Devotion tu Jesus

Fifth Friday

Before meditation

"Lay people will find through this loving devotion to my Heart peace in their families".

It also promises, through this medium, to reunite divided families and help those who are in some need.
Through these words makes us realize that true peace comes from Him, by Him and us together. But then peace is not a gift? It is because He helps us with specific interventions to engage the power or ability that has placed in us from birth to this gift, which is peace, to occur.
The conditions or powers are: truth, justice, love and freedom. These are the feelings and attitudes that come from the heart, because in it Jesus or deposited them enclosed, in the heart and only Jesus can work. Let us briefly each of these powers.

The truth
Is fundamental to peace, and this will only be possible if every individual sincerely, as well as become aware of their rights but also his own duties to others..

Justice
Will be able to build peace if in practice everyone respects the rights not only of others but also to fulfill duties to others seriously.

Love
Will build peace only if people feel the needs of others as their own and share with others what he has, starting from the values of the spirit.

Freedoms
Finally, builds peace and make it thrive if, in the choice of means to that end, people act according to reason and assume responsibility with courage for their actions.

If you succeed with commitment to bring these values into family life, then both men and women become more aware of the importance of their relationship with God, which is the source of all good and solid foundation for their lives both as individuals and how to be social. They will learn that the road to peace must pass through the defense and promotion of fundamental human rights. In fact, these rights of every human being enjoys, not as a benefit bestowed by a certain social class or by Sato, but as a privilege which is proper as a person.

In the encyclical "Pacem in Terris" of the late Pope John XXIII reads: "In an ordered and productive, must lay the foundation as the principle that every human person is a person, that nature is endowed with intelligence and free will and therefore is subject rights and obligations flowing directly and simultaneously from his own nature: rights and duties which are therefore universal, inviolable and unchangeable".

Writing these words, the Pope is not merely expressed abstract ideas, but ideas with profound consequences, as history has shown. The basis is the belief that every human being is equal in dignity, which is why civil society should use its facilities to support this truth. After this encyclical, soon they are born human rights movements that have shaken and not just any system of life, for example, the promotion of freedom has been recognized as an indispensable component of work for peace.

A closer look at the circumstances we must recognize that peace is not essentially about structures but about people. Structures such as procedures for peace is of course necessary and present, but they are the result of suffering and experience accumulated throughout history countless gestures of peace made by men and women who have kept hope and never giving way to discouragement. Gestures of peace spring from people who cultivate in their own hearts attitudes of peace, the fruit of the mind and heart, they become "peacemakers".

Gestures of peace are possible when we appreciate the community aspect of life, in order to perceive the refugee as the consequences of certain events that they have in their communities.
Gestures of peace create a tradition to a culture of peace. The religion itself has a vital role in fostering gestures of peace and in consolidating the peace terms. This role can efficiently carry as much focus on what is proper, such as: openness to God, the teaching of universal brotherhood and the formation of a culture of solidarity.

Pope John XXIII was a man unafraid of the future. Helped him in this attitude of optimism that trust in God, God who holds the hearts and minds of men, and confidence in man. Confidence that came from the deep atmosphere of faith in which he had grown stronger than this abandonment to divine Providence, even in the midst of the conflicts of his time and very well know, the Pope has never hesitated to propose to the leaders of his time to a new vision of time. Looking at him, we got to engage in those same sentiments that have been his!

Trust in the merciful and compassionate God who calls us to brotherhood, trust in men and women of our time as any other time, because the image of God imprinted on the minds of all equally. It is starting from these feelings that you can hope to build a civilized world and domestic peace on earth.

Second Meditation

Jesus came, and yet we are still waiting as was the ancient Israelites. Jesus came among us, yet we live the experience of exile "Knowing that as long as we live in the body we are exiled from the Lord." The whole New Testament is permeated by this expectation of Jesus who is coming and that always seems imminent. Now, the real half to prepare for the coming in glory that will be fulfilled at the end of the world is to live with the Church every year the series of mysteries experienced by Jesus' love for us. Christmas presents himself as the starting point of our redemption, that since this began when the Redeemer, promised and long waited after the fall of the first man came into the world. The Church by repeating the words of St. Leone does not wave, perhaps the day when Jesus was born again as the day of our redemption?

