Palm Sunday

            Why did Jesus enter in Jerusalem on a donkey? He could have come on a horse or on a camel, more elegant animals, sitting higher to be able to be seen and have a better view. But he wanted to fulfill the Scriptures. They said that the Messiah had to come riding on a donkey. Why did the Scriptures prophesied on a donkey and not another animal? Because the donkey is a humble, docile and hardworking beast, more suitable as an example for us, unlike a horse who prefers showing off and pretending. They say a donkey is a symbol of peace, humility and the simple life. A horse is a symbol of war, pride and luxury.

            One of the Psalms says that we are like a donkey before God. Jesus has decided to ride on us. We are just a donkey. Many times we think that we are a horse and we become silly, proud and rebellious. We cannot forget that even though we are carrying Jesus, we are just a donkey. When we pretend that we are a horse, the ride becomes bumpy, and Jesus finds it difficult to stay on top. Don’t be a stubborn, grumpy old donkey, only thinking how to find revenge with a kick. Be a young one, with long ears ready for the Master’s command, a quick step ready to work in his service. The Lord wants to ride us, to reach heaven together. The best way for us to enter into heaven is being docile to his call.

            Eventually you allow him to ride on you and you experience the shouts of the multitude and the cries of joy to the prophet who is coming to the holy city. People lay their garments for you to walk softly. You enjoy treading on people’s clothes. You feel important, thinking that people are welcoming you. You look around, acknowledging people’s praises and almost crash against a pole in the middle of the road. A simple gesture from Jesus makes your head bow low and fix your eyes on the way. No more frivolous thoughts or wandering looks. All around you is not for you; just for Jesus.

            Jesus is a good rider. He lets you ride at your pace, he doesn’t kick with his legs. He brings peace with himself. His yoke is easy and his burden light. But you need to cooperate. All he wants from you is to follow his path. It looks easy but it is not. Common experience tells us that it is one of the most difficult things. It is all right when both our path and his path coincide. But when his path differs from ours, when begins to climb up hill, when the path gets bumpy and rough, we prefer to go down hill. When are we going to be convinced that his way is the best way?

            When Jesus sees Jerusalem he begins to cry. You don’t know what to do. You never have seen him crying. He is weeping because of what is going to happen to the holy city, its future destruction at the hands of the Romans. It is amazing, Jesus just sad for a heap of stones. He is like us; we humans worry about things and gadgets. Jesus is a man and has good memories of the temple. And all because it didn’t follow the paths of the Lord. You want to apply the lesson to your own life. You don’t want Jesus to weep for you and for your children.

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Lent 5 A Lazarus

             “Lord, him whom you love is ill.” The same can be said of us. We are sick to death by sin, and we need Jesus to either cure us or resurrect us from death. He loves us with divine love and he is ready to come to help us at very short notice. But, can it be said the other way around? Can others say to Jesus: your friend, the one who thinks about you, who wants to spend time with you, who visits you and likes to receive you frequently, is in need of you? Jesus loved to stop over at Bethany, the house of his friends, to spend time with Martha, Mary and Lazarus. Saint Josemaria used to call the tabernacle, Bethany. Do we like to stop over at a church and spend time with our friend? Can we tell Jesus: Lord, I love you and I am ill?

            “If you have been here my brother would have not died.” It is a very strong statement. It is like saying: you are responsible for the death of our loved one. How many times we blame God for our sufferings, our illnesses, our accidents? We ask, where was God then? Martha and Mary could talk to Jesus in this way, because they were very close to him. If we could see their faces at the time, they would have shown a smile among their tears. It was not blaming him, but showing their pain for the death of their brother. Do I have the same confidence in Jesus, to tell him what is in my heart? Jesus, I am sick of everything.

            “Take away the stone.” But Jesus, he’s been there for four days already; he is really dead. For the Jews four days was the sign of real death. “Take away the stone.” But Jesus, his body is corrupt and he stinks. “Take away the stone.” I have been in that cave for many years now and it is impossible for me to move. Trust me, take away what separates you from me, a stone, a wall, a barrier, whatever it is. Jesus is telling us to take away what is between us and him. We are slow to follow his command and we have many excuses not to remove the obstacle from our path. If you don’t remove it, you cannot come out.

