisa as gift, in order to deposit in her the Kingdom of the Divine Will, so loved by Him, and formed within Himself.
It would have been for Jesus the greatest of His sorrows, while forming with so much love the Kingdom of the Divine Will within Him, in His Humanity – the primary purpose for His coming upon earth – and forming His Kingdom in order to restore It in creatures, if He were not to be sure, as He was for the Redemption, that at least one creature would receive the restoration of the Kingdom of the Divine Fiat.
And so Jesus looked at the centuries as one single point, and He found Luisa, the chosen one, and even from that time He directed and deposited His acts in you, in order to dispose His Kingdom. And just as for the Kingdom of Redemption Jesus spared nothing – neither toils, nor pains, nor prayers, nor graces, and not even death – so as to be able to give to all sufficient and abundant graces and means so that all might be saved and sanctified, even though He placed and secured everything in the Celestial Queen – the same for the Kingdom of the Divine Will: even though He secured everything in Luisa, He is giving so much, He is sparing nothing - neither teachings, nor light, nor graces, nor attractions, nor promises – in such a way that, if all want to receive the great good of the Divine Will to let It reign within themselves, all will find superabundant means and helps in order to live a good so great. Therefore, Luisa’ coming on earth in time was awaited by Jesus with such love, with such yearning, that we cannot even imagine; because He wanted to deposit the many suspended acts done by His Humanity in order to form the Kingdom of the Supreme Fiat.