Christmas is for us the day of our redemption, the day that is fixed to the fall. On the same day of Christmas, from which began the era of our salvation, the Church honors the Virgin Mary in a special way, which has given us, in the person of the Saviour, the blessed fruit of her womb, the child of his virginity! Christmas, in fact, is the festival par excellence of the divine motherhood. Nothing could seem more legitimate than ensuring the Virgin Mother, the vast place occupied by you in the liturgy of Advent, where Mary is always inseparably united to the Savior. We can say that Madonna is, for many titles, as the personification of Advent. First, when it came to light, has prepared the coming of the Savior. No doubt the Holy Virgin did not deserve, strictly speaking, the Incarnation of Jesus, but the Divine Wisdom had decided from all eternity, not to get on the ground before finding a place pure enough to accommodate and protect the beginnings his dwelling among men. Now Madonna has offered this land to the Lord as a virgin whose beauty perfectly spotless was the only able to attract the world.

It is true that the Word, Jesus, has been prepared by himself, his caste home, but not to such an extent that the Immaculate Virgin could not pay attention to the divine and could give, for what was to you, the grace of God that filled, the wonderful development that it deserves to become the Mother of the Redeemer.
It is hard to imagine how it was waiting for Madonna, when she conceived in her womb the child that was given to the world because he was the Saviour. What creature has ever expected, desired and prepared for the birth of the Redeemer as the Mother of the Redeemer? It is not clear that the Madonna is providentially qualified to enter into the mystery of Christmas, and enable us to celebrate with a feast that result, in a sense, is the largest and the most glorious of holidays? From one point of Advent, we are rightly places a very special way, under the influence of the Virgin Mother, in a moving antiphon at the end of each canonical hour, hailed as "Venerable Mother of the Redeemer", "Alma Redemporis Mater" and ask her to help us in our efforts to the resurrection of the guilt. On the first Sunday of Advent, the season is celebrated Mass in the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome, the shrine so beautiful and so vast erected in the center of Catholicism in honor of the Mother of God.

We note also that the beginning of Advent, the Church turns to the Virgin Mary in a number of liturgical songs, antiphons and responses, which bring out very freely, and with joyful freshness and delicacy of his attitudes in the Annunciation scene. But of course, magnifies the part of Lady gradually, we move closer to the Nativity of the Savior. And this we can imagine, thinking that enters into the glory of motherhood perfectly aware of the dignity of the child who will come to light through it; Having followed the Lord called to this glorious mystery of the Mother of God, does not want to be a mere conduit of such grace but a voluntary instrument that contributes to the great work not only with its excellent provisions, but also with the free movement of his will, in fact, the great mystery is accomplished only after his free consent. Still, it's very difficult, very difficult to imagine how it was waiting for the Lady to embrace the child that Heaven had given her because composes the great work of redemption.

A similar moment is experienced by the woman when she waits for the child, because she alone knows the wave of grace that accompanied it in the months of waiting to grow up beyond belief and as that wave when approaching the moment of seeing and being able to forge close to her heart ... At last there, and the mother is everything. How will it be tomorrow? To her mother, at that time, not interested in the future. It only matters that at the moment is his haute received the heart. But in the meantime the difficulty of understanding the wave of love that remains mum. To the Virgin Mary was already quite clear, very clear ... nothing less than the Son of God; God himself would have been his to give as a gift to the land of salvation. How he lived through those months of waiting, as they passed, the years with him. Is a mystery! Maybe one day if we understand the glory of heaven, but for now we can do is remain in silent adoration and full of gratitude, but certainly also full of grace. For her now, at this moment, the son God is near us, watching us, loves us, waiting for us. Thanks to him, thanks to Mary.