            “Lazarus, come out!” It was a strong voice, loud enough for the dead ears of Lazarus to hear from inside the tomb. It goes through the rock. It is the voice of Jesus, manly, well balanced, deep and harmonious, a voice impossible to resist. It is the word of God. The same one that still resounds from the beginning of time. The voice we hear at Mass: this is my body, a body that died for us and rose from the dead. Lazarus came out like a robot, a zombie, an automatic response, against his will. He was sleeping peacefully, more in the other life than here, and didn’t want to come back. An imperative command to come out. His voice is irresistible: Come out of yourself!

            “Unbind him and let him go.” It must have been an amazing scene. They were all paralysed and terrified. Nobody could move, not even run away. They were all tied to the ground looking at him like a ghost, like a mummy. When we take away the stone, he lets us free. There is always something that enslaves us, either a little thread or a chain. Something that doesn’t allow us to fly, to follow the path God wants us to walk. Unbind the ropes that tie you to earth and go, run towards eternity.

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Lent 4 A The blind man

             Last Sunday we looked at one of the four natural elements, water, indispensable for human life. It is very much part of the beginning of our Christian life, when we are baptised. Without water there can be neither natural nor supernatural life. This Sunday we consider another crucial element, light, without which life cannot grow either. It is part of the rite of Baptism, when we bring to the newly baptised person a lighted candle, symbolising a cleaned soul, full of light. Christ is the light who came to dispel darkness. On the Easter vigil we are reminded of this reality, when we bring the Easter candle into the darkness of the church, and little by little, by lighting the candles people are carrying in their hands, the whole church becomes illuminated.

            Today in the Gospel we come across a man blind from birth. It is hard for us to realise what it is to be blind. Try to close your eyes and keep them closed for a lengthy period of time; you won’t last too long. Blindness from the beginning is a harder reality: you cannot dream with images. Once they tried to explain to a blind man what the colour red was; and after much explanation, trying to compare it with a hot instrument, he said that it must be similar to the sound of a trumpet. Colours don’t have much to do with sounds; imagine spiritual things. We are blind from birth to them, because of original sin, and we need Jesus to cure our blindness, to be able to see him.

            Jesus made clay with his saliva, placed mud on the blind man’s eyes and told him to wash himself in the pool of Siloam. Why did he do that? He could have touched his eyes and cured him straight away. It is a reminder that we are made of clay, that our feet can easily break. The pool of Siloam was outside the walls of the city. He could have gone to the nearby fountain and washed his eyes, but it wouldn’t had worked. Jesus wanted him to walk with faith and show others his trust in God. He could go with mud on his eyes because he was blind and knew the way by heart. We also need to show others that we trust in Jesus. God’s saliva cured him, but it had to be mixed with our clay, with our humanity.

            We miss something when we don’t have it. We don’t normally realise that we are blind to the spiritual world. Once we cannot see, we notice our eyes, as when they hurt or we need glasses. We have two of them because they are very important. We have also two ears, to listen better; but only one mouth not to speak too much. We know we are blind because we realise that the saints can see things we don’t see. We would like to see what they see. Better, we would like to see with Jesus eyes. Saint Teresa of Avila wanted to know the colour of Jesus’ eyes when he appeared to her; she says that when she tried, the apparition disappeared altogether.

            Today we ask Jesus to cure our spiritual blindness. First we need to acknowledge that our soul has eyes and that they are closed. Then we have to allow him to put mud in them, and walk with a dirty face for a while, showing others our blindness, till we reach the waters of the Sacrament of Confession. And we need to do this not once, or twice, but a thousand times. Slowly we are going to start seeing; first some shadows, then some sparks of light. The more we clean them, the more light we are going to see. We cannot see the full light from the beginning: it would destroy our eyes completely. And slowly we are going to discover the wonders of the spiritual life.

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Lent 3 A Samaritan woman

            Today we meet a different Jesus, less attractive, more human, more like us. After two days journey from Jerusalem, he is tired, dirty and thirsty. He is all alone, sitting at the edge of Jacob’s well. His disciples had gone to the nearby village to get some food and water. Nobody stayed with him; they were too hungry or too thirsty to keep him company. Jesus couldn’t go on and had to sit down to rest. Or may be he was there waiting for the Samaritan woman and for each one of us. How many times we leave Jesus alone, entertaining ourselves, or giving in our silly little pleasures. And we forget about others.

            It is noon, the sun is up in the sky, the time of the day when everything is quiet and silent, but for the sound of the cicadas. Jesus looks at the fresh water at the bottom of the well with an impossible desire. And a woman comes alone carrying a jar on her head, moving her body in a provocative way. She comes at this hour to avoid other women who didn’t like her, because she stole their husbands. She is beautiful and Jesus is full of dust. Two different attitudes in life: a frivolous woman with a bucket, and a dirty, thirsty God. We are more inclined to notice her than to look at Jesus.

