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Today we started a new year; we welcomed the most beautiful greetings, in the hope that it will bring us well; but, if we want to be positive and sincere, we have to admit that we have a sense of hesitation in the depths of our heart.

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New Year

Considering well the social and moral situation in which we are still living, day after day we become more and more aware of the volubility, of the uncertainty of human things: what man can do when he cancels God and his laws: relying on his own strength, without a point well fixed, he finds himself groping in the darkness of human passions, creating selfishness, confusion .... only Babylon.

But we also want to be sincere and with a joy in the heart: the search for God is advancing and proof of this is the good that, under various manifestations, winds through society. If good is born only from God and from those who have in himself his Spirit, as Jesus himself proclaimed, we must say that God did not let himself be hunted, but is present, works by creating new forces capable of countering evil. It is true that the fight is and will be hard and long ... even when the plant is transplanted, it lives a period of difficulty or illness ... until the roots have found their life: water and mineral salts; but, to the extent in which these will be in their possession, the plant will find its full force and, in its time, will bear its fruits.

Our soil is Jesus: in Him we must be transplanted. To facilitate this transplantation, he confirms that he is by no means absent in human affairs, so he asks us for faith and trust.
Only on this condition has he taken human existence, and having lived it in all its extension asks each one to trust Him blindly.
The sin of which he speaks to us most frequently The Bible is the sin of distrust.
The sin of Adam, who did not trust the word of God, but preferred to follow the voice of the devil, is like the preventive summary of all the sins of the world! According to the Bible, sin basically consists in this: in not trusting God, the project of God, the word of God: trying to build a project on its own.

The overcoming of sin occurs through trust in the God of love.
God can not bear that man does not trust him; if man does not trust him and his love, God cannot save him, he cannot make it an instrument of salvation. On the other hand, if man trusts God, He makes impetuosity in his life, takes him totally and directs him to the expansion of his Kingdom.

To demonstrate this, let us refer to some biblical passages.
The Lord said to Abraham: "Go from your country, from your country, and from your father's house to the land that I will show you". Abraham lived in Ur of Caldea. He was a part of a land, a civilization, a tradition, a homeland, a country, a kinship, a house ... he was married to Sara.

His wife was sterile.
He had gained a lot of luck.
He lived well.
But here is God, Disturber, enter his life! "Get out"
And Abraham leaves, he trusts.
He comes off and goes.

With Abraham, who trusted God, the history of salvation begins; the journey of humanity towards the land of God begins. After these things God tested Abraham and told him "Abraham, Abraham!". He answered "Here I am". God resumed: "Take your son, your only son you love, Isaac, and go to the territory of Moria and offer him as a holocaust on a mountain that I will show you". Abraham, he got up early in the morning and ... We know the rest.
God is not content with a platonic love, a love in words. It tests man's trust and love. The test to which Abraham is subjected is so drastic that it gives shivers.

God calls Abram by name. It is a marvelous, but tremendous moment, the one in which God addresses himself directly to me and calls me by name. If he addresses me directly, it is a sign that he wants something from me. And God never wants trivial things. He always wants radical things. To God who calls by name Abraham answers "Here I am".

"Here I am" is a central word in the Bible, expresses the fundamental attitude that man must have when he is questioned by God: expresses the unlimited trust that man must nurture towards God! And when God makes his absurd proposal to Abraham, Abraham obeys, without saying a word. His faith is gigantic, unsurpassable. His trust in God is so radical that he trusts God even when he proposes the absurd: "I will make a great people of you! Take ... your only son whom you love and offer him as a burnt offering!" We also know the rest.

Trust deserves Abraham the blessing of God. "Because you have done this and you have not refused your only son, I bless you with every blessing." The history of human sin begins with an act of distrust: Adam does not trust God. The history of salvation begins with an act of total trust in God.
Let's move on to another character: to Moses. "Go, I send you to Pharaoh, he brings my people, the Israelites out of Egypt". Moses had devised a simple, peaceful project on his life.

He had escaped from the face of the Pharaoh, he had formed a family. But God, the Disturber, raises the life of Moses ... "Go!"
God's project is always a project of human liberation; but to implement it, he needs a man who totally trusts him and sells himself totally to his plan of salvation.
Moses replies: "Who am I to go to Pharaoh and to bring out the Israelites from Egypt?" Moses no longer has the faith of Abraham. It makes objections to God.
But God answers; "I will be with you". In other words, God says to Moses "It does not matter who you are, it is who I am who counts, I count that I am with you, you do not argue, he goes!".
Moses, confident in the word of God will work signs and wonders, will bring the Israelites out of Egypt, will be the undisputed leader of Israel to the threshold of the promised land. But God will not forgive him an act of distrust done to Meriba.

When he reached the threshold of the land of Canaan, he went up to Mount Nebo, and God said to him, "Aim the land of Canaan which I give to the Israelites, but there you will not enter".
God is Love. He cannot tolerate that man does not trust him and his plan of love. We have another intervention of Jesus in this declaration to his priests and to everyone regarding the necessity of His presence and of believing in it for the outcome of the apostolic labors: "I want my priests closer to Me and only to Me, who believe that, passing their hours next to my tabernacle, I will be with them, I will work and change hearts until they leave Me the Master of their works, do not expect vocations and holiness of life, but will act my justice". So many external works, journeys, conferences and round tables do not contribute to the salvation of souls. "They do not lose their courage even if their churches are deserted, the time will come when they will not be able to contain the faithful, only if they live near Me, I will be with them".

A most precious declaration: full of encouragement to trust but also of the condition for our works to succeed: to live beside Him, with Him our problems which, in reality, are situations in which He wants to act to manifest His meaningful Presence by using however, our.