THE IRRESISTIBLE ATTRACTION

It sounds funny though, but get yourself back as a three or four year old boy or girl and watch yourself how you used to measure the height, wrists, hands, legs and compare it with your dad’s and mum’s and brothers, sisters or friends. I did it a lot. The desire to be an adult, wanting to be like dad/mum or the older guys is just irresistible. This applies also to imitations. This desire to be older seemed to continue to grow even stronger unto late teenage years. Every New Year gives you HOPE to the imagined liberation, if you agree to what I intend is acceptable. The only problem is that the year comes so slow and so late. The waiting can be excruciating for the little ones to go out to see the world and especially for those whose days at school are not so kind.

But get to any older guys and you see just the contrary. How one wish that the year be little longer and slower, for he thinks that a year has just began and another year has come in so fast and he is so conscious that a year is been reduced from his stipulated life span. So he is sad that a new year has come in to take away part of him.

This play of human behaviour sometimes intrigues me. On the one hand the irresistible attraction to move forward as the young do and the defined resistance of the old in facing the reality of time on the other.

I can gather only one conclusion to it. If there is no GOD and if there is nothing to hope for, this outright resistance is bound to persist. In a sense, time is God. If you are conscious of time, you are conscious of God. And if you are conscious of God, you appreciate the value of time.

Let us Welcome the Year 2011 gratefully. Because if we are young there is so much to grow and if we are older there is so much to offer.

Guys, Have A Wonderful Time At The Thanksgiving And The Welcoming Of The New Year 2011.

SHUT HIM OUT OR PULL HIM IN

It is two days away from celebrating the grand Birth Day and everyone is on high as it should be. And I am here trying to be good or that is what you think by doing some good acts of charity: to make few courtesy calls, say hi to few people around or whatever. And there you go. Going around the neighborhood, you meet a mother struggling with two growing disabled teenagers and a sick husband preparing to undergo a surgery with a tumor in the stomach, and you are expected to wish them to have a wonderful Christmas Celebrations. You enter into another house and here is a couple practically incapacitated, the husband immobile for the last seven years, neither can he move his lips to speak nor make himself comfortable on the bed to sleep. All he has is his eyes to communicate. And the wife seated on the wheel chair for the last five years with paralytic legs and broken hands. But you are there to wish them and the daughter who nurses them all the very best for the joyful celebrations. This must be a great joke. 

I am not been pessimistic or have any intention to be sentimental. I just see my situation, my helplessness and uselessness in these situations. I can avoid it and go about as though these realities don’t exist and preach wonderful Christmas sermons. But I felt a real sense of fulfillment- taking Jesus in the Holy Communion to these people, to be able to accompany them in a little way - to help them to put themselves in the place of Jesus – who was helpless, hopeless and lost on the cross and at the stable. Christmas for them will be to be able to be Jesus in some sense – totally dependent on others and for those who care will be an opportunity to be with the human face of Jesus. In this sense, we still have lots of rooms for Jesus at Christmas. You shut him out or pull him in. This will be our Christmas CHOICE.

Wishing you guys A WONDERFUL CHRISTMAS from me, my table and chair.

HE COMES, COMES EVER COMES

Santa Claus comes, comes ever comes, steals into our houses at Christmas eve to leave gifts for the children and disappears. God bangs into our houses and leaves the Baby Jesus in our homes. He comes, comes ever comes in to stay. He won disappear like the Santa Claus. He shamelessly finds his home in our homes. That’s the difference between the two. So, what do you do with him, who comes to stay? Throw him out - tolerate him or celebrate him? This will be the theme of my reflections for this year’s Christmas. What do you think about it? What’s your take? Let us begin our Novena and think about it.

I bet you won’t throw him out - tolerating is indifference, its worse. I guess you will find a good room for HIM – the first time he found Himself in a manger. I do not think he enjoyed it.

A FURIOUS SERMON

I know guys are wondering why I am not making any entries in recent past and I got no reason to justify. I was out to a little parish in Central Italy for the first Sunday Advent Mass and you can expect the old traditional advent homilies … things like waiting… expecting… hoping or whatever and then the expected boring explanations over the dry theological and biblical exegesis. Let me tell you what? This old fashioned priest unexpectedly came up with a surprise and disturbing questions. After having described the horrible things going on around the world, he asked the most sensible question: what am I refusing to expect? What am I refusing to see? What are you allowed to expect? Do you pretend to have solutions to all the problems? Who is playing the game? Well, I rather leave everyone with the same soul searching question: what is wrong out there? Who is responsible for the hopeless situation around? Don’t tell me that God has changed his mind. He made one foolish decision and he will honour it, he will not change, never. He will honour HIS - I am not sure of MINE.

Listening to Kelly Clarkson “Because of you” I am sadly thinking of a family, crumbling in their relationship and wandering why so many such promising families get crushed - because they refused to see… see what? I guess there is a CAUSE and I am praying that you SEE.

… isn’t it troubling? Listen to the video music

My Youngest Pal On Line

Miryam is my youngest online pal. We regularly video chat or discuss over the phone about our school day activities. She is in the scuola materna. She sometimes asks me to sing to her some of my rhymes. She always shows off hers. Today she is two years old. BUON COMPLEANO MIMI.

I will be forwarding this video clip @mimi.it and discuss about it later in the evening. Where is technology taking us anyway?

Every day is my Birthday

This is how I look at my birthdays. One time you have a life size cake celebration and the next one may be just you, a table and a chair to accompany you. But at the end of the day you have a good laugh to see them both. I know my mum cares least about my birth date. For her every day is my Birthday.



Welcome back to the final year of your school

I am sorry to begin with a negative remark but what is actually wrong with academia? I asked a number of kids in a parish in the United States as they began their academic year if they were eager to get back to school and every single kid shook their heads in negative. Back in Italy it was just round the school reopening season and I shot the same question to kids around only to have the same negative nod. And now it’s back to myself and companions in the college and university. Believe me, of the 190 student priests in Collegio san Paolo who have promptly responded to the pursuit of academic excellence and yet I must confess the majority are refusing enthusiasm of going to school. Isn’t it funny? Wishing to and not wanting to.

Anyway, I must welcome back myself to where I must be and hang a reminder tag: ‘Il partente,' that’s an indication you are in your last year at Collegio San Paolo.