            She ignores Jesus; Jews and Samaritans didn’t talk to each other. And a woman alone didn’t talk to a man. Her situation in life was very messy. But Jesus overcoming his tiredness and her messiness, begins to talk to her. We are all represented in this woman, in her sinfulness, in her desire to draw water and find happiness. Jesus gives us an example of how to reach souls, even the ones that are far away from him. He begins to talk to her about what is important to her, about the water she comes to draw from the well. We normally talk about what is important to us and we find it difficult to know what is important to others.

            Jesus asks her: “Give me a drink.” God thirsty and without a bucket to draw water. He says the same from the cross: “I thirst.” You can find these words in every chapel of Mother Teresa’s nuns. Even though he doesn’t need anything, God always begins asking for things. He is thirsty for our love; he expects us to give ourselves to him, to place him at the centre of our lives. Better: he is telling us what is really happening to us, that we are thirsty of him. We are like the deer in the Psalm that is longing for streams of pure, clear water. And we keep coming back every day to draw water from an earthly well, that will never fill us up. Our heart is a bucket full of cracks, impossible to contain the muddy water we are trying to get from the pot holes in the road.

            Only God can give us this clean, fresh water. This is what he tells the Samaritan woman: “I am the only one who can give you a living water, a water that when you drink it, you’ll never be thirsty again.” A living water, alive, full of energy, with enough nourishment that leads to eternal life. Then, you won’t have to come back again to this well; you won’t have to look for impossible ways to quench yours thirst. It is the water that flew from his side on the cross, when the centurion pierced his heart. It is the grace that flows from the Mass every time we come to drink from his open wound. If only you knew the gift of God!

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Lent 2 The Transfiguration of Jesus

             Last Sunday we went with Jesus down to the desert. This week he is asking us to accompany him up Mount Thabor. We went down through penance and repentance; now, purified and cleansed, we climb up to the heights of the spiritual life, with the new wings sacrifice and mortification have given to us. Even though it is only 300 metres above the plain, it looks higher than it is, because it stands alone surrounded by flat terrain. There is a magnificent view and a beautiful church on top. It is only an hour of climbing, but the road goes straight up. The higher you go the more you see.

            You feel closer to God when you reach the summit. It is part of our Lenten exercise, to climb up the mountain of our sinfulness, towards God, leaving material things behind. You cannot carry much weight if you want to follow Jesus and keep his pace. The closer you become to the top, the more light you find yourself surrounded by. Saints love going up to the mountains to meet their creator. They have received many graces up there. The air is thinner, the light is purer, solitude welcomes you, silence envelops you, and here you feel that God is listening to you. Above the sounds and distractions of society, you find a better connection with God.

            Jesus took with him his three beloved apostles, Peter, John and James, to accompany him; the first Pope, the first apostle martyred and the last to die. He took them on other special occasions. But especially they witnessed both his transfiguration and the agony in the garden. The highs and the lows of his earthly existence. Both in beautiful natural surroundings, a mountain and a garden. They were the only ones to attend both amazing events. Would Jesus take us with him? Are we part of the group of his close friends? Are we ready to withstand the highs and the lows of the Christian life?

            Why did Jesus transfigure himself in front of them? To show them his divinity, just before he was going to show them his horrible passion and death. He does the same with us. If he takes us with him high on the spiritual life, he is going to asks us also to go through suffering and penance. It is the story of every saint. That’s is why there are only few saints; we like the mystical experiences, but we run away from the cross. In both events the three beloved disciples fell sleep; they let Jesus down. We too fall asleep when Jesus asks us to accompany him. But if three of Jesus’ best apostles couldn’t keep their eyes open, we mustn’t feel too bad when we do the same.

            When they arrived at the summit Jesus began to pray. This scene in the Gospel has been depicted traditionally as an icon of contemplation. Before we discover Jesus’ divinity, we need to spend time in prayer, contemplating his humanity. Only when we manage to be in deep concentration, detached from any earthly attachment, sitting above our miseries, can we discover the true face of Christ. It must have been an amazing experience, when they woke up and found themselves in front of the real Jesus. They never forgot that vision. Jesus does the same with us. When he asks us to share the sufferings of his cross, he also sends to us a bit of honey, a spark of heaven, a glimpse of his beautiful face.

