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Question

Hello Father!

Christ is risen! How beautiful is this Easter time! Someone thinks that Easter ended on April 21st (2019) … Instead, this is a long and profound time. But let’s face it, every Sunday is Easter!

Today I would ask you some questions. One is this.

As we know, it is right and proper that a nation recognizes the Natural Law and therefore condemns anything against it. But the Natural Law clearly refers to God, its author. Therefore, shouldn’t a nation recognize this fact, that is, recognize the existence of God as the author of Natural Law and the giver of life? On the other hand, understanding the existence of God is a question of logic and therefore of reason, without involving the faith. Thus, an abomination such as abortion would be condemned by declaring it not only as a crime against humanity, but also as a very serious offense to the Author of life. Maybe every nation should talk about God in its own legislation. What do you say?

This continent has no longer an identity in these times, during which religion is put in the last place in a large portion of Europe, and relativism and materialism (but also others such as secularism) prevail. By now many people’s hearts and minds are only full of garbage and swell with stupid prejudices (especially against the Church) and false ideals (the “freedom” of women who cry yes to abortion and the “right” to euthanasia). It is said that Europe should rediscover its Christian roots. This is true for the continent but also for the EU, if we look at the faith of the founders. But should individual politicians look at these roots, in their depths, or should there be something official? That is, in addition to recognizing the existence of God as the author of Natural Law, should one go further and have a form of confessional statute or should the politicians have a Christian behavior without ending up in a state religion?

The last question is theological. I don’t remember if I had already asked you … But I don’t think so. One day a priest told me that God’s opening to pagans came only because the Jews did not listen to Him by rejecting and crucifying Christ. But here I remember the words by St. Paul who says that God wants to save all men and that He has locked up the Jews in disobedience to show mercy to the pagans. Did it not happen then that God turned the evil of the hardness of the heart of some Jews into a good that is opened to all peoples? Didn’t this happen precisely because God has always wanted all to be one in Him? Then, the Old Testament also talks of openness to pagans. If the hearts of the Jews had not been so hardened and if they had converted and avoided killing Jesus, what would have happened?

Thank you, father, for everything, I pray for you.

Perhaps I’ll go to Bologna this summer. I will certainly visit the Basilica of San Domenico.

S.

The priest’s answer

Dear S.,

unfortunately, I’m answering you very late.

This email will be published when even Easter 2020 has  passed for quite a while.

In any case, however, I answer you. And this is the most important thing.

I present four considerations. The first about Easter, and the other three about the three questions you asked me.

1. What you say is right. Easter time is very beautiful because the Lord pours out on us a ray of His new life, as risen from the dead to never die again.

A particular joy is experienced at Easter. That joy that does not arise simply from the fact that men established that day as a holiday, such as for Labor Day or Republic Day.

That joy is like a ray of that Paradise which the glorious body of Christ entered as head of a new humanity.

This ray of paradisiacal joy radiates from Christ, the new Adam, over all His members, over every man with whom, since the first instant of his existence, He has personally united .

As you rightly observe, the Christians savor this joy every Sunday, which is the memorial day of the Lord’s resurrection.

So, on Sunday – as some ancient Christian authors said – it is unfair to be sad.

John Paul II said that it is necessary to educate oneself in Sunday joy as a virtue. It is necessary to guard this joy given by the Lord without disturbing it either in us or in our neighbors.

2. About the first question you asked me, I so answer: what you wrote to me is so true that Giorgio La Pira, who greatly contributed in the Constituent Assembly, proposed to insert an introduction, when it came to voting for the new Constitution of the Republic, with the following words: “In the name of God, the Italian people give themselves a Constitution”. Nothing came out of it, unfortunately.

However, these words have an enormous significance because they would have been placed there to mean that men are not the arbitrary architects of every law. The law that is given through the Constitution is within another Law that governs all men, which protects the good of all, especially the most fragile and the weakest, such as children in their mother’s womb, and directs to everybody’s ultimate and definitive good.

3. To say that Europe needs to recognize its Christian roots does not mean establishing a confessional constitution.

A confessional nation would arbitrarily force those who are not Christians.

But even if all were Christians, a nation has its own rightful autonomy in the governance of temporal realities.

Jesus’ words can also refer to this: “repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God”.

Recognizing the Christian roots, on the other hand, means adhering to the principles of natural law, that are rediscovered by the Gospel on which Europe was formed.

Among these, above all, the respect for the human person, indeed for every human person from the beginning of his or her existence until the natural outcome.

This is civilization.

4. God’s will to save everybody is eternal and universal.

However, God established an order: first of all, He wanted the Gospel to be preached to the Jews because the Messiah came out of that people, the Lord revealed Himself to that people first, in the midst of that people He would have performed all the wonders that accompanied His preaching.

That people had to be the first in giving the example of the adhesion.

For many of them He was cause for rise. For others He was cause for fall, as old Simeon said in the temple.

And what the Jews did towards Him is a sign of what the peoples, whom the Gospel would be announced to, would later do: some would have welcomed Him, others would have rejected Him.

The reasons for the refusal would be the same that led some Jews to do so: “so that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed”, as old Simeon said.

5. I hope you went to Bologna and took the opportunity to pray in front of the ark that preserves the mortal remains of our Holy Father Dominic and receive two thirds of his spirit as a man was constantly asking, the one who later became Father Marie-Joseph Lagrange, founder of the Jerusalem Bible School.

I gladly remind the Lord of you and I bless you.

Father Angelo