Thursday, November 10, 2022

HOLINESS TODAY

 

We know November as the month dedicated especially to the saints. In October at the Press Conference to present the Study Conference “Holiness Today” (Augustinianum Patristic Institute, 3 to 6 October 2022) His Eminence Cardinal Marcello Semeraro spoke:

"Holiness is a theme dear to Pope Francis. During his pontificate, the number of canonized saints continues to grow, and he wrote about “the call to holiness in the contemporary world” in 2018 in the apostolic exhortation Gaudete et exsultate, so as to “repropose the call to holiness in a practical way for our own time, with all its risks, challenges and opportunities”.

Professor Cecilia Costa lecturer in sociology of cultural processes and sociology of education at the University of Rome spoke:

"Contemporary reality needs the hope, love, energy and courage of holiness because, as Pope Francis writes in Gaudete et exsultate, the saints bear witness to an experience that goes against the grain of the logic of the moment.

It suffices to think of Teresa d’Ávila whose text The Interior Castle is capable of responding both to the existential anguish of the men of her time, and to the vertigo of meaning of modern humanity. Or, to recall Pier Giorgio Frassati who, responding with conviction to the con-vocation of love of God, succeeded in his brief existence to combine the extraordinary with the ordinary. Or, again, Carlo Acutis, who explained to his peers, the millennials, how love for Jesus can coexist with passion for the internet."


The saints are not a vestige of the past, but a plan for the future, because they have always been the “heroes” of the altruistic and creative love that takes the Sermon on the Mount as its sublime model.

 The saints are part of history, but they also make history, and their “holy history” can enable a cultural, social, and individual “conversion” from selfishness to altruism, able to restore harmony, solidarity, brotherhood and goodness to the world.

Paintings:  John Nava Communion of Saints- Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels- Los Angeles

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