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Lent 1 Temptations

Jesus goes to the desert led by the spirit to be tempted. He allows himself to be tested, to share our normal ordinary existence. By doing this, Jesus has entered the drama of human experience. We accompany him, to learn from him, to share his strength. Jesus fought and defended himself as a man, with the same weapons we have. We go to the desert with Jesus, like the desert fathers, to become stronger and be ready to fight the evil one. In the desert there are no distractions, no virtual reality, no place to hide. We can see the devil coming with all his false devices, and we can defeat him more easily. We draw him out from the city and we bring him to our home turf. Here we are just the three of us, and our enemy is outnumbered: we are two against one.

This Lent we are going to spend 40 days with Jesus praying and fasting. The Israelites spent 40 years in the desert. Moses and Elijah spent 40 days of penance and prayer before they met God. 40 is the number of testing, discovering of who you are and prayer in the Bible. We need time to get to know ourselves and get ready. After 40 days of prayer and fasting, Jesus is weak, and the devil takes advantage of this moment to tempt him with strong temptations. Traditionally we call our three enemies, the devil, the world and the flesh. The world are others and the flesh is ours. They could attack us one, two or three together. The worst one is us. We are our biggest enemy.

Why was Jesus tempted?  It is a mystery. Maybe the devil wanted to know who Jesus was, how strong he was, a bit of a testing match. We witness a battle between God and the devil. We are not in the middle. We can choose sides. Hopefully we are in God's side, in the right one, the winning one. In the history of humanity at the end God always wins, even though many times it looks like the devil has the upper hand. God uses the attacks and machinations of the evil one to bring his plans to completion. It must be frustrating for him to see all his work undone. He becomes more experienced with time, but he can never defeat God. In the crucifixion, Satan thinking that killing Jesus was going to win, served God’s plan for our redemption.

Why God allows us to be tempted? Temptations in themselves are indifferent; they are good if we win, they are bad if we lose. Sometimes we win, other times we lose. They help us to grow in love and virtue. We ask God to get rid of them because we don’t want trouble. To become stronger:  difficulties help us to grow. To show him that we love Him: we put Him first. To become more humble: we need his help. We realise how weak we are. They help us to increase our merits.

Get to know ourselves. We normally get tempted the same way. Be sincere. Oscar Wilde was running away from temptation very slowly, for it to catch him. I know that if I go to bed late... Once I begin to speak about this topic... If I go out with this person... Once I start eating peanuts I cannot stop. We know that we will never tempted above our strength. We have all the weapons to fight temptations. We need to use the right ones, like in computer games. The Bible: Jesus uses it against the devil. Pope Francis says that we should use the Bible as we use our cell phone: carry it with us, read it frequently, go back home to pick it up. The best weapon against the devil is Our Lady.

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Ash Wednesday

            “Return to me”, the Lord is telling us on the first reading of today’s Mass. It means that we have been wandering off, we have lost our direction and we need to stop and come back. We have been going rather in the opposite direction, towards our own ego, our selfishness and our pride. Return to me, turn around, do a “u” turn. It is hard to do it; it demands a small conversion, to recognise that we have been wrong and we need to put God back at the centre of our lives. Return “to me”, abandon the desires of your heart, that don’t make you happy, and return to your God, to your Creator, your Father, to what constitutes the meaning of your life.

            When the priest today places the ashes on our forehead, he will remind us of the famous words of the Scripture: “Remember man that you are dust, and unto dust you shall return.” It is a reminder that without God we are nothing; without God all that remains is this pile of dirt that we see in this little dish. The wind is going to blow away the dust of our bodies. We shall return to the earth where we came from. We get the ashes on our forehead, to make sure our thoughts are in the right place. The Church wants to inscribe on our minds what it is important in life. Memento mori. Remember, we come from God and we are going back to him.

            In the book The Alchemist the boy asks him: “Why do we have to listen to our hearts?” And the old man answers: “Because, wherever our heart is, there is also our treasure.” Ubi thesaurus cor; your heart is in your treasure. If we want to know what our treasure is, we should listen to the beating of our hearts. It is not familiar music, because we don’t normally listen to it. It is normally hidden from our senses. We need to listen carefully. Pope Francis says that “our heart always points in some direction: it is like a compass seeking its bearings. We can also compare it to a magnet: it needs to attach itself to something.” It is always seeking something and it is good for us to know what it is.

            Pope Francis in one of his homilies for Ash Wednesday, proposes three steps for Lent: “Almsgiving, prayer, fasting. What are they for? Almsgiving, prayer and fasting bring us back to the three realities that do not fade away. Prayer reunites us to God; charity, to our neighbour; fasting, to ourselves. God, my neighbour, my life: these are the realities that do not fade away and in which we must invest. Lent, therefore, invites us to focus, first of all on the Almighty, in prayer, which frees us from that horizontal and mundane life where we find time for self but forget God. It then invites us to focus on others, with the charity that frees us from the vanity of acquiring and of thinking that things are only good if they are good for me. Finally, Lent invites us to look inside our hearts, with fasting, which frees us from attachment to things and from the worldliness that numbs the heart. Prayer, charity, fasting: three investments for a treasure that endures.”

            In this journey through Lent, where do we fix our eyes, our gaze? What should we focus on? The Church has the answer: on Christ crucified. It is very simple: Jesus is on the cross and if we want to find him, we need to climb up to the cross.

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Love your enemies

             An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. This was the old law. It is a bit harsh for us: if you steal something, you loose your hand; if you kill, you are killed. It was good then, to stop successive acts of revenge. Justice was made, the deed repaid; no need to further action. They say that an eye for an eye eventually would leave the whole world blind. But Jesus came to lift the level of charity; he asked us to turn the other cheek, to love our enemies. It was a big change. How can we do that? We shouldn’t have enemies, but we all have people that annoy us. What did Jesus do? Even though he was innocent, he died for all of us. There is no offence that we can’t forgive and forget.

            This is the true Christian spirit: we are all brothers and sisters. We should love everybody without exception. This is the heart of the Gospel. We need to look at others as Jesus sees them. Have a big heart that includes everyone. Look at the saints, how they treated others; people were attracted to their way of life. When somebody cuts in on us driving on the road, we get upset; if we recognise the person, we smile instead and we wave to him or her. If we know the person jumping the queue, we are more lenient. We need to ask Jesus to help us to change our glasses, or to see things through his eyes.

            There was an Abbot in a monastery who was worried about the lack of charity among his brothers. He went to see a holy man to find a solution. The holy man told him: “You have Jesus among your brothers.” He responded that it was impossible. The holy man reassured him. Going back to the monastery he began to think: “The cook? No, he is too fat, always eating. The librarian? He doesn’t stop reading books. The porter? He is always gossiping about the news. The bell ringer? He is never on time to mark the hours. The gardener? He forgets to water the flowers. The tailor? He can hardly get the size right. The organist? He falls asleep on the keyboard.” And he went through all the friars to see who could be Jesus. When he arrived at the monastery, he got together all the brothers and told them about the holy man: “He says that one of you is Jesus. I don’t think so, but I tell you this just in case.” They all began to think about who could Jesus be. Then the whole atmosphere of the monastery changed. They treated each other differently. Saint Paul says that some of the people around us could be angels. Sometimes Jesus appeared to saints in a different human form, a leper to Saint Francis, a poor man to Saint Martin, a little boy to Saint Christopher.

            The Italians say that when someone does something against you tie a thread on your finger: not to forget, to have it always in your face. We cannot keep bearing all our grudges throughout our life. It is a dead weight. Eventually they will stop us from living. We need to learn how to forgive, forget and let them go.

            We all have things that upset us. It is part of human life. We should bring those things to our prayer, to our conversation with God and deal with them. Otherwise when we get upset all the things inside of us come out and we hurt people. Why do they upset us? How can we change our attitude? A young couple used to get upset using the same toothpaste. Instead of uniting them, it was the opposite. One liked to roll it up and the other just to press it. Eventually they bought two different tubes. The argument was over. Deep down, it is our pride that causes the upset. We need to recognise this and move on.

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Yes mean Yes

             “Let your Yes mean Yes, and your No mean No.” This was the motto of a boys’ school, to teach the kids to be sincere. They used to ask me, why do we have to say the truth, if with a lie we can get away with things. I used to tell them that Jesus is the Truth and if we want to be closer to Jesus, we need to be truthful. Let what you say reflect what you think. Let your mind express itself. Gulliver in one of his travels comes across an island populated by horses, and tries to explain to them what human beings are. The horses cannot understand creatures that are able to lie: How can they think one thing and say a different one? Scientists say that the difference between computers and human beings is that computers cannot lie; they are programmed to come out with what is right. The day they learn how to deceive others, they will be like us; then we will be in trouble, completely at their mercy.

            Society needs the truth to function properly. We live in a relativistic world where people are not interested in the truth. They are only interested in their truth. As long as I am happy in the way I live, I change the truth to suit my life. The internet is full of fake news. We like to access web sites that say things we agree with. The protagonist of the movie “A Few Good Men” has a famous line: “You cannot handle the truth”. It is true: we don’t want to handle it, to live by it, to live our lives according to the Truth, with a capital T. Martyrs used to lay down their lives for what they believed in. We are not ready to do so. We are only ready to die for what give us most pleasure, money, drugs, sex, alcohol or food.

            First we need to be sincere with God. It is silly to try to deceive God, because He knows everything. But we don’t want to face him, to acknowledge his presence. We live ignoring him, as if he doesn’t exist; we only go to Him when we are in trouble. How can we love Him if we are afraid of him? Maybe we contact Him once a day, out of duty, just in case, when we pray before going to bed. We need to force ourselves to spend time with Him in silent prayer, to try to see things through His eyes, to look at Him with loving eyes. Somebody said that we should look at Jesus’ eyes at least once a day. Sooner or later we are going to face Him.

            In the temple of Apollo at Delphi there was a famous inscription: Nosce te ipsum; know yourself. One of the most difficult things in life is to know ourselves. Because we live inside of ourselves, because we don’t like how we are, we create a different image of ourselves. I’d like to have another inscription: Ama te ipsum: love yourself; love yourself in the way God created you. God doesn’t love a virtual you; he loves you in the way you are. Unless we accept ourselves in the way we are we cannot be sincere with ourselves. How can we love ourselves? How can we get to know ourselves? Open your interior to somebody you love, to somebody who can help you, like in spiritual direction; we all need a sounding board to check who we are and how we are.

            Lastly, sincerity with others. It is very important in human relations. If people know that we are not sincere, they cannot trust us. It is not easy to live with a person who is constantly lying to you. Once we start lying, it is not easy to stop. The truth is harder, but will set you free. How can we stop lying? Try to catch the lie before it goes out; bite it. Slowly you can win the battle.

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Salt and Light

             Jesus reminds us today in the Gospel that we Christians are salt and light; salt of the earth and light of the world. Both are related to two senses, seeing and tasting. Without light we cannot see. Without salt the food becomes insipid. Jesus doesn’t say what we should be, but what we are; we are because of our Baptism. Not because we are better, or because we have done well, but because of his will, because he wants it. Christopher West always reminds us: You are a gift, be what you are.

            We are precious in the eyes of God, like Gollum with his ring. In the old world salt was very valuable. The Jews made their offerings to God seasoned with salt, to make it pleasant for him. The Greeks considered salt to be divine. The Roman soldiers were some times paid with salt. In the times where there were no fridges, to make the food last, it had to be covered with salt. The human body contains almost a kilo of salt. Comparing us with salt, Jesus is telling us how valuable we are in his eyes.

            What does it mean to be salt? It is white and pure; we should live a clean life, different from other people’s tasteless lives. It gives flavour to the food; we should make the world more pleasant, more lovable. It sterilises the wounds, stopping infections; we should preserve society from the effects of sin. It melts the ice when the roads are covered with it; we should melt the coldness of humanity with the warmth of the love of God. It preserves the food from decay; we should be like preservatives, to stop society from disintegrating, keeping things fresh and healthy. It produces thirst, the desire to drink; we should foster our thirst for God, that only his love can quench. But if the salt becomes tasteless what can you do with it? Throw it away. If it becomes contaminated, it becomes useless. When the salt in the underground water comes to the surface, the field becomes barren. It is possible for us to lose our way, our truth and our light.

            Light is very important for us. Without the light of the sun it is impossible to live. Our eyes are our most valuable sense. The same happens in the spiritual life: God is the light. The first thing he did when he created the world was to separate light from darkness. When we see God, we see light. The devil is the prince of darkness. Hell is pitch black. When we baptise a baby we light a candle, to signify that his soul is full of light. Jesus came to dispel darkness.

            We are the light of the world, not our light, but his light. We need to let his light to shine on us. We need to learn how to reflect his light, not ours. Like the moon, that reflects the light of the sun. We compare Mary with the moon. We should be like a lighthouse: to show people where the rocks are, where the danger is. Jesus is the beacon; we are the lighthouse. We can be a beautiful lighthouse, close to the sea, on the forefront, but if our beacon is out, we are useless. To give light we have to have it. Many times instead of salt we are vinegar; instead of giving light, we give darkness. We ask Mary our mother to remind us what we are: children of the light, pure mineral salt.

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